Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:22, 21 July 2005

This article is part of a series on the
History of the United States
Timeline and periods Prehistoric and Pre-Columbian Era until 1607 Colonial Era 1607–1765 1776–1789     American Revolution 1765–1783     Confederation period 1783–1788 1789–1815     Federalist Era 1788–1801     Jeffersonian Era 1801–1817 1815–1849     Era of Good Feelings 1817–1825     Jacksonian Era 1825–1849 1849–1865     Civil War Era 1849–1865 1865–1917     Reconstruction Era 1865–1877     Gilded Age 1877–1896     Progressive Era 1896–1917 1917–1945     World War I 1917–1918     Roaring Twenties 1918–1929     Great Depression 1929–1941     World War II 1941–1945 1945–1964     Post-World War II Era 1945–1964     Civil Rights Era 1954–1968 1964–1980     Civil Rights Era 1954–1968     Vietnam War 1964–1975 1980–1991     Reagan Era 1981–1991 1991–2008     Post-Cold War Era 1991–2008 2008–present     Modern Era 2008–present
Topics American Century Antisemitism Civil unrest Racial violence Cultural Cinema Music Newspapers Sports Demography Immigration Economy Banking Education Higher education Flag Government Abortion Capital punishment Civil rights Corruption The Constitution Debt ceiling Direct democracy Foreign policy Law enforcement Postal service Taxation Voting rights Journalism Maritime Military Army Marine Corps Navy Air Force Space Force Coast Guard Party Systems First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Religion Social class Slavery Sexual slavery Technology and industry Agriculture Labor Lumber Medicine Railway
Groups African American Asian American Chinese American Filipino American Indian American Japanese American Korean American Thai American Vietnamese American European American Albanian American English American Estonian American Finnish American German American Irish American Italian American Lithuanian American Polish American Serbian American Hispanic and Latino American Mexican American Jewish American Middle Eastern American Egyptian American Iranian American Iraqi American Lebanese American Palestinian American Saudi American Native Americans Cherokee Comanche Women LGBTQ Gay men Lesbians Transgender people
Places Territorial evolution Admission to the Union Historic regions American frontier Manifest destiny Indian removal Regions New England The South The West Coast States AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY Territories DC AS GU MP PR VI Cities Urban history Cities
Outline List of years Historiography Category Portal
v t e

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, handily defeating Democratic Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.

The end of the Cold War

During the Cold War, the division of the world into two rival blocs served to legitimate a broad and diffuse alliance not only with the Western European nations of NATO but many countries in the developing world. Starting in the late 1980s, however, the regimes of the Eastern European Warsaw Pact began to collapse in rapid succession. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" was seen as a symbol of the fall of the Eastern European Communist governments in 1989. U.S.-Soviet relations had greatly improved in the latter half of the decade, with the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987 and the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan as well as Cuban forces from Angola.

These developments undercut the rationale for providing unconditional support to such repressive governments as those in Chile and South Korea, which underwent processes of democratization with U.S. support during the same period as those of Warsaw Pact nations. Some U.S. commentators believed that this warming of relations between the two greatest powers of the Cold War should lead to a "peace dividend" where U.S. military spending would be drastically reduced. This argument was essentially lost in the political debate with the onset of the Gulf War. Instead, President George H. W. Bush argued for 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."

Nationalist agitation in the Baltic States for independence lead to first Lithuania and then the other two states, Estonia and Latvia, 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, and the vacuum left by the collapse of governments such as in Yugoslavia and Somalia revealed or reopened other animosities concealed by decades of authoritarian rule. While there was a certain reticence among the U.S. public, and even within the government, to get involved in localized conflicts in which there was little or no direct U.S. interest at stake, these crises served as a basis for the renewal of Western alliances while communism was becoming less relevant. To this effect, President Bill Clinton would declare in his inaugural address: "Today, as an old order passes, the new world is more free but less stable. Communism's collapse has called forth old animosities and new dangers. Clearly America must continue to lead the world we did so much to make."

In this sense, since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has sought to revitalize Cold War institutional structures, especially NATO, and through promoting U.S.-backed economic reforms around the globe through multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. NATO was set to expand initially to Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic and has since moved further eastward. In addition, U.S. policy placed a special emphasis on the neoliberal "Washington Consensus," manifesting in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which went into effect in 1994.

The U.S. often made unilateral moves to economically sanction countries which were said to be sponsoring terrorism, engaging in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or engaging in human rights abuses. There was sometimes a consensus for such moves, such as with the U.S. and European embargoes on arms sales to China after its violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, as well as the UN Security Council's imposition of sanctions on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. Support for some other sanctions, such as the ones levied on Iran and Cuba, were limited, and measures were imposed by Congress to punish foreign companies which violated the terms of the U.S.'s own laws.

