The present volume puts forward two propositions. First, the altered face of armed conflict in the early twenty-first century remains political in the sense that Clausewitz suggested to his readers in the early nineteenth century amid the nationalization of war and the eclipse of the old régimes of dynastic absolutist Europe. Second, this book reflects the author's conviction that the men and women at arms of NATO and the European Union must know and understand one another within the respective national experiences of war and peace, especially as the soldier and politics evolve in and among the twenty-six NATO allies. Such knowledge forms the basis for sound policy and efficacious strategy in an age of proliferating conflict.