ABSTRACT
Coriolanus’s servants were not alone in having difficulties in coping with an extended period of peace. Any discussion nowadays concerning the future is subject to a difficulty which clouds new concepts and ideas with uncertainty. This difficulty-like Shakespeare’s lethargy: mulled, deaf, sleepy and insensiblefollows from the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the disappearance of the long-standing threat and its replacement with the ‘risk’ associated with the former Soviet Union’s retained capability. This will lead, the military presume, to a public reluctant to continue to support defence funding at previous levels. The military are also fearful that eventually the public will question the continued need to equip and prepare UK armed forces to intervene in Central Europe.
