1988 presidential election
For details see the main article U.S. presidential election, 1988.
Republican President Ronald Reagan's vice-president George H. W. Bush ascended to the presidency, defeating Democratic Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.
The end of the Cold War
In the late 1980s, the regimes of the Eastern European Warsaw Pact were slowly collapsing. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" was a symbol of the fall of Eastern European Communist governments in 1989. By the early 1990s, the Soviet Union itself was on the verge of collaspe. Nationalist agitation in the Baltic States for independence lead to first Lithuania and then the other two states declaring independence from the Soviet Union. On December 26, 1991 the USSR was officially disbanded, breaking up into fifteen constituent parts. The Cold War was over.
In a speech delivered to a joint session of Congress on September 11, 1990, President George Bush declared the emergence of "a new world order... freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony."
During the Cold War, the purported "threat" of communism served to legitimate U.S. hegemony over Western Europe and other capitalist states. With the end of the Cold War, the United States lost the legitimacy that the struggle against communism conferred on U.S. hegemony along with a corresponding degree of leverage over its allies. The United States, however, had grown dependent on its position as the world's dominant power established during the Second World War and the central importance of U.S. hegemony in Europe. This status provided major political and economic benefits; and to perpetuate the role and interests in the international system stated above, the United States has sought to reassert its power through a revitalization of the Cold War institutional structures, especially NATO. These policies later manifested themselves in events such as ending the ethnic conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo, the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the negotiations with North Korea over nuclear weapons, respectively.
To reassert its status in the post-Cold War world, the United States has attempted or been perceived as attempting more or less unilaterally to do the following: pressure other countries to adopt U.S. values and practices regarding neoliberal economic policy and "human rights"; promote U.S. corporate interests under the catchphrases of "free trade" and "open markets"; shape International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies to serve those interests; pressure other countries to adopt economic policies and social policies that will benefit U.S. interests; intervene in local conflicts in which it has little direct interest on the surface; grade countries according to their adherence to U.S. standards on "free markets," "terrorism," "human rights," drugs, and weapons proliferation; enforce U.S. law extraterritorially in other societies; apply sanctions against countries that do not meet U.S. standards on these issues; prevent other countries from acquiring military capabilities that could counter U.S. conventional superiority; promote the interests of U.S. arms producers such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, abroad while attempting to prevent comparable sales by other countries; expand NATO to the borders of the former Soviet Union; force out one United Nations Secretary-General and dictate the appointment of his successor; categorize certain countries as "rogue states," excluding them from international institutions because they refuse to placate U.S. wishes; and undertake military action against Iraq and later maintain harsh economic sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein.1
The Persian Gulf War
For details see the main article Persian Gulf War.
The complete dependence of the industrialized world on oil, much of which resided beneath the surface of Middle Eastern countries, became painfully clear to the U.S. first in the aftermath of the 1973 world oil shock and later in the second energy crisis of 1979. Although in real prices oil fell back to pre-1973 levels through the 1980s, resulting in a windfall for the oil-consuming nations (especially North America, Western Europe, and Japan), the vast reserves of the leading Middle East producers guaranteed the region its strategic importance. By the early 1990s the politics of oil still proved dangerous for all concerned as it did in the early 1970s.
Conflict in the Middle East triggered yet another international crisis on August 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded the neighboring oil kingdom of Kuwait. Leading up to the invasion, Iraq complained to the United States Department of State about Kuwaiti slant drilling. This had continued for years, but now Iraq needed oil revenues to pay off its debts and avert an economic crisis. Saddam ordered troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, creating alarm over the prospect of an invasion. April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq, met with Saddam in an emergency meeting, where the Iraqi president stated his intention to continue talks. Iraq and Kuwait then met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait.
U.S. officials feared that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was then on the verge of armed conflict with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Washington's since the 1940s. U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared that it was 1938 and Munich all over again: if this "Hitler," as Bush called Saddam, succeeded, the world would be pushed back to a state of affairs in which "aggressors" ran rampant.2
The U.S. and Britain, two of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, convinced the Security Council to give Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait. Indeed, for reasons other than Saddam's late invasion of Kuwait, Iraq's stances in the international community had alarmed Western powers. Iraq was the leading country in forming the Arab League similar to the European Economic Community, an alliance of European countries. The intent of the League was that all oil-producing Arab nations would share and work together and plan their own army that would exclude Europeans. Iraq at the time had accumulated a huge foreign debt and was striving to pay off the debts accumulated during the Iraq-Iran War. Perhaps in response, Saddam was pushing oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices and cutback production. Westerners, however, remember the very destabilizing effects of the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.
