No Further Options: Canada's Peacekeeping Efforts in Yugoslavia, 1991-1993

Drawing from archival records and secondary sources, this article examines the decisions that led Canada to undertake peacekeeping operations in former Yugoslavia, and how subsequent decisions influenced the course of those operations. It argues that despite the prevailing diplomatic and military conditions that Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government knew about, and notwithstanding the volatile situation in Yugoslavia, Canada decided to commit peacekeepers to a mission that even then was quickly degenerating into a major regional war. The search for an international success led the federal government to disregard the complicating factors that ultimately created the conditions for the failure of Canada's mission. Mulroney's decision was an attempt to put a Progressive Conservative Party imprint on the liberal internationalism that defined twentieth-century Canadian foreign policy.