Conflict Trends in the 21st Century

摘要

As the Cold War was coming to a close, most of the world had never heard of the small Yugoslavian provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo, let alone believed they would demand global attention. Nor would the world have believed that a state such as North Korea, deemed a 'basket case' in many fundamental functions of government, would acquire nuclear weapons and maintain chemical and biological capabilities. A global network of extremists based on the perversion of one of the world's great religions that was willing to resort to sustained acts of violence resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians was a scenario worthy only of a movie script. The identification of U.S. national security priorities as waging a 'global war on terror' and the deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops to preempt a 'gathering' threat to the Nation's security-troops who would then become engaged in a protracted attempt to create a democratic nation-state in the midst of a civil war-were on no one's radar.