Traditionally, military medicine has progressed when war has forced doctors to devise better ways of caring for the wounded. Many advances in the treatment of shock, trauma, and infectious disease were developed under the pressure of war.

The Cold War (that period of indirect conflict and proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from the end of World War II in 1946 until the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s) forced military medicine into a period of self-examination and planning for new and varied demands.

Post-Cold War questions focus on how to balance a medical staff's combat readiness with other missions. In an environment where the military is highly mobile and fast-moving, and when it is deployed against considerably weaker forces, nonbattle injuries must be expected. For example, in 1991, in Operation Desert Storm (in which the US attacked Iraq...