1
Breaking the Spell (1990–1991)
It was a sunny morning in upstate Vermont in August 1990 when I walked into the hotel dining room for a leisurely breakfast. I took the complimentary copy of USA Today from the concierge’s desk and looked at the above-the-fold headline announcing that Iraqi armed forces had invaded Kuwait. It was a surprise attack, not rumoured in advance in any source that I was familiar with. I knew immediately that the job I had recently accepted at the Canadian Department of External Affairs and International Trade (as today’s Global Affairs Canada was then known) would present an unanticipated challenge. It was pulse-quickening if not quite alarming.
My several-day sojourn in Vermont was part of a relaxed summer holiday. I had decided to leave my employer of 13 years, The Calgary Herald, as well as the profession of journalism, lured by a job at External Affairs, where I was to take on a role in so-called strategic communications.
The first half of 1990 had been intense. As the Herald’s Ottawa editor, I had covered the negotiations of the Meech Lake Accord, the amendment that was supposed to win Quebec’s adherence to the Canadian Constitution. Talks that had begun in 1987 culminated in June 1990 at the Ottawa Conference Centre during virtually around-the-clock sessions between Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the provincial premiers. It had been a tiring time, leading to a depressing aftermath. For all the effort that had been put into Meech Lake, the negotiations failed, and as ambivalent as I had been about the prospective result, I felt a sense of futility that so much energy had been expended on this empty outcome.
I had sometimes thought of changing my career. As a journalist, one is an observer of events, not a participant in them. A desire to play a more active role in public matters often draws reporters across the line to government, businesses or associations. There is even the wish sometimes of using experience on “the other side” to become a better journalist by plumbing the inner workings of the major organizations that make the news. So, I was pleased when, making a preliminary enquiry at External Affairs, I received a reply that the department would be interested in hiring me in their strategic communications division. I accepted an offer to start on November 1, 1990.
In Vermont then, I was taking advantage of the opportunity to ease out of one career into another. Once I joined the Department, I expected the adjustment to be stressful, but I also expected the opportunity to tackle my new role in a methodical fashion, learning the ropes in an atmosphere not too intensely agitated by an aura of crisis. Once I read the headline in USA Today, I suspected that the Department would be confronting something it hadn’t had to in many years.
It is impossible to overstate the change in the international landscape at the start of the final decade of the 20th century. Conventional belief held that the Cold War, the strategic framework on which international relations had been built since the late ’40s, was an almost permanent state, to prevail long into the next century. The communist domination of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was apparently intractable. Virtually no one envisaged changes coming from within the east bloc. If these were to come, they would be evolutionary and slow. For some thinkers, a dissolution of dictatorship could be coaxed into being by a careful dialogue between Communist capitals and European liberal and social democratic governments. This would ease the tight-wound coils of suspicion, open the East to experimenting with market reforms and encourage a “convergence” between the two world systems. Instead, the rapid collapse of communism from 1987 to 1993 was a stunning turn of events of really unbelievable magnitude.
History was undoubtedly turning a page. The Cold War, characterized by geopolitical inertia and ideological bondage, was being given its last rites. But we didn’t know what the next chapter would hold. We would learn that Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Iraq was one of the opening sallies in a quite different historical phase in which a predominant theme was the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its confrontation with the liberty of the secular world.
On November 1, 1990, I walked from downtown Ottawa along Sussex Drive to the Lester B. Pearson Building, since 1973 the headquarters of the Department of External Affairs and International Trade (today known as Global Affairs Canada). My coat was tightly belted and buttoned against the truly seasonal northeast wind, and the walk seemed longer than I expected. The grey and blustery day wasn’t conducive to a new beginning. I entered through the heavy metal doors of in the principal entrance and turned left from the foyer towards the “D tower.”
