How can a nation that is so heavily militarised stop itself from becoming coarsened by violence?

ECONOMIST: New fiction

Under dictatorships, police were often militarised and were the poor relation of the armed forces.

ECONOMIST: Crime and policing in Latin America

The government insists the region is not being militarised, merely subjected to intensive policing.

ECONOMIST: Bolivia

In a report issued on Monday, a UN-appointed inquiry team said the conflict had become "increasingly sectarian... radicalised and militarised", according to AFP news agency.

BBC: Hezbollah fighters (file photo)

Germany and Japan were militarised societies that glorified war and conquest, held human life to be cheap and regarded obedience to the state as the highest virtue.

ECONOMIST: The second world war

Israel is a highly-militarised society that views itself as surrounded by hostile nations, where most parents send their sons and daughters as conscripts and continue to serve as reservists in later life.

BBC: Q&A: Gilad Shalit capture

President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office on 1 December, is aiming to create a new national militarised force to take over policing duties from the military, although there is, as yet, no timescale for this.

BBC: Mexico troops kill 12 in gun fight in Zacatecas state

Afghanistan now wants to improve relations with Pakistan, but because the border has become militarised, Kabul will have its work cut out to avoid the sort of long-term skirmishes, incursions and terror attacks that are a feature of the disputed frontier that Pakistan shares with India in Kashmir.

ECONOMIST: No model for Iraq | The