The New Military: From National Defence and Warfighting to International Intervention and Peacekeeping

Abstract

The role of the military is changing. From national defence and warfighting, the focus is increasingly shifting towards international intervention and peacekeeping. In this article, I contextualise this ‘new military’ historically through a brief analysis of Sweden’s history of military and political engagements with the world. Rather than a progressive development in which Sweden has become increasingly internationalised, notions of and relations between ‘Sweden’, the ‘world’, and the role of the military have continuously shifted; and consequently, international engagements at different times have signified different things. The current interventionist role of the military, therefore, needs to be related to a set of emerging transformations, which I conceptualise as ‘conflict preventionism’. This transnational cultural form, I argue, is bringing about a new relationship between the military and the political spheres; between the national and the international; and, ultimately, between the notions of war and peace.