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Assuming Canada’s military strategy in the conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant (ISIL) is fundamentally a choice between fighting a war and a non-combat training and humanitarian mission, creates a policy dilemma founded on a false dichotomy.

When the Trudeau government first considered the possibility that Canadian soldiers might remain in the theatre of combat, the “What to do and how much is enough?” policy debate invariably fluttered around the false assumption that the government could choose between a humanitarian and a combat mission. As Canada’s military experiences have demonstrated time and again, these two purposes in reality are simply aspects of the same phenomenon — warfare. They are set apart only by political decisions about means and methods — decisions, some often forget, in which the enemy always has a significant, and sometimes a final, say.

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Scholars often define wars by their particular characteristics and place them along a low-high spectrum of violence. At the lowest end, one finds “unstable peace” or “civil strife” situations, in which a significant armed conflict might flare into open combat at any time, as occurred during Canadian military missions in Africa and Cyprus. In the middle range sits the oddly branded “limited wars” — limited for politicians, but deadly for soldiers — such as the one fought in Korea in the 1950s. At the dark, dreadful end of this spectrum lurks unrestrained international warfare.