MacCaulay
Banned
Okay...just bear with me, because this all follows kind of a thin strand but could have an immense effect later on.
The United Nations Emergency Force was the peacekeeping force put in place after the Suez Crisis in 1956 erupted into war along the Egyptian-Israeli front. The militaries from Canada, India, Brazil, Finland, Sweden, and Yugoslavia all contributed significant amounts of men and material, finally reaching a force number of 6000 spread along the Egyptian side of the border with Israel from Gaza south along the Sinai to the sea.
It was the first of it's kind and demonstrated what we would later know as "peacekeeping." UNEF was spearheaded by Les Pearson, the Secretary of External Affairs of Canada, and Dag Hammarskjold, the UN Secretary General. This constant support from the Canadian government was evident when UNEF's first commander was selected to be Major-General E.L.M Burns, who had previously commanded I Canadian Corps in northwest Europe during WWII.
Dag Hammarskjold would pass away in a plane crash in the Congo in the early '60s, leaving the UN for the first time to rush to find a replacement Secretary General. They ended up nominating and then unanimously voting for: U Thant, a former Burmese prime minister.
When relations between Israel and Egypt began to become more strained, and some would say inverted from in 1956 due to Nasser's threatened blockade of the Straits of Tiran, U Thant took a very different tac than his predecessor. He sidelined UNEF, having decided that if Egypt and Israel were no longer interested in peace, then UNEF as a peacekeeping force wasn't viable.
As they were on Egyptian territory, then they would be forced to leave when Egypt asked them to, U Thant remarked, "regardless of Israel's territorial whims."
In May '67, U Thant tried to convince either Egypt to keep UNEF, or Israel to let UNEF redeploy on it's side of the border. Neither government would budge. U Thant felt he was without maneuver room, and the US was already preparing it's own plan, Operation Regatta, to open the Straits.
By the end of May, Egypt had formally asked UNEF to leave. When Egyptian troops began their push towards Israel, their first operation was to occupy and take into custody what UNEF posts hadn't yet been evacuated.
Over two dozen peacekeeping troops were killed in firefights.
This leads one to ask a few questions, not the least among them: what if U Thant had not been the Secretary-General in charge? Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash, and so the search for another UN head was fairly hurried.
Hammarskjold could've easily missed the flight and lived, in which case had he supported keeping UNEF in place to support a negotiated settlement or possibly even an armed wall between the Israelis and Egyptians, he would've had support from now Canadian Prime Minister Les Pearson, who would be under pressure to prove that the Canadian Forces Reorginization Act, which had amalgamated the Army, Navy, and Air Force, had actually done some good.
This leads us to a scary setup on the Egyptian/Israeli border in 1967: two armies who desperately want to settle the bad blood between them, and another force who wants to keep them apart and is prepared to fight.
This also leads the UN down another path, one that at first seems good (they may have stopped a war that brought us to the brink of nuclear conflict), but when we stare a bit deeper may in fact be setting a dangerous precedent.
Egypt will almost certainly still ask UNEF to leave no matter who the Secretary-General is, and even if Canada drops the Airborne Regiment in, and Yugoslavia sends in reinforcements, and they actually hold, the end is still the same: a force from the UN was invited on to Arab soil and when asked to leave, they stayed of their own volition. Not only did they stay, but they actively engaged in combat against their hosts.
This is a world with a different kind of peacekeeping. The kind that people seem to wish for: the kind that actively stops wars, and that keeps people safe from evil. It is less restrained, and more proactive.
But with more proactivity comes less activity in the world at large. Egypt wouldn't ever want a UN force on it's soil again, nor would any other Arab state. We can butterfly away the UN forces in Lebanon, and the Palestinian gunmen kept under house arrest by UN police in the West Bank. The Communist world may also feel estranged. This may even butterfly away the UN mission to the DMZ in Vietnam, and Panama.
Yugoslavia, too, may develop a dislike of the organization that it's troops fought and died in, making a UN deployment to that country in the 90s that much harder.
This is just something I was thinking about. UNEF defined peacekeeping, and there were alot of precedents set. And thought I believe U Thant got a lot of grief that he deserved for his handling of the situation, I believe it could've been handled more poorly.
