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Link to original article on ruxted.ca Shame on Lawrence Martin’s Unnamed Official The Ruxted Group pays careful attention to Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin; he is well connected in Ottawa and offers penetrating insights about Canadian politics. We have taken issue with him, however...

Link to original article on ruxted.ca Politics, the Military and the Media Many column inches in the print media and even more gigahertz of bandwidth in the electronic media have been expended on parsing Gen. Rick Hillier’s recent comments about how long it might take to make the Afghan...

Link to original article on ruxted.ca Preparing for NATO’s Failure Several recent reports1 indicate that efforts by Canada and others, including the NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, himself to convince NATO members to beef up their military contributions to Afghanistan or, at...

Link to original article on ruxted.ca Big Lies Canada is a free and open society in which everyone may criticize the government, politicians (in general), and public servants, including high profile, highly public figures like General Rick Hillier and unknown soldiers, too. Amongst the...

Link to original article on ruxted.ca M. Coderre is Wrong M. Denis Coderre, the Liberal Party of Canada’s defence critic, is wrong. We are not talking about his “fact finding” mission in Afghanistan – the one about which he says no facts can be allowed to change his or his party’s position...

Link to original article on ruxted.ca A Threatening Future and a Plan for Action The Ruxted Group takes note of a new report, ”A Threatened Future: Canada’s Future Strategic Environment and its Security Implications”, prepared by three distinguished Canadians: Jack Granatstein, Gordon Smith...

Link to original article Now’s The Day, And Now’s The Hour A recent report by the Secretary-General of the United Nations ought to cause Prime Minister Harper to hold the line on Afghanistan in the forthcoming Throne Speech. All three opposition parties in Parliament are demanding that the...

Link to original article Far Distant Ships: Looking at the Future of Canada's Navy With the operation in Afghanistan drawing the bulk of media and "expert" attention, the other elements of Canada's Armed Forces have not received the same public attention as the Army. The Ruxted Group would...

Link to original article on ruxted.ca A Triple A+ Military for Canada Two recent articles focused The Ruxted Group’s attention on military organization. In the first, some retired generals suggest that the pace of ongoing operations (Afghanistan) has derailed General Hillier’s attempts to...

Link to original article on ruxted.ca Seventy Seventy. 70. That’s the sidetrack on to which an entire strategic debate – a debate which never happened in Canada – was shunted. Seventy dead Canadians – sixty-nine soldiers and one diplomat – have defined the first significant foreign policy...

Beaten in Afghanistan? Resisting the Opposition’s Urge to Abandon the Afghan People Ruxted has spent the summer calling for a greater show of leadership from the Prime Minister and his deputies with respect to the Afghanistan mission.  Ruxted has called for more and better communication from...

Link to original article LOOKING NORTH For most of Canada’s history, the high arctic has been a mysterious frontier. The north was a land of legends, the setting for many true tales of exploration, heroism and tragedy, but not otherwise part of the day to day experience of Canadians. Great...

Link to original article Afghanistan Post-2009 In a recent Globe and Mail column Christie Blatchford succinctly describes a strategy the Government of Canada needs to make its own. She quotes Canadian Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team (OMLT) commander Lieutenant Colonel Wayne Eyre as...

Link to original article The Sand Trap of Darfur After four years of delay and neglect, the United Nations has finally authorized a Chapter VII mission to the troubled Darfur region of the Sudan. As most readers are aware, this is the scene of an ongoing genocide perpetrated against the Black...

Link to original article Well Done, Sir! The Ruxted Group wishes former MND Gordon O'Connor well. We have taken him – and his colleagues, especially Prime Minister Harper – to task for failing to communicate the raison d'être of the Afghanistan mission to Canadians, thereby securing their...

Link to original article on Ruxted.ca Little Canada Over the past several weeks, Ruxted has commented on the world-view of some politicians, journalists and academics who advocate withdrawal from the mission in Afghanistan (and by extension non-participation in other high risk, high payoff...

Link to original article Bias The Ruxted Group was founded in part because of concerns that Canadians were not being fully informed regarding defence issues. Political agendas, institutional laziness and a reluctance of government to provide proper context has led to a dearth of properly...

Lead, Follow or Get Out of The Way! Prime Minister Harper's 'new' government seems mildly schizophrenic: one part, the cabinet, has 'done the right things' and has 'done things right' with regard to rebuilding our armed forces; another part, led by the PMO, has failed to enunciate policies...

Link to original article Trimming the sails According to Canadian Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Rick Hillier, in a 25 July 2007 interview with CBC, some of the Tories' 2006 election promises may no longer be necessary. Should the government adopt General Hillier's advice, the...

Link to original article The Truth About Peacekeeping The Globe and Mail cites a poll which finds 65% of Canadians (nearly 70% in Ontario) “believe their role on the world stage is more suited to peacekeeping than as enforcers of peace.”  According to former Chrétien speech writer Peter...