The many decades of peace that Europe enjoyed after 1945 were a historically unprecedented achievement in which defence spending declined and armies shrank dramatically. “Where have all the soldiers gone?” asked one analyst of this transformation. Up until a month or two ago, polls showed that large numbers of the continent’s inhabitants regarded war as an anachronism, an outlook unchanged by the fighting that accompanied Yugoslavia’s break-up in the 1990s.
1945年后,歐洲享受了幾十年的和平,這是一項(xiàng)史無(wú)前例的成就,國(guó)防開支大幅下降,軍隊(duì)規(guī)模大幅縮減。“士兵們都到哪兒去了?”一位分析這一轉(zhuǎn)變的人士問(wèn)道。直到一兩個(gè)月前,民意調(diào)查顯示,歐洲大陸的大量居民認(rèn)為戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)是不合時(shí)宜的,這種觀點(diǎn)在20世紀(jì)90年代伴隨南斯拉夫解體的戰(zhàn)斗中沒(méi)有改變。