Blue helmets and white armor: Multi-nationalism and multi-culturalism

Multi-national peace-keeping forces as organizations are characterized by an inherent tension between national and transnational belonging. Derived from a wider ethnography of peacekeeping, this article focuses on these military missions as transnational sites and explores the implications of this tension between national belonging and allegiance and membership and operations within an international framework. The data is derived from interviews and focus groups with military and civilian personnel in the main peacekeeping forces in and around Israel and in a number of military forces around the world. [Cosmopolitanism, the military, transnationalism, peace-keeping, United Nations].