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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.

Article Excerpt
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...