THE NEW CONSERVATISM AND A NEW WORLD ORDER (1981-1992)

1. Reagan presidency (1981-1988)

A. General information about the period - Ronald Reagan produced a major realignment with his 1980 and 1984 landslide elections. Reagan's economic policies (dubbed "Reaganomics") and the implementation of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% over the course of seven years. Reagan continued to downsize government taxation and regulation. The US experienced a recession in 1982, but the negative indicators reversed, with the inflation rate decreasing from 11% to 2%, the unemployment rate decreasing from 10.8% in December 1982 to 7.5% in November 1984, and the economic growth rate increasing from 4.5% to 7.2%.

Reagan ordered a buildup of the US military, incurring additional budget deficits. Reagan introduced a complicated missile defense system known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (dubbed "Star Wars" by opponents) in which, theoretically, the U.S. could shoot down missiles with laser systems in space. The Soviets reacted harshly because they thought it violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and would upset the balance of power by giving the U.S. a major military advantage. For years Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev argued vehemently against SDI. However, by the late 1980s he decided the system would never work and should not be used to block disarmament deals with the U.S. Historians argue how great an impact the SDI threat had on the Soviets – whether it was enough to force Gorbachev to initiate radical reforms, or whether the deterioration of the Soviet economy alone forced the reforms. There is agreement that the Soviets realized they were well behind the Americans in military technology, that to try to catch up would be very expensive, and that the military expenses were already a very heavy burden slowing down their economy.

Reagan's Invasion of Grenada and bombing of Libya were popular in the US, though his backing of the Contras rebels was mired in the controversy over the Iran–Contra affair that revealed Reagan's poor management style.

Reagan met four times with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who ascended to power in 1985, and their summit conferences led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Gorbachev tried to save Communism in the Soviet Union first by ending the expensive arms race with America, then by shedding the East European empire in 1989. The Soviet Union collapsed on Christmas Day 1991, ending the US–Soviet Cold War.

The GOP expanded its base throughout the South after 1968 (excepting 1976), largely due to its strength among socially conservative white Evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Roman Catholics, added to its traditional strength in the business community and suburbs. As white Democrats in the South lost dominance of the Democratic Party in the 1990s, the region took on the two-party apparatus which characterized most of the nation. The Republican Party's central leader by 1980 was Ronald Reagan, whose conservative policies called for reduced government spending and regulation, lower taxes, and a strong anti-Soviet foreign policy. His iconic status in the party persists into the 21st century, as practically all GOP leaders acknowledge his stature. Social scientists Theodore Caplow et al. argue, "The Republican party, nationally, moved from right-center toward the center in 1940s and 1950s, then moved right again in the 1970s and 1980s." They add: "The Democratic party, nationally, moved from left-center toward the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved further toward the right-center in the 1970s and 1980s."

B. A society in transition - shifts in the structure of Ameri­can society, begun years or even de­cades earlier, had become apparent by the time the 1980s arrived. The composition of the population and the most important jobs and skills in American society had undergone major changes.

The dominance of service jobs in the economy became undeniable. By the mid-1980s, nearly three-fourths of all employees worked in the ser­vice sector, for instance, as retail clerks, office workers, teachers, phy­sicians, and government employees. 

Service-sector activity benefited from the availability and increased use of the computer. The informa­tion age arrived, with hardware and software that could aggregate previ­ously unimagined amounts of data about economic and social trends. The federal government had made significant investments in computer technology in the 1950s and 1960s for its military and space programs. 

In 1976, two young California en­trepreneurs, working out of a garage, assembled the first widely marketed computer for home use, named it the Apple, and ignited a revolution. By the early 1980s, millions of mi­crocomputers had found their way into U.S. businesses and homes, and in 1982, Time magazine dubbed the computer its “Machine of the Year.” 

Meanwhile, America’s “smoke­stack industries” were in decline. The U.S.automobile industry reeled under competition from highly efficient Japanese carmakers. By 1980 Japanese companies already manu­factured a fifth of the vehicles sold in the United States. American manufacturers struggled with some success to match the cost efficien­cies and engineering standards of their Japanese rivals, but their for­mer dominance of the domestic car market was gone forever. The gi­ant old-line steel companies shrank to relative insignificance as foreign steel makers adopted new technolo­gies more readily.

