Stealing the Show: Peace Operations and Danish Defence Transformation after the Cold War.

Peace operations have been the single most important driver of defence transformation in Denmark since the end of the Cold War. While this may also be true for other European countries, Denmark nevertheless stands out in a number of respects. The transformation from invasion defence towards an expeditionary force structure began as early as 1992, the process has been underpinned by a remarkably strong domestic consensus, and the officer corps has not resisted the move away from invasion defence. The distinct features of the Danish case can be explained by the fact that Danish decision makers buried the threat from the East very quickly, that Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen and Defence Minister Hans Hækkerup succeeded in pushing the armed forces to the forefront of Danish foreign and security policy at an early stage, and that the policy paid off. This locked Danish defence transformation on a course of internationalisa-tion that it shows no signs of departing from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]