Word: retrospect
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Those episodes, scary as they were at the time, should be strangely reassuring in retrospect. They prove that deterrence is something like a force of nature. The very existence of nuclear weapons exercises a gravitational pull on the superpowers during moments of political and military confrontation, tugging them back from the brink. In a real crisis, precise calculations on one side about exactly how many of what kind of weapons the other side has do not matter all that much; what matters is that both have nuclear weapons, period...
...Panama decision in particular was held within a small circle; Joint Chiefs spokesman Colonel William Smullen asserts that "there were a handful, really a small number, of people in this entire building ((the Pentagon)) who knew this operation was going to happen." In retrospect, though, the invasion looks inevitable. The U.S. through two Administrations built Noriega into a menacing monster -- instead of what he was, the tin-pot dictator of a not very important country -- and put its credibility on the line in declaring that he had to go. But everything Washington tried -- propaganda, economic sanctions, attempts to foment...