Partnerships in Military Interventions and the Canadian Public

Abstract

AbstractDo Canadians’ preferences for Canada's role in the world depend on who Canada acts with and not just what Canada does? This question is particularly important in the context of overseas military intervention, which Canada never undertakes on its own. This paper presents a survey experiment measuring how support for a hypothetical peace operation changes with the leader of the mission. Missions led by the United Nations and by Canada's European allies receive more support than American-led missions do, especially among respondents who also favour peace operations for substantive reasons. The finding suggests that the UN and the European connection are alternative ways for a mission to benefit from a preference for multilateralism. While the results confirm some tension between American-led missions and internationalism, European partnerships may offer a way of reconciling an interest in alliances with the internationalist Canadian public.