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History of the United States (1980–1988)
Encyclopedia
The history of the United States (1980–1991) includes the last year of the Jimmy Carter
presidency, eight years of the Ronald Reagan
administration, and the first two years of the George H. W. Bush
presidency, up to the collapse of the Soviet Union
. Plagued by the Iran hostage crisis
and mounting domestic opposition, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Republican Reagan. In his first term, Reagan introduced expansionary fiscal policies aimed at stimulating the American economy after a recession in 1981 and 1982
, including oil deregulation policies which led to the 1980s oil glut
. He met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
in four summit conferences, culminating with the signing of the INF Treaty. These actions accelerated the end of the Cold War
war, which occurred during the early part of the Bush presidency, and the removal of the Berlin Wall
. The second largest stock market crash
(percentage-wise) in United States history occurred in 1987, preceding another recession. The largest scandal of the years was the Iran-Contra affair
, wherein weapons had been sold to Iran
, and the proceeds used by the CIA to aid Contras in Nicaragua.
", the Southwest, Southeast, and especially Florida
and California
(surpassing New York
as the nation's most populous state in 1964). By 1980, the population of the Sun Belt had risen to exceed that of the industrial regions of the Northeast and Midwest
, which were experiencing a decline in population. The rise of the Sun Belt continued a trend in the growth of suburbs since the 1950s, mostly because of the increasing mobility brought by the growing popularity of automobiles. In addition, the rise of the service sector, at the expense of industry and manufacturing, facilitated demographic shifts to the "frontiers" from the more industrialized states in the Northeast and Midwest.
The rise of the Sun Belt has been producing a change in the nation's political climate, strengthening conservatism
. The boom mentality in this growing region conflicted sharply with the concerns of the so-called Rust Belt
, a highly congested region, saddled with a declining economic base, and home to large, impoverished minority groups. The Northeast and Midwest have remained more committed to social programs and more interested in regulated growth than the wide-open, sprawling areas of the South
and West
. Electoral trends in the regions reflect this divergence—the Northeast and Midwest have been increasingly voting for Democratic candidates in federal, state and local elections while the South and West are now the solid base for the Republican Party.
As industries moved their plants and headquarters from the inner cities and urban centers to the suburbs with lower tax and looser regulatory environments, many saw a contraction of their economic base as municipalities lost the revenues from the enterprises that had departed. In the nation's major urban areas unemployment increased, expanding demand for social services, while tax bases declined. New York City
barely averted bankruptcy in 1975.
The fiscal problems of the nation's major urban centers were occurring in the broader context of demographic shifts in the country since the end of World War II
, which forced large cities to cope with declining tax bases. Meanwhile, conservatives railed against what they saw as the failures of liberal social programs, a potent theme in the 1980 presidential race and the 1994 mid-term elections, when the GOP captured the United States House of Representatives
after 40 years of Democratic control.
The liberal leaders of the 1960s, characteristic of the era of the Great Society
and the civil rights movement
, gave way to conservative urban politicians in the 1970s across the country, such as New York Mayor Ed Koch
, a conservative Democrat.
and the Watergate scandal
shattered confidence in the presidency. International frustrations, including the fall of South Vietnam
in 1975, the Iran hostage crisis
in 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the growth of international terrorism, and the acceleration of the arms race raised fears over the country's ability to control international affairs. The energy crisis, high unemployment, and very high inflation and escalating interest rates made economic planning difficult and raised fundamental questions over the future of American prosperity.
American "malaise," a term that caught on following Carter's 1979 "crisis of confidence speech," in the late 1970s and early 1980s was not unfounded as the nation seemed to be losing its self confidence.
Under dictator Leonid Brezhnev
the Soviet economy was falling behind—it never could use computers, for example—and kept alive because of oil exports. Meanwhile détente with the Soviets collapsed as the Communists scored successes in 1975 when North Vietnam
invaded and conquered South Vietnam
, with American forces involved only to rescue American supporters. Nearly a million refugees fled, most who survived came to the U.S. Other communist movements, backed by Moscow or Beijing, were spreading rapidly across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. And the Soviet Union seemed committed to the Brezhnev Doctrine
, sending troops to Afghanistan
in a move roundly denounced by the West and Muslim countries.
Reacting to all these perceptions of American decline internationally and domestically, a group of academics, journalists, politicians, and policymakers, labeled by many as "new conservatives" or "neoconservatives", since many of them were still Democrats, rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s (especially after the nomination of George McGovern
in 1972), and also blamed liberal Democrats for the nation's weakened geopolitical stance. Many clustered around Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson
, a Democrat, but they later aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan
and the Republicans, who promised to confront pro-Soviet communist expansion. Generally they were anti-communist Democrats and opposed to the welfare programs of the Great Society. But their main targets were the old policies of containment
of communism and Détente
with the Soviet Union. They wanted rollback
and the peaceful end of the Communist threat rather than aimless negotiations, diplomacy, and arms control.
