The Canadian Peacekeeping Myth (Merged Topics)

[GAP]

The myth of Canada as global peacekeeper
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail MICHAEL VALPY
Article Link

Despite high-minded policy statements and public perception, Canada's role on the world stage has diminished, reports Michael Valpy

It's so hard to square mythology with reality. While 70 per cent of Canadians consider military peacekeeping a defining characteristic of their country, Canada has turned down so many United Nations' requests to join peacekeeping missions during the past decade that the UN has stopped asking.

In 1991, Canada contributed more than 10 per cent of all peacekeeping troops to the UN. Sixteen years later, its contribution is less than 0.1 per cent.

On this month's fifth anniversary of Canadian troops being sent to Afghanistan and one year after assuming responsibility for the counterinsurgency campaign -- a war by any other name -- in Kandahar province, one of the country's biggest unanswered questions is: What is Canadian military policy? It's certainly not to be the global leader in peacekeeping the country once was.

Little more than a year ago, Colonel Michael Hanrahan, the Canadian Armed Forces' top expert on peacekeeping, was offered the job as chief of staff of the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations. His Ottawa superiors nixed the idea. There is, in fact, not a single Canadian officer in the UN's peacekeeping headquarters.

The Department of National Defence website touts in glowing terms Canada's support and participation in SHIRBRIG -- the Danish-inspired multinational Standby High Readiness Brigade for United Nations Operations designed to provide rapid deployment of peacekeeping troops for up to six months. In reality, Canada's SHIRBRIG commitment is a will-o'-the-wisp.

Canada invented the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect that the UN accepted in 2005. Since then, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have stood by with their hands pretty much in their pockets while the doctrine glaringly failed its first test: The call for robust and, if necessary, uninvited UN military intervention to halt the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
More on link

 

[ArmyRick]

Its too bad but it is reality.

The UN failed miserably in the 90s and now has no reputation.

The great canadian idealogy of us as strictly peacekeepers is sickening IMO. We are soldiers, sailors and airman. Our job is first and foremost is to protect our nation and its interest with violence if neccessarry.

In South Africa, WWI, WWII, Korea, Cyrpes in the 70s, FRY at some points (MEdak pocket) and now afghanistan, it was certainly VERY neccessarry to wage violent action.

I wonder if alot of these bozos who spew on and on about peacekeeping ever wonder why UN peacekeepers were armed?

Its a concept and a myth that has to be shattered amongst Canadian minds that all we do is peacekeeping.

 

[career_radio-checker]

Its a concept and a myth that has to be shattered amongst Canadian minds that all we do is peacekeeping.

I'm trying, and it is actually quite rewarding to see people's reaction when you spell it out for them.

 

[medaid]

'We're not the public service of Canada, we're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.' - Gen Hillier, CDS Jul 2005.


I agree completely with the above quote. The soooner we move away from the 'peacekeeper' image and reestablish our selves as a military, and a military who fights foremost, we will be set in the Canadian populace minds. In no way am I saying those who have served on peacekeeping missions, that their contributions are unimportant, i am merely saying that WE know what we do, it's time to make THEM see that.

 

[Kiwi99]

