Before proceeding further, an example is useful to focus some of the as yet unknowable consequences of these broader realities, changes, and trends. The deployment of American forces to Bosnia is a reaction to and representation of major shifts occurring in the post-Cold War world. With these shifts, this deployment is suggestive of what may lie ahead for the use, relevance, and design of military force. The legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then, the start of the Cold War, caused the West to adopt policies for containing and deterring the broad threat posed by the Soviet Union and its ideology. Thermonuclear weapons, complemented over time by strong conventional forces, threatened societal damage to Russia. Conventional forces backed by tactical nuclear weapons were later required, in part, to halt a massive Soviet ground attack in Europe and, in part, to provide an alternative to (immediate) use of nuclear weapons. Today, the First Armored Division, the principal American unit serving in Bosnia is, in essence, the same force that fought so well in _Desert Storm_ and, for the bulk of the Cold War along with our other units, had been designed to defend NATO against and then defeat a numerically superior, armored and mechanized Soviet adversary advancing across the plains of Germany. Now these troops, as well as others from both sides of the former Iron Curtain, are engaged in OOTW for which special training, rules of engagement, command arrangements, and other support structures have been put in place at short notice, few of which were even envisaged a few years ago. These are also operations that, because of intense, instantaneous media coverage, can have huge domestic political impact especially if events go wrong. Whether or not this armored division is the most optimally configured force for such an operation is not relevant for the moment even though this unit probably was the most appropriate for this task. However, it is prudent to examine the consequences of changing tasks presaged by Bosnia, in which the enemy is instability rather than an ideological or regional adversary we are trying to contain or defeat and neutrality on our part may be vital to the success of the mission. Do these changes mean that we should alter our traditional approach to the doctrine for and design of forces? If so, how? Are there alternative or more effective ways and means to conduct these peacekeeping-related operations? And, in this evaluation, are there alternative doctrines we should consider to fight wars more effectively as we envisage scenarios under the construct of the MRC?