Military Reform of Armed Forces in Europe

Abstract

During the Cold War period most European armed forces were structured on the same broad principle of defence against a common enemy within a bipolar structure premised on nuclear deterrence (Von Bredow, 2000: 51). The removal of the strategic certainties of the Cold War created huge pressures for reform of military structures and organisation, and these pressures have been both augmented and confused by the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks of September 2001 which introduced what has been described as a new Postmodern age, dominated above all by the ‘war on terrorism’ (Heyman, 2001; Posen, 2001; Cronin, 2002).¹