… most Canadians neither know nor care much about either foreign or defence policy. They, the societal mainstream, were and are still being fed a load of codswallop in schools and universities about Canada’s military history. It begins with the lie about how Canada “invented” peacekeeping. Anyone who believes that “baby-blue-beret” style United Nations peacekeeping was Lester B. Pearson’s idea is too bloody stupid to walk around loose. In fact, Dr. Ralph Bunche, a distinguished American diplomat got the Nobel Prize (1950) for “inventing” peacekeeping in the late 1940s. The outcome of his negotiations was UNTSO, The United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization, the UN’s first ever peacekeeping mission. There was parallel work going on at the same time, involving Canadians like General Andrew McNaughton and Lester Pearson, to use military officers to supervise the India-Pakistan truce in Kashmir. The two original missions, UNTSO and UNMOGIP (the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan) are still working.
What Lester B. Pearson did was to use his diplomatic and political skills — and both were of a high order — to, almost literally save the Western alliance after Britain and France made a strategically stupid decision to capture the Suez Canal after Egyptian President Nasser nationalized it. That move infuriated US President Eisenhower because it upset his own Middle East strategy, and nearly destroyed the Western alliance. Mike Pearson, under orders from Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, repaired the damage before the USSR and its cronies could take strategic advantage of the rift that had opened in the US-led West. Mike Pearson moved peacekeeping from small observer and truce supervisory missions to major undertakings involving troops in a “trip-wire” role. He and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld were able to stick handle a complex plan through President Eisenhower and around the Soviet bloc in just a few days. Some people said the pair “saved the world”; they certainly saved the Western Alliance.
If you don’t know that then you are a typical Canadian who has been failed by the education system.
Ted Campbell, “Being prepared”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2020-12-17.
October 26, 2026
QotD: When Lester Pearson “invented” peacekeeping
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