The works of Niccolo Machiavelli throw needed light on a contemporary problem, the incompatability of the civilian and military modes of being. With Machiavelli, I assume that the surd between military and civil institutions originates in the abstraction of defense-of-oneVcountry from the citizens' daily concerns.

Machiavelli and other neoclassicists, assuming the Greek and Roman perspectives of social organization, stressed the importance of integrating civil and military “institutions.” A civil militia or “nation in arms” is the form of civil-military organization they deemed appropriate for the task. Machiavelli believed that the security of the state would be insured by incorporating the private everyday affairs of the citizens into a larger context of purposeful communal activity.