A General for Peace

D.M.L. Farr is a professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa.

It is, to put it mildly, unusual when a major-general, leaving active service, becomes a full-time peace activist. Leonard V. Johnson retired from the Canadian armed forces in 1984. A General for Peace tells the story of his life and gives the reasons for his conversion to peace activism. It is a short but lively account, made interesting by many anecdotes and given force by the author’s unassuming sincerity. The writing is straightforward and at times colloquial, expressing, one imagines, the personality of the author. In summary, the book is both a memoir and a plea for disarmament in the present dangerous world.

Johnson’s 34 years in the air force gave him broad experience as a flier, administrator, and policy advisor. Born in Saskatchewan in 1929, he was too young to serve in the Second World War. But he grew up in the rugged country north of Prince Albert, where he spent his days outdoors as a railway worker, fur patrolman, and then as a forestry patrol pilot for the Province of Saskatchewan. He joined the RCAF in 1950 and moved through the ranks to command positions, mostly in air transport. He was base commander for all military activities at Edmonton, then an associate assistant deputy minister for policy and chief of evaluation at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. Between these assignments there were periods of study leave at the U.S. Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia and the National Defence College at Kingston.

Johnson’s conversion to a peace worker did not occur in a blinding flash on his road to Damascus. Rather, it was a cumulative process beginning towards the end of his military career. At the NORAD command centre at Colorado Springs in 1979, he came to the conclusion, after watching a computer simulation of an attack on North America, that retaliation was no longer a rational response after deterrence had failed. This realization raised the first doubts in Johnson’s mind. Johnson’s most important appointment, in terms of his later role in the peace movement, was as commandant at the National Defence College from 1980 to 1984. Here he had more time to think and read about problems of security and to meet a wide range of political figures, academics, and peace researchers. Among those who assisted in his education were G. Arbatov and A.N. Yakovlev of the Soviet Union, who led him to the conclusion that the USSR’s military objectives were defensive, not offensive; Jonathan Schell, author of The Fate of the Earth, with its chilling description of “omnicide,” the death of all living things in nuclear war; and Anatol Rapoport of the University of Toronto, who made him see that NATO and the Warsaw Pact were “mutually-justifying halves of a single military system” (p. 122).

Following his retirement Johnson began writing and speaking to groups interested in disarmament. He joined an English organization, Generals for Peace and Disarmament, and plunged into the cause of promoting peace. These years, as his book relates, have been hectic ones for him. There were frustrations and disappointments and emotionally draining experiences such as his 1986 visits to El Salvador to meet some of the victims of the civil war in that unhappy country. The final chapter of the book is a devastating critique of the Mulroney government’s 1987 white paper on defence policy.

Not everyone will agree with Leonard Johnson’s arguments nor accept his conclusion. Yet they need to be heard and pondered. His autobiography is a good starting point. It is absorbingly readable while at the same time powerful in its criticism of prevailing military (and civilian) attitudes to the strategy of nuclear deterrence. Its closest Canadian counterpart is General E.L.M. Burns’s Megamurder, which 20 years ago called for a way to be found to protect civilization without having to rely on the ultimate possibility of mass destruction.