When Nicolas Zarkozy became president in 2007 he proclaimed a break with the past: France was no longer automatically to go it alone as during de Gaulle's presidency, but was to be integrated fully into NATO. Instead of competing with the strongest power on earth, France - as well as the EU -...

The popular perception of the role of NATO was famously defined by NATO's first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, as "keeping the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down". NATO's role is still essentially to keep its members safe from threats, to ensure the cohesion of the transatlantic...

In recent years, Security Sector Reform (SSR) has emerged as a key component of international post-conflict reconstruction efforts. At the same time, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the holistic approach to SSR that is outlined in policy papers is very difficult to translate into...