Editor's Foreword

tion brigade roughly quintuples the airpower available
in the area of operations. In December, Obama
announced a further 30,000 troops would deploy in
2010. The strategy has ‘the protection of the Afghan
population’ as its core objective with the accelerated
training of Afghan national security forces as its key
mission. It also aims to enable a phased drawdown
of US forces from 2011.
CANADA
Canada has continued to build capabilities and infrastructure
consistent with the objectives of the Canada
First defence strategy and the demands of current
operations (see The Military Balance 2009, pp. 18–19,
and Strategic Survey 2009, pp. 100–3). Internationally,
meanwhile, Afghanistan remained the Canadian
government’s primary focus, with nearly 3,000
troops deployed in Afghanistan on Operation Athena,
the majority in the Kandahar area. But, as noted in
Strategic Survey, slow progress, high costs and waning
domestic support forced the government to maintain
its pledge to end Canada’s combat mission in
Afghanistan in 2011. Prime Minister Stephen Harper
said that the government might propose maintaining
some Canadian presence in Afghanistan after that
date to focus primarily on reconstruction and development.
This force might include helicopters, police
and army trainers, a Provincial Reconstruction Team
and CF-18 fighter aircraft.
Meanwhile, the defence department announced
substantial procurement initiatives during 2009. In
line with announcements in the Canada First strategy,
Ottawa in August issued a contract for the purchase
of 15 CH-47F Chinook helicopters with a value of
approximately C$2.2bn including support and maintenance.
The first is due for delivery in 2013. Earlier,
in July, plans were announced for the procurement
of the ‘next generation’ of Canadian land-combat
vehicles. These projects, called the ‘Family of Land
Vehicles (FLCV) projects’ were valued at around
C$5bn. As part of the programme, the existing LAV
III fleet would be upgraded and three new vehicle
fleets procured (including ‘Close Combat Vehicles,
Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicles and Force Mobility
Enhancement Vehicles’). It was expected that specific
contracts would be awarded by 2011. Infrastructure
projects were also announced that would lead to
major construction at the Gagetown and Trenton
bases (including new maintenance facilities for
Canada’s C-17s at Trenton). Meanwhile, in July, a
North America
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new Combined Air Operations Centre was opened
at 1 Canadian Air Division/Canadian NORAD HQ
in Winnipeg. This facility was to provide ‘operational
level command and control of airspace’ for the organisation’s
commander, and it was to be the ‘focal point
for planning, directing and assessing air and space
operations’. As noted in Strategic Survey 2009 (p. 101),
‘securing Canada’s arctic has become an increasingly
important security objective of the Canadian
government’, particularly as the possibility of an
ice-free Arctic grows, which would make the region
more accessible to shipping. Canada has actively
tried to assert its sovereignty in its northern territory
with various procurement and infrastructure-development
plans. However, the emerging positions of
other nations indicates that ‘Canada will likely face
significant political obstacles in its efforts to assert its
sovereignty in the region’.
DEFENCE ECONOMICS – UNITED STATES
Over the past year the US economy experienced the
worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and
plunged into a severe and protracted recession. In the
second half of 2008, the collapse of investment bank
Lehman Brothers and the forced rescue of US mortgage
giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac signalled the
start of a rapid deterioration in economic activity that
saw GDP decline by 6.25% in the fourth quarter and
a further 5.5% in the first quarter of 2009. In response
to these shocks, US macroeconomic policy shifted to
a war footing with the introduction of a broad range
of emergency measures led by the Troubled Asset
Relief Program (TARP) which provided an initial
US$700bn of capital to stressed financial institutions.
TARP was accompanied by a swift cut in interest
rates to 0% and followed by a fiscal stimulus of more
than 5% of GDP, support for the housing market,
the introduction of quantitative easing and a host of
other measures.
In February 2009, the authorities introduced
a Financial Stability Plan that included further
support to the housing market, up to US$1 trillion
in consumer and business lending, a US$1tr
Public–Private Investment Fund and a number of
initiatives to improve financial stability, including
stress tests to assess banks’ resilience and a requirement
for increased balance-sheet transparency. The
combination of massive macroeconomic stimulus
and financial-market intervention succeeded in stabilising
financial and economic conditions and in the
North America