The Iron Curtain fell over a quarter of a century ago. With it fell also the relatively straightforward Western assumption that war was going to be a bi-polar, symmetrical affair, albeit one with nuclear overtones - an assumption around which the training and education of military officers had hitherto been built. The immediate post Cold War period showed officers wearing a blue, rather than a green helmet, negotiating with opponents whom they ought not to call enemies and keeping the peace in situations where there was no peace to keep. Added to this was the phenomenon of international...