Military Orthodoxy and the Warfighting Tradition

Abstract

The first chapter outlined the context within which a potential reappraisal of the role of the national military might emerge. As the boundaries between Self and Other are destabilised through processes of cosmopolitanisation, new avenues are created for transborder empathy and the extension of moral community. Ideas of human security and the R2P reflect elements of a cosmopolitan view of security and imply new roles for military forces. However, a significant problem in the transition towards such new cosmopolitan military roles is the tension with the dominant warfighting tradition — a series of key assumptions about the nature of conflict and the practice of war around which national militaries are frequently orientated.