This Reader provides a structurally coherent explanation and review of the magnified role conception and organizational task expansion for the Nigerian military establishment in foreign policy. It argues essentially that one of the most problematic and intractable areas of public policy in Nigeria since the Civil War concerns the development of a professional defence establishment adequate to meet the challenges arising from the altered parameters of our security environment.

The correction of this condition is the primary motivation of the Armed Forces modernization and augmentation program that touches upon all elements of Nigeria's military power. This Reader is at once a review and a critique of the major facets of this modernization and augmentation process of the Nigerian armed forces within the operative context of the changing dimension of threat perception and the strategic parameters that have guided Nigerian military planning since the Civil War in 1970.