While armed forces in several countries underwent deep transformations after the end of the Cold War, few, if any, experienced more radical changes than Germany, Italy and Japan. This book explores how these three countries have modified the posture and structure of their militaries over the past three decades. While each country has had to overcome a pacifist constitution, a widespread view in both elite and public opinion that war was a taboo and armed forces should be designed to defend and deter against large-scale threats, they have all become more active security providers over recent decades.

Each country, however, has followed a distinct path. This book reconstructs these paths to show how a mixture of external and domestic factors affected the pace and the extent of transformations. The book also identifies critical junctures in such processes: any push to change it argues is mediated by the need to come to terms with the cumbersome weight of the past.