During the Cold War, the risk of local conflict escalating into nuclear showdown dampened the appeal of military intervention as a tool of U.S. statecraft. Perhaps more importantly, air power was a relatively blunt instrument until the operational maturation of stealth and precision-strike technologies. Before the Gulf War of 1991, air power had not demonstrated the "fidelity" needed to perform nuanced attacks against transitory, difficult-to-reach targets—it lacked the ability to produce decisive political effects short of total war. However, the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise in aerospace capabilities engendered by the technology revolution made no-fly zones viable in both political and military contexts.