Editor’s Corner

Welcome to yet another frosty issue of the Canadian Military Journal. While it is still autumn in the Great White North as these words are being penned, the horses are growing their winter coats, and they are never wrong. Time to break out the gloves and parkas…

We have quite an eclectic issue this time out. Taking the point, Defence Scientist James Moore continues his study of Armed Non-State Actors (ANSAs), and herein, he explores “… the strategic roles of ANSAs in the context of violent intergroup conflict, beginning with a statement of the central problem.” Next, Colonel Daniel MacIssac, a graduate student at Deakin University and the Australian Defence College’s Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies, and a former Deputy Chief of Staff Strategy for Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC), explores the energy security concerns of both Canada and the People’s Republic of China. MacIssac argues that the sale of surplus Canadian oil to China will improve the energy security of both nations, and that this increased energy interdependency “…may also be useful in potentially mitigating any future Sino-Western security tensions.”

Moving along, infantry officer Major Max Michaud-Shields looks at the fascinating realm of military human enhancement through the innovative use of enhancement technologies. However, as Michaud-Shields opines, “…the high likelihood that invasive PA (Personal Augmentation) in general, and cybernetics (the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things) in particular, will eventually become a viable capability development pathway raises several weighty ethical and operational questions.” He is followed by Colonel Guy Chapdelaine, the Director of Strategic Support in the Chaplain General Office at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, who highlights the key moments in the history of the Canadian chaplaincy since the creation of separate Protestant and Catholic chaplaincies on the eve of war in 1939. He then discusses the Canadian multiculturalism model, “…and the means used to prepare our chaplains to work in a pluralistic context.” The author then goes on to address the challenges associated with managing religious diversity, while still ensuring that chaplains are able to maintain their links to their own religious communities. Chapdelaine then concludes with a response to the question posed in the article’s title, that is, as to whether diversity is a blessing or a curse for the Chaplain Branch.

In the last of the major articles, doctoral student William Wilson examines the serious conceptual challenges posed by the overall complexity of the intelligence profession through a number of intelligence models that have been established to help grapple with and to grasp this complexity. “Among the different models on offer, three prominent ones include the cyclical model, the target centric-model, and the multi-layered model.” Each is based upon a slightly different understanding of the intelligence gathering process, and each will be seen to offer different strengths and weaknesses. Since military minds strive to learn from the lessons offered from past experiences, the author “…aims to test the usefulness of these three models by evaluating them against the Cuban Missile Crisis (of 1962),” since it “…demonstrates many of the conceptual challenges confronting intelligence practitioners and scholars, making it an ideal test case.”

We round out the issue with two highly different opinion pieces, although both in their own way deal with the subject of higher military education. In the first, Lieutenant Colonel (ret’d) Daniel McCauley, a former USAF pilot and now an assistant professor at the American Joint Forces Staff College at the National Defense University in Norfolk, Virginia, opines that the current American Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) system “…is centered in an educational paradigm more attuned to the demands of the Cold War era than those of the 21^st Century.” The author further offers that “…the JPME community must eschew this 20^th Century paradigm and develop a competence-based approach that provides students with the abilities needed to operate across the multiple levels of war, traversing multiple domains and disciplines, and is applicable anywhere in the world.” Parallel applications for the Canadian military are certainly worthy of consideration. In the second submission, RMC Saint-Jean Professor of Philosophy Danic Parenteau takes a fresh look at what type of initial training is best suited to produce good officers at the Royal Military Colleges of Canada, based upon “…the shifting overall geopolitical context in which the CAF operates, and, in particular, the major transformations affecting warfare and military operations.” Parenteau believes that in order to function effectively in new, unpredictable environments, young, developing officers must be both adaptable and versatile, and that “…the best intellectual tool an officer can have for developing his or her skills is critical thinking anchored in a broad general culture.”

Our own resident Martin Shadwick then explores the ramifications of the recently-announced decision to retire two Iroquois-class destroyers and two Protecteur-class Auxiliary Oiler Replenishment (AOR) ships, while highlighting some of the mitigating options provided by the modernized Halifax-class frigates, and the embodied promise of a brighter replacement future for the AORs through their eventual replacement with the Queenston-class Joint Support Ships. Martin closes with a few words on the benefits the acquisition of a fifth C-17A Globemaster III would provide to enhance Canada’s defence capabilities. Finally, as is our wont, we offer a number of book reviews for our readership’s consideration.

Until the next time.

David L. Bashow
Editor-in-Chief
Canadian Military Journal