According to Samuel P. Huntington, to reinforce its status in the post-Cold War world, "the United States has, among other things, attempted or been perceived as attempting more or less unilaterally to do the following: pressure other countries to adopt American values and practices regarding human rights and democracy; prevent other countries from acquiring military capabilities that could counter American conventional superiority; enforce American law extraterritorially in other societies; grade countries according to their adherence to American standards on human rights, drugs, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, missile proliferation, and now religious freedom; apply sanctions against countries that do not meet American standards on these issues; promote American corporate interests under the slogans of free trade and open markets; shape World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies to serve those same corporate interests; intervene in local conflicts in which it has relatively little direct interest; bludgeon other countries to adopt economic policies and social policies that will benefit American economic interests; promote American arms sales abroad while attempting to prevent comparable sales by other countries; force out one U.N. secretary-general and dictate the appointment of his successor; expand NATO initially to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and no one else; undertake military action against Iraq and later maintain harsh economic sanctions against the regime; and categorize certain countries as 'rogue states,' excluding them from global institutions because they refuse to kowtow to American wishes."

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 and attempted to annex neighboring Kuwait as its nineteenth province. 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. The Western world condemned the invasion as an act of aggression; U.S. President George H.W. Bush compared Saddam to Hitler and declared that if the United States and international community did not act, aggression would be encouraged elsewhere in the world.

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. The Western world was determined to not let the Kuwaiti oil supply fall under the control of Saddam, fearing it would have a dire impact on the global economy. 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, remembered the very destabilizing effects of the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.

Saddam ignored the deadline, and the Security Council declared war on Iraq. The war commenced in January 1991, with U.S. troops forming the majority of the coalition which participated in Operation Desert Storm. By the time Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait in late February, Iraq had lost an estimated 20,000 troops, with some sources speaking of as many as 100,000 casualties on the Iraqi side.

U.S. history, 1991-2000

1992 presidential election

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.

The Clinton administration and the Republican Congress

Clinton entered office as one of the youngest presidents in U.S. history and the first of the Baby Boom generation to reach the White House. Promising to focus on and resolve some of the United States' many domestic issues, he entered office with high expectations in some quarters, despite his low showing in the 1992 popular vote. 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, and anything but by others. His 1994 proposal of a national health care system, 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 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 Newt Gingrich their Speaker. There was a surge in the market of new media outlets which gave more voice to the right. Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show was a spectacular success and a major influence in the GOP legislative victory. The Weekly Standard was formed in 1995 and after the election of George W. Bush would advertise itself as the most read publication in the White House. These new media amplified the ever-louder quarrels, causing some to speak of a new 'culture war' in U.S. politics. The more extreme right-wing voices which verged into uncompromising hostility toward the government, particularly after the botched ATF raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, were somewhat discredited, however, after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 by Timothy McVeigh.

Along with strong backing from traditional Democrats and liberals, Clinton was able to garner the support of moderates who appreciated his centrist "New Democrat" policies, which steered away from the expansion of government services of the New Deal and Great Society and allowed him to "triangulate", taking away many of the Republicans' top issues. Examples of such compromises were a welfare reform legislation signed into law in 1996, which required welfare recipients to work as a condition of benefits and imposed limits on how long individuals may receive payments. Clinton also pursued tough federal "anti-crime", steering more federal dollars toward the "war on drugs", and calling 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.

Many 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; "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." His wife Hillary described the allegations as fraudulent smears dredged up by a "vast, right-wing conspiracy." Clinton was later forced to retract his assertions 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.

Globalization and the "new economy"

Clinton's terms in office will be remembered in some quarters for 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 what many commentators called a technology-driven "new economy," and relatively high increases in real output, low inflation rates, and a drop in unemployment to below five percent. 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."

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 generated controversy about whether policing the rest of the world was a proper U.S. role. Islamic radicals overseas loudly threatened assaults against the 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 U.S. interests abroad.

Immigration, most of it from Latin America and Asia swelled during the 1990s, laying the groundwork for great changes in the demographic makeup of the U.S. population in coming decades, such as Hispanics replacing African-Americans as the largest minority.

The George W. Bush administration

Though his election had been the focus of intense controversy which led eventually to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore where the court ruled 5-4 in the former's favor, George W. Bush was sworn in as President on January 20, 2001. 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 was plagued by a nine-month recession, witnessing 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, four airliners were hijacked; two of them were flown 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 3,000 lives. The fourth plane crashed in southern Pennsylvania after some passengers fought back and provoked the piloting hijackers to crash. 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."

Congress approved several measures to protect against future attacks, including creating the Department of Homeland Security and passing the USA PATRIOT Act, which was criticized by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. The administration's military response was to invade Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, 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.

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 was unemployment, which experienced the longest period of monthly increase since the Great Depression. The robustness of the market, combined with the unemployment rate, led some economists and politicians to refer to the situation as a "jobless recovery."

War in 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. The Bush administration began making a public case for 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.

Some important allies of the U.S., including France, Germany, and Canada, 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, Australia, Poland, 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; on May 1, Bush declared, under a sign reading "mission accomplished," that major ground operations were at an end. Nevertheless, fighting with the Iraqi insurgency continued and escalated through the 2004 U.S. national elections. 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.

George W. Bush was re-elected in November 2004, winning over Democratic contender John Kerry in an electoral vote. Bush achieved 51% of the popular vote.

Notes

Sentence taken from Samuel Huntington. 'The Lonely Superpower," Foreign Affairs, March/April 1999, 37-8.

• History of the United States