In many levels of Government and the media there is too much emphasis placed on WHY we are there and what we SHOULD be accomplishing. There seems to be very little understanding that we ARE there and we ARE doing things that ARE making a difference.  Comments such as this article should be dismissed as nothing more than unfounded guesses.  It is to easy for members of the media and many 'special analysts' to make blanket statements about Afghanistan.  It is far harder to put yourself in a situation where you see first hand what our troops are accomplishing.  Name one succesful UN peacekeeping mission that no longer requires a UN or peacemaking force.  Cyprus - UN still there.  Bosnia - UN still there.  Rwanda - failure by the UN, not the troops.  Somalia -same as Rwanda.  The UN is an out of date organisation that screams loudly at injustices around the world but takes few steps in solving the problem; ie, the Sudan.  Canadas reputation as a peacekkeping force, especially amongst Canadians, is the result of the capabilities of todays media bringing Yugo and Kosovo into the homes of people all over the country.  It portrays Canadian soldiers as top class peacekeepers (our secondary or even third line role) and takes away the image of the fighting man and woman.  That, coupled with the current 'lets not offend anyone' attitude, gives everyone a warm fuzzy.  Most notably, it is a politically friendly term.  I enlisted to be a soldier, not a peacekeeper.  But i can do that job.  If some of these journalists that spout this crap about the woes of the war in Afghanistan took the time to speak to soldiers who have fought there, or the families of those deployed, it would not change their view.  We, as soldiers, will still pick up our rifle every mornig and march towards the sound of gunfire.  If it is an attempt to undermine the mission or the Government, so be it.  It effects not the mind of the soldier.  they are just glad to be involved in the bigget battle the world has seen for many years, fighting for the Canadian public, and free people world wide.

 

[McG]

I've been saying for a while that our goals in Afghanistan have the same moral integrity as peacekeeping.  It is nice to finally see it in the media.

Future peace keeping likely means more combat, experts says
John Ward, The Canadian Press
Published: Saturday, March 17, 2007

OTTAWA — The iconic peacekeeping missions of the past, with blue berets on a ceasefire line, so beloved by the Canadian public, are likely gone forever, lost in a harsher world.

Experts say missions of the future are likely to be more muscular — like Afghanistan — and will mesh a heavily armed military, humanitarian agencies, diplomats and politicians in an uneasy, but vital alliance. Combat may be a necessity, if only to provide security for relief workers and reconstruction efforts.

The handwriting has likely been on the wall for a decade, from the days that Canadian soldiers fought pitched battles in the former Yugoslavia, with little publicity at home among a public content with the peacekeeper image forged in quieter times.

The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, founded in 1984 to be a sort of institutional memory for peacekeeping methods and lessons, brought university students, soldiers, bureaucrats and humanitarian experts together last week to run a role-playing exercise about a peacekeeping mission in the fictional country of Fontanalis.

This mission, like the operation in Afghanistan, suggested to the participants that times have changed since the early days of UN peacekeeping.

Flora MacDonald, former Tory politician and onetime foreign affairs minister, played the role of a senior UN bureaucrat in the exercise. She said in an interview that the old days are gone.

“Everything has changed,” she said. “Peacekeeping has changed. You can’t equate the 1970s or 1980s with today or the next few years. You have to recognize that nothing is static.”

Col. Pat Stogran, who led the 3rd battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry into Afghanistan in 2002, is a serving officer seconded temporarily to the peacekeeping centre. He agrees that there’s a new world to be dealt with.

“We used to fight wars in three ranks and colourful clothing, then we went into trenches and then we went into mechanized warfare,” he said.

Now the world sees insurgents able to use the Internet and stage attacks unthinkable a few years earlier.

“The world has changed and the nature of the threat has changed. You can’t hope to go back to the old way of peacekeeping when conflict has changed so much.”

Lew MacKenzie, the retired major general who led Canadian soldiers to occupy the Sarajevo airport in the 1990s, said the players have changed, as well as the methods.

He noted that a senior UN official said recently that the world body simply is incapable of running a major mission where deadly force is required. The UN has always had problems with its member states when it comes to authorizing the use of any force beyond simple self-defence.

Where the UN once negotiated with countries, MacKenzie added, today’s peacekeepers must deal with far more shadowy groups.

“The change after the Cold War was that factions were involved,” he said.

“They don’t have a flag in front of the UN building. They don’t have a delegation. If you make a deal with them and they break the deal, where do you go to find them? They’ve disappeared.”

But whatever the methods, it will still be peacekeeping, said Mo Baril, a retired general, former military adviser to the UN secretary general and onetime chief of Canada’s defence staff.

“War has changed and we still call it war,” he said. “We haven’t invented a new word.

“It seems because peacekeeping has changed some would like to give it another name, some would like to call it war.

