In the previous chapter I argued that the liberal democracies’ armed forces were trained and equipped for traditional interstate wars in Europe. The main preoccupation was relatively static defenses with large units, that is, divisions and army corps. I concluded that modern armed forces need full-spectrum capabilities to carry out their missions successfully. The key question therefore is what this spectrum looks like. This chapter offers a closer look at the security challenges which shape capabilities and define how coercive strategies should be executed with military means. I will argue that global war is unlikely, and that the number of interstate wars will remain very limited. Most likely, the armed forces of liberal democracies will be deployed in distant parts of the world. President Clinton argued in April 1999 that the West finds itself engaged in “a great battle between the forces of integration and the forces of disintegration; [between] the forces of globalism and the forces of tribalism.” A clash was emerging between the premodern world and the modern and postmodern worlds. Consequently, the protection of interests and the defense of values require modern and postmodern states to deal with rogue states and complex contingencies, international terrorism, and criminals in failed or weak states.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) defines a major armed conflict as “prolonged combat between the military forces of two or more governments, or of one government and at least one organized group, incurring the battle-related deaths of at least 1,000 people during the entire conflict and in which the incompatibility concerns government and/or territory.” In 1997 there were 19 such conflicts. According to SIPRI, this was the lowest post-Cold War figure, that is, considerably lower than those for 1989, the first year covered in their statistics, when there were 32 conflicts at 36 locations. During the first half of the 1990s, Europe was the only region with a trend toward increased conflict. In 1993 and 1994, the number rose to five. Conflicts took place in four different European regions: Azerbaijan (the government versus the republic of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia); Bosnia and Herzegovina; Georgia (the government versus the republic of Abkhazia); and the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland).