Martialling Peace

How does peacekeeping maintain its seemingly inviolable image as a benevolent, diplomatic, and disciplined force in international politics? Wegner presents a rich breadth of empirical material to unravel peacekeeping’s one-dimensional persona, demonstrating its investment in gendered, racialized, and imperial violence. Militarism is not only the work of war and military institutions, she brilliantly shows, but is also embedded within dominant national and indeed, global, desires about what peace "is." Wegner offers us a courageous path to end our love affair with martial peace and its endless legitimization of war. * Colleen Bell, University of Saskatchewan *
Wegner’s forensic analysis of the ‘peacekeeping myth’ in Canadian national imaginary offers the reader an important new concept in ‘martial peace’, which reveals how military violence is made possible both abroad and at ‘home’ on (stolen) Indigenous land in Canada. In her conclusion Wegner – calling on the insights of Indigenous and decolonial thinkers before her - dares us to imagine a radical future that is anti-militarist and Indigenous-led. * Julia Welland, University of Warwick *
Through a nuanced and wide-ranging discourse analysis, Nicole Wegner derives the concept of "martial peace", produced and reproduced in/through the mythology of peacekeeping. In turn, martial peace performs a key role in legitimising militarisation and war. With resonance far beyond the case of Canada, which is the focus of Wegner’s meticulous analysis here, critical engagement with how peace is martialled to justify violence is a necessary precursor to the imagining of anti-militarist and anti-oppressive futures. * Laura Shepherd, University of Sydney *
A must-read in military and security studies, Martialling Peace rocks inherited assumptions that ‘peacekeeping’ decreases conflict. Wegner compellingly demonstrates that peacekeeping encourages and legitimates, rather than tempering, war. Building on feminist theory, discourse analysis, and careful empirical work on the Canadian context, this book deconstructs the deeply problematic peacekeeping myth. * Laura Sjoberg, Royal Holloway, University of London *