Keeping the Peace
Will Ferguson
The monument on Sussex Drive says it all: three figures,
cast in bronze, just slightly larger than life; one holds
a radio receiver, another stands on guard, the third prepares
to scan the horizon with binoculars.
Monitor, Sentry, Observer: these are the three roles depicted
in the Canadian Peacekeeping Monument, the only such monument
in the world.
A similar trio of bronze figures can be found at the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and the difference
between the two monuments is both stark and revealing. In
the American one, the soldiers look battle-weary and haunted.
It is powerful, heart-wrenching, cinematic. The Canadian
monument is not.
The differences are important. Since the end of the Second
World War, no two countries have had a greater impact on
how the world resolves its conflicts than have Canada and
the United States. In a sense, they have provided competing
game plans: peacekeeping on the one hand, Pax Americana
on the other. It's Cyprus vs. Vietnam. Painful, drawn-out
stalemates vs. cymbal-crashing operatic bloodbaths.
It is one of the Big Lies of our post-psychoanalytic age
that if we confront our demons we can conquer them. This
is the American model, the notion that we must express anger
openly and directly. Conflicts are not meant to be repressed
or defused, they are meant to be resolved, once and for
all. The Americans solved their separatist crisis with a
civil war.
Canadians, however, know that it is sometimes better not
to express one's feelings, not to call an opponent's bluff,
and to avoid open confrontation. Deflect, delay, deny. It
is an approach that gives us mind-numbing Royal Commissions
at one end, and the unflinching, often heroic bravery of
peacekeepers at the other.
In itself, peacekeeping resolves very little. It is the
ultimate non-solution. Instead of launching a crusade, we
attempt to arrange a ceasefire. Instead of choosing one
side over another and then battling it out to the bitter
end, we stall for time. We set up separate solitudes: isolated
domains with a minimum of interaction. Sound familiar? It
is the blueprint of our nation, projected outwards onto
the world.
In Canada we lull a problem, first to sleep and then into
a fitful coma -- and though the underlying issues may never
die, the crisis inevitably does. The odds are you haven't
heard much about Cyprus lately. There was no napalm, no
gory escalation, no Hollywood mythmaking. Cyprus is a standoff,
not a showdown, and the conflict has been kept at a simmer
for decades without ever fully boiling over.
Although Canadian peacekeepers are no longer directly
involved, the UN mission in Cyprus is a touchstone of the
Canadian Way, just as surely as Vietnam remains an indictment
of the American Way. One cost more than a million lives
and inspired Apocalypse Now. The other resulted in a constant
vigil. Waiting, watching, holding our breath, standing on
guard. Heroic inaction.
Yes, peacekeeping is messy. Yugoslavia, Somalia, East
Timor, Kosovo are among the most dangerous shooting galleries
on earth, and peacekeepers are caught in the crossfire.
Many have given their lives. And yes, peacekeeping has its
critics. We are told again and again that its days are numbered,
that it doesn't resolve anything. It's true. Peacekeeping,
much like democracy itself, is the worst possible system--except
for all the others.
And peacekeeping remains Canadian, both in origin and
in spirit. For ours is a relentlessly pragmatic, unsentimental
approach; we see the world as it really is: chaotic, messy,
and mired in irreconcilable differences. This may not be
as romantic as the Americans' burning idealism, but in the
long run it's a far saner approach. Peacekeeping works precisely
because it accepts the limits of human communication to
resolve fundamentally opposing world views, and there is
a certain sad wisdom in this.
For better or for worse, peacekeeping remains our single
greatest legacy. Canadian inaction. Canadians in action.
Saturday Night Magazine
December 1999
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