Why do states who are not threatened deploy their armed forces in various speeds and sizes? After the closure of the Afghanistan mission in March 2014, and the return of almost all military personnel to Canada, the government was presented with a distinctive opportunity to “re-set” the overseas posture of its armed forces. This chapter, the third empirical case study of four, examines the Canadian Armed Forces’ first rotation to Mali with the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (OPERATION PRESENCE). Here the Canadian government deployed a relatively modest contingent slowly because various actors had to be persuaded over a period of months that the deployment met their own interests, and the composition of the Task Force manipulated accordingly. In this chapter, based on anonymous interviews with senior public servants and military officers, I argue that that within the federal bureaucracy there were several influential departments who were able to delay and shape the deployment until their departmental interests were met. Moreover, when it came to deploying the Canadian Armed Forces to Africa with the UN, among the federal bureaucracy there was a strong preference for the status quo, a low level of agreement, and a low willingness to compromise which ultimately determined the speed with which forces were deployed and the size of the Canadian military contribution. I conclude that because of differing departmental interests, specifically Global Affairs Canada and National Defence, the decision-making process for Mali proved to be more competitive, required additional rounds of consensus-building, and required additional time for departments to negotiate a compromise than the first two case studies.