Introduction, Section I

Abstract

It is clear that the collapse of the Soviet Empire at the beginning of this decade has led to what President Bush called, at that time, a “New World Order.” Although no one as yet has defined exactly what that means, it obviously includes the fact that the United States has emerged as the only true super power in the world, at least militarily. If there were any doubts to that fact, the events of the last decade removed them. In the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S., with minimal support from some of its NATO allies, destroyed one of the largest military forces in the world with an aerial bombardment and a one-week invasion. In the Kosova air war intervention in 1999, the U.S. flew 90 percent of the NATO missions and drove the Serbian military out of Kosova without a single Alliance casualty.