ABSTRACT
The British government's 1998 Strategic Defence Review implicitly acknowledged the reality that expeditionary conflict as a form of military action required a reappraisal of positions, priorities and policies. The British have had a traditional disdain for doctrine, regarding it as prejudicial to their intuitive and innovative spirit. There is a thread of anti-intellectualism running through British military thought processes and too frequently a continuing failure, in Fuller's words, to 'probe into the viscera of living war'. The end of World War II and the emergence of nuclear deterrence did generate a doctrine for general global war, but the implications of such a doomsday scenario also brought into focus the concept of limited war. The purpose of doctrine is 'to establish the framework of understanding of the approach to warfare in order to provide the foundation for its practical application'. Peacekeeping has invariably been a sponsored activity under the aegis of the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).
