The peacekeeping myth – the widely held belief that peacekeeping is a softer, non-violent, ethically justifiable use of militarised force – legitimises warfare and martial violence. This central claim I’ve made throughout the book requires an understanding of the connection between militarism and martial politics; it requires attention to how peace has been martialled to justify warfare and violence. Martial politics describes the war-like relations that have always existed within liberal societies, and the martial violences that have been inflicted upon Indigenous, black, queer and disabled populations. In Howell's (2018) articulation of martial politics, her framework was positioned as an alternative to militarisation frameworks that dominate critical and feminist international relations scholarship. As Howell astutely notes, militarisation is often under-theorised and frameworks that employ militarisation often fail to recognise the violent nature of liberal politics within and outside assumedly ‘peaceful’ states.

Yet in Howell's framework, what is left unspoken is how ‘peace’ has been used to justify these martial politics. Despite the extensive peace theorisations by international relations and peace studies scholars, peace is significantly under-theorised. There is need for greater attention to how peace has been discursively manoeuvred – martialled – to justify military violence. We must pay closer attention to how we envision peace and how we justify the means to its (imagined) end. ‘Martial peace’, therefore, refers to the fantasies and nostalgic myth making about the nature of liberal societies that is used to justify the violent and war-like relations Howell labels ‘martial politics’. Martial peace is the aspirational end-goal, the fantasy about orderliness in liberal politics that fails to capture the injustices that are side-swept in discourses about war, peace and peacekeeping. Nostalgic fantasies in myths about peacekeeping – captured in nuanced ways across national contexts in versions of the peacekeeping myth – sustain martial politics/violence through the reproduction of militarist logics. The peacekeeping myth, used to heuristically illustrate how discourses about peace and peacekeeping are deeply infused with militarist ideology, underpins how current visions of peace legitimise and perpetuate warfare.

Militarist ideology within the peacekeeping myth perpetuates and legitimises war. Militarism is not simply the glorification of war and military institutions and does not only lurk at the margins of defence institutions and arms industries; it is upheld by dominant global desires for peace – negative or martial peace. Militarism circulates within discourses about peace and permeates institutions tasked with ‘keeping’ peace.