ABSTRACT
This book departs from the claim that analyses of specific countries’ defence strategies should acknowledge that states come in various shapes and sizes, and that their strategies are affected by power asymmetries between states, differences related to regional contexts, and unit-level characteristics. Previous research on alignment and military strategy has mainly focused on the strategies of superpowers and great powers, and has paid scant attention to how power asymmetries between more and less resourceful states influence their perceived interests and their choice of strategic means and ways. In a previous book, we explored the strategic adjustments of four small states to the changing external security environment of the twenty-first century (Edström et al. 2019). In this study, we turn our attention to the strategic responses from a category of states that in comparison are more resourceful: middle powers.