The Pearson Building is a sprawling structure that is said to have been designed to resemble the Sphinx, in abstract obeisance to Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s peacekeeping role in the Middle East during the Suez crisis. Its main A tower represents the Sphinx’s imposing head and the C and D towers its powerful paws, all aligned in a northerly direction evoking Canada’s role as a northern power. To me, the building looks more like a ship’s bridge, evoking the command centre of Canada’s ship of state. I am always reminded of Leonard Cohen’s rare optimistic anthem: “Sail on, sail on, O mighty ship of state, To the shores of need, Past the reefs of Greed, Through the Squalls of Hate.”1
In the D tower was housed all the department’s administrative functions, including human resources. In one of the partitioned cubicles, I located my staffing officer, Luc Cousineau, who then found the papers that I needed to sign, including the rather sweeping Loyalty Oath.2
“Have you had any previous government experience?” Cousineau asked. “No,” I said. “Too bad,” he replied. “For pension purposes, you could ‘buy back’ those years and get out of here a lot sooner.” Hardly a happy welcome to a radiant future in the elysian fields of Canadian foreign and trade policy.
The man most responsible for my hiring was Peter Daniel, who was then the assistant deputy minister of communications and culture. The bland title, assistant deputy minister, or ADM does not evoke to government outsiders the force and weight it carries within the federal bureaucracy. Whereas deputy ministers are the top civil servants of any department and are in regular though rarefied contact with the elected ministers, ADMs wield real and effective day-to-day authority over sprawling departmental branches. They give the overall direction and are, more often than not, the arbiters of even pedestrian decisions in their domains. Daniel was a rarity within the federal civil service structure. Only at Finance Canada and External Affairs at that time were there ADMs responsible for communications branches. Elsewhere, running communications, which entailed explaining departments’ policies and actions to a variety of audiences – media, business, associations, employees or the general public – was subsumed within other administrative streams – likely a policy or functional branch. That the communications function was accorded its own branch at External was an indicator of the importance ascribed to it in managing foreign and trade policy.
Daniel was himself a former journalist, having worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Montreal. Even today, whenever there are documentaries that recall the 1970 October Crisis, one inevitably sees footage of a young and handsome Daniel announcing to viewers the discovery of Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte’s body in the trunk of a car following the minister’s assassination by militants of a cell of the Front de Libération du Québec. I had met Daniel on numerous occasions at networking functions hosted by the Department – either policy events or visits of heads of state or foreign ministers. He seemed to be sufficiently impressed with my journalistic credentials and demeanour to consider me a prospect for his branch. Daniel was not, in 1990, quite the photogenic TV broadcaster of 20 years before. With his carefully managed comb-over and pale skin, and his habit of draping his overcoat across his shoulders, he had acquired the nickname “the Count,” which reflected an attitude of some affection but also a little fear in those who reported to him. Daniel would hold court from behind a specially designed circular desk in his office on the second floor of the “C tower” which overlooked Ottawa’s old City Hall by the final reaches of the Rideau River. It was there that I was first informed of my initial assignment in the Department: to work as a strategist on trade communications. I was to be involved in explaining and promoting a variety of trade initiatives, including trade agreements, handling questions regarding international trade disputes, and devising and managing publicity campaigns for Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service. But Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait changed that. Rather than supporting the economic interests of a country at peace, I would be recruited into the civil service rear-guard of a highly unexpected military campaign.
The role Canada would play in the wake of the invasion of Kuwait was not immediately obvious. The attack was a clear violation of Kuwait’s national sovereignty. There had not been, since Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia during the unsettled period following the United States’ 1975 withdrawal from Vietnam, such an indisputable and complete flouting of the territorial integrity of a United Nations member country. Iraq’s motive was to seize Kuwait’s petroleum resources, giving it greater control over future supply of oil to international markets. The Iraqi Army’s presence in Kuwait was made more forbidding by the positioning of its troops along the Saudi Arabian border, opening the possibility of another armed confrontation that could have a significant impact on world petroleum supplies. Yes, memories of world oil shortages familiar from Middle East conflicts in the ’70s were on everyone’s minds. But international condemnation focussed on the principle of preservation of national sovereignty within internationally recognized borders.
Almost universally negative reaction to the invasion led to the rare unanimous resolution of the United Nations Security Council to call for the use of “all necessary powers” to dislodge Saddam from Kuwait. With the support of this resolution, United States President George H. W. Bush (the first Bush, not the second) announced that the United States would assemble a coalition of like-minded countries to restore Kuwait’s sovereignty.
