Peacekeeping and the Postmodern Soldier

This article examines the subjective experience and attitudes of Italian soldiers toward nontraditional military missions like peacekeeping, based on two surveys of Italian soldiers who served in peacekeeping missions to Albania and Somalia. It argues that the traditional "institutional/occupational" dichotomy is inadequate to explain the range of motivations of Italian peacekeepers. Instead, it offers a new typology of motivations—paleomodern, modern, and postmodern—to account for the observed data and shows how a variety of attitudes toward peacekeeping assignments varies by these motivational types. To conclude, it briefly considers the implications of these facts for military organization.