SMOL: Can’t make sense of ‘gender-inclusive demining’ aid to Ukraine

Article content

I was pretty impressed with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s firm rhetoric in support of Ukraine on the second anniversary of the Russian invasion and his promise to commit to the obvious, being that we can do more on defence.

Article content

It was also good to hear that Canada is finally committing to joining the likes of Botswana, Norway, Greece and Latvia and purchasing air defence missile systems for our air defence missile-less military.

Article content

Clearly, pressure from the United States, the country that failed to conquer us 210 years ago, and our NATO allies, some of whom we defended, liberated and defeated in the last two world wars, is ever-so-laboriously convincing the defence freeloading Canadian government to groggily wake up to its own military shortfalls in 2024. Baby steps!

Likewise, the Trudeau government aid plan was another step in the right direction, ensuring Russian aggression remained outside of NATO. Seemed all was in order with funds earmarked for such plans as counter-nuclear smuggling and demining equipment. At least all seemed fine until I stumbled upon the clause intended to assign military aid funds for gender-inclusive demining. Four million dollars of the intended $3.02 billion aid earmarked for the Ukrainian war effort, buffering NATO’s eastern flank, and helping to prevent an all-out Third World War must, according to Trudeau, be assigned to “providing capacity building to key national stakeholders and establishing a gender and diversity working group to promote gender-transformative mine action in Ukraine.”

Article content

Article content

Welcome to the tactically absurd Trudeau hippy spin on the deadly serious and sadly often tragic, business of military demining. An absolutely superfluous attempt at tactically fusing two mutually irrelevant priorities. As Ukraine now surpasses Afghanistan and Syria as the “world’s biggest minefield,” and Ukrainian army sappers risk their lives to clear Russian mines, the Trudeau government wishes them to focus on mobilizing what is essentially a gender-inclusive focused study group to promote gender-transformative mine action.

Surely, it’s (pardon the pun) high time to significantly lower the THC content of whatever they are smoking now in the offices of the executive branch of government.

Nonetheless, for the sake of fairness and fact-checking, I tried to locate some mention of “gender inclusive demining” and “gender-transformative mine action” in various Canadian National Defence, NATO, and American military websites to no avail. Should the above terms exist somewhere in the NATO operational planning process, it certainly doesn’t seem to be much of a priority.

Article content

And, frankly, why should it! Although I have only a general soldier’s understanding of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines, I feel confident enough to say that, on the pointy-fragmentary end, mines are entirely gender inclusive. By this, I mean that they will maim and kill, with indiscriminate savagery, whoever comes in contact with them (soldier, civilian, man, woman, child, straight, gay, trans, non-binary). Although the technology of mines, especially when it comes to demining, is increasing, I am at a loss to see how gender can or should play a role in the process.

For the last two years, we have been reminded over and over that Ukraine is fighting a David and Goliath war with limited resources, and that includes the monumental task of finding and clearing Russian mines. It should be up to the democratically elected government of Ukraine and its military commanders to decide what combination of human, strategic, and economic factors shall determine where, when and how any specific cluster of Russian mines should be cleared. Likewise, it should be up to them to decide precisely how much, if at all, Canadian bourgeois opulent ivory-tower-bohemian-inspired utopian social action on gender transformation should play into the mix in Ukrainian wartime mine clearance.

Article content

Dare I assume that the Ukrainian army sappers risking their lives in mine clearance at this very moment feel the same way.

However, thinking out loud, there is one specific area where perhaps some real gender inclusion and transformation in military demining might take place. It is a safe guess to assume that, even today, the gender composition of military engineers, technicians, and support personnel bearing the dangerous burden of demining in Ukraine and elsewhere are overwhelmingly male. Is that fair from a gender inclusion standpoint?

Perhaps, conceivably, a more helpful focus for promoting real gender inclusion and transformation would be to incentivize and encourage more women, trans women and all the other supposed genders to take a more prominent, direct and active part in the dangerous job of demining in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Article content

Not likely to be a part of any bourgeois feminist Justin Trudeau’s concept of gender-inclusivity. Yet, it seems the only pertinent application of gender inclusion all the same.

— Robert Smol is a retired military intelligence officer who served in the Canadian Armed Forces for more than 20 years. He is currently completing a PhD in military history. Reach him at rmsmol@gmail.com.

Article content