ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the role conscription played in West Germany's rearmament in the 1950s, a process which, inter alia involved the construction of a new democratic framework for civil-military relations. It examines the contours and substance of the German (non)-debate on conscription in the 1990s, a period which saw the draft across much of Europe in terminal decline. The chapter shows how whilst a strong resistance to change characterized Germany's stance throughout the previous decade, in more recent times the potency of the pro-conscription consensus has clearly become rather jaded. The discernible slackening of the taboo surrounding conscription towards the late 1990s came about, it argues that, due to a combination of domestic and international factors, including the arrival into office of the Red-Green coalition government in 1998, the Bundeswehr's engagement in Kosovo in 1999, September 11th and the emergence of new security threats and developments within na To and the eu.
