Editors’ Introduction

Published date01 June 2018
AuthorJack Cunningham,Brian Bow
DOI10.1177/0020702018784381
Date01 June 2018
Subject MatterEditors’ Introduction
Editors’ Introduction
As usual, our June issue is the John W. Holmes Issue in Canadian International
Policy; this year we focus on the timely topic of UN peacekeeping. Canadians have
long prided themselves on their country’s contributions to United Nations peace
support operations, but it has been clear for many years now that the Cold War-era
‘‘peace-keeping’’ that Canadians often have in mind is a thing of the past. UN
peace support operations today are much more complicated, and are often poorly
understood, by publics, pundits, and policy-makers. Volume 73, issue 2, features a
collection of f‌ive articles, organized by Sarah-Myriam Martin-Brule
´and Ste
´fanie
von Hlatky, which identify some of the most pressing operational challenges for the
UN and propose specif‌ic training strategies to prepare our soldiers for these com-
plex environments.
We begin with Martin-Brule
´and von Hlatky’s introductory essay, which out-
lines some of the most pressing challenges for UN peace support operations, and
argues that Canada needs to think more seriously about the environments in which
it will be asked to operate, the goals it wants to pursue there, and the kinds of
equipment and training it will need to develop. Howard Coombs then looks at the
‘‘Soldiers First’’ approach the Canadian military has taken to training, and the
ways in which it may be misaligned with the demands of contemporary peace
support operations. These same themes are picked up again in Hans Breede’s art-
icle, which looks more specif‌ically at Special Operations Forces, and argues for a
more serious reconsideration of their role in peace support operations. Next, Gae
¨lle
Rivard-Piche
´argues for more ef‌fective whole-of-government coordination for civil-
ian agencies in peace operations, based on the Canadian experience in Haiti.
Finally, Walter Dorn and Joshua Libben document the decline of training for
peace support operations, and make an argument for tearing down prevailing
myths about ‘‘peacekeeping’’ and developing a new training agenda for the
Canadian Armed Forces.
The sixth article for this issue is Jonathan Paquin’s essay on US perceptions of
the realignment of Canadian foreign policy under the Harper government. He
argues that US of‌f‌icials were aware of the broad outlines of Harper’s new approach
to foreign policy, and their views of that approach were driven mainly by their
perceptions of the ‘‘f‌it’’ between Harper’s priorities and those of their own (US)
parties.
In the Lessons of History section, Andrew Thompson has contributed an
important essay on Canada’s approach to human rights and the future of the
liberal international order. And we have two Policy Briefs for this issue: Alex
International Journal
2018, Vol. 73(2) 185–186
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702018784381
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