In the post-Cold War era, militaries across the world are engaged in an ongoing re-definition of their roles, organisation and financing.  This adaptation is challenging often long-standing relations between armed forces and the societies they serve. No where is this transformation more striking than across the whole of Europe, a continent which was divided into opposing camps for much of the post-1945 period. Armed Forces and Society in Europe offers an innovative conceptual framework to critically evaluate contemporary civil-military relations across the continent of Europe. It analyses 8 key issues in armed forces and society relations, to explore the scale and intensity of these changes. In doing so it highlights the major challenges of contemporary civil-military relations and takes issue with the conventional wisdom that a 'Postmodern' military has emerged in Europe, suggesting that 15 years after the end of the Cold War, across Europe militaries are surprisingly resilient in terms of their modernist foundations, structure and purposes.

 

Pre-publication endorsements

"Fifteen years have elapsed since the end of the Cold War - at least in the West - and, since then, the role of the armed services as well as the relationships between military and society have been transformed. Anthony Forster provides a wide-ranging and perceptive analysis of these changes blending insights from theories in military sociology and political science as well as the most recent findings of empirical research. He compares and contrasts the experiences of Western and post-Communist Europe and provides a lucid and lively discussion that will be of interest to both scholars and policy practitioners in the broad field of defence studies. Undergraduate and postgraduate students and teachers will find it invaluable." - Professor Christopher Dandeker, Department of War Studies, King's College London, UK.

"This book provides the reader with a thorough analysis of recent transformations of civil-military relations in both Western and Eastern European societies. In the context of post Cold War and post 9/11 environment, Anthony Forster has written a truly comprehensive study about changing domestic and international roles of the armed forces. Academics will be inspired whereas policy-makers will be sobered by reading this genuinely innovative and informative volume"' - Dr. Hans Born, Senior Fellow, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces.

Professor Anthony Forster's book Armed Forces and Society in Europe was published in October 2005 by Palgrave.

Anthony Forster is Professor of Politics and International Relations and Director of the Governance Research Centre at the Department of Politics, University of Bristol. He has published widely on the European foreign and security policy and on comparative European civil-military relations.

Anthony Forster/Department of Politics