The rapid expansion in United Nations peacekeeping operations in the 1990s has inevitably led to official and scholarly scrutiny of their efficacy and shortcomings. Sandra Whitworth offers a critical eye and questions of gendered analysis by studying the subjects of the UN's peacekeeping operation in Cambodia, whose presence often meant greater insecurity as well as the (mis)conduct of soldiers from Canada—a country historically linked to major peacekeeping contributions—in Somalia. Using these two case studies, Whitworth highlights a basic contradiction inherent in peacekeeping that stems from its heavy reliance on soldiers whose training emphasizes masculine traits of violence, homophobia, racism, and aggression, yet whose tasks as peacekeepers require limiting violence to self-defense and providing a benign, altruistic presence. She uses gender analysis to examine these contradictions, to challenge peacekeeping's association with alternatives to military violence, to show how peacekeeping forces can increase local people's insecurity, rather than alleviating it, and to critique the use of soldiers for missions requiring unsoldierly skills.

Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping initially explores peacekeeping's contradictions as well as past and present narratives. The former arise from the tendency to raise technical questions about “best practices” or issues of command and control, rather than political questions, such as “who benefits,” who is excluded, and what effect operations have on the people in countries where peacekeepers are deployed. As a result, in her view, debates about the efficacy of peacekeeping take place largely among technical experts (predominantly men), excluding whole groups of interested people from the discussion (most especially those affected by missions, especially women). Furthermore, she notes that for many countries, post–Cold War peacekeeping provides a rationale for their militaries (and, one should note, a source of revenue). Absent, in her view, has been any critical questioning of who conducts peacekeeping and who needs it—the “us” versus “them” perspective—and an indigenous view of what peacekeeping is supposed to accomplish. She asks whether UN peacekeeping is the contemporary civilizing mission of the West, the latest social engineering project to impose Western values and institutions on the conflict-prone Third World.

The major sources of data and the core case studies are contained in chapters on the UN operation in Cambodia, viewed largely from the perspective of Cambodians, especially women, and on Canada as a peacekeeping contributor, specifically in Somalia. Although there are brief discussions of contingents from a few other countries, Whitworth does not attempt to provide a more systematic examination of what countries provided the large increases in peacekeeping troops for post–Cold War operations and where, other than in Cambodia and Somalia, there were problems of sexual assault, prostitution, increased HIV/AIDS, and racism, and to whose troops these were linked. Likewise, brief allusions to operations in Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and East Timor serve as examples of recent UN efforts to include gender advisers and gender units in peace missions, but they are not systematically examined.

The problems in Cambodia and Somalia are well known, as are recent problems among UN troops in the Congo. Also well known is the need for more peacekeepers in the 1990s and the reluctance of Western and especially Nordic countries to put their soldiers at risk in conflicts where there was no peace to be kept. These situations forced the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations to recruit soldiers from countries without previous peacekeeping experience. Often these contingents had less training and discipline, and their governments were motivated by the financial benefits to be reaped from peacekeeping. This does not apply to the Canadians in Somalia, but it certainly applies to the Bulgarians in Cambodia. With respect to the former, racism was the problem, and for that, Whitworth's gender analysis is less helpful in elucidating its roots among Canada's soldiers. The gender approach does provide one critical lens through which to analyze the variety of problems in the UN operation, including the misconduct of the Bulgarians. One might wish, however, for more systematic gender analysis of the units that had the most problems and why, as well as more context for criticisms of other issues, such as the handling of refugees and the UN's effects on the local economy. And one should definitely ask what Cambodia would have been like without the UN operation, despite the latter's shortcomings. One should also note that in 1991, the UN lacked experience in mounting such a large, multifaceted operation in a short period.

Examining UN responses through gender mainstreaming, Whitworth notes that inserting gender concerns, including Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), has increased emphasis on effectiveness, not on tough questions arising from the “radical political potential” of gender (pp. 120–21). In this, she reveals her desire for fundamental rethinking of UN peacekeeping as an institution. Likewise, in a richly documented chapter on “Militarized Masculinities,” she examines the particular form of idealized masculinity that is inculcated into soldiers, both men and women, in modern state militaries, and she delves into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as an illustration of the fragility of the masculine construction of militarized male identity. The author concludes that soldiers who express feelings of fear and emotional pain associated with PTSD—or “traces of the feminine”—exhibit the very qualities required in missions to keep and create peace (p. 172).

Soldiers may not be the best peacekeepers, as Whitworth contends, but it is hard to imagine ready alternatives. Her analysis makes clear that women soldiers are not the answer since they, too, are inculcated with “militarized masculinity.” Nor is it yet clear that gender-mainstreaming strategies are the remedy. The UN's experience in trying to recruit civil police for Kosovo illustrates the difficulties in mobilizing nonmilitary civilian capabilities for peacekeeping missions. Furthermore, the UN can only focus on human security (versus state security) if member states permit it to do so. It has moved in this direction over the last decade with increasing support for the “responsibility to protect” individuals through humanitarian intervention. Yet protecting human security almost inevitably requires enforcement action with the corresponding risks that accompany the presence of soldiers.

Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping does not address these dilemmas directly, but the critical questions it raises enrich the debate over how best to deal with threats to international peace. Scholars interested in these issues, as well as those specifically interested in gender analysis of security-related issues, will find the book of considerable value. Those who want to understand the scope of the problems illumined by the author will, however, regret that the book provides snapshots of particular cases, not systematic analyses of post–Cold War UN peacekeeping operations.