In Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, the United States and its coalition allies unleashed massive land, air, and sea power. It was over in a matter of weeks. The contrast between the United States’ grueling and unsuccessful war in Vietnam and the Soviet Union’s in Afghanistan could not have been more stark, and the speedy victory even led to talk of a new era of warfare—a so-called revolution in military affairs. From now on, the theory went,