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A National Force: The Evolution of Canada’s Army, 1950–2000, by Peter Kasurak

Reviewed by: Isabel Campbell, Directorate of History and Heritage, National Defence HeadquartersThis review represents the reviewer's personal views and not those of the department.Peter Kasurak's history has garnered national attention, with the Literary Review of Canada calling his portrayal of Canadian ground forces "an army astray."[1] Few would quarrel with that assessment for the 1990s; however, Kasurak uses persuasion rather than solid analysis to support his refreshing, but one-dimensional argument that "reliance on the British Army ... left the Canadian Army without a staff that could focus on national military strategy or the development of an 'army of the future'" (16). While the Canadian Army had a limited "capacity ... for thinking about problems ... [outside] the army's assignment" and was even myopic, the reasons for this shortcoming were different from and more complex than he suggests (67). The American influence on Canadian military thinking and Canadian attempts to use the United Nations and the North Atlantic alliance to create an independent strategy are well known, but he too often overlooks this context and the diverse challenges facing the Canadian Army officer corps during the period.David French's Army, Empire, and the Cold War proffers a more balanced approach to the British Army's history, while demonstrating that Kasurak's statements about British doctrine are dated and inaccurate.[2] British, Canadian, American, and other officers developed concepts for manoeuvre warfare, mobile forces, and air-portable forces for the nuclear and conventional battlefields, but could not implement their ideas due to low threat levels, tight budgets, and other factors. Under these circumstances, the West Germans and other NATO members insisted on a North American presence on the European Central Front. Was an inadequate, dependent officer corps really responsible for the eventual outcomes of the Trudeau reassessment of Canadian foreign and defence policy, as Kasurak claims?Kasurak condemns the army's commitment to the Central Front role in defiance of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's direction as "one of the most under-reported incidences of insubordination in Canadian civil-military relations" (285). "Pursuing this preference led Leo Cadieux [the minister of national defence from 1967 to 1970] and senior armed forces and departmental officials to thumb their noses at Cabinet direction to move the army from the Central Front" (285). A few years later, Trudeau and Cadieux's successor, Donald Macdonald, "were greatly upset to find that Cabinet direction had not been followed" (285). Yet Trudeau could have accepted Cadieux's resignation and pushed for a complete withdrawal of troops from the alliance, though Mitchell Sharp, the secretary of state for external affairs, likely would have resigned. Sharp regarded the presence of Canadian troops in Europe as beneficial to Canadian interests and considered Trudeau a "remarkably effective chairman of Cabinet" who genuinely sought "consensus."[3] Trudeau was no autocrat.A look at the allegations against Cadieux demonstrates the work's major flaws. Quoting briefly from a key Cabinet record of 13 August 1969, Kasurak ignores the conflicting evidence it contains. On this day, because he could not implement the original directive, Cadieux sought Cabinet guidance, presenting Trudeau and his Cabinet colleagues with a compromise plan. Charles Drury, the president of the Treasury Board, astutely observed that "the proposal looked to be just reducing," not the required change in roles. Cadieux explained that to implement a new mobile role, Lyman Lemnitzer (the Supreme Allied Commander Europe) had requested larger numbers and new equipment, which Canada could not afford within the authorized budget of $1.815 billion. After discussions to eliminate Canada's nuclear commitment to the alliance, Trudeau and his Cabinet authorized Cadieux to negotiate an "interim land force reduction by June 1970," which would continue with its present equipment until new light equipment was available within three years. …