The period from the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991 to the attacks on the United States by terrorists on 11 September 2001 spanned little more than a decade. American military operations during that time ranged the globe and included peace operations, humanitarian expeditions of various kinds, and counter-drug efforts. Carried out without the coherent framework provided by the Cold War, the missions of the 1990s were many, diverse, and diffuse, characteristics that sometimes created an impression of heavy activity, even overwork. The common thread among these post-Cold War missions, from the intervention in Panama during December 1989 to soldiers and Marines fighting forest fires in the western United States in the summer of 2000, was that they rarely resembled conventional warfare.