This article presents the first comparative study of US policy towards two European neutrals, Sweden and Switzerland, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During this period, Sweden and Switzerland were integrated into the Western security regime through a series of diplomatic, economic and technological steps until certain parts of the Swedish and Swiss armed forces were hard to separate from their NATO counterparts. This pioneering multi-archival study shows not only that US policy towards the neutrals was coordinated in order to make them conform to US security demands (a fact previously unnoticed by historians), but it also points towards another surprising and previously unknown conclusion – which the article calls ‘the armed neutrality paradox’. The article argues that the transfers of military technology to Sweden and Switzerland, which were needed to make their neutrality credible, effectively undermined the very credibility that they were supposed to ensure. This technology became a conduit of foreign influence reaching straight into the nerve centre of the armed neutrals, and the more ubiquitous and advanced the technology got, the less control over its use the governments seemed to have. US policy, together with the efforts of the neutral governments to increase security, spawned this paradox.

Since the end of the Cold War, the study of European defence has been dominated by a 'CSDP-centric' approach, while largely neglecting the comparative analysis of national defence policies. This article makes the case for turning the dominant research prism of European defence studies upside down by returning the analytical precedence to the national level. This approach privileges the comparative analysis of national defence policies and armed forces, before focusing on the trans-/supra-national level. The case for this conceptual turn is made in three steps. First, it addresses the different historical stages in European defence integration and the transformation of national armed forces in Europe. Second, it questions the predominance of CSDP in the scholarly literature on European defence. Finally, it seeks to demonstrate the fruitfulness of such a demarche by empirically substantiating common patterns and intra-European divergences in the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces since the end of the Cold War. In conclusion, the article suggests avenues for research focused on European national defence policies and armed forces.

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The introduction, which sets the stage for The Handbook, contends that, when it comes to European security and defence, analytical precedence should be given back to Europe’s national defence policies and armed forces. Therefore, it first addresses the different historical stages in the rise and decline of the CSDP and the transformation of national armed forces in Europe since the end of the cold war. Then, it questions the seemingly unjustified predominance of the CSDP vis-à-vis the comparative study of national defence policies in the literature on European defence. With the case made for the ‘analytical resurgence’ of national armed forces in Europe, the third section demonstrates the fruitfulness of such a demarche by summarizing the central findings of The Handbook. What emerges from the rich and diverse range of contributions in this volume is that national armed forces have regained their central importance.

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