With the Canadian government expected to refresh its Global Engagement Strategy in 2014, there are interesting implications for Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) as it continues to emphasize a shift from crisis response to engagement.
At a symposium in Kingston this week, commanders, operators and academics discussed the challenges of working with new and diverse partners, and the ethics and moral responsibilities that comes when those you help train turn on their own citizens.
Vanguard will feature more from the event in upcoming issues, but one of the highlights was a dinner recognizing a signature event in Canadian SOF history, and a video linking some of that past with the present. While the written word plays an important part in capturing the historical record of Canada’s army, navy and air force, SOF has tended to rely on a oral tradition (the sapte of books about the killing of OBL excepted), telling stories from one generation to the next. This videos grabs a slice of that and is well worth a watch: http://www.combatcamera.forces.gc.ca/netpub/server.np?find&catalog=videos&template=videos-03-eng.np&field=itemid&op=matches&value=477&site=combatcamera