Canada’s reputation was linked to our “traditional” peacekeeping role, and that suggested it was unlikely that Canada would play a direct military role in repelling the invasion. But the government of Prime Minister Mulroney, which was more inclined to align itself closely with the United States than any of its Liberal predecessors, was in fact prepared to play a more active part. Prime Minister Mulroney committed to President Bush that Canada would contribute militarily to an effort to dislodge Saddam from Kuwait on the condition that action be mandated by the United Nations. Mulroney thereby opened the door to Canada’s taking part in a war for the first time since the Korean War 40 years before.
The tension about this significant shift in Canada’s policy is captured in Mulroney’s speech to the House of Commons: “The Commons was tense as I got to my feet on January 15th. As I began my remarks, protestors in the galleries began chanting, “No war. No war.” With Canadian lives on the line, I understood and respected the emotion behind the voices shouting at me. If [Saddam] Hussein acted the way I suspected he would [by not respecting the January 15th, 1991 deadline to withdraw from Kuwait] I knew in a few short days I would become the first prime minister since Louis St-Laurent to commit Canadian soldiers, airmen, and sailors to battle. Hussein had made clear his threats to use weapons of mass destruction against coalition troops, making my government’s decision all the more chilling. ‘The question before Canadians now is a simple one,’ I told the House. ‘If Saddam Hussein does not withdraw peacefully from Kuwait and the use of force is required, where will Canada stand? On this simple question of right and wrong, will we continue to support the international coalition, or will we stand aside and hope that others will uphold the rule of international law?”3
When within days of my joining the Department, the approximately 200 employees of the communications and culture branch were assembled in the Department’s formal conference room to learn of their new assignment, the atmosphere was tense. I and many others in the room that day were of the generation that had watched and sympathized with the ordeal of the United States and Vietnam and its neighbours during the American war in Indochina. The United States’ defeat in 1975; the deaths of so many young American soldiers; the destruction and death unleashed on the Vietnamese; the flight of Vietnamese “boat people” following the conflict. Although Canada had played little official role in these events, other than as a member of the rather toothless international control commissions that supervised brief truces near the beginning and the end of the war, the conflict had a major impact on my generation. From the perspective of many of us, having seen the impact of this conflict, advocacy of armed force to solve world crises was almost unspeakable. After its defeat in Vietnam, the chastened United States was reluctant to put US soldiers in harm’s way in a foreign conflict. And Canadians sympathized.
Daniel made it clear that – using an expression from the First World War referring to warning of an impending attack – “when the balloon went up,” we must all be prepared to endure difficult moments. As I would learn throughout my employment with the Department, government priorities usually demand the participation of employees from well outside their nominally defined roles. Daniel wanted commitment from across his whole branch. We were to run an around-the-clock media monitoring and analysis operation which would advise the privy council, cabinet and ultimately the prime minister. We were to cover rapidly evolving international developments; outline the manner in which these were being characterized; and propose “messages” to assist ministers explaining Canada’s position to the public. We would be organized in three rotating shifts in an expanded departmental operations centre. We would often be reporting for work at midnight and relinquishing our shifts at 8 am. Daniel announced that, should there be those who objected to Canada’s military participation in the Gulf War, their views would be respected, and they would continue in their regular jobs – although with added tasks given their colleagues’ absence on the Gulf communications team.
Never for a moment did I consider not taking part. My opposition to the Vietnam War was well known during my university years, but I had never espoused pacifism. To me the clear violation of Kuwait’s sovereignty was something that could not be ignored and thereby condoned. Acquiescing to this invasion would embolden others and threaten peace elsewhere. But I respected the decision of some of my new colleagues to stand down.