“Well, it’s not the same. You go to war to win a battle and win whatever aim you have.

In modern peacekeeping, he said, you may have to fight insurgents to a standstill, but that’s not fighting a war.

One challenge, these experts say, is getting the Canadian public, which is caught up in what MacKenzie calls the peacekeeping myth, to recognize today’s efforts are as important and praiseworthy as those of the past.

“Successive governments have perpetrated this peacekeeping myth, that it’s No. 1 in our priorities, for government self-interest because you can chop defence budgets if you think it’s just blue berets and pistols.”

Chief Superintendant Graham Muir of the RCMP, who has served with the UN mission in Haiti, agreed that Canadians have to learn about the new model.

“They still effectively are consumers of yesterday’s message.”

He pointed out that when it comes to UN peacekeeping missions — outside of Afghanistan, which is a United Nations-sanctioned mission under NATO — Canada has more policemen serving than soldiers.

In the early 1990s, thousands of Canadian troops were serving in UN missions. Today there are fewer than 100.

Some of the students taking part in the Pearson exercise said they learned a great deal about running a peace mission in an unstable country.

For one thing, anything that can go wrong, will. The scenario is littered with figurative booby traps that pop up just as things seem to be going well: aid trucks are hijacked; avian flu breaks out; convoys are attacked.

“Every time we start to address one problem, something else comes up that’s more pressing or seems more important,” said Carrie Dyson of Toronto, a student at Humber College.

What has shes learned?

“There has to be greater co-ordination between military and humanitarian NGOs. What we are learning is to combine both efforts as much as possible.”

Clayton Dennison from the University of Calgary said Canadians have to understand that peacekeeping may involve fighting.

“People think we’re peacekeepers, that’s been our tradition, but we have to understand that the world has changed and in a lot of regions of the world you’re not going to have the armed combatants agreeing to let peacekeepers in.

“But we still have to go in anyway.”

Stogran said he’s confident Canadians will understand the new world.

“Canadians throw themselves into things, the First World War, the Second World War, NATO and the watershed peacekeeping missions of the 1990s because they’re interested in keeping the peace, in  international stability, being a part of it.”

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=adb935db-a093-4275-91e6-93ab9c1ebe7b&k=64052

 

[IN HOC SIGNO]

It takes a while to re-educate the media and thus the public as well. The media like to rely on stereotypes and caricatures.... :

 

[Disenchantedsailor]

The great canadian idealogy of us as strictly peacekeepers is sickening IMO. We are soldiers, sailors and airman. Our job is first and foremost is to protect our nation and its interest with violence if neccessarry.

In South Africa, WWI, WWII, Korea, Cyrpes in the 70s, FRY at some points (MEdak pocket) and now afghanistan, it was certainly VERY neccessarry to wage violent action.

Agreed, this country was built on warfare, since long before Confederation, The Boer War, The Great War, the Second World War, Korea and so on.

And as Lew Mckenzie put it, Peacekeeping is a natural by product of warfare

 

[ruxted]

Link to original article

The Truth About Peacekeeping

The Globe and Mail cites a poll which finds 65% of Canadians (nearly 70% in Ontario) “believe their role on the world stage is more suited to peacekeeping than as enforcers of peace.”  According to former Chrétien speech writer Peter Donolo, “Canadians may be pining for the days before 9/11 and are “nostalgic for the blue helmets” of the UN missions of the past.”

While acknowledging the basic facts and figures and Mr. Donolo's conclusions, Ruxted wonders how Canadians came to be so abysmally ignorant of our history to believe the lie that Pearsonian, baby-blue beret peacekeeping is Canada’s military ‘tradition’?

It is a Big Lie which for a generation has been preached by ill-educated teachers using curricula prepared by even less qualified educrats, and promulgated by lazy journalists who attach their by-lines to press releases prepared (by those with an obvious political agenda like Mr. Donolo) to propagate the myth that Canadians could do without a combat capable, combat ready, globally deployable, balanced military.

