Foreign Wars Undermine Democracy at Home

The war in Afghanistan is a cause, rather than a symptom, of Canada's democratic deficit.

On Dec. 30, 2009, Canada found itself temporarily without a legislative branch of government, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament, dissolving all parliamentary committees and nullifying 36 bills on the parliamentary agenda. The Prime Minister’s Office claimed it was done to provide time for consultation with Canadians about the forthcoming budget, a claim that was viewed with some skepticism.

As it happens, one of the highest-profile parliamentary initiatives cancelled by the prorogation was a public-interest hearing called by the Military Police Complaints Commission to discuss the Canadian military’s treatment of prisoners during its counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan. By shutting down Parliament, the government was able to sidestep its ability to inquire into whether the military was complicit in torture.

What has remained under-examined in the national conversation about this event is that for a nation at war, this is not uncharted territory. In fact, there are distinct historical precedents for activity of this kind by governments carrying out counter-insurgency operations abroad. Counter-insurgency is a particularly messy, ugly business, and successful prosecution of a counter-insurgency campaign usually involves the adoption of a number of tactics that are difficult to reconcile with the legal requirements of modern-day warfare.

Furthermore, the stakes in war are high enough that transparency itself can come to be viewed as an obstacle or even a weakness. For these reasons, military occupations have a particular and pernicious set of pressures that they exert on democratic institutions and open societies. Throughout the history of modern warfare, different countries have responded to these pressures with varying tactics – and varying degrees of success.

The past century has furnished numerous examples of the different ways these pressures can manifest themselves. Some of the most extreme examples are quite notorious. In 1921, after Spain’s disastrous military debacle at Annual in the mountainous Moroccan Rif, a magistrate named Juan Picasso was authorized to examine what had happened and bring charges against those responsible.

His subsequent inquiry had to carry on despite being impeded at every step by the military, which used all available mechanisms to deny access to documents and insulate the higher-ranked officials from investigation. In 1923, just before his report was to be published, the liberal Spanish regime was overthrown in a coup d’état by the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.

Such a thing could never happen in Canada, a country whose democratic institutions are rooted in tradition and much less brittle. However, it remains a fact that public opinion is a powerful force, and the more the public knows about a counter-insurgency campaign, the less likely they are to support it. For this reason, governments have long known that they must control information flowing from the sites of conflict where their troops are active.

In 1921, the Italian government, whose occupation of Libya was beset with difficulties and public criticism, began its most successful phase of reconquest using a simple tactic: All new military initiatives were to be simply called “police actions.”