‘La Petite Muette’ and Suspicious Controller: Armed Forces and Society in Slovenia

Abstract

Slovenian military units earned high prestige during the country’s so-called Ten-Day War1 of independence against the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija — JNA) in 1991. At this time, the Slovenian armed forces were comprised of the republican Territorial Defence force (Teritorialna obrana — TO), which eventually evolved into the Slovenian armed forces (Slovenska Vojska — SV) in 1994. Throughout this period, the military developed bases for its legitimacy in society around the military and political successes of the conflict, and particularly its role in providing territorial national defence and wartime guerrilla tactics against the JNA.