Martialling Peace

Examines the mythology of the peacekeeper and how it functions to sustain militarism in global politics The peacekeeper - impartial, disciplined, helpful and restrained in their lethal capacity - is a powerful trope. This book examines the mythology of international peacekeeping, using Canada as a case study to explore how the peacekeeping myth both challenged and condoned combat activities in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. While Afghanistan was explicitly not a peacekeeping mission, peacekeeping mythology circulated throughout discourse about the War. Introducing a novel framework k- martial peace - Nicole Wegner offers an in-depth examination of the Canadian Armed Forces missions to Afghanistan and the use of police violence against Indigenous protests in Canada as case examples where military violence has been justified in the name of peace. In doing so, she reveals how gender, militarism and nationalism operated in political discourse to justify military force and violence in the name of peace. Martialling Peace critically investigates the peacekeeper myth and challenges academic, government and popular beliefs that martial violence is required to sustain peace. Nicole Wegner is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Gender and War at the University of Sydney, Australia.