The team began work at the beginning of January 1991. Our location was a narrow office alongside the Department’s 24-hour operations centre. It was immediately adjacent to the “crisis” situation room where senior officials from the various government departments involved assembled early each morning to review intelligence and coordinate next actions. The office was equipped with terminals providing access to national and international wire services, as well as television monitors that were invariably tuned to CNN, which at that time had just passed its first decade of operation. The internet was in its infancy and known only to a handful of specialist government and academic institutions. There was no Twitter, no Facebook. Email at the time was rudimentary and patchy within the federal government, and was not the core office mode of communication it has since become. I was the designated analyst for whichever shift I was on, and it was my role to monitor all relevant media, oversee the production of a media summary to highlight new and pertinent information and then provide an analysis for the policy coordinating committee. The most important scan and analysis was the one produced for the daily
7 am meeting. This piece would be combined with analyses from the Privy Council Office (effectively the top executive suite of the Canadian federal public service), an “issues summary” from the Department of National Defence (DND) and a domestic media survey from a Toronto-based team headed by University of Toronto professor John Kirton. Based on these inputs the crisis communications committee would adjust the government’s daily messaging. The principal message to which the government must adhere, according to the communications strategy devised in the run-up to the creation of the task force, was that every action undertaken by the government was consistent with the United Nations-approved mandate under Security Council Resolution 278.4
A new recruit to the Department, I was now being exposed to its complex processes and internal machinations, including those around the production of any statement designed for media consumption. Each shift would have a media relations officer to field reporters’ questions. If there was no previously approved response to a query, it was the team’s responsibility to produce one. But only after the proposed response had been vetted by the appropriate geographic or policy branch. This was far from the freewheeling climate of a news bureau that I was used to, where you expected what you wrote to appear in print, perhaps only lightly touched by a copyeditor. I remember a rather uncomfortable exchange with the manager of the Department’s operations centre. Reviewing a few rather anodyne lines to answer a fairly simple media question, he shouted red-facedly: “Has Chuck Svoboda seen this? He must approve it before it goes out!” Svoboda, director, as I recall it, of international security, in the mystified tone of someone who was wondering why he was being bothered, gave the lines his weary go-ahead. But I had to get used to the often draining and turgid process of approvals and re-writes and re-approvals that often had to work their way upward through the hierarchy even to ministers’ offices.
The evening of January 16th, 1991 was unforgettable. Saddam Hussein had been presented with an ultimatum to withdraw his troops from Iraq on January 15. That deadline having passed without any response, President Bush announced that the assault against Iraq would begin, which initially would involve the bombardment of Iraqi military positions and installations, including in the capital Baghdad.
What we saw on live television was a revelation. First, live images of the night sky above Baghdad illuminated by tracer lights attempting to reveal incoming US cruise missiles. Then, broadcast coverage directly from US aircraft identifying ground targets and displaying the hits made by the cruise missiles, broadcast from the on-screen computer terminals in the cockpits of the aircraft. Such imagery is considered routine today, but this was the first time any of this technology had been used in wartime and the first time such images had been broadcast live to an international television audience. My colleagues and I, as did television audiences everywhere, watched in amazement as the air assault unfolded before our eyes.
This was the first of many such nights during the opening attacks of the Gulf War. As night after night of air sorties against Iraq ground on, we began to think the war could be a protracted one. If the barrage of bombings was taking weeks, would the ground campaign which would follow against Saddam Hussein’s supposedly highly trained, elite troops known as the Republican Guard not take even longer? And wouldn’t a ground war bring allied coalition casualties that the air war was largely immune to? The mood among the communications team was resigned and anxious.
Each media analysis was drafted in an atmosphere of dread. This war could have decidedly bloody consequences that would include terrible casualties for all sides, including Canadian military personnel. There was never, however, any event that caused any notable deviation from the communications team’s “main messages” relating to Canada’s steadfast support for a United Nations-approved military intervention. As the war ground on the “principal themes” outlined in the evolving 48-hour communication plan were: “Recognition and empathy for the human, economic and environmental costs of war; responsible management of the Canadian war effort; [and] the need to keep our values intact – domestic tolerance; honouring international obligations; protecting international peace and order.”5
Our objective was to advance and give credence to the government’s stance. But the specific role of our forces evolved from the moment their deployment was announced. Three battleships in the Persian Gulf were to enforce a United Nations-imposed embargo on Iraqi trade. But then their role was expanded to provide protection to other allied forces in the Gulf. A squadron of CF-18 fighter jets were to patrol the skies above the Gulf to identify any Iraqi aircraft posing a threat to Coalition aircraft participating in the bombardment. But, as will be seen, that role escalated to a more aggressive posture.
