Not Our War

Many Canadians seem to be ignorant of why we are in Afghanistan. Most think it was primarily due to our partnership with the US. That is only half the truth since it has been forgotten that dozens of Canadians died during 9/11, thus it was not only an act of war on the United States but on our country as well. What is Canada's role when it comes to global conflicts? As with Afghanistan, this issue is mired in a lot of ignorance and half truths regarding our history. Should Canada take an active stance as the United States has done for the last fifty years, or should we take an isolationist stance as they did prior to World War 2? For many Canadians, the answer is simple; we're peace keepers. Arguably though Canada is an isolationist nation and I feel this is something that we must continue.

A growing trend within Canadian immigrant communities is a desire for Canada to get involved in the conflicts of their homelands. I bring up this because of Bob Rae's recent comments that Canada should get involved in the conflict in Sri Lanka between the government and Tamil Tigers. Large numbers of Tamil-Canadians have come out in support of the registered terror organization in the past month or so. It is unclear whether these people want military or diplomatic intervention. They clearly want the government to side with the Tigers. Despite appasing Tamils, I question whether there would be any political or strategic value of getting involved for Canada. First of all, I want to make something vary clear to all Canadians. If Canada did get involved as part of UN military intervention into the country, it would not be a peacekeeping mission. There is a huge difference between peacemaking, peace enforcement, and peacekeeping. Peacekeeping, which is what Canada is known for, only involves ensuring sustainable peace once a peace agreement has already been reached. That has not yet happened in Sri Lanka. This would be a peacemaking and enforcement mission that could possibly involve armed conflicts as neither side has been willing to talk at the bargaining table. So this leaves us with two questions. After Afghanistan, do we really want to risk putting our troops into another foreign war? Would it be the right thing to get involved in the first place? To the first question, Canadians have already answered that with a resounding NO. The second question is a little more complicated. To answer it, we have to look at history.

Perhaps the best example of a UN peacemaking mission gone wrong was the Korean War of the 1950s. A war which ended right back at the status quo ante bellum despite the thousands of lives lost. The tyranny of Kim Il Sung still lives on through his deranged son, while the people of North Korea starve and the people of the South are under the constant threat of war. Arguably things would have been worse had there been no involvement but most of the time things do not turn out so well. Consider the hugely unpopular Vietnam War where the United States stepped in to help protect an ally from the invading communist North. Vietnam ended by serving the Americans their first major military defeat combined with international embarrassment over the war's handling. Granada, Nicaragua, Iran, Cuba, Chile, Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, Somalia; a long list of recent conflicts in which the outcome was made worse by foreign powers poking their noses into conflicts that didn't involve them. It presents Western governments with a no-win situation. If you do not get involved, you risk alienating particular groups within your own society, or the war spreading to involve your own nationals. If you do get involved, you risk getting into an unwinnable conflict, a conflict that will come back to bite you in the future, or international scorn over the handling of the conflict or for simply getting involved in the first place. Of course there are exceptions to this but typically when a western country engages a non-western nation as a third party in a civil conflict, things inevitably get worse.

The Sri Lankan case is one of these internal conflicts not unlike the others listed above. The United Nations was originally created to resolve disputes among its member nations, not as a tool for resolving civil strife within the individual states. Internal conflicts, civil wars, tend to be far messier and more politically charged than international wars. For us to get involved in Sri Lanka would be akin to diving naked into a vat of molten lead. We put ourselves at enormous risks for getting involved, especially given that outsiders poorly understand the root causes behind the conflict combined with our natural human inclination to take sides. So far all we have heard is the loud, single voice of one side, those who side with the Tamil guerrillas. The Canadian government is already under enormous pressure from Tamils to support the Tigers despite them being internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. When we have a no-win situation like this, it is wisest to pick whichever choice is going to do the least amount of damage; with inaction always being a perfectly viable option. New immigrants to Canada need to get something strait. There should be a sign at all immigration offices that says "Welcome to Canada: Leave The Problems of Home at the Door". We cannot be going into your home land to solve the problems you created. It is not our country, they are not our people, it is not our war.