Michael T. Klare

About the Author: Michael T. Klare is an associate professor of peace and world-security studies of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is the author of American Arms Supermarket and other books on U.S. military policy.

Whatever the final outcome of events in the Persian Gulf, Operation Desert Storm has inaugurated a new paradigm for the U.S. military. While prior models for combat assumed that U.S. forces would fight the Warsaw Pact in Europe or guerrillas in Central America, this model envisions periodic battles with well-armed regional powers like Syria or Iraq. To distinguish these clashes from European "high-intensity combat" or a Central American "low-intensity war," Pentagon officials categorize them as "mid-intensity conflict" (MIC).

Like Desert Storm, future mid-intensity conflicts are likely...