a different war

pain in the details

I first visited Australia with a National War College delegation in May 1995 as part of the students’ regional studies practicum. We had already met extensively, at least once rather awkwardly, with Indonesian counterparts but the War College strategy education requires exploring the widest possible set of aspects of strategic issues. Lots of stuff is written but putting the students their their paces parrying ideas must be done in person to hone their thinking most effectively. We certainly pressed and were challenged on the U.S. future in Asia.

The 1995 Clinton administration focused on southeast Europe as part of the era of remaking the world. The Somalia intervention during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton eras spanked us into remembering the world did not entirely like us but, hey, the Soviet Union literally did not exist by that year so things were better. The United States was providing non-technical assistance to a Boris Yeltsin regime—before Vlad the Impaler hid in the wings—to lead them into a democratic, laissez-faire world. The North Koreans worried us but we still hoped, naively of course, that we could coax the Kim family to abandon a nuclear weapons development program. We were unaware a rightwing Israeli would assassiate his Prime Minister, Yitzak Rabin, in November. Finally, we blissfully unaware the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center