In 1993, President Clinton’s newly appointed CIA director, James Woolsey, described the post-Cold War security environment and the collapse of the Soviet bloc as the United States slaying the dragon and being left in a jungle inhabited by poisonous snakes.
Throughout the 1990s, the United States duly reconfigured its huge military power away from heavy armour, anti-submarine forces and other Cold War elements and towards expeditionary warfare, special forces, stand-off weapons and rapid deployment, all useful for fighting small wars in far-off places. What was not expected was that those “snakes” could hit both the metropolis and the centre of military power, which partly explains the rush to large-scale war after 9/11.
From his own perspective, Woolsey may have been right in seeing a radically changed world but he, as well as many throughout the West, were decidedly wrong in thinking that those they considered jungle adversaries would easily succumb to Western military power. After all, as the US and NATO prepare to exit Afghanistan, this is only one of four recent failed wars – along with Libya, Iraq and the more recent four-year air war against Isis.