Consumers were the beneficiaries of this ferocious competition in the manufacturing industries, but the painful struggle to cut costs meant the permanent loss of hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs. Those who could made the switch to the service sector; others became unfor­tunate statistics.

Population patterns shifted as well. After the end of the postwar “baby boom” (1946 to 1964), the overall rate of population growth declined and the population grew older. Household composition also changed. In 1980 the percentage of family households dropped; a quar­ter of all groups were now classi­fied as “nonfamily households,” in which two or more unrelated per­sons lived together.

New immigrants changed the character of American society in other ways. The 1965 reform in im­migration policy shifted the focus away from Western Europe, facilitat­ing a dramatic increase in new arriv­als from Asia and Latin America. In ­ 1980, 808,000 immigrants arrived, the highest number in 60 years, as the country once more became a haven for people from around the world.

Additional groups became active participants in the struggle for equal opportunity. Homosexuals, using the tactics and rhetoric of the civil rights movement, depicted them­selves as an oppressed group seeking recognition of basic rights. In 1975, the U.S.Civil Service Commission lifted its ban on employment of ho­mosexuals. Many states enacted an­ti-discrimination laws.

Then, in 1981, came the discov­ery of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Transmitted sexually or through blood transfu­sions, it struck homosexual men and intravenous drug users with par­ticular virulence, although the gen­eral population proved vulnerable as well. By 1992, over 220,000 Ameri­cans had died of AIDS. The AIDS ep­idemic has by no means been limited to the United States, and the effort to treat the disease now encompasses physicians and medical researchers throughout the world.

C. Conservatism and the rise of Ronald Reagan

For many Americans, the eco­nomic, social, and political trends of the previous two decades — crime and racial polarization in many ur­ban centers, challenges to traditional values, the economic downturn and inflation of the Carter years — en­gendered a mood of disillusionment. It also strengthened a renewed sus­picion of government and its ability to deal effectively with the country’s social and political problems.

Conservatives, long out of power at the national level, were well po­sitioned politically in the context of this new mood. Many Americans were receptive to their message of limited government, strong national defense, and the protection of tradi­tional values.

This conservative upsurge had many sources. A large group of fun­damentalist Christians were partic­ularly concerned about crime and sexual immorality. They hoped to return religion or the moral precepts often associated with it to a central place in American life. One of the most politically effective groups in the early 1980s, the Moral Majority, was led by a Baptist minister, Jerry Falwell. Another, led by the Reverend Pat Robertson, built an organization, the Christian Coalition, that by the 1990s was a significant force in the Republican Party. Using television to spread their messages, Falwell, Rob­ertson, and others like them devel­oped substantial followings.

Another galvanizing issue for conservatives was divisive and emo­tional: abortion. Opposition to the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, which upheld a woman’s right to an abortion in the early months of pregnancy, brought together a wide array of organizations and individ­uals. They included, but were not limited to, Catholics, political con­servatives, and religious evan­gelicals most of whom regarded abortion under virtually any cir­cumstances as tantamount to mur­der. Pro-choice and pro-life (that is, pro- and anti-abortion rights) dem­onstrations became a fixture of the political landscape.

Within the Republican Party, the conservative wing grew dominant once again. They had briefly seized control of the Republican Party in 1964 with its presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, then faded from the spotlight. By 1980, however, with the apparent failure of liberalism un­der Carter, a “New Right” was poised to return to dominance.

Using modern direct mail tech­niques as well as the power of mass communications to spread their message and raise funds, drawing on the ideas of conservatives like econ­omist Milton Friedman, journalists William F. Buckley and George Will, and research institutions like the Heritage Foundation, the New Right played a significant role in defining the issues of the 1980s.

