MILITARY

armed conflict was perhaps
neither the best nor the only
solution to the pressing issues
facing Britain’s empire in the
late-1800s. In the main, today’s
problems are little different
than those faced by Gordon,
Butler, and their contemporaries.
The confluence of past
and present suggests that
today’s world needs more
Gordons – men and women
who can think critically and
appreciate problems from different
perspectives. The NSP
seeks to do just this by taking
promising officers and strengthening
these qualities within
them. In so doing, this vital
Canadian programme offers an
educational environment of
which both Gordon and Butler
would likely be proud.
NOTES
1. The ‘Axis of Evil’ was first mentioned by
President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the
Union address. See George W. Bush, “The
President’s State of the Union Address,” 29
January 2002; http://georgewbush-whitehouse.
archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/
print/20020129-11.html, accessed 4 June 2012.
The background of the term ‘Arc of Instability’ is
somewhat more nebulous, with references to the
term found as far back as the 1970s. Australia
began using the term in the late-1990s in reference
to areas of the Pacific, and it increasingly
entered the US military planning lexicon in a
broader geographical context following the 11
September 2001 attacks.
2. Department of National Defence, Canada First
Defence Strategy (Ottawa: DND Canada, 2008),
p. 6.
3. Privy Council Office, Securing an Open Society:
Canada’s National Security Policy (Ottawa: PCO
Canada, 2004), p. vii.
4. Ibid., p. 3.
5. George F. Kennan, “Comments on the General
Trend of U.S. Foreign Policy,” in George F.
Kennan Papers (Box 23), (draft paper, Princeton
University, 20 August 1948), quoted in John
Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A
Critical Appraisal of American National Security
Policy During the Cold War, 2 nd Ed. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 26.
6. Canadian Forces College, Joint Command and
Staff Programme Syllabus: JCSP Residential and
JCSP Distance Learning (Toronto: Canadian
Forces College, 2011), 1-1/9.
7. Earlier versions of these programs were the
Advanced Military Studies Course and the
National Security Studies Course. The change in
title reflected a change in CFC nomenclature and
did not significantly affect course curriculum,
though the focus drifted more towards the strategic
in the former. For ease, AMSP and NSSP
Administration Building, Canadian Forces College.
will be used in this document for standardization.
8. Canadian Forces College, Advanced Military
Studies Programme 10 Syllabus (Toronto:
Canadian Forces College, 2007), para 201.
9. Canadian Forces College, National Security
Studies Programme 10 Syllabus (Toronto:
Canadian Forces College, 2007), para 201.
10. A review of CFC’s nominal rolls showed that only
16 of 167 total students were not in the military;
this equates to just under ten percent of the student
population.
11. Canadian Forces College, National Security
Programme 1 Syllabus (Toronto: Canadian Forces
College, 2008), 1-1/2.
12. Chief of Military Personnel, CANFORGEN
064/08 New National Security Programme (NSP)
(Ottawa: DND Canada, 3 Apr 2008), para 3.
13. Ibid., para 4.
14. Ibid., para 2.
15. Department of National Defence, B-GJ-005-500/
FP-000 Canadian Forces Joint Publication 5.0
(CFJP 5.0): The Canadian Forces Operational
Planning Process (OPP), Change 2 (Ottawa:
DND Canada, April 2008), paras 106.1-2.
Strategic and operational refer in this case to two
levels of war commonly discussed in PME.
Contemporary CF doctrine defines strategy as
“the concept that links available national resources
to government ends – over time and as circumstances
change. For the Department [of
National Defence] and the Forces, strategy is
about how to use our resources to best support the
government’s aims” (106.1). The operational
level, on the other hand, focuses on the “joint
employment of land, maritime and aerospace
forces employed in sequential and simultaneous
engagements that are linked by design in a campaign
plan” in an effort to meet strategic ends
(106.2).
16. For a list of fully equivalent schools, see Canadian
Defence Academy, Canadian Defence Academy
(CDA) Directive 02/12 Officer Developmental
Period 4 (ODP4) Equivalency (Kingston:
Canadian Defence Academy, 23 April 2012),
A-1/1. Partial equivalency from a variety of programmes
is also available as laid out in the subject
document.
17. Canadian Forces College, National Security
Programme 4 Syllabus (Toronto: Canadian
Forces College, 2011), 1-1/9. The aims for NSP 3
and 4 are identical.
18. Ibid., 1-1/9 through 1-4/9.
19. Colonel Sir William Francis Butler, Charles
George Gordon (London: MacMillan and Co.,
1889), p. 85. This quote (or one like it) is often
attributed to Thucydides, but this author could
find no mention of it in any of the current or historical
editions of the famous Greek’s History of
the Peloponnesian War – his only known piece.
The quote in this article can be attributed to
Colonel Sir William Francis Butler, who wrote an
important biography of Major-General Charles
George Gordon, the British officer who famously
met his end at Khartoum. In the passage preceding
the above quote, Butler wrote:
Gordon understood the fact that nations as
well as individuals have pulses, that the
leader who would lead to any definite end
must know how to count these pulsations,
and, in addition to his skill as a sword-cutter,
must be able to do a good deal of the
binding up of wounds, even though he had
himself caused them. To say this is, of
course, only to say that Gordon was great,
in a sense greater than any merit of action
in arms could aspire to.
Gordon seemed to have understood that while war
involves breaking, it also involves building.
Likely, he would have been a keen advocate of the
National Security Programme.
DND photo by Sergeant Charles Barber, CFC
MILITARY EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Vol. 12, No. 4, Autumn 2012 • Canadian Military Journal 25