Cameron Abadi

It’s widely understood that the end of the Cold War led to changes in the material strength of the German military: military spending dropped dramatically, as did troop levels. But less attention has been paid to the ways that German military culture—the role that the military plays in public life—has itself changed dramatically, tracing back decades prior to reunification. Today, the military has been actively marginalized in ways that have altered public understandings of military service and national security. The German government has now made an unprecedented commitment to restore the country’s military readiness. But that readiness has been defined almost exclusively in material terms. The cultural component of military readiness has gone relatively ignored. Cameron Abadi's research will explore the question of whether, and how, German culture could, and should, become re-militarized in parallel with its coming re-armament.