The “Old” Goldwater Right had favored strict limits on government intervention in the economy. This tendency was reinforced by a signifi­cant group of “New Right” “liber­tarian conservatives” who distrusted government in general and opposed state interference in personal behav­ior. But the New Right also encom­passed a stronger, often evangelical faction determined to wield state power to encourage its views. The New Right favored tough measures against crime, a strong national de­ fense, a constitutional amendment to permit prayer in public schools, and opposition to abortion.

The figure that drew all these disparate strands together was Ron­ald Reagan. Reagan, born in Illi­nois, achieved stardom as an actor in Hollywood movies and television before turning to politics. He first achieved political prominence with a nationwide televised speech in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater. In 1966 Reagan won the governorship of California and served until 1975. He narrowly missed winning the Re­publican nomination for president in 1976 before succeeding in 1980 and going on to win the presidency from the incumbent, Jimmy Carter.

President Reagan’s unflagging optimism and his ability to celebrate the achievements and aspirations of the American people persisted throughout his two terms in office. He was a figure of reassurance and stability for many Americans. Whol­ly at ease before the microphone and the television camera, Reagan was called the “Great Communicator.”

Taking a phrase from the 17th-century Puritan John Winthrop, he told the nation that the United States was a “shining city on a hill,” invest­ed with a God-given mission to de­fend the world against the spread of Communist totalitarianism.

Reagan believed that government intruded too deeply into American life. He wanted to cut programs he contended the country did not need, and to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Reagan accelerated the program of deregulation begun by Jimmy Carter. He sought to abol­ish many regulations affecting the consumer, the workplace, and the environment. These, he argued, were inefficient, expensive, and detrimen­tal to economic growth.

Reagan also reflected the belief held by many conservatives that the law should be strictly applied against violators. Shortly after becoming president, he faced a nationwide strike by U.S.air transportation controllers. Although the job action was forbidden by law, such strikes had been widely tolerated in the past. When the air controllers refused to return to work, he ordered them all fired. Over the next few years the system was rebuilt with new hires.

D. The Economy in the 1980s and the "Reagan Revolution" - president Reagan’s domestic pro­gram was rooted in his belief that the nation would prosper if the power of the private economic sector was un­leashed. The guiding theory behind it, “supply side” economics, held that a greater supply of goods and services, made possible by measures to increase business investment, was the swiftest road to economic growth. Accordingly, the Reagan administration argued that a large tax cut would increase capital in­vestment and corporate earnings, so that even lower taxes on these larger earnings would increase gov­ernment revenues.

Despite only a slim Republican majority in the Senate and a House of Representatives controlled by the Democrats, President Reagan suc­ceeded during his first year in office in enacting the major components of his economic program, including a 25-percent tax cut for individu­als to be phased in over three years. The administration also sought and won significant increases in defense spending to modernize the nation’s military and counter what it felt was a continual and growing threat from the Soviet Union.

Under Paul Volcker, the Federal Reserve’s draconian increases in in­terest rates squeezed the runaway inflation that had begun in the late 1970s. The recession hit bottom in 1982, with the prime interest rates approaching 20 percent and the economy falling sharply. That year, real gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 2 percent; the unemployment rate rose to nearly 10 percent, and almost one-third of America’s indus­trial plants lay idle. Throughout the Midwest, major firms like General Electric and International Harvester released workers. Stubbornly high petroleum prices contributed to the decline. Economic rivals like Ger­many and Japan won a greater share of world trade, and U.S. consump­tion of goods from other countries rose sharply.

Farmers also suffered hard times. During the 1970s, American farm­ers had helped India, China, the Soviet Union, and other countries suffering from crop shortages, and had borrowed heavily to buy land and increase production. But the rise in oil prices pushed up costs, and a worldwide economic slump in 1980 reduced the demand for agri­cultural products. Their numbers declined, as production increasingly became concentrated in large opera­tions. Those small farmers who sur­vived had major difficulties making ends meet.

The increased military budget — combined with the tax cuts and the growth in government health spend­ing — resulted in the federal gov­ernment spending far more than it received in revenues each year. Some analysts charged that the deficits were part of a deliberate adminis­tration strategy to prevent further increases in domestic spending sought by the Democrats. However, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress refused to cut such spend­ing. From $74,000-million in 1980, the deficit soared to $221,000-mil­lion in 1986 before falling back to $150,000-million in 1987.

