Force if necessary, but not necessarily force. That is one way to sum up Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan's doctrine on Canada's new peacekeeping – in an echo from a long-ago Liberal wartime government. Mr. Sajjan's actual idea is "by force if needed." And the measure of that need is the protection of endangered civilians, combined with limited rules of engagement. "Rules of engagement" is a decidedly military phrase; it's far from just supervising a neutral line in the sand.
The 2015 Liberal election platform already used the vague expression "peace operations," a shift away from Pearsonian peacekeeping. To what was not yet clear.
Wisely, Mr. Sajjan is steering clear of earlier references to Canada's Afghanistan mission, in which he took part. That mission was, among other things, an ideological war of liberation. The new Canadian peacekeeping – apparently in Africa – will not be like that.
Mr. Sajjan is clear at least that the mandates of the new missions will be "robust." The idea is to send about 600 troops. They will be part of a larger mission, perhaps to Mali or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It should be good that the Canadians will not be alone in a remote country, but the Canadian government is evidently worried about their future colleagues.
The main defect of the past several decades of peacekeeping was not just some perverse attitude on the part of unenlightened politicians in the world, such as – arguably – former prime minister Stephen Harper, but rather the propensity of the United Nations missions in the field to dither and ask for instructions from their governments back home in their capitals, places where officials are often not in a hurry – and where some of those same home governments don't really want to take any action at all.
Meanwhile, the civilians in the troubled countries don't get rescued from the people who may want to massacre large groups of people. So the commanders on the ground need to make some difficult decisions, often quite quickly.
That is the kind of "robustness" and "proactively acting" that Mr. Sajjan says he wants – in accord with rules of engagement. To their credit, the Minister of Defence and his colleagues are thinking clearly. The difficulties in the field are yet to come.