At what point does a country officially turn from a tradition of peacekeeping to an ethos permitting permanent, unscheduled military engagement? Does it happen when the armed forces reach a certain critical mass? When military funding becomes unprecedented? Or when engagement happens in multiple theatres, and future combative missions are simply assumed despite the political climate at home?

None of these. Peacekeeping is effectively finished as a tradition as soon as the population wills it. The acceptance of mounting casualties in foreign conflicts that have nothing to do with security at home, the promotion of nationalism in the face of a national identity crisis, the mood that allows parents to look on, smiling, while their prepubescent children dress in real military uniform, handle real ordnance, and talk with real soldiers in front of real recruitment desks — these are the signs that change for a nation of peacekeepers is inevitable.

And in Canada, change has come.

Canada and peacekeeping

After World War II and the Korean War, Canada’s position as a “middle power”, together with its foreign policy goals and its sense of national identity, restricted its participation in military engagement across the globe. Peacekeeping, the maintenance of cease-fire between combatants following hostilities, was a role that fit well with both the will of the population and the fiscal means of Canada as a middle power.¹

In 1956, Lester B. Pearson, then Canada’s minister of external affairs, proposed a UN force to defuse the looming threat of war during the Suez crisis in the Middle East. The proposal was accepted, and the world’s first organized, multi-national UN peacekeeping force was deployed successfully to the region, ending hostilities. Pearson is considered the father of modern peacekeeping, and for his accomplishment, he was awarded 1957′s Nobel prize for peace. Canada’s tradition of peacekeeping began with that milestone, and with the recognition by the Nobel selection committee that Pearson, the only Canadian to win the peace prize, had, in their words, “saved the world” from another global conflict.²

Since Pearson, Canada has been engaged in about forty peacekeeping operations, and has been generally regarded with respect for both its “quiet diplomacy” and its leading role in conflict resolution and maintenance, as well as its willingness to bear the human cost: more than one hundred peacekeeping Canadian soldiers have lost their lives in the half-century of the tradition in Canada.³

This is contrasted sharply with the number of Canadians dead in the combat mission in Afghanistan in just seven years: one hundred and eleven fatalities as of this date.

No win, no end

Undoubtedly this disparity is not lost on Mr. Harper and his minority Conservative government, who have pledged close to twenty billion dollars annually in military spending through 2010 and beyond. Despite popular opinion in Canada that the military is woefully underfunded, spending has reached levels not seen since World War II. And the Department of National Defence is asking for twice the current amount through 2025.

An additional misconception is that Canada falls far behind the United States in military spending. In fact, since the second World War and projected through 2010, Canada’s defence budget closely mirrors that of the U.S.⁴ The Conservatives understand that Canadians must see some value for their money in order to enjoy continued support. They are fortunate to govern in a climate of shifting national priorities — the designation for the “Highway of Heroes” can see almost instantaneously passed legislation but patients still languish in waiting rooms — but there are signals coming from the Conservatives that plans for that money are underway. Undefined, amorphous, and open-ended plans, but plans nonetheless.

Those plans may include sending yet more troops to Afghanistan beyond the 2011 deadline the Conservatives agreed to.⁵ Even as he was determined to echo Canadians’ sentiments that “winning” in Afghanistan was important, whatever that means, and even while he claimed winning was impossible, Mr. Harper did not rule out spending more money, and presumably more lives, on the Afghan mission.

The importance of acclimatizing Canadians to combat missions with unclear agendas and unforeseeable ends has a certain logic for a party fixated on issues of law, order, might, and nationalism, and not so concerned with details of personal liberty and freedom of thought. Afghanistan, in this respect, is a kind of test. If Canadians simply accept perpetual troop deployment while not bothering themselves with the foreign policy issues involved, the Conservatives have won a major ideological battle in this country. The transformation is underway. Dead soldiers are being routinely delivered along the “Highway of Heroes”, elevated to the status of national half-deities, while flag-waving patriots cheer from bridges above. Are those people concerned with foreign policy? With tax dollars spent on unwinnable wars in culturally hostile nations? Or are the soldiers, and by extension the military, the foreign policy directing them, and the Conservative government formulating that policy simply above reproach, with pesky issues of mission worthiness, or even the worthiness of combat missions over peacekeeping missions, simply getting in the way of idolizing soldiers for the sake of their occupation alone?

Wargames

Perhaps there is no more telling sign of a fundamental shift in the population’s attitude to the military than in the signals parents give their children. Last month, I was at the Canadian International Auto Show, which I attend every year. Once again this year, the military had a large display area, showing off tanks, vehicles, bombers, and heavy guns. Soldiers in full uniform, including officers, were everywhere. At the rear of the display area, recruiters manned desks for the various services: army, navy, air force. People wandered in and around the area, touching artillery, clambering on machines of war. High above, a sign proclaimed that the Canadian Armed Forces was hereby “Connecting With Canadians”.

But disturbing to me were the kids, climbing over and handling and playing with the machines of war. Encouraged by their parents, proudly looking on, they handled heavy ordnance, missiles, guns, and sat in instruments that not too long ago were deployed in the field, brutally destroying lives and bodies as they destroyed enemy positions. Nobody seemed bothered by this. It was entertaining for them. One young boy dressed up in military armour with the help of a couple of men in uniform, then stood for pictures taken by his beaming parents while holding some kind of strike missile. My stomach turned. The scene seemed more appropriate to the streets of Gaza than to the pavilion under the dome of the Rogers Centre.

Is this how the Armed Forces connects with Canadians? By turning itself into a playground for kids? By making acclimatization to the military, to machines of destruction, a part of growing up in this country? By making its presence felt at the most unexpected of places in society?

I have said that I do not support the troops, because I am supremely uncomfortable giving unqualified “support” — whatever that may mean — to a government body directed by policy I may not understand. I stated that, not being psychotic, I don’t wish harm on troops or anyone else doing a job of their choosing, but that I’ll reserve my support for those people and those actions I can condone with a clear conscience, with the knowledge that I know what I’m talking about. For example, in the second World War, the need for troop deployment was obvious. In the “war on terrorism”, the desire to wedge foreign policy into a culture defined by its antipathy to the West is less so.

I’m not so sure people understand this position, or would even allow it, if it were up to them. There is a palpable sense of threat in the forums, on the news, in the comments at newspaper websites, whenever dissent from nationalism and militarism makes itself known. Canada is different from the peace-leading nation it was in 1956. The people are different, more proud of a military tradition they never had, more nationalistic than ever before. Canada has transformed.

And now Canada is seeking out the youngest and the brightest. The sooner it can find them, and the younger they become, the more irrevocable will be the march into the territories of barely controlled national pride, of the idolatry of soldiers and war, of suspicion of dissent, of the turning away from discussion. Eyes fixed on the future, the Conservatives understand that a fundamental change is underway.

1. The Loyal Edmonton Regiment Museum, Peacekeeping: Canada’s Role [↩]
2. CBC.ca, Lester B. Pearson, Top Ten Greatest Canadians, Spring 2004 [↩]
3. Peter McCluskey, CBC News In Depth: The history of Canadian peacekeeping, October 30, 2003 [↩]
4. Steven Staples and Bill Robinson, More Than The Cold War: Canada’s military spending 2007-08: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, October 2007. [↩]
5. Paul Koring, Canada, allies, will never defeat Taliban, PM says, The Globe And Mail, March 2, 2009. [↩]

Louis Politics Military, Peacekeeping, Troops