The constantly shifting war aims were not an ideal basis for communications management. In the best of situations, communications are carefully planned in advance under a pre-determined scenario. But in this case, the government was adjusting its posture as preparations to confront Saddam evolved. Our role, rather than explaining our actions within a defined strategy, was to help bring public sentiment along as war aims broadened. The challenge was to convince audiences that the government, in constantly adjusting its stance, was exercising good judgment within a framework of accepted Canadian values.
Canadian public opinion had been initially supportive of military action and of possible Canadian involvement. In September 1990, an Angus Reid poll found that 69 per cent of Canadians favoured the government’s decision to send forces to the Gulf in support of sanctions. However, by mid-January, with military action directly involving Canadian troops seeming much more likely, support had slipped to 36 per cent.6
In our stance, we were moving from a peacekeeping paradigm to one of active aggression. The attention brought to bear on “the first shot” taken by the Canadian military reflected our critical awareness of Canada’s new stance. At the outset of the aerial bombardment of Iraq, Canadian fighter jets did not take part. Instead, they were to intercept any Iraqi aircraft attacking coalition fighters and bombers, including those in hot pursuit of allied bombers returning from their nightly missions. However, on the night of January 30, two Canadian airmen were ordered, as they were the best positioned in the Gulf skies, to attack an Iraqi missile-carrying ship seeking refuge in an Iranian port. They pursued and severely damaged the vessel and were then thrust into the limelight as the first Canadian warriors since the Korean War to have attacked – not in a defensive, but in an aggressive, posture – enemy forces.7
Canadian media duly reported this incident although it was a mosquito’s bite compared to the massive nightly wolf pack attacks of US fighter-bombers on targets throughout Iraq. Yet the incident effectively broke the spell under which, for more than 35 years, Canada and the Canadian public had been bound. We had been proud of our reputation as non-aggressors and peacekeepers. We had not during those many years taken any direct military action against any other state. Crossing that Rubicon was profoundly significant. The event raised concerns even in DND headquarters where “Colonel Richard Bastien said that the attack may have been technically beyond the authorized role in the Persian Gulf, but it was within the spirit of the rules of Canadian engagement.”8 So it was illustrative of the post facto communications approach that, only after the CF-18 assault on the Iraqi vessel, did Defence Minister Bill McKnight announce that the fleet of CF-18s would henceforth be permitted to launch direct attacks against Iraqi forces.
Discomfort over our newfound belligerence erupted behind-the-scenes on the eve of the much-anticipated ground assault when it appeared that a Soviet-brokered deal could avert the oncoming battle. Scrawled in hand on the National Library-archived version of the daily Gulf communications report was the following: “Only one story [today]. Iraq ready to talk. [Convening of] Arab summit, redistribution of wealth, and elimination of weapons of mass destruction [all elements of the Soviet-Iraqi proposal] . . . That is along the line of the Canadian government post-hostilities proposal.”
I do not know who the author of the annotation was, although it would have been a senior official either in External Affairs or the Privy Council. But it was evident that he or she was desperate for a lifeline to peace and a halt to the momentum of the war machine. At the highest level of our Gulf crisis planning, there was the hope that the conflict could be ended without a land campaign. My own analysis of the prospective Soviet-brokered deal in an analysis drafted for the 7 am task force meeting was that failing to take advantage of it could be a source of future recriminations. “The outcome and intensity of this debate will be affected by the success [or failure] of the ground battle. If the war goes well, the argument [over a possible lost opportunity for a peace deal] will become marginal. If it goes poorly, it will become a major source of controversy.”
It is a civil servant’s job to advise. It is ministers’ jobs to dispose. My words of caution appeared to gain no traction. Evident jitters among senior officials didn’t change the government’s course. The official line devised in response to the Soviet plan was that it fell short. It did not include Iraq’s immediate disavowal of heavy weaponry; nor its accepted responsibility for paying war reparations; nor renunciation of its territorial claim to Kuwait. Holding back the drumbeat for war was not to be countenanced at this late stage. A Canadian diplomat who had been evacuated from Kuwait observed: “The only language Saddam Hussein is capable of understanding is that of violence, and there is no possibility of peace while he is in power.”9
With the ground attack about to begin, there was terrible foreboding about the carnage that might follow. On February 23, the United States and other coalition forces crossed into Kuwait and Iraq from bases in Saudi Arabia. Within a few hours, media were reporting the surrender and capture of the supposedly fearsome Iraqi forces who had been panicked into surrender and flight. President Bush would announce on February 27 that Kuwait had been freed and the Iraqi armed forces defeated.
