Review: "Blue Helmet" by Edward H. Carpenter

Blue Helmet by Edward H. Carpenter
Published March 2025 via Potomac Books
★★★

In 2019, facing the end of his military career, Carpenter took the opportunity for a new challenge—a yearlong posting as a peacekeeper in South Sudan. He was optimistic: about what the UN was doing, about what he could do within his role, about the shape of South Sudan and the world more generally when he left again. And then he got there.

It was one of the many quiet, dirty truths of South Sudan, but it wasn't a dirty secret. The UN knew about it, and the U.S. government knew about it too. At least until now, no one had done anything substantive to resolve the matter. But I was new and genuinely believed that this forum could make a difference. (loc. 924*)

It becomes rapidly clear in Blue Helmet—if you don't already have an inkling—that the UN's mission there was not what Carpenter had dreamed about. Officially, the mandate was clear: protect civilians, protect human rights, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid (loc. 507). And officially, the UN did just that. On paper, the peacekeepers did nothing but send out patrols and facilitate talks and protect lives and deliver supplies. On paper.

We came to these places and asked the local leaders what they needed, but we didn't really listen to what they told us. They asked us to provide security and to protect civilians, but we simply told them "not [to] kill each other." It hadn't exactly been working out very well so far; we were again doing the exact same thing and expecting to achieve different results—insane. (loc. 3065; brackets in book)

Carpenter can write about all of this because he is now retired from the military—no more deeply hierarchical structure to exist in or (as I understand it, not specific to Blue Helmet) retribution to fear from speaking out. And what he describes from his time in South Sudan is effort after effort to speak out, albeit within the confines of his role and that hierarchical structure; report after report, and memo after memo, and conversation after conversation that all fell on plugged ears.

It's a damning indictment—not of the "blue helmet" soldiers, but of the way the UN (and the broader world) treat conflict in countries like South Sudan (read: underdeveloped countries, financially poor countries, countries with nonwhite populations). The overall sense is that the UN would send soldiers in, yes, but the soldiers would have no directive and no permission to do anything that would directly prevent violence. They'd have resources but not be allowed to use them; they'd have intelligence that violence was brewing and then do everything possible to stay away from that violence; they'd let children be slaughtered and then ignore those children in their reports because not all deaths and abductions and injuries counted. Not all children counted.

As a book, I found this fairly slow going. I got about halfway through fairly quickly and then lost momentum, and it took me a while to finish. I think this is partly because it's a very information-heavy book, with lots of reproduced memos and extracts from reports and an alphabet soup of acronyms. There's also very limited character development for other characters—Carpenter is a decent writer, and his points come across crisply, but I could have used some more recurring characters throughout, and more information and scenes. I think this is supposed to be partly made up for by various mini romances throughout the book, but I'd have gotten more out of a couple of well-developed platonic work relationships or friendships rather than semi-oblique references to, e.g., hookups while on trips out of the country.

With that in mind: I was reading this out of general interest in reading about humanitarian work, an equally general curiosity about books that take place in places I've never been, and a love of memoir. I was a bit let down by the memoir side of things, but I'd highly recommend this to those researching peacekeeping operations and (more generally) the effects of humanitarian (and other) interventions.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.