The weakness of all three states in the face of global economic competition has increasingly put pressure even on the revered model of citizen-soldier. In times of indebtedness and austerity, there is a greater competition for state resources and contestations of the current schemes of redistribution. The pressure to contribute economically is very much present, and the perfect citizen is no longer the soldier-citizen but the working and consuming citizen. The implications of this statement go much beyond the former Yugoslavia. In the age of corporate soldiers and wars fought by drones, there is a risk that states stop caring about the quality of their ‘stock’, adding yet another reason to shed state responsibility for their populations.
This is an extended summary of a longer paper that was originally published in the CITSEE Working Papers Series and is available for download here.
