Canadian Gunboat Diplomacy<\/a><\/i>notes, \u201cin Costa Rica, [Canadian vessels] Aurora, Patriot and Patrician helped the Royal Bank of Canada satisfactorily settle an outstanding claim with the government of that country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In another chapter of the 2000 book titled Maple Leaf Over the Caribbean: Gunboat Diplomacy Canadian Style<\/i> Royal Military College historian Sean Maloney writes: \u201cSince 1960, Canada has used its military forces at least 26 times in the Caribbean to support Canadian foreign policy. In addition, Canada planned three additional operations, including two unilateral interventions into Caribbean states.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Canadian Navy has long flexed its muscles in the Western hemisphere, over the past decade the Canadian Navy has played a greater role in Africa. In the summer of 2008 Canada took command of NATO\u2019s Task Force 150 that worked off the coast of Somalia. Between the start of 2013 and fall of 2015 Canadian warships HMCS Regina <\/i>and HMCS Toronto<\/i> participated in a 28-nation Combined Maritime Forces operation in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. At the start of 2015 twenty-six Canadian Armed Forces members participated in the multinational maritime security exercise Cutlass Express 2015. Sponsored by the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), it took place off the East African coast.<\/p>\n
As part of what\u2019s been dubbed Africa\u2019s \u201cencirclement by U.S. and NATO warships\u201d, HMCS Athabaskan<\/i> led Operation Steadfast Jaguar 2006 in the Gulf of Guinea. A dozen warships and 7,000 troops participated in the exercise, the first ever carried out by NATO\u2019s Rapid Response Force. <\/p>\n
The following year HMCS Toronto<\/i> participated in a six-ship task group of the Standing Naval Maritime Group 1 of NATO that traveled 23,000 kilometers around the continent. The trip took five months and was the first NATO fleet to circumnavigate Africa. HMCS Toronto<\/i> spent a year preparing for this trip, a journey costing Canadian taxpayers $8 million.<\/p>\n
Oil largely motivated operations off Nigeria\u2019s coast. Nigeria\u2019s Business Day<\/i> described NATO\u2019s presence as \u201ca show of force and a demonstration that the world powers are closely monitoring the worsening security situation in the [oil-rich] Niger Delta.\u201d A Canadian spokesperson gave credence to this interpretation of their activities in a region long dominated by Shell and other Western oil corporations. When the Standing Naval Maritime Group 1 warships patrolled the area Canadian Lieutenant Commander Angus Topshee told the CBC that \u201cit\u2019s a critical area of the world because Nigeria produces a large amount of the world\u2019s light crude oil, and so when anything happens to that area that interrupts that flow of oil, it can have repercussions for the entire global economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
More broadly, the objective of circumnavigating the continent was to develop situational knowledge of the various territorial waters, especially Nigeria and Somalia. How knowledge of countries\u2019 coastlines was to be used was not made entirely clear, but it certainly wasn\u2019t to strengthen their sovereignty. \u201cDuring the voyage,\u201d according to a story in Embassy<\/i>, \u201cthe fleet sailed at a distance of 12 to 15 miles off the African coast, just beyond the limits of sovereign national waters. The NATO fleet did not inform African nations it would soon be on the horizon. This, Lt.-Cmdr. Topshee says, was an intentional move meant to \u2018keep options open.\u2019 \u2018International law is built on precedent,\u2019 he says. \u2018So if NATO creates a precedent where we\u2019re going to inform countries, we\u2019re going to operate off their coastline, over time that precedent actually becomes a requirement\u2019.\u201d To help with the legal side of the operations a lawyer circumnavigated the continent with HMCS Toronto<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Reportedly, the Nigerians did not appreciate NATO\u2019s aggressive tactics. Topshee described the Nigerians as \u201cdownright irate\u201d when the fleet approached. \u201cThere was real concern they might take action against us.\u201d<\/p>\n
For HMCS Toronto\u2019s<\/i> Captain Stephen Virgin, the circumnavigation was largely about preparing NATO forces for a future invasion. \u201cThese are areas that the force might have to go back to some day and we need to operate over there to get an understanding of everything from shipping patterns to how our sensors work in those climates.\u201d<\/p>\n
In early 2011, 15 days before the UN Security Council authorized a no-fly zone over Libya, HMCS Charlottetown<\/i> left Halifax for the North African country. Two rotations of Canadian warships enforced a naval blockade of Libya for six months with about 250 soldiers aboard each vessel.<\/p>\n
Later that year, on May 19, HMCS Charlottetown<\/i> joined an operation that destroyed eight Libyan naval vessels. The ship also repelled a number of fast, small boats and escaped unscathed after a dozen missiles were fired towards it from the port city of Misrata. After the hostilities the head of Canada\u2019s navy, Paul Maddison, told Ottawa defense contractors that HMCS Charlottetown<\/i> \u201cplayed a key role in keeping the Port of Misrata open as a critical enabler of the anti-Gaddafi forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
On one occasion a Canadian warship, part of a 20-ship NATO flotilla purportedly enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya, boarded a rebel vessel filled with ammunition. \u201cThere are loads of weapons and munitions, more than I thought,\u201d a Canadian officer radioed HMCS Charlottetown<\/i> commander Craig Skjerpen. \u201cFrom small ammunition to 105 howitzer rounds and lots of explosives.\u201d The commander\u2019s response, reported the Ottawa Citizen<\/i>, was to allow the rebel ship to sail through.<\/p>\n
The National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy will give Canadian officials greater means to bully weaker countries. Surely, one of the opposition parties sees a better way to spend $40 billion dollars.<\/p>\n
Dubbed \u201cCanada\u2019s version of Noam Chomsky\u201d (Georgia Straight), \u201cone of the most important voices on the Canadian Left today\u201d (Briarpatch), \u201cin the mould of I. F. Stone\u201d (Globe and Mail), \u201cpart of that rare but growing group of social critics unafraid to confront Canada\u2019s self-satisfied myths\u201d ( Quill & Quire) , \u201cever-insightful\u201d (rabble.ca), \u201cChomsky-styled iconoclast\u201d (Counterpunch) and a \u201cLeftist gadfly\u201d (Ottawa Citizen), Yves Engler\u2019s published eight books. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell once said \u201can election is no time to discuss important issues.\u201d But surely the opportunity to free up $40 billion while making the world a safer place ought to spark a discussion about the Canadian Navy\u2019s role in the world. Four years ago the Conservatives announced the National Shipbuilding Procurement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-25668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25668"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25670,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25668\/revisions\/25670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25668"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=25668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}