Research for 1991

In the 15-year period of 1977 through 1991, U.S. military forces responded to international crises or incidents in 83 cases. This information memorandum presents key findings from historical data in three studies on U.S. military activity since World War II. It examines the questions of whether there is a baseline global demand for U.S. crisis response activity and what impact the Soviet collapse had on the level of U.S. activity. More specifically, the memorandum discusses the role of naval forces in U.S. crisis response activity, focusing on the steady frequency of naval responses over time, the important role played by carriers and the Marine Corps in those responses, the participation of naval forces in all cases involving terrorism, and the increasing concentration of naval crisis response activity in the Middle East during the 1980s.