Creative Execution: What Great Leaders Do to Unleash Bold Thinking and Innovation

Chapter 4

From Desert Storm to Iraqi Freedom

The great duel, the mother of all battles, has begun.

—Saddam Hussein, January 1991

Between World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the United States firmly established itself as the world’s leading military and economic superpower, in the process taking Creative Execution to new heights. In its direct and indirect confrontations with the Soviet Union, as with the implementation of the Marshall Plan in 1947, the Berlin Crisis of 1948, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the moon landing in 1969, the United States consistently demonstrated that its creative spine was stronger and more flexible than that of the ossified Soviet regime. In each case, the United States found creative ...