Is peacekeeping a relic? Once known as peacekeepers, Canada's military has changed quite dramatically into a more robust force capable of fighting. The transition is not complete and there appears to be some disagreement as to which way to go now.

Historian Jack Granatstein says that peacekeeping came to an end as a concept in the Balkans in the early 1990s. Today, "we might call it peace support or peace enforcement. Our grandfathers would have called it war."

A University, of Alberta professor points out that, since 1956, Canada was a major player in numerous UN peacekeeping missions. In a recent article (April 2006) in The Edmonton Journal, Dr. W. Andy Knight, professor of international relations at the university's Department of Political Science, wrote that then-foreign minister Lester Pearson's concept of peacekeeping in the '50s involved soldiers who "would use the minimum amount of force, supervise ceasefires, observe movements of belligerents, and facilitate negotiated settlements of disputes."

And, he says, Canada maintained a top 10 ranking among UN peacekeeping nations until recently.

"Wearing the UN blue helmets has been something that most Canadian military personnel did with pride, even though it came fraught with danger ... The leadership in the Canadian military now seems more concerned with plugging our soldiers into defence alliances--like NATO--and 'coalitions of the willing' that have little or nothing to do with the UN. The trend over the past decade has been to move away from UN peacekeeping (a task that involves more than just the skills of a combat-ready soldier) and towards peace enforcement (a more robust and aggressive type of operation)."

Professor Knight laments that, as of March 2006, Canada ranked 50th in troop contributors to UN peacekeeping missions with just 162 personnel in the field, after "the Canadian government pulled out all 190 of its military personnel from the Golan Heights, marking the end of our contribution to UN peacekeeping there after 32 years."

Perhaps, the changed character of Canada's defence forces has been summed up by the Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier. In July 2005, he said that the Canadian army's job is to kill the "detestable murders and scum-bags" who commit terrorism.

On Canada's role in Afghanistan, he said "We are going (there) to actually take down the folks that are trying to blow up men and women ... We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people." Gen. Hillier says the reality is that Canadian troops haven't been peacekeeping for more than a decade.

When he served in the Balkans in the mid-1990s, he says there was no peace to maintain. In the hills near Sarajevo, he says he and his troops were shot at continuously, targeted directly. So, after serving in the former Yugoslavia in 1995 and Bosnia in 2000, his approach in Afghanistan was: Find the good guys and help them out, and then go after the bad guys and take them out.

He says his primary goal is to protect Canada and North America, and places helping out failed overseas states second on his agenda. And, he wants to do it by reforming the forces across the board, from recruitment (increasing the numbers of full-time and reserve troops by 8,000) to buying new equipment.

He envisions a transformed military that is capable of full-blown combat as well as humanitarian and peacekeeping operations around the world.

Many praised General Hillier for his frankness, welcoming what they see as a fresh approach that reflects a practical view of military operations. Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, a Conservative MP when the Liberals were in power, said the General "speaks like a soldier, not a diplomat." Then-Prime Minister Paul Martin was also behind him and his blunt remarks, describing him as "not only a top soldier, (but) a soldier who has served in Afghanistan."

Retired Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, the first commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo, agrees that the idea of peacekeeping brigades is unrealistic. He says "what the world needs to sort out the thugs in places like Darfur (in Sudan) are well-trained, well-equipped combat soldiers who show up in a timely manner."

In an April 2005 article in The Globe and Mail, Gen. MacKenzie praised the Liberal government's new defence policy for making it the military's top priority to defend Canada and North America in close cooperation with the United States. He also sees the new policy as "a realistic reaction to an increasingly dangerous world ... The review acknowledges that Canadians are now under greater threat than during the Cold War. To cope, the Canadian Forces will be restructured to enhance operational readiness."

The candid remarks of General Hillier were not warmly received by all Canadians though. Maude Barlow, chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, said Canada should play "a thoughtful, moderating position."

Similarly, Stephen Staples, a military analyst at the Ottawa-based, left-leaning Polaris Institute, was alarmed by General Hillier's comments, and wondered if we were seeing "an Americanization of the Canadian Forces."

While some talk of the need to build armed forces against the threat of terrorism, others say the best way to fight terrorism is to tackle it before it grows. As writer Michael Nickerson sees it Canada's role "is one of dedicated missions to help with stabilizing and rebuilding nations in need, and stepping up and participating in much-needed UN intervention in such hot spots as Sudan."

Mr. Nickerson argues that military force can't claim a victory in the war on terror. "The world's mightiest military machine has not reduced terrorism one iota," he writes in a July 2005 Globe and Mail article. "If anything, it has merely stirred up and spread a hornet's nest: Attacks against Western nations have increased, not decreased, since 9/11 ..."

In a 2002 survey, most Canadians (75 percent) said the government needs to spend more on Canada's military, but few (five percent) thought funding should come from health care, the environment (13 percent), or agriculture (14 percent).

At the time, there was no consensus on the role of the military. While most thought funding should be increased, just slightly more than half (53 percent) favoured "a better-funded and equipped all-purpose armed force capable of undertaking traditional defence and combat roles at home and abroad."