The deep recession of the early 1980s successfully curbed the run­away inflation that had started dur­ing the Carter years. Fuel prices, moreover, fell sharply, with at least part of the drop attributable to Rea­gan’s decision to abolish controls on the pricing and allocation of gasoline. Conditions began to im­prove in late 1983. By early 1984, the economy had rebounded. By the fall of 1984, the recovery was well along, allowing Reagan to run for re-election on the slogan, “It’s morning again in America.” He de­feated his Democratic opponent,  former Senator and Vice President Walter Mondale, by an overwhelm­ing margin.

The United States entered one of the longest periods of sustained economic growth since World War II. Consumer spending increased in response to the federal tax cut. The stock market climbed as it reflected the optimistic buying spree. Over a five-year period following the start of the recovery, gross national prod­uct grew at an annual rate of 4.2 percent. The annual inflation rate remained between 3 and 5 percent from 1983 to 1987, except in 1986 when it fell to just under 2 percent, the lowest level in decades. The na­tion’s GNP grew substantially dur­ing the 1980s; from 1982 to 1987, its economy created more than 13 mil­lion new jobs.

Steadfast in his commitment to lower taxes, Reagan signed the most sweeping federal tax-reform measure in 75 years during his sec­ond term.This measure, which had widespread Democratic as well as Republican support, lowered income tax rates, simplified tax brackets, and closed loopholes.

However, a significant percentage of this growth was based on defi­cit spending. Moreover, the national debt, far from being stabilized by strong economic growth, nearly tri­pled. Much of the growth occurred in skilled service and technical ar­eas. Many poor and middle-class families did less well. The adminis­tration, although an advocate of free trade, pressured Japan to agree to a voluntary quota on its automobile exports to the United States.

The economy was jolted on Octo­ber 19, 1987, “Black Monday,” when the stock market suffered the great­est one-day crash in its history, 22.6 percent. The causes of the crash in­cluded the large U.S. international trade and federal-budget deficits, the high level of corporate and personal debt, and new computerized stock trading techniques that allowed in­stantaneous selling of stocks and fu­tures. Despite the memories of 1929 it evoked, however, the crash was a transitory event with little impact. In fact, economic growth continued, with the unemployment rate drop­ping to a 14-year low of 5.2 percent in June 1988.

E. Foreign affairs - in foreign policy, Reagan sought a more assertive role for the nation, and Central America provided an early test. The United States pro­vided El Salvador with a program of economic aid and military training when a guerrilla insurgency threat­ened to topple its government. It also actively encouraged the transition to an elected democratic government, but efforts to curb active right-wing death squads were only partly suc­cessful. U.S. support helped stabi­lize the government, but the level of violence there remained undimin­ished. A peace agreement was finally reached in early 1992.

U.S. policy toward Nicaragua was more controversial. In 1979 revolutionaries calling themselves Sandinistas overthrew the repres­sive right-wing Somoza regime and established a pro-Cuba, pro-Soviet dictatorship. Regional peace efforts ended in failure, and the focus of administration efforts shifted to support for the anti-Sandinista re­sistance, known as the contras.

Following intense political debate over this policy, Congress ended all military aid to the contras in Oc­tober 1984, then, under administra­tion pressure, reversed itself in the fall of 1986, and approved $100 mil­lion in military aid. However, a lack of success on the battlefield, charges of human rights abuses, and the rev­elation that funds from secret arms sales to Iran (see below) had been di­verted to the contras undercut con­gressional support to continue this aid.

Subsequently, the administration of President George H.W.Bush, who succeeded Reagan as president in 1989, abandoned any effort to secure military aid for the contras. The Bush administration also exerted pressure for free elections and supported an opposition political coalition, which won an astonishing upset election in February 1990, ousting the Sandini­stas from power.

The Reagan administration was more fortunate in witnessing a re­turn to democracy throughout the rest of Latin America, from Guate­mala to Argentina. The emergence of democratically elected governments was not limited to Latin America; in Asia, the “people power” campaign of Corazon Aquino overthrew the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, and elections in South Korea ended decades of military rule.

