Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Pax Americana alliance at heart of Harper government’s F-35 posture

The Prime Minister’s Office probably did not set off streamers when it learned a letter from Laurie Hawn, the former parliamentary secretary to the Defence Minister, on the F-35 fighter jets had been made public.

The government media strategy thus far has been to accept the Auditor-General’s finding that the Department of National Defence did not exercise due diligence in the procurement process to replace the CF-18 jets and suggest those problems have now been rectified by handing the entire file to a new F-35 secretariat inside the Department of Public Works.

That’s not how Mr. Hawn sees things — and in his letter to a concerned citizen he made clear he believes there is nothing to apologize for. “There has never been any wrongdoing or bad faith on the part of National Defence or other people involved with the program,” he said.

He accused Michael Ferguson, the Auditor-General, of getting some figures are “just factually wrong.”

“He says that, in 2008, National Defence estimated acquisition at $9-billion and sustainment [operating costs] at $16-billion. That is not correct — it was $9-billion plus $7-billion for a total of $16-billion, again over 20 years. If he can’t get some basic facts right, it makes you wonder about other things.”

Mr. Hawn said the cost of the aircraft remains unknown, but it will likely be far less than some of the numbers bandied around because Canada is buying the cheapest of the three F-35 variants — and because the current CF-18 fleet can probably be extended to 2023, by which time production should have increased and prices come down.

He dismissed the need for a competitive tender as an “unnecessary” process that “would inevitably come to the same conclusion. An evaluation of all potential contenders was done and we reached the same conclusion as 10 other advanced countries.”

Mr. Hawn, a former CF-18 fighter pilot, accuses the media and the opposition of going “over the top” on the story “but that has become the norm.” “There was no misleading of Parliament or anyone else; National Defence was simply accounting and reporting as they had always done.”

That may be the case. In fact, it probably is — National Defence has a long history of pulling the wool over the eyes of the taxpayer. This was a procurement process where there were no checks or balances on the military, which wanted the shiniest car in the showroom. The specifications were wired so that the F-35 was chosen without an open and transparent competition. Full life-cycle costs were under-stated, particularly at the time of the 2011 election.

Even without signing a formal contract, the government committed itself, de facto, to a plane, without knowing what it could do or how much it would cost. We still haven’t seen a statement of requirement that says what the Air Force needs or why.

But having said all that, Mr. Hawn’s letter adds some useful balance to what has become a media feeding frenzy.

The focus has been almost exclusively on the process, which is understandable, given Mr. Ferguson’s explicit statement that he was not passing comment on the merits of the F-35.

But Mr. Hawn touches on some of the wider geo-political factors that have to be taken into consideration when looking at this issue. “I want an aircraft at the start of its development cycle and not at the end,” he said. “We don’t know what threats we will face over the next 40 years and we need to be in a position to be able to advance our capabilities to deal with them.

“One of the big challenges in communication is that some of the capabilities of the aircraft are so highly classified that those details cannot be released without doing damage to our and our allies’ security. There is literally a handful of people in Canada [who have] read into the full capabilities of the F-35. I’m not one of them but I know them and all I can say is variations of ‘Holy Cow!’”

The wider international backdrop to the F-35 purchase is an America concerned about the rise of China in the Pacific. The Canadian government’s decision to go with the F-35 appears to be part of a tacit political agreement between the United States and key allies like Japan and Australia to contain China’s ambitions.

Critics have ridiculed the need for first strike stealth capability patrolling for Canada’s North or for taking part in conflicts like the recent Libyan mission. Yet the unwritten statement of requirement is for planes that could counter the threat posed by Chinese aircraft carriers at some point 30 years hence.

If, with a nod and a wink, you sign up for a Western alliance that sees the rise of China as a destabilizing and potentially existential threat, then the cost of the F-35 ceases to be of paramount concern.

It seems entirely feasible that the Harper government and National Defence were willing supplicants in a grand Pacific Pax Americana. Having signed up to the F-35 program, they attempted to justify it on the basis of regional industrial benefits and supplying the men and women in uniform with the best equipment available. The uncomfortable truth about the escalating costs and development problems was discounted and all opposition railroaded.

The government’s disdain for the niceties of normal process make more sense when seen through this prism. It makes more sense, but becomes no more acceptable.

The Auditor-General’s report has undermined public confidence in the integrity of the system. English writer Aldous Huxley once said no country can prepare for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant at the head of an obedient bureaucracy. Despite some of the more wild assertions, Canada remains a democracy. It is incumbent on the government to restore faith in the system.

Original Article
Source: national post
Author: John Ivison

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