Led by Norman Podhoretz
, the neoconservatives attacked the foreign policy orthodoxy in the Cold War as "appeasement
", an allusion to Neville Chamberlain
's negotiations at Munich in 1938. They regarded concessions to relatively weak enemies of the United States as "appeasement" of "evil," attacked détente, opposed most-favored nation trade status for the Soviet Union, and supported unilateral American intervention in the Third World as a means of boosting U.S. leverage over international affairs. Before the election of Reagan, the neoconservatives, gaining in influence, sought to stem the antiwar sentiments caused by the U.S. defeats in Vietnam and the massive casualties in Southeast Asia
that the war induced.
During the 1970s, Jeane Kirkpatrick
, a political scientist and later U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations
under Ronald Reagan, increasingly criticized the Democratic Party. Kirkpatrick became a convert to the ideas of the new conservatism of once liberal Democratic academics. She drew a distinction between authoritarian dictators, who she believed were capable of embracing democracy and who were, not coincidentally, allies of the United States, and communist totalitarian dictators, who she viewed as unyielding and incapable of change.
In addition to the growing appeal of conservative sentiment, President Jimmy Carter
's prospects for reelection in the U.S. presidential election of 1980 were strengthened when he easily beat back a primary challenge by liberal icon Senator Edward Kennedy
of Massachusetts
. Against the backdrop of economic stagflation and perceived American weakness against the USSR abroad, Ronald Reagan, former governor of California, won the Republican nomination in 1980 by winning most of the primaries. After failing to reach an unprecedented deal with Ford, who would be a sort of co-president, Reagan picked his chief primary rival, George H.W. Bush, as the vice-presidential nominee. During the campaign, Reagan relied on Jeane Kirkpatrick as his foreign policy adviser to identify Carter's vulnerabilities on foreign policy.
Reagan promised an end to the drift in post-Vietnam U.S. foreign policy and a restoration of the nation's military strength. He also promised an end to "big government" and to restore economic health by use of supply-side economics
.
Supply-side economists were against the welfare state built up by the Great Society
. They asserted that the woes of the U.S. economy were in large part a result of excessive taxation, which "crowded out" money away from private investors and thus stifled economic growth. The solution, they argued, was to cut taxes across the board, particularly in the upper income brackets, in order to encourage private investment. They also aimed to reduce government spending on welfare and social services geared toward the poorer sectors of society which had built up during the 1960s.
The public, particularly the middle class in the Sun Belt region, agreed with Reagan's proposals, and voted for him in 1980. Critics charged that Reagan was insensitive to the plight of the poor, and that anyway the economic troubles of the 1970s were beyond any president's ability to control or reverse.
The presidential election of 1980 was a key turning point in American politics. It signaled the new electoral power of the suburbs and the Sun Belt, with the Religious Right
for the first time a major factor. Moreover, it was a watershed ushering out the commitment to government anti-poverty programs and affirmative action
characteristic of the Great Society
. It also signaled a commitment to a hawkish foreign policy.
A third-party candidacy by Representative John B. Anderson
of Illinois, a moderate Republican, did poorly. The major issues of the campaign were the economic stagflation, threats to national security, the Iranian hostage crisis, and the general malaise that seemed to indicate America's great days were over. Carter seemed unable to control inflation and had failed in his rescue effort of the hostages in Tehran
. Carter dropped his détente-oriented advisers and moved sharply to the right against the Soviets, but Reagan said it was too little, too late.
Reagan won a landslide victory with 489 votes in the electoral college to Carter's 49. Republicans defeated twelve Democratic senators to regain control of the Senate for the first time in 25 years. Reagan received 43,904,153 votes in the election (50.7% of total votes cast), and Carter, 35,483,883 (41.0%). John Anderson won 5,720,060 popular votes.
Reagan's approach to the presidency was somewhat of a departure from his predecessors; he delegated a great deal of work to his subordinates, letting them handle most of the government's day-to-day affairs. As an executive, Reagan framed broad themes and made a strong personal connection to voters. He used very strong aides especially chief of staff James Baker
(Ford's campaign manager), and Michael Deaver
as deputy chief of staff, and Edwin Meese
as White House counsel, as well as David Stockman
at the Bureau of the Budget and his own campaign manager Bill Casey
at the CIA.
On March 30, 1981, Reagan was shot in Washington by a disturbed nonpolitical man. He recovered fully, with opponents silenced in the meanwhile.
Reagan stunned the nation by appointing the first woman to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor
in 1981. He promoted conservative leader William Rehnquist
to Chief Justice in 1986, with arch-conservative Antonin Scalia
taking Rehnquist's slot. His fourth appointment in 1987 proved controversial, as the initial choice had to withdraw (he smoked marijuana in college), and the Senate rejected Robert Bork
. Reagan finally won approval for Anthony Kennedy
.
, claimed that the tax cuts would increase revenues through economic growth, allowing the federal government to balance its budget for the first time since 1969.
