About 'Peacekeeping'

Walter Dorn, Canadian military historian, shares Canada's storied role in peacekeeping while illuminating the evolution of global peacekeeping, ending with an urgent call for broad-minded globalism.

When the crew of Apollo 17 looked back at Earth in 1972, they didn’t see borders, walls, or the dotted lines of nation-states. They saw the “Blue Marble”—a fragile, interconnected sphere suspended in the vastness of space. Its atmosphere, less than one percent of the planet’s diameter, shields a world where life has evolved over 5 billion years, culminating in humanity’s brief 250,000-year tenure.

This profound cosmic perspective served as the opening note for a compelling talk to the Calgary Ploughshares group by Walter Dorn, a preeminent expert on peacekeeping. In a world increasingly fragmented by narrow-minded nationalism, Dorn’s message is an urgent call for broad-minded globalism. The central thesis of his address is as relevant today as it was in the aftermath of the Second World War: Canadian security is inextricably linked to global security. Or, as former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Louis St. Laurent famously declared, “The UN’s vocation is Canada’s vocation.”