Abstract
Reviewed by : Randall Wakelam (Randall.Wakelam@rmc.ca ), Royal Military College of Canada, Canada
The question of who commands Canadian service personnel is a longstanding, delicate, and often vexatious one. Since the first deployment of Canadians overseas in 1885, politicians and military leaders have been concerned about who gives orders to Canada’s soldiers, sailors, and aviators. This book, by one of Canada’s leading air power researchers, deals with the complex and not-infrequently confusing matter of the integration of the efforts of fighting services of two or more nations within an alliance or collation. The case study on which this investigation is based is that of the harmonization of Canadian and US air forces for the defence of North America.
The topic has been looked at in lesser detail in the past. W.A.B. Douglas’s The Creation of a National Air Force (volume 2 of the RCAF Official History) and James Eayrs’ Peacemaking and Deterrence introduced readers to questions of who should control Canadian flying efforts. A much more focused study, Joseph Jockel’s No Boundaries Upstairs, investigated differing national (Canadian and US) interpretations of how the air defence collation that became the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was designed and adopted. Goette’s study goes beyond these to examine the specifics, and looks at the gestation of continental air defence from the first bilateral discussions and plans of 1940 through to the actual creation of NORAD.
Before looking at the events, Goette begins by positing that while Canadians have allowed, and continue to allow, the US (specifically the US Air Force) to control air defence functions and operations, Canada has not given up sovereignty and command of its air force. He argues this point as a counter to defence commentator Professor Michael Byers’ contention that the central characteristic of a sovereign state is the “control” of its armed services. Goette says that this is not the case, and that it is the “command” of military forces that is linked to state sovereignty. His case study of the evolution of the air defence command and control relationships in North America between 1940 and 1957 serves to validate his premise.
Goette begins with a very dense examination of the two terms. He explains that command is linked to sovereignty while control is associated with the effective use of forces. In laying out his argument, he makes reference to the longstanding concept of civil–military relations and the predominance of civil authority in the direction of defence efforts. He also reminds readers that the adoption of command and control policies and agreements is very much associated with personalities, and here one should remember that the decision-makers, particularly those in Ottawa, had spent much of their adult lives living under the control of the UK and were throughout the period of the study very much seized of the notion of self control of political and military decisions.
The Americans had their own national issues, one of which was their binary approach to command of military forces and operations. The services could—and their doctrines so specified—work “in cooperation” much of the time, but shift to a single “unified” commander of all forces in an operational theatre when national security was threatened and the likelihood of attack was imminent. This, Goette demonstrates, was the system that they wanted to invoke with Canada, and specifically the RCAF, at several junctures over the years in question.
Richly illustrating the actual negotiations and decisions of these years, Goette relates the waxing and waning of the bilateral relationship, linking the air defence question to larger issues of the defence of North America, first from Japan and Germany, and after 1945 from the Russians. He shows how various US, Canadian, and British command and control philosophies were ultimately blended so that the Americans got what they wanted—a single integrated air defence system with one person in control of operations—while Canadians maintained command of their forces regardless of whether aircraft were responding to Canadian or US direction when sent aloft.
If there is one aspect of the book that is a bit daunting, it is the discussion of command and control concepts in chapter 2. Even dyed-in-the-wool aficionados of the subject will need to read closely and carefully; those new to the ideas presented will possibly have a hard go of it. Also, while Goette correctly talks about “command” and “control” as two separate things, he does not mention the commonly used term “command and control,” often written as “C2.” Those familiar with this last term may therefore have an additional moment of confusion. A second very minor matter is that those looking for a book about air defence operations will not find it in this work. There is no discussion of what squadrons operated where or when, nor of what was involved in intercept practices, or what Russian Bears were intercepted. Rather, this is a book about the decisions, policies, and conventions that allowed, and by extension still allow, those intercepts to happen.
Finally, readers will enjoy the plentiful photographs of the RCAF senior leaders involved in developing those protocols, as well as the maps and charts that show the physical development of the radar systems which provided the vital situational awareness of the system. And for those needing an “airplane picture,” there are some of these as well.
Overall, Goette’s work makes a welcome and valuable addition to our understanding of Canadian defence philosophies, policies, and practices—particularly those of the air defence of the nation.