The tiny central African country of Burundi may be on the verge of a serious outbreak of violence drawn on ethnic and political lines, similar to the horrors that engulfed neighbouring Rwanda in the 1990s. Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza was elected to a controversial third term in July, despite a two-term limit in the country’s constitution, which led to a failed military coup. The cycle of unrest has only escalated in the landlocked state since then, prompting pleas for intervention, directed at both the African Union and the United Nations.

Last week Nkurunziza declared that any intervention would be treated as a violation of Burundi’s sovereignty and forcibly repelled. “Everyone has to respect Burundi’s borders. In case they violate those principles, they will have attacked the country and every Burundian will stand up and fight against them,” he said.

His threat suggests any international peacekeeping initiative might escalate the situation, revealing one of the prime flaws of peacekeeping in the first place.

For decades idealists have argued that violent outbreaks in foreign regions should be dealt with via neutral but armed third parties. Nowhere is faith in international peacekeeping stronger than in Canada, which has long held to the notion that our status as a middle power and honest broker is best served by our peacekeeping efforts rather than direct military involvement.

It’s a myth that has held up despite the facts. The face of international peacekeeping has changed dramatically in the decades since Canada played any meaningful role. Nonetheless, the Liberal party’s recent election platform faintly dripped with nostalgia for an imagined past. “We will renew Canada’s commitment to peacekeeping operations,” the party promised. “Under Stephen Harper, Canada has dramatically scaled back its involvement in peace operations,” it added, although in reality Canada’s involvement in peacekeeping operations has been on a steady decline since the mid-1990s, long before the Conservatives took office.

“As the number of violent conflicts in the world escalates, demand for international peace operations has never been greater,” the Liberals noted. Which may be true, but is no guarantee Canada could play a meaningful role.

Canada’s affection for peacekeeping dates to 1957, when then-diplomat and later Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to facilitate the departure of Britain and France from Egypt during the Suez Crisis with the aid of a UN peacekeeping force. Though largely a face-saving measure to cover for French and British withdrawal, it drew accolades from which Canadians have never quite recovered.

Throughout the Cold War period, most peacekeeping efforts were failures. Further, far from acting as a neutral “honest broker,” Canada often took the side of Western interests, both political and economic. Even in this era, only 10 per cent of Canada’s defence budget was funnelled into peacekeeping. The rest was diverted to NATO, NORAD and other more conventional military expenditures.

When peacekeeping is effective — as it was in 1964 in Cyprus, for example — it is usually because both sides of a conflict genuinely desire to keep the peace.

This is rare. It is far more common for peacekeepers to instead find themselves caught between fighting forces with little interest in peace. Too often, the troops are poorly equipped, poorly trained, under-manned or so constrained by rules of engagement that hinder any hope of success. Canada discovered this first hand two decades ago when Canadian soldiers become embroiled in ugly disputes in Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and, most notoriously, Rwanda, where Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire was unable to save either the Belgian troops under his command or the Rwandan civilian population in the face of a hideous genocide.

Nonetheless, the new Liberal government hopes to turn back the clock, promising to support “international peace operations with the United Nations,” even as more questions arise about the UN’s capacity and reputation.

UN peacekeeping has become increasingly dependent on troops from struggling countries that are paid a cash fee for their soldiers. The top suppliers of peacekeeping troops, police and military experts today are not first-world countries that can boast well-trained militaries, but rather Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Rwanda. In that order. Indeed, Burundi has become such an enthusiastic contributor to African Union peacekeeping forces that there are doubts Burundi’s army would be willing to obey an order to resist them.

In recent years, reports abound of peacekeepers participating in widespread corruption and rape.

Like so much of the Liberal platform, its hopeful commitment to peacekeeping is based on fuzzy feelings and woolly mythology, along with a poorly articulated discomfort at the occasional necessity of going to war.

Peacekeeping works, sometimes, and in certain and specific situations. Canada has much to contribute in the way of specialist training and humanitarian aid. It should not be used as an excuse to withdraw Canada from playing a meaningful role in the world’s hot spots, however. And Burundi may be about to offer yet another example of peacekeeping’s limitations.

Which begs us to ask: would shipping well-intentioned blue helmets from Petawawa to Bujumbura really be in Canada’s best interests? More importantly, would it be in Burundi’s?