Saddam, shocked and apparently misled, ignored the deadline, and the Security Concil declared war on Iraq. Both U.S. and British policies were dictated by domestic pressures and interests; and Bush believed that the world's price of oil, and therefore the control of the world's economy, was at stake. The war commenced in January 1991, with U.S. troops forming the majority of "Operation Desert Storm," joined by 33 other countries including Canada and Saudi Arabia. By the time Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait in late February, Iraq had lost an estimated 20,000 troops. Other sources speak of more than 100,000 on Iraqi side.
1992 presidential election
For details see the main article U.S. presidential election, 1992.
Riding high on the success of the Gulf War, Bush enjoyed very high approval ratings for his job as president. However, economic problems dogged Bush, and with the entry of H. Ross Perot into the race, Bush found himself losing a three-way race between himself, independent candidate Perot, and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton. See U.S. presidential election, 1992 for more.
The Clinton administration
Bill Clinton entered office with high expectations from many Americans as a young president, the first of the Baby Boom generation to reach the White House, who had promised to focus on and resolve some of the United States' many domestic issues. Almost immediately, however, he was dogged by controversies over the personal backgrounds of some of his appointees, and by political clashes stemming from his announcement that he would permit homosexuals to serve openly in the U.S. military.
These events in 1993 seemed to set the pattern for a man who would become one of the United States' more divisive Presidents, regarded with great affection by some constituencies, and anything but by others. His 1994 proposal of a national health care system for all Americans, championed by his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, ignited a political firestorm on the right, where it was vigorously opposed on the general principle that government was incompetent and should be shrunk, not expanded. The proposed system did not survive the debate.
Year by year, polarization grew in Washington, D.C., between the President and his adversaries on the right, the Republicans who assumed the majority in the House of Representatives in January 1995 and elected the ideology-driven Newt Gingrich their Speaker. Talk-show commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan and other politicized media outlets amplified the ever-louder quarrels, causing some to speak of a new "Culture War" in U.S. politics. The more extreme right-wing voices, who verged into uncompromising hostility toward the government, were somewhat discredited, however, after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995.
Clinton's terms in office will be remembered in some quarters as a "holiday from history" because of the nation's largely domestic focus during the period. Very large numbers of Americans were mostly ignoring politics in favor of business and personal affairs. The years 1994-2000 witnessed the emergence of a technology-driven "new economy", solid increases in real output, low inflation rates, and a drop in unemployment to below 5%. The Internet and related technologies made their first broad penetrations into the economy at large, prompting a Wall Street technology-stock bubble, which Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan described as "irrational exuberance".
Few seemed to be nervous about events abroad; after the demise of the Soviet Union the United States was militarily dominant, and Japan, sometimes seen as the largest economic rival to the U.S., was caught in a period of stagnation. China was emerging as a foremost trading partner in more and more fields. Localized conflicts such as those in Haiti and the Balkans prompted President Clinton to send in U.S. troops as peacekeepers, which did generate controversy about whether policing the rest of the world was a proper U.S. role. Islamic radicals overseas loudly threatened assaults against the "infidel" U.S. for its ongoing military presence in the Middle East, and even staged the first World Trade Center bombing in New York in 1993, as well as a number of deadly attacks on Americans abroad.
The foreign issue with the most impact on Americans at home was immigration, most of it from Latin America and Asia, which swelled during the 1990s, laying the groundwork for great changes in the demographic makeup of the U.S. population in coming decades.
Along with strong backing from traditional Democrats and liberals, Clinton was also supported by many moderates who appreciated his centrist "New Democrat" policies, which steered away from the more excessive aspects of the 1960s Great Society. For example, welfare reform legislation that he signed into law in 1996 requires welfare recipients to work as a condition of benefits and imposes limits on how long individuals may receive payments. Clinton also pursued tough federal anti-crime and anti-drug policies and called for the hiring of 100,000 new police officers.
Clinton was reelected in 1996, defeating Republican Senator Bob Dole and a weakened and marginal re-run by H. Ross Perot.
Most voters in 1992 and 1996 had been willing to overlook long-standing rumors of extramarital affairs by Clinton, deeming them irrelevant. These matters came to a head, however, in February 1998 when reports surfaced of ongoing sexual relations between Clinton and a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clinton initially and vigrously denied the relationship, but was forced to retract that assertion in August after the Lewinsky matter came under investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who had been looking into various allegations of past misdeeds by Clinton for several years. Since Clinton's denials had extended to a deposition before Starr's office, impeachment proceedings began in the House against the President on charges of perjury.
Clinton was impeached in the House of Representatives, but not convicted at his trial by the U.S. Senate, and a scandal-weary and embarrassed U.S. public seemed largely satisfied to have the matter closed.
