German military force is a good thing. The world needs more of it. That is the difficult lesson Germany and Europe have learned since the end of the cold war. It is a message that runs through yesterday's government strategy paper on a new, more expeditionary army.

The paper recognises the Bundes- wehr's key tasks are peacekeeping and peacemaking across the world, rather than guarding Germany's unthreatened borders. The once traumatic issue of deploying German troops overseas - a taboo subject for much of the postwar period - is addressed head on.

But while the new doctrine is a welcome step towards creating a 21st century military, Berlin has to march much further down that road. In particular, it needs to get rid of conscription, a tradition that limits the country's military effectiveness.

Germany's leaders can rightfully point to huge changes since 1994, when the constitutional court ruled that the army could be deployed outside the country's borders. Five years later, the Bundeswehr participated in the Kosovo war. Today, 9,000 German troops are overseas, chiefly in Afghanistan, the Balkans and Congo.

In keeping with Germany's transformation into an ordinary, outward-looking nation state, public opinion has broken with the pacifism of the past. But yesterday's paper is moreof an attempt to get militarydoctrine up to speed with reality - the previous review was in 1994 -than a fearless look into the future.

That is why German politicians need to think more about conscription. Big armies are not better armies. The days are long gone when Germany's numerical superiority allowed Bismarck to boast that if the British army landed on the continent he would have it arrested. Today, the presence of 55,000 conscripts among Germany's 250,000-strong military complicates the army's use as an expeditionary force. Yet the world's need for peacekeepers has never been so great.

The traditional argument for conscription - that "citizens in uniform" will prevent a military coup or a new Hitler - is irrelevant in today's Germany. The work carried out by 69,000 conscientious objectors in the country's homes and hospitals provides German social services with a boost, but military policy cannot be based on such considerations. If Germany's army is to match up with those of Britain and France it needs, like them, to become wholly professional. That, in turn, will allow German soldiers to engage in more frontline missions rather than supporting from the sidelines.

At present, German forces in Afghanistan are in the public eye not for their work in providing security - they are well away from fighting in the country's south - but because of photos that seem to show soldiers desecrating a human skull. Against such a backdrop the case for a fully professional, muscular army is all the more compelling.