Aid as Peacemaker: Canadian Development Assistance and Third World Conflict

Paul D. Dickson is a post-doctoral fellow in military history at the
Department of National Defence.

This is an important book for anyone concerned with Canada’s role in
international development in the Third World. Robert Miller, the Deputy
Director of the Parliamentary Centre for Foreign Affairs and Foreign
Trade, has commissioned a series of papers from “experts in third
world development” to address whether Canada’s aid programs could be
doing more to prevent conflicts and civil strife in developing
countries. The result is a provocative discussion of the nature and
impact of Canada’s present aid policies, as well as of the old and new
alternatives to direct government aid. The book’s answer to its own
central question—whether aid can be used as an instrument for the
promotion of peace—is dependent on a number of variables particular to
the conflicts themselves; thus, no consensus emerges on the degree to
which aid can help.

The importance of political will is a key theme. Even voluntary efforts
are largely dependent on government funding. Almost all of the authors
call for an end to the government’s policy of neutrality, on the
grounds that it is based on the false assumption that aid is neutral.
The authors assert that human rights should be the basis of aid
decisions, and that Canada’s military policy should conform to the
overall objective of peacemaking through development. There are many
impressive arguments presented for this view, as well as several
perceptive pieces on the difficulties involved. Miller’s introduction,
Gerald Schmitz’s dissection of the Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA), and Linda Freeman’s analysis of Canada’s aid to South
Africa stand out as models of balance. Others, such as the piece on
CUSO, come across as self-serving and narrow, a criticism that could be
extended to the collection as a whole. The final conclusion, that Canada
should collapse its Department of National Defence and CIDA, creating a
new “Department of International Security” with two interrelated
vocations (peacekeeping and development), illustrates the general lack
of context in the book as a whole—specifically, the fact that its
analysis of aid is divorced from Canada’s defence and foreign-policy
relations with non–Third World countries. Nevertheless, Aid as
Peacemaker provides much food for thought, and is an invaluable study
for those who ponder Canada’s future foreign policy.