Soldiers Were Never on More Disagreeable Service: Peace Operations in Territorial Kansas and the Trans-Missouri West, 1854-1956.

摘要

While there are veritable libraries dedicated to the study of war, few military theorists or historians have evaluated the role of the army in the study of peace or the craft of peacemaking. Even the great Western master of war theory Carl von Clausewitz exerted little to no effort in explaining peace and its causes in his magnum opus, On War. Most of the focus of military art and military history has been on the causes of war and its conduct. Such military historians as John Lynn have stressed that the uniqueness, hence the raison d' etre of military history, is the study of combat. The study of violent conflict between nations and social organizations is what differentiates military history from all other types of historical inquiry. The study of non-violent resolution of conflict through military means would thus seem to be antithetical to what military history is all about. Yet the militaries of most nation states have spent the vast amount of their existence in what most would define or describe as times of peace, though little intellectual inquiry has been conducted regarding the roles and missions of armies during peacetime. As a result, significant questions about those roles have remained virtually unanswered.