Author Dr. Frank N. Schubert examines the almost 300 US military deployments that occurred between 1989 and 2001. At the time, the large number of these deployments appeared to overtax the US military and support theories of global chaos. Schubert's analysis of the American military experience and operations in the post-Cold War decade demonstrates that the operations were neither as diffuse nor as numerous as first thought. Instead of looking at hundreds of disparate operations ranging the globe, the book groups common operations in specific regions significantly reducing the overall total and clarifying the focus of the deployments. Moreover, the nature of the operations comports with a long US military tradition of law enforcement, disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, and nation building as well as constabulary operations, including pacification and so-called small wars.

This is a reissue of a study first published in 1995. Written shortly after the completion of Operation JUST CAUSE, this monograph traces the involvement of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff in planning and directing combat operations in Panama. The study begins with the initial development of contingency plans in February l988 and concludes with General Manuel Noriega's surrender to U.S. officials on 3 January l990. Relying primarily upon Joint Staff files and interviews with key participants, the author, Dr. Ronald Cole, provides an account of the parts played by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Staff, and the Commander in Chief of U.S. Southern Command in planning for operations in Panama and their roles in the combat operations that followed.

Written several years after the end of operations by US forces in Somalia, this monograph focuses specifically on the involvement of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff in planning and directing the operations in Somalia from August 1992 to March 1994. The study begins with a discussion of the conditions and circumstances that, in August 1992, led President George H. W. Bush to direct the American military to support relief efforts in Somalia and ends with the final withdrawal of US forces in 1994. The author, Dr. Walter S. Poole, relied primarily on Joint Staff files and interviews as sources of information.