Inside America’s Post-Cold War Strategic Crisis: How the US Military Became a Discount Security Shop
Buddhika Jayamaha and Jahara Matisek | October 26, 2018
Inside America’s Post-Cold War Strategic Crisis: How the US Military Became a Discount Security Shop
Editor’s note: This article is excerpted and adapted from a longer article, entitled “The Strategic Crisis in the American Way of War: A Global Discount Security Shop?,†originally published at The Strategy Bridge.
Every interregnum is fraught with risks and uncertainties, just like the current post–Cold War interregnum. The current crisis in the American way of war appears to be the culmination of numerous US strategic reorientations in which the US military has gone from being the bulwark and guardian of a benevolent superpower to a global discount security shop in the contemporary world. Broadly, the strategic reorientation has gone through three iterations, and along the way, the United States appears to have lost a center of gravity.
The first iteration was the pragmatist understanding of a world transformed typified by the George H.W. Bush presidency (1989–1993). Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States and her European allies spoke of a world transformed, but there was a sense of pragmatism and caution in their optimism. Bush, who was present at the creation of a world order with America no longer having a near-peer adversary, was explicit in articulating the importance of not claiming victory and not rubbing America’s triumph in the nose of the now-fallen Soviet Union. Bush believed it necessary to be graceful and magnanimous to all, especially if the United States was to maintain its military preponderance of power while capable of shaping global events with allied support in the future. Though seen as strategic blips, both the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991) and the humanitarian intervention in Somalia (1992–1995) were strategically significant.
https://mwi.usma.edu/inside-americas-post-cold-war-strategic-crisis-us-military-became-discount-security-shop/
