The few people who are entertained by the way Ottawa makes decisions will find The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar worthy of close study. It is timely and a page turner in its compelling historical detail. It is also generally well researched and presented. The final chapter provides a stark examination of where things actually stand in Afghanistan—an account not available from any government source—and offers a realistic assessment of the array of bad options available to current decision makers.
This account presented by Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang of how we came to be fighting a war in southern Afghanistan is not, however, balanced. The authors—she a political scientist and director of the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre of International Studies, he a former chief of staff to two of Canada’s Liberal ministers of defence from 2002 to 2006—do not seem as interested in recording the advice offered, or in objectively plumbing the...
Robert R. Fowler was foreign policy advisor to prime ministers Pierre Trudeau, John Turner and Brian Mulroney, served as deputy minister of National Defence, was Canada’s longest-serving ambassador to the United Nations and was ambassador to Italy and United Nations food agencies, the prime minister’s personal representative for the Kananaskis G8 Summit and the personal representative for Africa of prime ministers Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. He retired in 2006 after 38 years in public service and is now a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
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