ABSTRACT
Are casualties relevant for the way in which democracies wage war? As the current experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest, the mounting toll of casualties suffered by Western forces do influence public opinion and put increasing pressure on the decision-makers to pull out without having achieved the mission’s political goal. But does casualty aversion have a deeper and more profound impact on the way democratic states organize their foreign security realm before actually going to war? Does the fear or expectation of future casualties at least influence decisions about technological choice, procurement and even defense industrial issues in peacetime?