By contrast, South Africa re­mained intransigent in the face of U.S. efforts to encourage an end to racial apartheid through the contro­versial policy of “constructive en­gagement,” quiet diplomacy coupled with public endorsement of reform. In 1986, frustrated at the lack of progress, the U.S. Congress overrode Reagan’s veto and imposed a set of economic sanctions on South Afri­ca. In February 1990, South African President F. W. de Klerk announced Nelson Mandela’s release and began the slow dismantling of apartheid.

Despite its outspoken anti-Com­munist rhetoric, the Reagan ad­ministration’s direct use of military force was restrained. On October 25, 1983, U.S. forces landed on the Ca­ribbean island of Grenada after an urgent appeal for help by neighbor­ing countries. The action followed the assassination of Grenada’s leftist prime minister by members of his own Marxist-oriented party. After a brief period of fighting, U.S.troops captured hundreds of Cuban mili­tary and construction personnel and seized caches of Soviet-supplied arms. In December 1983, the last American combat troops left Grena­da, which held democratic elections a year later.

The Middle East, however, presented a far more difficult situ­ation. A military presence in Leb­anon, where the United States was attempting to bolster a weak, but moderate pro-Western government, ended tragically, when 241 U.S. Ma­rines were killed in a terrorist bomb­ing in October 1983. In April 1986, U.S.Navy and Air Force planes struck targets in Tripoli and Beng­hazi, Libya, in retaliation for Libyan-instigated terrorist attacks on U.S.military personnel in Europe.

In the Persian Gulf, the earlier breakdown in U.S. - Iranian relations and the Iran-Iraq War set the stage for U.S. naval activities in the region. Initially, the United States responded to a request from Kuwait for pro­tection of its tanker fleet; but even­tually the United States, along with naval vessels from Western Europe, kept vital shipping lanes open by es­corting convoys of tankers and oth­er neutral vessels traveling up and down the Gulf.

In late 1986 Americans learned that the administration had secretly sold arms to Iran in an attempt to resume diplomatic relations with the hostile Islamic government and win freedom for American hostages held in Lebanon by radical organizations that Iran controlled. Investigation also revealed that funds from the arms sales had been diverted to the Nicaraguan contras during a period when Congress had prohibited such military aid.

The ensuing Iran-contra hearings before a joint House-Senate commit­tee examined issues of possible ille­gality as well as the broader question of defining American foreign poli­cy interests in the Middle East and Central America. In a larger sense, the hearings were a constitutional debate about government secrecy and presidential versus congressio­nal authority in the conduct of for­eign relations. Unlike the celebrated Senate Watergate hearings 14 years earlier, they found no grounds for impeaching the president and could reach no definitive conclusion about these perennial issues.

U.S.- SOVIET RELATIONS - in relations with the Soviet Union, President Reagan’s declared policy was one of peace through strength. He was determined to stand firm against the country he would in 1983 call an “evil empire.” Two early events increased U.S.-Soviet tensions: the suppression of the Soli­darity labor movement in Poland in December 1981, and the destruction with 269 fatalities of an off-course civilian airliner, Korean Airlines Flight 007, by a Soviet jet fighter on September 1, 1983. The United States also condemned the continuing So­viet occupation of Afghanistan and continued aid begun by the Carter administration to the mujahedeen resistance there.

During Reagan’s first term, the United States spent unprecedented sums for a massive defense build-up, including the placement of in­termediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe to counter Soviet deploy­ments of similar missiles. And on March 23, 1983, in one of the most hotly debated policy decisions of his presidency, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) re­search program to explore advanced technologies, such as lasers and high-energy projectiles, to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles. Although many scientists questioned the technological feasi­bility of SDI and economists pointed to the extraordinary sums of money involved, the administration pressed ahead with the project.

After re-election in 1984, Rea­gan softened his position on arms control. Moscow was amenable to agreement, in part because its econ­omy already expended a far greater proportion of national output on its military than did the United States. Further increases, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev felt, would crip­ple his plans to liberalize the Soviet economy.

