Okay. There are several layers to that.
One, as I mentioned in that article, when you look at it, the vast majority of peacekeeping operations are in the global south. There are very, very few in the global north countries, so there is an element of going out and civilizing the natives, things we've heard before that historically we've heard in other narratives, colonial narratives, because colonialism was also justified as being something that was good for people. I think there is a line there that needs to be drawn between saying, “Is this the only way going forward that we can enable lasting peace as a global community? Is the only way to keep the peace through militarized entities?“
Again, as I said before, I understand that in the short term sometimes there is a need for peacekeeping missions, and there have been multiple jokes made, the memes about people in the United States after 2016 asking for a peacekeeping mission in the U.S. These are meant to be funny, but there is something to be said about some of it, the fact that we assume that peace needs to be kept somewhere else in the global south.
That's something I don't think we can do away with right now, but it's a conversation I really want people to think about, because it is about power and it is imbued with a certain history of colonialism.
Having said that, I understand that in the short term there is often a need for peacekeeping missions, and I think we are justified in providing troops to peacekeeping missions, although today the vast majority of peacekeeping troops are also provided by countries in the global south. I don't think Canada has been among the top 20 peacekeeper-contributing countries in probably the past 20 years. We provide a fairly small number in the global scheme of peacekeeping.
We have countries that are used to providing very large numbers of peacekeepers. Today you think of countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. You think of countries in South America, and especially I think of the southern cone countries. We have Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay that are major contributors today, troop-contributing countries, to peacekeeping. I think that instead of just continuing this practice now of pulling people into institutions that I'm not sure have worked that effectively to building lasting peace—