The Canadian Defense Policy essays

The Canadian Defense Policy essays ?The search for stable foundations of policy in the face of drastic and revolutionary change poses a problem of almost excruciating difficulty for all nations... - Dr. R. J. Sutherland, Canadas Long Term Strategic Situation In his 1962 essay, Canadas Long Term Strategic Situation, Dr. R. J. Sutherland took the unusually bold step of predicting the stable foundations of Canadian defense policy for the next four decades, even though he was writing at the height of Cold War tensions and amid revolutionary developments in nuclear weapons technology.1 An economist, cavalry officer and operational analyst with experience of World War Two and the Korean conflict, much of Sutherlands work for the Department of Defense remains classified and although his career was cut short by his untimely death in 1967, aged only 45, he is considered by many to have been Canadas preeminent strategist of the 1950's and 1960's.2 Sutherland was working for Canadas Defense Research Board when his seminal essay on Canadian security was published in the International Journal. Despite the dramatic global changes since Hitlers War, Sutherland argued that the very concept of national security required consistent policies to be applied over many decades and suggested that looking ahead to the far horizon of the year 2000 could help to determine the long term basis of Canadian security and defense policy.3 Whilst articulating why all out thermonuclear war was unlikely, Sutherland still presented an essentially Hobbesian view of the international system, contending that The game of power politics has been going on since the dawn of history and as such a peaceful world order would not be achieved by the start of the next millennium. Despite these uncertainties, Sutherland posited that there were certain invariants in Canadas strategic situation relat...