In November 1985, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed in principle to seek 50-percent reductions in stra­tegic offensive nuclear arms as well as an interim agreement on inter­mediate-range nuclear forces.
In December 1987, they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty providing for the de­struction of that entire category of nuclear weapons. By then, the So­viet Union seemed a less menac­ing adversary. Reagan could take much of the credit for a greatly di­minished Cold War, but as his ad­ministration ended, almost no one realized just how shaky the USSR had become.

2.  The Presidency of George H. W. Bush

A. The election of H. W. Bush - president Reagan enjoyed unusu­ally high popularity at the end of his second term in office, but under the terms of the U.S. Constitution he could not run again in 1988. The Republican nomination went to Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, who was elected the 41st presi­dent of the United States.

Bush campaigned by promising voters a continuation of the pros­perity Reagan had brought.
In ad­dition, he argued that he would support a strong defense for the United States more reliably than the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis. He also promised to work for “a kinder, gentler America.” Du­kakis, the governor of Massachu­setts, claimed that less fortunate Americans were hurting economi­cally and that the government had to help them while simultaneously bringing the federal debt and de­fense spending under control. The public was much more engaged, however, by Bush’s economic mes­sage: No new taxes. In the balloting, Bush finished with a 54-to-46-per­cent popular vote margin.

During his first year in office, Bush followed a conservative fiscal program, pursuing policies on taxes, spending, and debt that were faithful to the Reagan administration’s eco­nomic program. But the new presi­dent soon found himself squeezed between a large budget deficit and a deficit-reduction law. Spending cuts seemed necessary, and Bush pos­sessed little leeway to introduce new budget items.

The Bush administration ad­vanced new policy initiatives in ar­eas not requiring major new federal expenditures. Thus, in November 1990, Bush signed sweeping legisla­tion imposing new federal standards on urban smog, automobile exhaust, toxic air pollution, and acid rain, but with industrial polluters bear­ing most of the costs. He accepted legislation requiring physical access for the disabled, but with no fed­eral assumption of the expense of modifying buildings to accommo­date wheelchairs and the like. The president also launched a campaign to encourage volunteerism, which he called, in a memorable phrase, “a thousand points of light.”

B. Budgets and deficits - Bush administration efforts to gain control over the federal budget deficit, however, were more problem­atic. One source of the difficulty was the savings and loan crisis. Savings banks — formerly tightly regulated, low-interest safe havens for ordinary people — had been deregulated, al­lowing these institutions to com­pete more aggressively by paying higher interest rates and by making riskier loans. Increases in the gov­ernment’s deposit insurance guaran­teed reduced consumer incentive to shun less-sound institutions. Fraud, mismanagement, and the choppy economy produced widespread in­solvencies among these thrifts (the umbrella term for consumer-orient­ed institutions like savings and loan associations and savings banks). By 1993, the total cost of selling and shuttering failed thrifts was stagger­ing, nearly $525,000-million.

In January 1990, President Bush presented his budget proposal to Congress. Democrats argued that administration budget projections were far too optimistic, and that meeting the deficit-reduction law would require tax increases and sharper cuts in defense spending. That June, after protracted negotia­tions, the president agreed to a tax increase. All the same, the combi­nation of economic recession, losses from the savings and loan indus­try rescue operation, and escalating health care costs for Medicare and Medicaid offset all the deficit-reduc­tion measures and produced a short­fall in 1991 at least as large as the previous year’s.

B. End to the cold war - when Bush became president, the Soviet empire was on the verge of collapse. Gorbachev’s efforts to open up the USSR’s economy ap­peared to be floundering. In 1989, the Communist governments in one Eastern European country af­ter another simply collapsed, after it became clear that Russian troops would not be sent to prop them up. In mid-1991, hard-liners attempted a coup d’etat, only to be foiled by Gorbachev rival Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic. At the end of that year, Yeltsin, now domi­nant, forced the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Bush administration adeptly brokered the end of the Cold War, working closely with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. It led the negotiations that brought the unification of East and West Germany (September 1990), agreement on large arms reductions in Europe (November 1990), and large cuts in nuclear arsenals (July 1991). After the liquidation of the Soviet Union, the United States and the new Russian Federation agreed to phase out all multiple-warhead missiles over a 10-year period.

