Australian peacekeepers who served in Bougainville, Solomon Islands and East Timor from the early 1990s through to the mid-2000s have remembered their service and the overall efforts of peacekeeping operations as morally superior to warlike operations. This has been especially so in comparisons with contemporary actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but wider narratives of Anzac also suffused peacekeepers’ memories. And yet, peacekeepers also believed that the more their service experience was warlike the more valuable it was. This is what we might call the ‘peace paradox’. The Australian public has largely agreed with them. When it has come to commemorating, remembering and even remunerating peacekeepers the more violent, dangerous elements of their work have been rewarded far and beyond the more peaceful elements.

Drawing mainly on oral histories with Australian peacekeepers, this paper will explore this paradox and in doing so will demonstrate how personal stories can lead to an expansive understanding of national memory and identity.  And more specifically, this paper will show how peacekeepers’ stories offer a unique view of Australian ideas about peace and war throughout the twentieth century.