Paper Titles & Abstracts

The common perception is that Europe is at a crossroads in terms of what to do with its military. More and more, Europe has been portrayed as Colin Gray (1981) portrayed a reluctant and isolated United States prior to the First and Second World Wars. The people don't know what to do with their militaries. The politicians do not know what to do with their dwindling resources. And the militaries themselves are unsure about their future deployment. But is this triadic problem as insurmountable as it, at first glance, appears to be? By creatively rethinking the core Clausewitzian principles involving the military, the state and the people in conjunction with the emergence and proliferation of advanced digital technologies and emergent forms of warfare, this may be the appropriate moment to reconstitute/ reconstruct Europe's strategic-military problematic. Taking into account Europe's highly educated work-force and a solid technological base, the current impasse that afflicts the European strategic-military posture could be turned into a strategic-political advantage. This article will consider how this may be achieved and will argue that if strategic action (or inaction) is 'culture all the way down' then, such a reconstitution will involve re-engineering - in the first instance - the culture of security that Europe has thus far adopted thereby finding a new or different mode of strategic-military operability that is responsive to the changing notions of warfare embedded in global society and politics.