The disposal of nuclear materi­als and the ever-present concerns of nuclear proliferation now super­seded the threat of nuclear conflict between Washington and Moscow.

C. The Gulf war - the euphoria caused by the draw­ing down of the Cold War was dramatically overshadowed by the August 2, 1990, invasion of the small nation of Kuwait by Iraq. Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, and Iran, under its Islamic fundamentalist regime, had emerged as the two major military powers in the oil-rich Persian Gulf area. The two countries had fought a long, inconclusive war in the 1980s. Less hostile to the United States than Iran, Iraq had won some support from the Reagan and Bush adminis­trations. The occupation of Kuwait, posing a threat to Saudi Arabia, ­ the diplomatic calculation overnight.

President Bush strongly con­demned the Iraqi action, called for Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal, and sent a major deployment of U.S. troops to the Middle East. He assem­bled one of the most extraordinary military and political coalitions of modern times, with military forces from Asia, Europe, and Africa, as well as the Middle East.

In the days and weeks follow­ing the invasion, the U.N. Security Council passed 12 resolutions con­demning the Iraqi invasion and imposing wide-ranging economic sanctions on Iraq. On November 29, it approved the use of force if Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, 1991. Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, once Iraq’s major arms sup­plier, made no effort to protect its former client.

Bush also confronted a major constitutional issue. The U.S. Con­stitution gives the legislative branch the power to declare war. Yet in the second half of the 20th century, the United States had become involved in Korea and Vietnam without an official declaration of war and with only murky legislative authoriza­tion. On January 12, 1991, three days before the U.N. deadline, Congress granted President Bush the author­ity he sought in the most explicit and sweeping war-making power given a president in nearly half a century.

The United States, in coalition with Great Britain, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other countries, succeeded in liberating Kuwait with a devastating, U.S.-led air campaign that lasted slightly more than a month. It was followed by a massive invasion of Kuwait and Iraq by armored and airborne in­fantry forces. With their superior speed, mobility, and firepower, the allied forces overwhelmed the Iraqi forces in a land campaign lasting only 100 hours.

The victory, however, was incom­plete and unsatisfying. The U.N. res­olution, which Bush enforced to the letter, called only for the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait. Saddam Hussein remained in power, savagely repress­ing the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south, both of whom the United States had encouraged to rebel. Hundreds of oil-well fires, de­liberately set in Kuwait by the Iraqis, took until November 1991 to extin­guish. Saddam’s regime also appar­ently thwarted U.N. inspectors who, operating in accordance with Secu­rity Council resolutions, worked to locate and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear facilities more advanced than had previously been suspected and huge stocks of chemical weapons.

The Gulf War enabled the United States to persuade the Arab states, Israel, and a Palestinian delegation to begin direct negotiations aimed at resolving the complex and inter­locked issues that could eventually lead to a lasting peace in the region. The talks began in Madrid, Spain, on October 30, 1991. In turn, they set the stage for the secret negotiations in Norway that led to what at the time seemed a historic agreement between Israel and the Palestine Lib­eration Organization, signed at the White House on September 13, 1993.

D. Panama and NAFTA - the president also received broad bipartisan congressional backing for the brief U.S. invasion of Panama on December 20, 1989, that deposed dictator General Manuel Antonio Noriega. In the 1980s, addiction to crack cocaine reached epidemic pro­portions, and President Bush put the “War on Drugs” at the center of his domestic agenda. Moreover, Norie­ga, an especially brutal dictator, had attempted to maintain himself in power with rather crude displays of anti-Americanism. After seek­ing refuge in the Vatican embassy, Noriega turned himself over to U.S.authorities. He was later tried and convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami, Florida, of drug trafficking and racketeering.

On the economic front, the Bush administration negotiated the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada. It would be ratified after an intense debate in the first year of the Clinton administration.