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The Significance of the Gulf War
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19216 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
4,170 Words |
| Author
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Kenneth L. Adelman
A former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency, Kenneth L. Adelman is now vice president of the
Institute for Contemporary Studies and coauthor (with Norman
Augustine) of The Defense Revolution (ICS Press). |
"You saw some action once, too, didn't you?" a young CIA analyst asked an intelligence veteran in the movie Three Days of the Condor.
"Do you miss the action?"
The experienced hand answered slowly and carefully, "It's not the action I miss. It's the clarity."
In the post-Gulf War world, Americans will miss the clarity of that conflict. Foreign confrontations do not come any clearer:
·The triggering act, the conquest of another nation, was unmistakable and wholly unjustifiable.
·Our foe looked like, and was, the devil incarnate.
·The enemy state was repressive and totalitarian, brimming with armaments and striving for weapons of mass destruction (but luckily not yet attaining nuclear capability).
·The world community, incensed, lent its support to a UN resolution authorizing the use of force.
·The Allied coalition was wide and included all the key Arab and European states.
·Congress, less incensed, went along with the president's strong leadership after the diplomatic track proved fruitless.
·The timing was ideal--our first post-Cold War war when we still retained a Cold War arsenal.
·The military victory was quick and decisive, with far fewer Allied casualties than anticipated.
That degree of clarity was unique. The outlook for America at the crossroads--standing somewhere between the Cold War era and the awaited New World Order--is necessarily murky.
For decades, we knew who our enemies were--the octogenarians atop Lenin's tomb during the October Revolution parade. We knew that, while aggressive abroad and repressive within, they nonetheless proceeded rationally and within some bounds (no matter how wide) of morality. And we know they controlled their own
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