Since the end of the Cold War the role has changed again. The role of the armed forces in peacekeeping and humanitarian work is much more prominent. There have been many human and/or natural disasters that have taxed the technology and ingenuity of the world’s best military minds. Some of the most intractable have been the civil wars in Rwanda and Sierra Leone. Just as difficult, but for different reasons, has been the civil strife caused by the break up of the former Yugoslavia and neighbouring regions in the Balkans.

Gulf War
In August 1990, the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Tension had been building in the region for some time. Until the late 1980s the USA had been a supporter of Saddam, primarily because he was an opponent of Iran. Iran’s fundamentalist Muslim regime was opposed to the USA because of its connections with Israel. The US supplied Iraq with weapons and technology in its bloody war with Iran, but by 1990 it was clear that Saddam was not under US control. His invasion sparked off a mammoth effort to get Saddam out of Iraq, and of course secure western oil supplies from nearby Saudi Arabia at the same time. The war involved an unprecedented bombardment by air and by missile attack that lasted for months. By the time the ground forces moved in, it was clear that Iraqi forces had had enough. There was still a heavy death toll among Iraqis.

The Balkans
Until the 1990s, Yugoslavia was a relatively stable state. The communist leader General Tito had held together the different ethnic groups in Yugoslavia with an iron hand. After his death, the cohesion of Yugoslavia began to fade. The first region of the state to declare itself independent was Slovenia. In a bloody civil war, the Slovenians then the Croats tried to create their own new states. The fighting reached new heights when it spread to Bosnia. There were thousands of casualties, and horrific atrocities were committed against civilians on all sides. Perhaps the worst was the massacre of 5000 unarmed Muslim boys and men in the UN-declared safe haven of Srebrenica. In 2000 ethnic conflict had spread to the province of Kosovo, where Serbs and Albanians clashed, and in 2001 there seemed a real danger that Macedonia would be engulfed in the violence. UN troops have been a constant presence and have prevented the bloodshed in these new regions from reaching the levels that occurred in Bosnia.

Smart weapons
A key feature of the conflicts, especially in Kosovo, has been the unwillingness of the USA to commit ground troops to these trouble spots without first battering the enemy with remote weapons. The weapons were awesomely powerful and accurate. Each evening, the media engaged in a slightly sordid ‘show’ of targets being hit.

Kosovo seemed to have justified the policy of remote weapons. Serbia was barraged with air attacks and cruise missiles, and the net effect has been the fall from power of the Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic. The price of this ‘safety’, however, has been high. Air attacks killed many innocent civilians in Serbia. The disruption to power supplies, communications, road and rail and food production brought real hardships to Serbs. There were even casualties in neighbouring Hungary, when a TV station was locked onto by an anti-radar missile and destroyed. In the worst disaster of all, US forces mistakenly destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Information Warfare
The next new frontier seems to be Information Warfare. Skilled computer hackers could bring nations to their knees without a shot being fired. By attacking and corrupting computer networks, hackers could disrupt power supplies or cause disease epidemics by cutting water or sewage supplies. It is a terrifying prospect and it is vital for the future that such weapons are controlled and used properly.