Queen’s University School of Policy Studies professor Douglas Bland can discusses the United Arab Emirates’ decision to evict Canadian soldiers from a military staging base near Dubai.

“Landing rights are a technical problem that military air staff has to manage all the time. The real story is will our NATO allies allow UAE to interfere with our operations without redress? Are our U.S. and European allies going to sit back and allow a Mideast business cadre to send a major international operation off the rails?” says professor Bland. “This is an alliance problem, not a Canadian-UAE bilateral problem. Therefore the UN and NATO, whose strategy is now at risk, should be supporting Canada and tell UAE to back down – and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia should be the ones delivering the message on our behalf.”

Professor Bland holds the Chair in Defence Management Studies in the Queen's University School of Policy Studies. His research is concentrated in the fields of defence policy making and management at national and international levels, and the organization and functioning of defence ministries.

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