It was opposed by the Free Democrats and an old guard of cold-war defence buffs.
On March 1st Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, opened his defence at his war-crimes trial in The Hague.
ECONOMIST: More arrests and court cases revive bad Balkan memories
For Iraq, persuading the world that it is worth continuing with inspections, however slowly it ekes out its co-operation with them, is its main diplomatic line of defence against a war.
George Bush and his defence chiefs neglected the war in Afghanistan while they devoted themselves to bungling the war in Iraq.
He was America's secretary of defence during the Gulf War in 1991, when he played a key role in maintaining a fragile and fractious coalition of Arab states long enough to achieve a modicum of victory.
He was responsible for organising the Mannerheim Line of defence against Russia during World War Two and was president of Finland from 1944-1946.
Western countries used the end of the cold war to slash defence budgets in the 1990s, but given continued military action in Afghanistan and the threat of terrorism, further big reductions are hard to envisage.
For example, Britain's defence secretary during the Falklands war, John Nott, revealed in his memoirs that France had been Britain's staunchest ally, providing information that helped to render the Exocet anti-ship missiles used by Argentina ineffective, and supplying Mirage and Super-Etendard fighters for British Harrier pilots to pit themselves against in training.
But German Defence Secretary Franz Josef Jung has defied calls to resign over the incident - the deadliest involving German troops since World War II - and a defence ministry spokesman insisted the decision to attack was "militarily necessary and correct".
But with the end of the cold war and the resulting defence cuts, that figure has fallen to 3, 000.
ECONOMIST: They want to emulate the boom in the rest of the south-west
Most EU nations have cut defence spending in the post Cold War years.
Donald Rumsfeld, America's secretary of defence, cautioned Americans that the war was nearer its beginning than its end .
Japan's was a war of self-defence, protecting its perfectly legal territories of Manchuria (North-East China) and Korea against Communist conspirators.
Opposition parties accuse Mr Brown, particularly during his time as chancellor of the exchequer, of squeezing defence budgets at a time of war.
The council said that among other things it would be spending money on repairs to paths, the restoration of the borough's war memorials and sea defence work.
Rarely has the nomination for a defence secretary literally become an issue of war and peace.
Growth in the second quarter was flattered by a 44% (annualised) surge in defence spending to pay for the Iraq war, the biggest increase since 1951.
Dick Cheney and Colin Powell have both got first-hand experience of running a war, Mr Cheney as defence secretary during Desert Storm, Mr Powell as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
He gave warning to Colombia's president that any attempt to mount a similar operation in Venezuela would lead to war and he ordered his defence minister to send ten battalions, including armoured units, to the border.
At home, the Defence Department's post-Gulf-war prestige is also in the balance, along with the doctrines of high-tech dominance that the Gulf war encouraged people to believe.
During World War II, the Ministry of Defence used the Brompton Road station as a military bunker, and Winston Churchill himself is said to have held strategy meetings there.
They worry that, having won the war, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, is now going to lose the peace by stubbornly refusing to send enough troops to do what is needed in Iraq.
The state also has an awesome ability to reinvent itself as it did when its defence industry collapsed at the end of the cold war.
Time and again, Mr Bush argued that a good offence is the best defence, whether it be in Iraq, the war on terror, or tax cuts.
Two weeks ago, the defence secretary took a lot of flak for a war plan that, the critics said, put too much faith in this transformation.
Earlier Lt Gen Sir Robert Fry, deputy chief of the defence staff in the run-up to the war, said the UK's role in the March 2003 invasion was crucial.
If Mr Hagel becomes the next secretary of defence, strategists on all sides believe that opposition to war will be significantly strengthened.
California's huge defence and aerospace industry grew first from the second world war, then from the Korean war and the cold war (and, beyond the scope of this book, finally the Vietnam war).
That the Republic of Liberia is in the State of War and it is believed that information of public defence has been collected by the defendants and citizens to be used against the Republic of Liberia.
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