"Peacekeeping" is the new "War"

[bcholmes]

The Harper government has been told to stop referring to "fighting terrorism" and the Sept. 11 attacks, and to banish the phrase “cut and run” from its vocabulary if it is to persuade a skeptical public that the military mission in Afghanistan is worth pursuing.

A public-opinion report says only 40 per cent of respondents across Canada, and almost none in Quebec, support the deployment. To change the perceptions, it recommends putting the emphasis on "rebuilding," "enhancing the lives of women and children," and "peacekeeping."

— "Change tune on war, PM told", The Globe and Mail

Last April, I heard a speech about Canadians' investment in the peacekeeper myth -- that we've been so proud, in the past, about our role as peacekeepers, that we've willing to support a great deal of stuff described as peacekeeping even though we really don't do peacekeeping any more. Most Canadians don't seem to be aware that we have only a fraction of the peacekeepers we once had (I'm going by memory, but I seem to recall that we have something like 80 peacekeepers with the UN, whereas we sent 1250 to Bosnia).

Heck, we're not even peacekeeping in Haiti (although we talk as if we are). MINUSTAH is primarily made up of Brazilian and Jordanian soldiers.

The report to Foreign Affairs was prepared last month by The Strategic Counsel . It paints a bleak picture of weak public support for the military mission, for which the firm blames "unbalanced, mostly negative" media coverage of the war and misperceptions about the mission's purpose.

Only 40 per cent of Canadians support the mission, according to Strategic Counsel data. And the firm says the public views information from Ottawa "through a thick lens of cynicism."

"They feel that much of what government says is propaganda, intended simply to appeal to the voting public and to spin stories in a positive manner," the report points out.

Um. So the report recommends spinning the story as "peacekeeping" and "rebuilding" because the public is cynical of spin? That's... interesting logic.

Comments

[drakkenfyre.livejournal.com]

I disagree. "Peacekeeping" has always been this: making people stop fighting by the barrel of a gun. Cyprus, the archetypal peacekeeping mission was not nice, and it wasn't pretty. Civilians died and soldiers died.

However, today's peacekeeping does differ from traditional peacekeeping in one important respect: In the past, peacekeeping was about keeping two nations that had agreed to a ceasefire separate enough so that nothing stupid happened to breach the peace. Technically, it's defined by the UN as "a way to help countries torn by conflict create conditions for sustainable peace." Which seems it could encompass both activities in post-conflict and not-so-post-conflict territories, but in practice it doesn't. So I do see that Canada is doing non-UN "peacemaking" more at this time than UN peacekeeping. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.

Not all missions that were, in the past, seen as "peacekeeping" were UN ops. Two notable exceptions are the Boznia-Herzegovina excursion starting in 1995, which was a NATO action. And the observers and the force in the Sinai weren't UN, either.

And yes, Canada only sent a few military advisors, in the form of officers, non-commissioned officers, and a few RCMP officers to Haiti. But we can't be everywhere at once. We only have 33 million people, and given that we don't even have the raw numbers of military personnel of, let alone the rate of militarization of, neutral and isolationist Switzerland, we just can't be everywhere at once.

Another reason I don't necessarily agree with the statement that we don't do peacekeeping anymore is that Canada has racked up the second-highest body count in UN peacekeeping missions. That does not include things like Afghanistan. We're not involved in great numbers in a UN mission right now, but at this moment, Canadian peacekeepers are deployed to:

-the Golan Heights (UNDOF)
-the Middle East in general (UNDOF)
-Timor-Leste (police only) (UNMIT)
-Sudan (UNMIS)
-Côte d'Ivoire (police only) (UNOCI)
-the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC)
-and, of course, Haiti (MINUSTAH)

And many poorer countries that send a lot of troops do so because it is the only way that they can draw a paycheque. (You see, in those cases they are often paid by the UN.) And some countries, like Japan, that send very few troops often send a lot of equipment.

If we're going in that direction, I can understand (though I wouldn't support) an argument that peacekeeping is neocolonialist, unethically interventionalist, or even paternalistically racist. Why? Looking at Afghanistan in particular, we are imposing our value system on people in other parts of the world. But if we accept that motive as valid, my explanation for Afghanistan is that someone had to try again. And yes, it is messed up. But we still have a better chance of success in that region than anyone before.

I do think we've done good things there. Here's what Canada did in Op Athena:

In August 2003, Operation Athena began outside Kabul as part of ISAF, with a 1,900-strong Canadian task force providing assistance to civilian infrastructure such as well-digging and repair of local buildings.

In March 2004, Canada committed $250 million in aid to Afghanistan, and $5 million to support the 2004 Afghan election.

Operation Athena ended following the national elections in December 2005 and the [first step towards the] fulfilment of the stated aim of "rebuilding the democratic process" in Afghanistan.

That was from Wikipedia--though the editorial comment was mine--but the original source is this CBC article, and much more material can be found in it: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/afghanistan/canada.html

Eventually we'll get out, either at the right time or the wrong time, and then we'll go on to places that need our help more, like Haiti or the Democratic Republic of the Congo or wherever there's a crisis at that time. I firmly believe we should be doing more peacekeeping, and certainly Canada will go back to it after they're finished in Afghanistan.

And while I don't like Harper's motives, don't forget it wasn't Harper who got us into Afghanistan, and that we might actually be doing some good in the midst of all of it.

[tetsab]

A may-or-may-not be interesting anecdote:

I was on the Greyhound, Kitchener-to-Toronto, about six months ago and there was some young, slight gal [blond-ish, thin-ish, would never pick her out of crowd in a million years-ish] nattering away on her cell phone for most of the trip.

One of the many things she talked about is how she wants to join the armed forces to get Discipline and the like. And wouldn't it be cool, she said to whoever she was talking to, if they could join together. But she wouldn't want to join the Canadian armed forces because "they're just peacekeepers" and she want to be in a Real Army (tm) so it would be ideal if she could come down to the US and join along with whoever she was talking to and get college money and everything and it would be great!

I couldn't figure out if I was more surprised by the idea that "peacekeepers", however you define them, have nothing to do with "real armies" or that she'd missed all the blah blah blah about how what we're doing Right Now is no longer peacekeeping and a "different kind of mission" etc. etc.