Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.
Interpretation
This quote examines the evolution of the American military strategy, highlighting lessons learned from past conflicts.
Michael Ignatieff reflects on how the Desert Storm operation influenced the American approach to warfare, particularly in relation to building coalitions and understanding the political implications of military actions. He emphasizes that lessons learned from the Vietnam War taught America the importance of international legitimacy and domestic support when engaging in military interventions, suggesting that successful warfare is not just about military might but also about political strategy and coalition-building.
In practice
During a military conference discussing international strategies, this quote can highlight the importance of coalition-building.
Genocide is not just a murderous madness; it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics - one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.
Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - to do the country's fighting.
Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People's Republic of China and in Putin's police state.
Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes.
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.
How do you keep war accountable to the American people when war becomes invisible and virtual?
You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about.
Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.
In listening to the narratives of the Congolese, I came to terms with the extent to which their bodies had become battlefields.
A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a war story nothing is ever absolutely true.
This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.
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