The George W. Bush administration
Though his election had been the focus of intense controversy, George W. Bush was sworn in as President on January 20, 2001 after the U.S. Supreme Court decided the electoral legal issues in his favor. The first eight months of his term in office were relatively uneventful; however, it had become clear by that time that the economic boom of the 1990s was at an end. The year 2001 witnessed the end of the boom psychology and performance, with output increasing only 0.3% and unemployment and business failures rising substantially. President Bush approved a large federal tax cut with the intent of revitalizing the economy.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four airliners and flew two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, destroying both towers and taking just under 3000 lives. The fourth plane crashed in southern Pennsylvania, evidently after the passengers fought back and forced the terrorists to crash the plane. The immense shock, grief and anger brought on by the attacks profoundly altered the national mood; President Bush declared that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network were the culprits and announced a war on terror.
The war on terror took two fronts. At home, Congress approved several measures to protect against future attacks, including creating the Department of Homeland Security and passing the USA PATRIOT Act, which civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have criticized. The immediate military response was an invasion of Afghanistan, targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban government that supported and sheltered them. The U.S. was joined by a coalition which included forces from more than a dozen countries, and was successful in removing the Taliban from power, although fighting continues between the coalition and Afghans of various factions.
The response to the terrorist attacks showed the remarkable resilience of the economy. In 2002, the GDP growth rate rose to 2.8%. A major short-term problem in the first half of 2002 was a sharp decline in the stock market, fueled in part by the exposure of dubious accounting practices in some major corporations. Another economic problem that continues to the present time is unemployment, which has experienced the longest period of monthly increase since the Great Depression. The robustness of the market, combined with the unemployment rate, led economists to refer to the situation as a "jobless recovery."
War on Iraq
In his State of the Union address in January 2002, President Bush called Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "axis of evil," accusing them of supporting terrorism and seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As the year went on, it became clear that the Bush administration was planning on an invasion of Iraq, on the grounds that Saddam Hussein supported terrorism, had violated the 1991 U.N.-imposed ceasefire, and possessed biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, among other charges.[1]
Many longtime allies of the U.S., including France, Germany, and Canada, as well as millions of people within the U.S. and around the world, did not believe that the evidence for the President's accusations was well-founded enough to justify a full-scale invasion, especially as military personnel were still needed in Afghanistan. The United Nations Security Council did not approve of the invasion, and the U.S. therefore provided most of the forces in the invasion of Iraq. With the support of a coalition whose major partners included the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy, Iraq was invaded on March 20, 2003.
After six weeks of combat between the coalition and the Iraqi army, the invading forces had secured control of many key regions; Saddam had fled his palace, his regime clearly over; and on May 1, Bush declared, under a sign reading "mission accomplished," that major ground operations were at an end.
Nevertheless, the fighting continued and escalated through the 2004 U.S. national elections. At first, it was not clear whether the Iraqi resistance was made up primarily of al-Qaida sympathizers and former members of Saddam's military who remained loyal to him, or whether the invasion had ignited anti-Americanism and inspired movements opposed to being occupied by an invading force. It now appears that most of the resistance is from the former group. Saddam Hussein's sons Qusay and Uday were killed by U.S. forces; Saddam himself was captured in December 2003 and taken into custody.
With casualties increasing and the cost of the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq estimated at over $200 billion, the war has lost about one-third of its supporters in the U.S. since the end of major operations was announced. Recent polls suggest that international displeasure with the United States is at an all-time high, with a majority of people in Europe believing that the country is too powerful and acts mainly in self-interest, and a vast majority in predominantly Muslim nations believing that the United States is arrogant, belligerent, or hateful to Islam. [2]
George W. Bush was re-elected in November 2004, winning 51% of the popular vote.
Notes
1 Samuel Huntington. 'The Lonely Superpower," Foreign Affairs, March/April 1999, 37-8.
2 The origins of conflict between Kuwait and Iraq, however, were far more complex and lay in the Iran-Iraq War. Iraq had been left bankrupt by the war against Iran, which Saddam felt had positioned Iraq as a bulwark against the expansion of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Faced with rebuilding its infrastructure destroyed in the war, Iraq needed money. Although Iraq had borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states, including Kuwait, during the 1980s to fight its war with Iran, no country would lend it money except the United States, which left Saddam's regime a virtual client state of the U.S. Saddam felt that the war had been fought for the benefit of the other Gulf Arab states and even the United States and argued that all debts should be forgiven. Kuwait, however, did not forgive its debt and further provoked Iraq by slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered within its disputed border with Kuwait.