For more than a half century (1899 to 1969) Canada pushed its way onto the world's stage – in South Africa, Europe, and the Pacific, then following the last global war, securing and then keeping the peace in NATO on the North German Plain in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Canada also led the way in preventative peacekeeping in the ‘50s.  As we have stated, UN peacekeeping was a tool developed during the Cold War to reduce the risk of all out war being triggered by disputes amongst client states of NATO and Warsaw Pact members.  It was an adjunct to Canada’s war-like role in NATO.  Indeed, Canada was often called upon to participate in UN missions because it was a Western member of NATO and because we provided a counterbalance to Eastern Bloc or non-aligned countries.  Missions were carefully balanced to allow for global tensions and required the direct consent and participation of the countries where the peacekeeping force was to be deployed.

But UN peacekeeping changed after 1990 when the Cold war ended and the firm hands of superpowers were removed from most clients - a change Canadians have chosen to ignore.  The raison d’être for preventative peacekeeping disappeared and new problems appeared which are intractable to lightly armed troops enforcing a peace by providing a ‘thin blue line’ which cannot be violated without earning international reproach.  The UN  provides a laundry list of prerequisites for UN-managed peacekeeping.  One is that “there must be a peace to keep”;  then “less capable” militaries, typically those from less developed countries, can do the job with some support from “more capable” militaries, such as the Canadian Forces.  When there is no peace to keep then the more capable militaries must first make the peace - just what Canadians and Europeans appear increasingly disinclined to do, but is the best and most efficient use of their highly professional, ethical, and capable armed services.

During the ‘90s Mr. Donolo pushed the Chrétien government’s line that Canada would use soft power to force the UN to adopt a doctrine of Responsibility to Protect.  It was cynical manipulation of public opinion by a public relations professional.  As Joseph Nye, the originator of the soft power theory has pointed out, soft power is available only to those who can “legitimize” it by having enough hard, military power.  Canada frittered away so much of its hard power that Mr. Donolo's masters could not practice the Responsibility to Protect they so fervently preached, instead resorting to slandering the US for proclaimed misguided use of hard power and unwillingness to use its considerable soft power.  That slander was sufficient for Canadian domestic politics where sophomoric, knee-jerk anti-Americanism wins votes.

Messers Chrétien and Donolo did not push Canada out of credibility all by themselves.  As early as 1960 the costs of defending Canada’s vital interests and sustaining a leadership position in global affairs were taking a severe toll in Canada.  Paul Hellyer’s controversial organizational experiments in the mid ‘60s were designed to save money, which he hoped (in vain) could then be used to equip and train combat forces.  (That they ‘accomplished’ other things is another argument.)  In 1970 Pierre Trudeau literally threw in the hard power towel, declaring that Canada could not be a leader of the middle powers and needed to turn its attention and resources inward.  The final nail in the coffin came in the early nineties when, knowing there was no political sympathy for defence issues, the Mulroney government cast aside its Defence White Paper and slashed and burned what minimal capability Canada had left - a process gleefully accelerated by Jean Chrétien throughout his tenure.

UN peacekeeping became Canada’s currency of choice for buying its place at the international table without paying a respectable share of the bill.  One of the world's richest and most favoured nations eschewed its international responsibilities and claimed a moral superpower status, lecturing and hectoring its friends and allies while refusing a full and fair share of the burden of bringing some level of security to the world.

Canadian ignorance of peacekeeping encompasses not only the political situation described above; Canadians do not understand the nature of the missions.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, the need for classical or preventative peacekeeping declined dramatically.  Absent any familiar military threat in sight, many in the West felt it was safe to stand down the military machine of the Cold War and cash in a "peace dividend", without looking at the effects of the disintegration of the Soviet Empire on the former clients and colonies.  The emergence of many small, distributed threats that followed the fall of the Soviet Union requires a response: not the same as facing down a nuclear armed adversary, but a response none the less.

