All the signs point to Africa
Officials have made it clear government has heart set on mission French West Africa
French have the most troops and the most robust military capability. It is also where the German and Dutch have quietly sent about 1,000 troops over the past year although those countries do not see their contributions as part of a bid for a Security Council seat.
Like the French, the Canadian military needs to be careful about becoming overstretched. As African operations involving about 600 ramp up, it must also sustain about 800 troops in Kuwait and the Kurdish part of Iraq.
It will soon send about 450 combat troops on a new NATO mission to Latvia to try to contain Russia’s irredentist impulses on its western borders.
With only five C-17 heavy lift aircraft and oceans between these disparate missions and Canada, getting the logistics right will be job No. 1. Much of the planning will fall to Maj.-Gen. Chuck Lamarre.
The logistician responsible for the massive undertaking of bringing all of Canada’s equipment back from Kandahar, Afghanistan, he is now Vance’s director of staff and his right arm on operations.
Given that the Trudeau government intends to keep Canadian Forces in Africa for many years and that those troops will require scores of heavy armoured personnel carriers, weapons, a field hospital and helicopters, something to look for soon may be an announcement Canada intends to establish a regional logistics hub, most likely in the Senegalese port of Dakar. It would be something akin to the ones that already exist in Kuwait and Cologne, Germany.
Identifying personnel and assembling the tens of thousands of nuts and bolts required to deploy to a part of the world where infrastructure is almost totally lacking will take time and patience. That will give Canadians the opportunity to ponder whether the African mission is an altruistic endeavour to do good in a deeply troubled part of the world or a grand bid to enhance Canada’s chances of winning the Security Council seat.