The motto of the US Army War College, seen on its website and the cover of its journal Parameters is: “Not to Promote War, But to Preserve Peace.” I gather from this that the Army War College thinks its function is to prevent wars from breaking out. This seems to be at loggerheads with the fact that increasingly we use the word “warriors” to refer to those in the military. Shouldn't that be “peacers”? No, that word doesn't exist. Fine: peacekeepers. Which is it? The question is a fairly basic one, appropriate for the beginning of a new year. What is the most basic function of those in military uniform? Is it war, or peace?

The great film director Stanley Kubrick apparently thought it clear that the function of the military was to wage war. In his apocalyptic fantasy “Dr. Strangelove,” he frequently includes shots of the billboards on “Burpleson Air Force Base” taken over by the unhinged Col. Jack D. Ripper; the billboards say “Peace is Our Profession.” That's in tune with the movie's black comedy tone, but actually it's not too far from what the War College claims.

Warriors? Or peacekeepers? Those for whom this is a non-issue might say it depends on how high up the chain you are. For those near the bottom, you're a warrior when you're told to be a warrior and a peacekeeper when you're told to be a peacekeeper. Only the big boys and girls have to worry about the philosophy. Others might say our function is to wage war in time of war, and keep the peace in time of peace.

I think we need a unified answer. We can't say one thing one time and another another or change our tune depending on the audience. We need to know what people in the military are, all the time. If it's a calling, we have to understand what role it plays in the larger society. Now we're edging towards seeing it as a profession again. That's what it means to speak of “warriors.”

In times of widespread civilian draft, it might not have been so easy to see what the military does as an ongoing calling. I have a friend who describes himself ruefully as having been a “civilian in uniform” in the Army. Presumably that attitude is just what the military wants to avoid by encouraging military people to think of themselves as “warriors,” rather than as peacekeepers who didn't do their mission very well. (I think the motto of the War College is potentially very troublesome, for precisely this reason: War must be seen as a failure of mission.)

We're not the first culture to be faced with this question: What do we call people in the military? The real issue behind the name is whether the military there to be used or not to be used? Is the military something to be celebrated or tolerated?

Countries prone to celebrate the military -- too prone, according to many historians -- include the Prussia of Bismarck's era, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, not to mention later German states. In these cultures, career military officers enjoyed the status of aristocrats, who in fact fed their ranks. Military virtues for men were seen as the highest virtues, and women had a point too insofar as they could support their soldier husbands or produce boys to grow up and fight in their turn.

These were societies where calling military men “warriors” (in German: Krieger ) was a natural thing. In such societies -- check out the literature of the time -- officers lived the life of the barracks as an end in itself, but hoping for a chance to actually do what they were trained to do: fight in a war. And society looked up to them as being members of an honorable profession.

Some of this is good, but it can go too far. Having a society too comfortable with the notion that its military are “warriors,” champing at the bit to fight, isn't a good thing. It leads to politicians using wars as a way to distract attention from other issues. USMA graduate and Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich, in his The New American Militarism , sketches in worrisome detail a view of the US as having gone too far in this sense.

On the other hand, it may well be unwise to tell people in the military that war is a failure of mission, that they are most essentially preservers of the peace. I caught the tail end of the Cold War version of this on board a Los Angeles class submarine. One of the junior officers, a former student, explained to me that his job was to make sure that things didn't happen. Not to promote war, but to preserve peace.

This is a fairly intellectual understanding of the role of the military, and one that tends not to play too well with our midshipmen at the US Naval Academy. They want more force. At President Bush's recent speech here to lay out his vision of Victory in Iraq, it was notable that the Brigade -- mostly asleep up to the time of the speech itself (they were roused at an early hour to populate the seats of Alumni Hall) -- cheered roundly each time the commander-in-chief used the words “fight” or “victory.”

This is a live debate for other reasons. Much ink has been spilled discussing the use of US troops as more active “peacekeepers” in far-flung places, with the Pentagon typically insisting that that's not their mission. Certainly the U.N. has learned the hard way, in places like Rwanda (where I lived and taught for two years before the civil war), that sending in men who are not allowed to use their weapons makes them sitting ducks for attacks themselves, and limits their usefulness.

All this is a way of saying that every time I hear soldiers referred to as “warriors” I think, “yes, but.” Not that they should be “peacers,” but only that we should be aware of the potential problems in going too far with this kind of macho chest-thumping. People in the armed services are, most primordially, in service -- to their country and its citizens. If you don't let them think of themselves to some degree as “warriors” they probably won't be willing to fight. But it has to be tempered by something like the vision of the Army War College: War isn't the point. It's a means to an end. And that end is peace, which means being back home with family and friends, carrying on the perhaps less exciting but much more necessary actions we call life.