To the benefit of all, Canadian soldiers are operating in the far corners of the earth in "peace support” missions and "security and stabilization” operations in an effort to restore rule of law and remove conditions which encourage threats against our security and prosperity. This is long term hard work, for not only soldiers to provide the security screen, but also government agencies and other organizations who work behind the screen to build and sustain new stability.  Canadians need to be aware of what needs to be done now to secure our safety and prosperity, and be willing to provide the tools and support needed for these decades-long missions.

As reported by the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, in March 2007, the future of peacekeeping will involve more combat.  This trend started at least a decade ago.  Hard military power was essential in the former Yugoslavia.  Even the Canadian military in UN blue berets were required to fight for the peace.  Securing the peace and exercising a Responsibility to Protect requires capable states to impose their will upon those who inappropriately employ violence.  Many who believe that Canada should avoid combat operations also suggest that we should send peacekeepers to the Sudan.  These people we might call traditionalists should be warned that such a move would require an illegal or UN-sanctioned invasion, conventional war-fighting, and a perhaps even greater counterinsurgency campaign than they currently decry in Afghanistan.

The Ruxted Group acknowledges that peacekeeping was and remains a mission in which most Canadians found both pride and comfort.  But, it is time for Canadians, especially educators, journalists and politicians to tell themselves the truth about peacekeeping: it was, and always has been, an adjunct to Canada's overall defence policy and a secondary and minor role for the Canadian military.  Traditional peacekeeping, so beloved and idealized by Canadians is dead and has been dead since the mid-1990s.  Missions, like those depicted on Ottawa's Peacekeeping Memorial don't exist and, in today's security climate, cannot exist except in very specific circumstances.  Canadians need to get over it and move on.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Because of our education systems, media and politicians (all stripes) most Canadians are unaware of the simple facts Ruxted points out.

To wit: Pearson's baby, UNEF, was kicked out of Sinai in 1967 by Egyptian President Nasser (as he was fully entitled to do), which led directly to the Six Day War. A great victory for "peacekeeping".

And what about UNPROFOR in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina? Such a great peacekeeping success that thousands were eventually massacred at Srbrenica in 1995; NATO had to bomb the Serbs heavily and Croatian forces very violently expel them from the Krajina before peace could be established. BY FORCE.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[career_radio-checker]

A good book to get your hands on is "Who's war is it?" by Jack Granastein (spelling?). The title of the book is just an eye grabber but Jack, as usual, is very articulate and precise about peacekeeping. He characterizes peacekeeping as simply a "cheap" foreign policy which frees' up cash to fund other "important" public programs. He's a realist and makes no bones about where he stands on defence and foreign policy. The real surprise is that he is a prof at York University -- the most leftist school in Canada. A very good and easy read, I highly recommend it.

 

[armyvern]

Big Jack:

Granatstein

 

[ex-Sup]

I whole-heartedly concure! However...

preached by ill-educated teachers using curricula prepared by even less qualified educrats

Watch that we are not painted with the same brush! I (and I'm sure that there are other of my colleagues out there) am well aware of the facts put forth in the article. I know that I do my best to teach my students the historic role of peacekeeping, and also the realities of our post 911 world. It isn't always easy though; remember we are dealing with teenagers. The majority of them are in our classes because they have to be and half of those could give two s@#ts about Canadian history.

Just my $0.02  ;D

 

[Roger]

Because of our education systems, media and politicians (all stripes) most Canadians are unaware of the simple facts Ruxted points out.

To wit: Pearson's baby, UNEF, was kicked out of Sinai in 1967 by Egyptian President Nasser (as he was fully entitled to do), which led directly to the Six Day War. A great victory for "peacekeeping".

And what about UNPROFOR in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina? Such a great peacekeeping success that thousands were eventually massacred at Srbrenica in 1995; NATO had to bomb the Serbs heavily and Croatian forces very violently expel them from the Krajina before peace could be established. BY FORCE.

