USAHEC Educators' Toolbox: Post-Cold War and Desert Storm

The leadership at the top of the United States' military and government attempted to solve the problems in Colombia once and for all in 2000. The strategy, dubbed Plan Colombia, would cut drug trafficking, support peace, build democracy, and defeat the guerillas terrorizing the countryside. Unfortunately, the program has increased the militarization of drug policy, allowed fear of Colombian security forces to overcome human rights, and generally worsened the crisis it was designed to resolve. This lecture, from Dr. Winifred Tate, will detail the history of the U.S. involvement in Colombia's internal drug wars, while also examining the U.S. policymaking process through a unique anthropological lens.

In her new book, Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: U.S. Policy Making in Colombia, Dr. Tate discusses how more than 80 percent of the assistance provided by the U.S. through Plan Colombia was military aid, despite the Colombian security forces link to abusive, drug-trafficking, paramilitary organizations. This talk examines the design, implementation, and assessment of this aid package. Challenging the conventional wisdom about Plan Colombia, which has been widely praised by pundits and policymakers in Washington, Tate will argue that the security challenges presented by Colombian paramilitary forces continue to be underestimated.

Winifred Tate is an associate professor of anthropology at Colby College and the author of Drugs, Thugs and Diplomats: U.S. Policymaking in Colombia (Stanford University Press 2015) and the award-winning Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia (University of California Press 2007). Dr. Tate has more than 25 years' experience with issues regarding Colombia, beginning with an extensive period of volunteer work and study abroad in the 1980s. She spent another three years working with human rights NGOs in Guatemala and Colombia, after completing her Bachelor's Degree. In addition, she worked for three years as the Colombia policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, before completing her doctorate at New York University.

President George H.W. Bush famously announced at the end of the 1991 Gulf War that the United States had finally "kicked the Vietnam Syndrome." What was the Vietnam Syndrome, and did the United States actually "kick" it through its apparently decisive victory over Iraq? Why did Vietnam cast such a great shadow over the Gulf War? How did memory and national mythology interact in the Gulf War? Did we finally get over Vietnam in 1991? The lecture will address these and other provocative questions concerning the first Gulf War. Bill Allison is Professor of History at Georgia Southern University, joining the faculty there in 2008. He earned his Ph.D. in history at Bowling Green State University in 1995, then taught at the University of Saint Francis before joining the History Department at Weber State University from 1999-2008. During the 2002-2003 academic year, he was Visiting Professor in the Department Strategy and International Security at the USAF Air War College and he was Visiting Professor of Military History at the USAF School for Advanced Air and Space Studies from 2010-2011. He is currently the General Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair in Military History at the US Army War College. He is author of The Gulf War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Military Justice in Vietnam: The Rule of Law in an American War (University Press of Kansas, 2007), among other works. He has lectured at numerous conferences and universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, and the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is a Trustee of the Society for Military History and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Military History. He has also served as a member of the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee. He is currently writing a book on 1968 in America titled "On Nostalgia's Altar: America, Mayhem, and 1968." A native of Texas, he lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with his wife Jennifer and black lab Moose.

The decade of the 1990s saw the end of the Cold War, conflict in Southwest Asia, emerging threats from new actors, retrenchment of US military activities around the world and a concomitant drawdown of forces. The reduced budgets of the post Desert Storm era forced the Army to make painful but necessary cuts in personnel and equipment, while transforming to meet new threats and ways of war. Civil and political leaders hoped for a "peace dividend" that would mean a smaller, cheaper military, yet one no less effective than the one that had served the Cold War so well. The Army's senior leaders worked to balance projected requirements, changing roles and missions, emerging technology, re-stationing, and personnel drawdown requirements against reduced budgets and the need to modernize the force and continue to care for Soldiers and their families. General Sullivan will discuss the issues he faced as Army Chief of Staff and discuss some of the methods he used. The strategic leader must manage the complexity ever changing situations while simultaneously building the joint, combined and interagency teams necessary to operate in a dynamic environment. Dealing with the present is not enough, and the successful leader must also shape the future of the Army to continue to fight and win the nation's wars.

General Gordon R. Sullivan is the President and CEO of the Association of the United States Army a dynamic organization with over 100,000 members that represents Soldiers, families, and the defense industry. GEN Sullivan was commissioned an Armor officer in 1959 from Norwich University. He holds a BA in History from Norwich and an MA in political science from the University of New Hampshire. His professional military education includes the U.S. Army Armor School Basic and Advanced Courses, the Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College. In addition to his many awards on active duty, he is also the recipient of the West Point Association of Graduates Sylvanus Thayer Award and a member of the Sergeants Major Academy's Hall of Honor. General Sullivan retired from the Army on 31 July 1995 after more than 36 years of active service. He culminated his service in uniform as the 32nd Chief of Staff of Staff of the Army. He is the co-author of Hope Is Not a Method (Random House, 1996), which chronicles the enormous challenges encountered in transforming the post-Cold War Army through the lens of proven leadership principles and a commitment to shared values. He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Norwich University and the Marshall Legacy Institute as well as a member of the MITRE Army Advisory Board and a Corporate Member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Commencing in December 1995, Operation Joint Endeavor sought to implement a peace agreement concluding a bloody, ethnically motivated civil war in Bosnia. Over 57,000 NATO Soldiers participated in the year-long operation, which was the first-ever ground operation conducted by NATO and the largest military operation in Europe since World War Two. The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry (Quarterhorse) was one of the first combat units of NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR) to enter Bosnia, where it played a pivotal role in the international effort to mend that nation still smoldering from three and a half years of brutal civil war. Despite the mountainous terrain, bad weather, tens of thousands of land mines, the periodic threat of terrorist attack, and the political imperative to minimize American casualties, Quarterhorse upheld the peace in one of the most challenging parts of the American sector. A useful case study of stability operations during the Age of Interventions (1989-2001), the American experience in Bosnia contributed to the development of military leaders who would go on to lead combat and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.