Once committed to actual combat, anything less than overwhelming and rapid military success for the intervening power will be diplomatically disastrous.
That's how young army captain Wesley Clark urged that war be waged in his 1975 thesis on "Military Contingency Operations: The Lessons of Political-Military Coordination." Back then, he was a student at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Today, the four-star general is NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, based in Belgium. He's running a much different war than the one he advocated a generation ago. It is a war of contrasts, one that pits the...