Mark
Ottawa

The main reason the kicked out the Canadians, is because they had been under British rule in the area and did not want any British there no more, and we Canadians at the time still wore a British style uniform. Hence Pearson pushed to have the new flag with no Union Jack and to have Canadian uniforms on members of the forces.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Chop:  All the points you mention are completely irrelevant to Nasser's 1967 decision.  If you have evidence otherwise please provide.
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/unef1backgr2.html

More:
http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/caj/documents/vol_09/iss_1/CAJ_vol9.1_02_e.pdf

By the time the mission ended, close to 9,000 Canadians had served alongside personnel from Brazil, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, India, Indonesia, Norway, Sweden and Yugoslavia. The mission was not without losses; the UNEF suffered 110 fatalities, of which 31 were Canadians.

I'm amazed the Canadian public and media were not howling to end the senseless (as in the end it was) loss of life and bring the troops home by our own decision.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Greymatters]

+1, good article.

 

[pbi]

While I generally agree with the Ruxted article, I would offer two thoughts:

-it may be unfair to blame educators and journalists for the misinformed public mythology about peacekeeping. IMHO, the political leadership of the country, as well as our own senior military leadership, were for decades only too happy to retail the idea that we were really all about blue ops, and were just nice folks who wore oversized puffy berets and handed out candy bars to local kids. On the politician's side, it was probably a way of dressing up otherwise unpalatable defence spending (historically, except for a few spikes here and there,  there has never been much support for peacetime defence spending in Canada). On the part of our own leadership, I think peacekeeping was a publicly acceptable "life preserver" at a time that it was becoming harder and harder to educate a public that either knew nothing about us at all, or saw us as lackeys of the US military (suspicion of Canadian military actions during the Cuban Missile  Crisis, the unpopularity of BOMARC, and the weird ability of some members of the Canadian public in the 70's to associate us with the US war in Vietnam, to give a few examples...). As an institution, I believe the CF contributed to the image dilemma that began with Medak and is still with us: who we have to be vs who we tell people we are;

Second, while we are all justifiably proud of our combat role in Afghanistan, and this role has clearly won us renewed respect (at least in the Western military community if not the political community as well) I believe that peacekeeping operations taught the Army many useful things, and helped to instill some practices that have served us well in Afghanistan. For example, to name a few:

-the importance of solid combat training underlying operational effectiveness in peacekeeping;

-the ability (as limited as it was) to go halfway around the world to an unfamiliar place, set up and start doing business ion a short period of time, regardless of terrain or climate;

-the ability to transition back and forth from negotiation to show of force and actual use of lethal force as the situation requires;

-the ability to do what we now call "CIMIC", at sub-unit and unit level, with little or no help from outside agencies incl the GoC;

-the understanding that there are lots of NGOs/IOs in the operating environment (or battlespace, or AO, or whatever term you want to use;

-the importance of the well-trained professional NCO who can make decisions and act autonomously under all sorts of differing circumstances;

-the understanding of the importance of the public opinion of the locals in the AO, and ways to build trust and communication;

-the ability to work with troops of all different nationalities (and radically different levels of professionalism); and

-the ability to improvise with few resources.

Let's not write off the last 30 years of experience, or deny its contribution to the Army we are today, in an understandable rush to celebrate our return to being "red meat eaters" again. (as one US Army Col described the Canadian Army's current view of itself)

Cheers

 

[Cardstonkid]

This is a good article. Canadians in general are asleep in their comfy hobbit houses under the illusion that their safety is bought and paid for by their peaceful nature. If only they knew.

 

[McG]

For those interested in this topic, there is also some relevant debate here: 
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/29913.0.html or
http://forums.milnet.ca/forums/threads/29913.0.html

It starts well prior to the time of the deployment of the PRT through to political reaction following combat operations by TF ORION.  One thing, which I feel is drawn out well, is that military & political missuse of the term "peacekeeping" had come back to bite us.  (I think it still is biting) 

 

[Gronk]

Some very valid points pbi