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Throughout the Cold War period, most peacekeeping efforts were failures. Further, far from acting as a neutral “honest broker,” Canada often took the side of Western interests, both political and economic. Even in this era, only 10 per cent of Canada’s defence budget was funnelled into peacekeeping. The rest was diverted to NATO, NORAD and other more conventional military expenditures.

When peacekeeping is effective — as it was in 1964 in Cyprus, for example — it is usually because both sides of a conflict genuinely desire to keep the peace.

This is rare. It is far more common for peacekeepers to instead find themselves caught between fighting forces with little interest in peace. Too often, the troops are poorly equipped, poorly trained, under-manned or so constrained by rules of engagement that hinder any hope of success. Canada discovered this first hand two decades ago when Canadian soldiers become embroiled in ugly disputes in Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and, most notoriously, Rwanda, where Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire was unable to save either the Belgian troops under his command or the Rwandan civilian population in the face of a hideous genocide.

Nonetheless, the new Liberal government hopes to turn back the clock, promising to support “international peace operations with the United Nations,” even as more questions arise about the UN’s capacity and reputation.

UN peacekeeping has become increasingly dependent on troops from struggling countries that are paid a cash fee for their soldiers. The top suppliers of peacekeeping troops, police and military experts today are not first-world countries that can boast well-trained militaries, but rather Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Rwanda. In that order. Indeed, Burundi has become such an enthusiastic contributor to African Union peacekeeping forces that there are doubts Burundi’s army would be willing to obey an order to resist them.