End of History? End of war‪?‬

THIS year, the last of the twentieth century, our country has done something quite extraordinary, something quite out of character. We attacked a country that was doing us no harm whatever -- a country that did not even appear to represent a threat to international peace. Such a threat to the general peace would be the only justification the UN would accept for an attack of this kind -- but we didn't undertake this action with UN backing. In fact, we didn't ask for UN authorization and support to make this attack upon Serbia because we knew we wouldn't get it. Given the effort that Canadians have put into promoting the UN as the centrepiece of international affairs for the past half century, this is a rather shocking departure. Certainly the Americans and British took the lead in promoting NATO's course of action, but Canada showed no signs of reluctance. In the end, about 10 per cent of the NATO bombs dropped on Yugoslavia were Canadian.