ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Germany but closes with a brief review of the recent developments and historical issues in Italy. In 2016, Germany’s ‘grand coalition’ government of the conservative and social democratic parties embarked on a new stage in the remilitarisation of the country, both domestically and globally. The document set out a new ‘whole-of-society’ vision of ‘national security’ that foreshadowed a militarisation of foreign policy, civil and social life in preparation for war. The White Paper advocated a European foreign and defence policy dominated by Berlin and dedicated to defending the geopolitical and economic interests of Germany worldwide. The Constitution of the German Federal Republic, produced in the aftermath of World War II and the holocaust, was originally, like that of Japan, strictly pacifist. In the twenty-first century, no European country has seen a more protracted large-scale domestic deployment of the military to deal with civil unrest than Italy.
