ABSTRACT
The first will deal with the Persian Gulf War, the most conspicuous military success and the only major military adventure of the post-Vietnam period. People will also view it in its geopolitical context and raise the question of whether it was the first major challenge of the new world order or the last of the old order. The second section will look at the minor operations in which the American military has been employed. The underlying issues and events leading to the American involvement in the effort to evict Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army from Kuwait are both simple and complex, depending upon the level at which one investigates them. The destruction of other military production facilities also looked more toward the future than the present. Political concerns did not disappear with the end of the Cold War. Rather, as the post-Vietnam period lurched toward the collapse of the Communist menace, those concerns simply changed, both domestically and internationally.
