so, rather than send troops to fight alongside white supremacists in angola or anti-communist forces in vietnam, we talked the americans into agreeing with us that it was valuable to stabilize africa by sending them food and textbooks.
from 1965-2005, canada was the most non-aligned member of nato. it's a difficult balancing act, as we had to try to align with the parts of american hegemony we liked while avoiding participating in the parts we didn't. and it didn't always work.
it's not clear that trump will accept these arguments. lbj did. nixon did. carter did. clinton did. reagan didn't.
peacekeeping is not something canada has ever done out of unselfish altruism. it's been a way to avoid harder war commitments in conflicts we conscientiously objected to.
frankly, there are not any such conflicts like angola, or vietnam, or iraq, in which america is currently involved in. canada went to afghanistan as a part of a un mandate, and that was the right choice. i would support canadian involvement in yemen, as these are legitimate bad guys and vicious barbarians that need to be wiped out. the closest thing to an iraq or vietnam is ukraine, and we are taking a very uncanadian position on that conflict, in supporting bellicose war rhetoric and very hot war that the americans are wisely trying to de-escalate. unlike iraq, a war of regime change in iran would actually be a noble enterprise. etc.
it is plausible that we might get asked to participate more in some of the proxy wars in africa, and support brutal parties that we are ideologically opposed to. that is the kind of thing that we invented peacekeeping in order to avoid, but there's a lot less of that in the world today than there was in 1970.