The United Nations Emergency Force was the peacekeeping force put in place after the Suez Crisis in 1956 erupted into war along the Egyptian-Israeli front. The militaries from Canada, India, Brazil, Finland, Sweden, and Yugoslavia all contributed significant amounts of men and material, finally reaching a force number of 6000 spread along the Egyptian side of the border with Israel from Gaza south along the Sinai to the sea.
It was the first of it's kind and demonstrated what we would later know as "peacekeeping." UNEF was spearheaded by Les Pearson, the Secretary of External Affairs of Canada, and Dag Hammarskjold, the UN Secretary General. This constant support from the Canadian government was evident when UNEF's first commander was selected to be Major-General E.L.M Burns, who had previously commanded I Canadian Corps in northwest Europe during WWII.
Dag Hammarskjold would pass away in a plane crash in the Congo in the early '60s, leaving the UN for the first time to rush to find a replacement Secretary General. They ended up nominating and then unanimously voting for: U Thant, a former Burmese prime minister.
When relations between Israel and Egypt began to become more strained, and some would say inverted from in 1956 due to Nasser's threatened blockade of the Straits of Tiran, U Thant took a very different tac than his predecessor. He sidelined UNEF, having decided that if Egypt and Israel were no longer interested in peace, then UNEF as a peacekeeping force wasn't viable.
As they were on Egyptian territory, then they would be forced to leave when Egypt asked them to, U Thant remarked, "regardless of Israel's territorial whims."
In May '67, U Thant tried to convince either Egypt to keep UNEF, or Israel to let UNEF redeploy on it's side of the border. Neither government would budge. U Thant felt he was without maneuver room, and the US was already preparing it's own plan, Operation Regatta, to open the Straits.
By the end of May, Egypt had formally asked UNEF to leave. When Egyptian troops began their push towards Israel, their first operation was to occupy and take into custody what UNEF posts hadn't yet been evacuated.
Over two dozen peacekeeping troops were killed in firefights.
This leads one to ask a few questions, not the least among them: what if U Thant had not been the Secretary-General in charge? Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash, and so the search for another UN head was fairly hurried.
Hammarskjold could've easily missed the flight and lived, in which case had he supported keeping UNEF in place to support a negotiated settlement or possibly even an armed wall between the Israelis and Egyptians, he would've had support from now Canadian Prime Minister Les Pearson, who would be under pressure to prove that the Canadian Forces Reorginization Act, which had amalgamated the Army, Navy, and Air Force, had actually done some good.
This leads us to a scary setup on the Egyptian/Israeli border in 1967: two armies who desperately want to settle the bad blood between them, and another force who wants to keep them apart and is prepared to fight.
This also leads the UN down another path, one that at first seems good (they may have stopped a war that brought us to the brink of nuclear conflict), but when we stare a bit deeper may in fact be setting a dangerous precedent.
Egypt will almost certainly still ask UNEF to leave no matter who the Secretary-General is, and even if Canada drops the Airborne Regiment in, and Yugoslavia sends in reinforcements, and they actually hold, the end is still the same: a force from the UN was invited on to Arab soil and when asked to leave, they stayed of their own volition. Not only did they stay, but they actively engaged in combat against their hosts.
This is a world with a different kind of peacekeeping. The kind that people seem to wish for: the kind that actively stops wars, and that keeps people safe from evil. It is less restrained, and more proactive.
But with more proactivity comes less activity in the world at large. Egypt wouldn't ever want a UN force on it's soil again, nor would any other Arab state. We can butterfly away the UN forces in Lebanon, and the Palestinian gunmen kept under house arrest by UN police in the West Bank. The Communist world may also feel estranged. This may even butterfly away the UN mission to the DMZ in Vietnam, and Panama.
Yugoslavia, too, may develop a dislike of the organization that it's troops fought and died in, making a UN deployment to that country in the 90s that much harder.
This is just something I was thinking about. UNEF defined peacekeeping, and there were alot of precedents set. And thought I believe U Thant got a lot of grief that he deserved for his handling of the situation, I believe it could've been handled more poorly.