On July 17, National Defence quietly announced the end of Canadian participation in peacekeeping missions in Kosovo, Cyprus, South Sudan, the Sinai, and the DRC — 50 to 60 personnel reassigned to “higher-impact” work closer to home. No drama, no press conference. Just a quiet funeral for what remained of Canada’s identity as a peace-minded middle power.
The decline is staggering. In the early 1990s, Canada was the largest contributor to UN peacekeeping, with over 3,300 personnel deployed. By 2019, that was down to roughly 150. Today, it’s in the low dozens.
The official line — scarce resources, risky missions, NATO and NORAD priorities — doesn’t hold up under a government that just committed over $80 billion to defence and hit NATO’s 2% target. This isn’t about money. It’s about strategic vision, or the lack of one.
Our military brass have modelled defence priorities on U.S. doctrine for two decades: combat over peacekeeping, deterrence over diplomacy. Stephen Harper and then,CDS Rick Hillier began gutting our peacekeeping capacity, presiding instead over a failed mission in Afghanistan. If that wasn’t proof enough, 2026 offered more: 900 U.S. strikes on Iran in twelve hours achieved tactical success and strategic failure; Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting war of attrition has no political end-state in sight. Over-reliance on air power, weak allied consensus-building, and a mercurial White House produced the miscalculation. Canada’s brass seem determined to emulate it anyway.
We used to understand something the Americans don’t: security comes as much from containing conflict, protecting civilians, and addressing root causes — inequality, poverty, weak governance as from firepower. A massive defence buildup that ignores human security isn’t strategy. It’s incoherence. If Canada can afford F-35s and submarines, it can afford peacekeepers and for a generation looking for meaningful careers, keeping the peace is a real one.
War itself has changed too. The UN already uses drones for round-the-clock monitoring in the DRC, AI for early warning, satellite imagery for ceasefire verification. Canada’s aerospace and AI sectors could supply the technology and doctrine to modernize peacekeeping into a proactive, tech-enabled asset rather than walking away from the field entirely.
This isn’t NATO versus the UN. It’s a choice between copying a failed American playbook and reclaiming a role that once made Canada respected. Parliament should be debating this. Right now, it isn’t.
So sad to be writing an obituary on Canada’s magnificent contribution to peace-keeping and to pro-active forms of providing security and retaining a focus on diplomacy. It seems the more we wish to disengage from the United States military industrial complex, the more entrenched we become in the economic determination of present and future wars. War World III?
Canada, wake up! We are bartering our future so that a few war mongering arms manufacturers can make hay while the sun shines. We have so much to gain from using our strength as a strong middle power. Let’s do it again!
Sorry , the co-author is Michael Manulak at Carleton