But, almost a third (32 percent) thought the force should be "downsized and reconfigured as a small but well-equipped peacekeeping and disaster-assistance force ready to be deployed anywhere in the world on short notice."

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Canadian historian J.L. Granatstein says Canadian peacekeepers "did important work after the Suez crisis of 1956, in Cyprus, on the Golan Heights, and on the Iran-Iraq border after the 1988 peace between those two nations." But, Mr. Granatstein agrees that "peacekeeping has largely disappeared, replaced in the new world disorder by much more robust operations (such as in Afghanistan now and the firmer Yugoslavia in the early 1990s) run by the UN or other organizations." Review these earlier peacekeeping efforts to contrast them with today's military deployments.

2. Newspaper columnist James Travers wrote in March 2006 that General Rick Hillier "reached a conclusion ahead of many Canadians: Peacekeeping is a relic of a different world and a more turbulent one now demands a military willing and able to fight." Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

3. Peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours held for a decade between 1956 and 1967, thanks to the efforts of the first United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), a Canadian idea proposed by Lester Pearson (then foreign minister)for which he won the Nobel Peace Price. After UNEF left the Middle East in 1967, war broke out once again between Arabs and Israelis. Find out why peace was not maintained.

Websites

Defence Policy--http:// www.forces.gc.ca/admpol/ eng/defence/home_e.htm

Peacekeeping http://www.peacekeeper.ca

Pearson Peacekeeping Centre htrp://www. peaceoperations.org/

Canadian Association of Veterans in United Nations Peacekeeping http://www.cavunp.org/ index.html

RELATED ARTICLE: The peacekeeping myth.

Joe Canadian, in his famous rant on behalf of Molson Beer, said "I can proudly sew my country's flag on my backpack. I believe in peacekeeping, not policing." Canadians cheered that commercial and there were requests for "Joe" to perform it live all over the country. Canadians saw themselves reflected in what .Joe was saying, especially the bit about peacekeeping. Ours is not a warlike nation, they thought: we go about the world spreading peace and understanding.

Well, yes--and no; more no than yes actually. True, former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson came up with the peacekeeping idea. That was in 1956, and it defused a dispute that could have turned very ugly. But, even at the time Mr. Pearson was bringing peace where war looked likely, our forces were armed and ready for a fight.

During the Cold War (1947-1989) Canada had forces stationed in Europe standing by to repel an attack by the Soviet Union if one ever came. At the peak, there were 12,000 Canadian troops in Europe. The highest number of Canadian peacekeepers deployed at any one time never exceeded 2,000. That number did put Canada close to the top as a contributor of peacekeepers, however, Ottawa only allocated five percent of its defence spending to peacekeeping.

But, today? You could get all of Canada's active peacekeepers into a couple of school buses. Meanwhile, there are 2,300 members of our armed forces in Afghanistan, most of them on combat duty. Many more are back home in Canada training to replace them when their tour is complete. These soldiers are fully armed and ready to use lethal force when necessary. And, it has been necessary.

The mission in Afghanistan is far more in Canada's military tradition than peacekeeping is or ever was.

Why, then, do Canadians believe in the peacekeeping myth? Government spin, mostly. It was always easier to get approval for defence spending if voters thought it was for peacekeeping. So, Ottawa's public persuasion machine cranked out scores of happy-face stories about peacekeeping. The nasty, bloody side of national defence was kept carefully out of sight.

Now, the world has changed. The peacekeeping of Lester Pearson doesn't work anymore because most conflicts are not between nations that can be persuaded to respect the rule of law.

Canadians are having a difficult time getting used to the idea that their defence forces are doing what they are trained to do--fight.

RELATED ARTICLE: On the home front.

As the Friends of the Canadian War Museum (FCWM) point out, Canada's military also has a role to play at home in times of national crisis. This was evident with the ice storm that pummeled Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia (as well as parts of New York and New England) for six days in January 1998.

Canadian Forces soldiers came to the rescue during the worst ice storm in the century. Operation Recuperation was the largest humanitarian operation during peacetime: nearly 16,000 personnel from 200 units throughout Canada converged on the devastated provinces. The destruction was described as the worst and most expensive in Canadian history. Millions of trees fell, scores of transmission towers were destroyed, and more than 30,000 utility poles came down. About 4.5 million people lost power, and 600,000 had to leave their homes.

According to Environment Canada, the storm directly affected more people than any other previous weather event in Canadian history. Twenty eight people died, and almost 1,000 were injured.

The military performed a variety of duties from clearing debris, opening up roads, delivering generators, and vital food supplies. The troops also transported the sick to hospital and worked with the hydro crews to restore power to more than half the homes in Quebec, 250,000 homes in Ontario, and 37,000 homes in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Department of National Defence was also involved in maintaining co-ordination with Emergency Preparedness Canada and running a military air bridge to move essential items such as generators, cots, and blankets from units across Canada to the affected areas.