After a decade of counterinsurgency operations, the 1999 Kosovo air war is a distant memory. Unlike the grueling, ground force–centric wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Operation Allied Force was a case study in coercion conducted at a safe distance to achieve limited ends using limited means. Despite flawed assumptions and the friction of a coalition operation, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) achieved its objectives at a reasonable cost and without combat fatalities. The NATO intervention reversed ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and helped set conditions for bringing democracy to Serbia

After a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama Administration has adopted a new defense strategy that recognizes the need to limit our strategic ends in an era of increasing limits on our military means. The strategy calls for armed forces capable of conducting a broad range of missions, in a full range of contingencies, and in a global context that is increasingly complex. It calls for doing so with a smaller defense budget. Opportunities for savings come from reducing the ability to fight two regional conflicts simultaneously and from not sizing the force to conduct prolonged, large-scale stability operations.