A war in the Persian Gulf was hardly what was envisioned by anyone as the opening chapter of the post-Cold War era. The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe was to have brought a “peace dividend” of closer international cooperation and an era of peace. Perhaps the Soviet Union’s efforts under Mikhail Gorbachev to mediate a solution predicated on Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait appeared closer to embodying the possibilities of “the new world order.” But by the time that initiative was broached, the United States and its allies, including Canada, were already committed to bringing Saddam Hussein to heel by military force.
Today the 1991 Persian Gulf War must be seen as the opening act of an era of wars, intra-state conflict and terrorism. For Canada, it foreshadowed the first of several military actions, including in Kosovo and Afghanistan, where the decisions to take part were made easier by the Persian Gulf precedent.
For the External Affairs communications team, the end of the war was a great relief. I vividly remember being told on March 1 that the group was being disbanded and we would return to our normal departmental roles. I was on the day shift when the news came, and I walked directly from the operations centre to the offices of the communications bureau. The sun was shining. Spring seemed to be in the air. But moments after arriving in the office, I heard a series of muffled explosions that shook the Pearson Building’s foundation. Surely it wasn’t possible? Had opposition to Canada’s role in the war taken a violent turn? Was this the act of saboteurs aggrieved at the defeat of an Arab nation by US imperialism?
I hardly had time to ask. My colleagues smiled, unperturbed. The explosions were part of the routine, annual campaign to break up the ice on the Rideau River. The blasts were needed to stop ice jams flooding the New Edinburgh neighbourhood on the opposite shore. My brief panic passed.
I felt easier than I had since the previous summer. I was finally about to begin my “peacetime” duties in the Department. The end of the war was a relief. There was some belief that successfully restraining Iraq was proof that regional conflicts could be contained and that the post-Cold War era would continue to yield benefits for global peace and stability.
As Foreign Affairs Minister Joe Clark said to the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade in the wake of the war on March 21: “The next six months, at most the next year, will be critical for determining whether the war with Iraq will go down in history as the key which opened a whole new era in the Middle East.”
Well, it was a key that opened a whole new era in the Middle East, but not in the way Clark was hoping. We would eventually witness the attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001; the long war in Afghanistan to supplant Al Qaeda and the Taliban; the more violent and destabilizing second act of the war on Iraq in 2003; and the eruption of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. These were not direct consequences of the Persian Gulf War; but the war was a precursor for dark, new forces to be unleashed in the world.
In this new period, traditional peacekeeping, for which Canada had been renowned, has been called upon less and less to intervene in armed disputes. In joining the Persian Gulf allied coalition, Canada was crossing the threshold into a different era which would make us define in some new way our stance toward international conflict.
It has been said that peacekeeping can be applied where there is a peace to keep, usually between warring states. That implies that the states – even reluctantly – recognize the benefit of being kept apart. The conflicts of the last three post-Cold War decades seem not to have provided such grounds for mutual restraint. Rather they have often been characterized by the will of a state or non-state actor to impose its will on vulnerable populations and brook no efforts at mediation. There is “a gap between the traditional principles of peacekeeping – impartiality, consent of the parties, and the use of force only in self-defence or to protect civilians – and . . . moving towards peace enforcement and counter-terrorism.”10 The Canadian participation in the United Nations’ Multidimensional Integrative Stabilization Mission to Mali (MINUSMA) was a case in point. Canada’s involvement ended in September 2019. But its purpose was to provide military support to protect the local population against the aggression of unrepentant Islamic jihadists who did not and still will not talk peace.
In 1990, it was an unexpected experience to witness at first-hand how the Canadian government strained to adjust to new circumstances with the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War. But back on regular duty in the communications branch, where I was to devise communications strategy in support of Canadian trade policy, I had the start of my next assignment to ponder. Little noticed by me during the last two months in the Gulf communications task force was the announcement by International Trade Minister John Crosbie on February 5, 1991, that Canada was about to join negotiations for a free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico.