Civil-Military Relations in a Politicized Post-Heroic Society CGLG Seminar with Guest Speaker Wolfgang Wagner

Sub-title: The European Public and the Transformation of the Armed Forces from Interventionism back to Territorial Defense

The position and role of the military in European societies has been changing dramatically. The withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 symbolizes the end of an era of interventionism, which was geared towards post-conflict peacebuilding, state- and nation-building; the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine marks the end of the widely held assumption that wars might still occur outside Europe or at its fringes (as in the former Yugoslavia) but were unthinkable at the heart of Europe. Governments across Europe have responded to the Russian war against Ukraine by re-prioritizing territorial defence and, together with the military command, started a process to adjust the composition, equipment, and training of the armed forces accordingly. To address deficits in military equipment, European governments have committed to steep increases in defence spending; to overcome shortages in personnel, conscription has been back on the agenda. These developments take place in “post-heroic societies” where the willingness to fight for their countries has reached a historical low point. Based on original survey data and focus groups in the Netherlands, Germany, Lithuania, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden, the talk will discuss how the changing role of the military in Western society is contested in European societies.