In April 1982, Argentine forces invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, a British territory in the deep South Atlantic in the most stunning rebuke to British self-esteem since the Suez fiasco.

Though she moved quickly to launch a military taskforce to wage war if necessary and ensure the return of the islands, Margaret Thatcher, Britain's prime minister, faced long odds. At home and abroad, wise heads shook in uncomprehending dismay at the challenge the British faced. Assemble a force that would sail 8,000 miles from home and recapture the islands from a rapidly entrenching Argentine occupation force? High-risk to the point of nearly impossible, they mused. Casualties would be intolerable; victory was improbable; the long-term injury would be far greater than the humiliating insult inflicted by the Argentines.

In June, after a five-week ground campaign, British forces completely overran the bewildered Argentine occupiers. For good measure, the brilliantly executed campaign ensured the collapse of one of the nastiest military dictatorships in Latin America and ushered in a transfer to democracy.

Eight years later, when a vast Iraqi army invaded Kuwait, George Bush, the US president, vowed that the affront to global peace and international law "would not stand". But as he began to assemble the military forces necessary to reverse it, the chorus from domestic and international critics grew louder. Send half a million Americans to an inhospitable land to fight an entrenched desert army led by the fearsome Republican Guards? The American people would never accept the casualties and the US would either confront another Vietnam or face a humiliating reversal.

After a 30-day air campaign and a four-day march that turned into one of the most one-sided routs in military history, the Americans and their allies expelled the Iraqis, recaptured Kuwait and restored the superpower's elan.

Nine years later, Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, ordered Serb forces systematically to crush Kosovo Albanians and eject them from the province. President Bill Clinton promised to stop the aggression and, without committing ground troops, to force Mr Milosevic back. The critics at home and abroad were derisive. Air power alone could not force the Serbs out, they said. And in a ground war, US forces would get bogged down in the ferocious Balkan geography that had once conquered even the Nazis. Nato's credibility would be destroyed.

Seventy days after an air campaign, the Yugoslavs capitulated. Serb forces were removed from the province and, for good measure, Mr Milosevic now contemplates his tyranny from a cell in the Netherlands.

You might think that after this 100 per cent record of success in the three largest engagements involving the western powers in the past 20 years the critics might at least pause before predicting disaster for the US as it embarks on its war against terrorism in the wake of last week's devastation.

But around the world the experts, sceptics and outright anti-Americans are massing to warn that the US will never succeed in a fight with the people who committed atrocities in New York and Washington.

While expressing public support for the US in its grief, a growing number of critics in Europe and elsewhere - pundits and politicians - are anxious to distance themselves from whatever Washington may do. A campaign against the terrorist networks, they say, is unwinnable: it will stoke even more fundamentalist fervour and will leave the Middle East aflame.

I am not suggesting, for even an instant, that the battles that are about to be fought are going to be like those big engagements of the past two decades. There are, as has been tirelessly pointed out, no territorial acquisitions to be reversed, no enemy troops to be targeted, no surrender terms to be negotiated.

And if it was obvious that the US was either going to lob a few cruise missiles at some forlorn mountain in Afghanistan or, still worse, attempt to repeat the disastrous history of foreign armies on Afghan soil, the sceptics would have a point. But the principal lesson of these past successful engagements is that wars, even difficult ones, can be won with the establishment of objectives that are clear, obtainable and, above all, can plausibly be said to reverse the wrong that has been committed by the aggressor.

Talk of a war to end terrorism - or even "to rid the world of evil-doers", as President George W. Bush ill-advisedly put it last week - is not helpful. But the focused deliberation the administration is undertaking, with its allies, is not going to result in an attempt at such amorphous or impossible goals. A targeted campaign, using all the awesome means at America's disposal, to punish those responsible, weaken their networks and deter them and others from repeating acts of terrorism will not eliminate the threat. But it will significantly reduce it. And properly handled, it can be done without fracturing the coalition that is gradually being constructed to deal with the threat.

In any case, there is something else America's critics should consider before they urge the US not to strike. What else do they really expect Mr Bush and his administration to do?

After the most nihilist piece of terrorism in history, the most destructive and deadly act of aggression against the American people in 200 years, does anyone really believe the US should content itself with some stern language at the United Nations, a couple of extradition requests and a few billion dollars for some state-of-the-art metal detectors? Not to repay those who would rain bloody anarchy on the world would condemn the world to be ruled by it.

gerard.baker@ft.com