L'armée américaine après l'Irak

Abstract

The American counterinsurgency in Iraq represents a watershed for the United States military. Quite unlike the operations for which it had prepared itself since Vietnam, and in some ways counter to the ways in which it had understood war in those years, it has put tremendous pressure on the institutions of the Army, in particular. Its initial missteps reflected the disjunction between how the Army saw itself, and what its tasks really were. But to a remarkable degree the Army has adapted to its mission in Iraq, aided by the vast store of experience accumulated during the 1990’s, and by certain innate qualities of professionalism and pragmatism. As of this writing, at any rate, it remains a formidable, and on the whole healthy, institution.