Peacekeeping vs. Peacemaking

The early days of peacekeeping, and of course you hear General MacKenzie talk about it so often, we were peacekeeping and that is basically is maintain a role separating both countries. In most cases you are dealing with a couple of countries and a buffer zone or borderlines, or whatever the case may be, or line of separation. Basically to use, all it really means it’s an imaginary line that’s on a map that both factions are aware of and our main role is to keep them separated from that particular area. When you look at that in itself, that can be a tedious job because in most cases you’re there to keep the peace, not to cause any problems, not to really fire any weapons. That’s the difference between what we were doing then compared to the peacemaking, what they’re doing now. It’s totally different. You’re more in harms way now than you were then. Doesn’t mean that you were not in harms way at that stage because basically any time you step in a zone there is always a possibility of something going wrong. But now they realize that there is a greater possibility of something going to happen.