The twelve months that spanned the period between the early springtimes of 1991 and 1992 may well turn out to constitute the most important year for American foreign and security policy in half a century. Encasing the dawning of a new and different security era, like macabre parentheses, were two columns of black smoke-that of 1991 over the newly liberated Kuwait, and that of 1992 over the embattled district of South-Central Los Angeles. Within these acrid temporal brackets unfolded a set of developments of utmost significance for American foreign and security policy and for the very meaning of the country's external commitments.