Reagan's 1981 economic legislation, however, was a mixture of rival programs to satisfy of all his conservative constituencies (monetarists, cold warriors, middle-class swing voters, and the affluent). Monetarists were placated by tight controls of the money supply
; cold warriors, especially neoconservatives like Kirkpatrick, won large increases in the defense budget; wealthy taxpayers won sweeping three-year tax rate reductions on both individual (marginal rates would eventually come down to 50% from 70%) and corporate taxes; and the middle class saw that its pensions and entitlements would not be targeted. Reagan declared spending cuts for the Social Security
budget, which accounted for almost half of government spending, off limits due to fears over an electoral backlash, but the administration was hard pressed to explain how his program of sweeping tax cuts and large defense spending would not increase the deficit.
Budget Director David Stockman
raced to put Reagan's program through Congress within the administration's deadline of forty days. Stockman had no doubt that spending cuts were needed, and slashed expenditures across the board (with the exception of defense expenditures) by some $40 billion; and when figures did not add up, he resorted to the "magic asterisk"--which signified "future savings to be identified." He would later say that the program was rushed through too quickly and not given enough thought. Appeals from constituencies threatened by the loss of social services were ineffectual; the budget cuts passed through the Congress with relative ease.
By early 1982, Reagan's economic program was beset with difficulties as the recession that had begun in 1979 continued. In the short term, the effect of Reaganomics was a soaring budget deficit. Government borrowing, along with the tightening of the money supply, resulted in sky high interest rates (briefly hovering around 20 percent) and a serious recession with 10-percent unemployment in 1982. Some regions of the "Rust Belt
" (the industrial Midwest and Northeast) descended into virtual depression conditions as steel mills and other industries closed. Many family farms in the Midwest and elsewhere were ruined by high interest rates and sold off to large agribusinesses.
Reagan allowed the Federal Reserve to drastically reduce the money supply to cure inflation, but it resulted in the recession deepening temporarily. His approval ratings plummeted in the worst months of the recession of 1982. Democrats swept the mid-term elections, making up for their losses in the previous election cycle. At the time, critics often accused Reagan of being out of touch. His Budget Director David Stockman, an ardent fiscal conservative, wrote, "I knew the Reagan Revolution was impossible--it was a metaphor with no anchor in political and economic reality."
The economy recovered in 1983 and 1984. A factor in the recovery from the worst periods of 1982-83 was the radical drop in oil
prices due to increased production levels of the mid 1980s
, which ended inflationary pressures on fuel prices. The virtual collapse of the OPEC
cartel enabled the administration to alter its tight money policies, to the consternation of conservative monetarist economists, who began pressing for a reduction of interest rates and an expansion of the money supply, in effect subordinating concern about inflation (which now seemed under control) to concern about unemployment and declining investment.
By the middle of 1983, unemployment
fell from 11 percent in 1982 to 8.2 percent. GDP
growth was 3.3 percent, the highest since the mid-1970s. Inflation
was below 5 percent. When the economy recovered, Ronald Reagan declared it was Morning in America
. He defeated Walter Mondale
in the 1984 presidential election by a large landslide.
The 1981 tax cuts, one of the largest in U.S. history, also eroded the revenue base of the federal government in the short-term. The massive increase in military spending (about $1.6 trillion over five years) far exceeded cuts in social spending, despite wrenching impact of such cuts spending geared toward some of the poorest segments of society. Even so, by the end of 1985, funding for domestic programs had been cut nearly as far as Congress could tolerate.
In this context, the deficit rose from $60 billion in 1980 to a peak of $220 billion in 1986 (well over 5 % of GDP). Over this period, national debt more than doubled from $749 billion to $1,746 billion.
Since U.S. saving rates were very low (roughly one-third of Japan
's,) the deficit was mostly covered by borrowing from abroad, turning the United States within a few years from the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's greatest debtor. Not only was this damaging to America's status, it was also a profound shift in the postwar international financial system, which had relied on the export of U.S. capital. In addition, the media and entertainment industry during the 1980s glamorized the stock market and financial sector (e.g. the 1987 movie Wall Street
), causing many young people to pursue careers as brokers, investors, or bankers instead of manufacturing and making it unlikely that any of the lost industrial base would be restored any time soon.
The deficits were keeping interest rates, although lower than the 20% peak levels earlier in the administration due to a respite in the administration's tight money policies, high and threatening to push them higher. The government was thus forced to borrow so much money to pay its bills that it was driving up the price of borrowing. Although supply-siders promised increased investment as a result of top-rate and corporate tax cuts, growth and investment suffered for now in the context of high interest rates. In October 1987, a sudden and alarming stock market crash took place, but the Federal Reserve responded by increasing the money supply and averted what could have been another Great Depression.
Perhaps more alarmingly, Reagan-era deficits were keeping the U.S. dollar overvalued. With such a high demand for dollars (due in large measure to government borrowing), the dollar achieved an alarming strength against other major currencies. As the dollar soared in value, so American exports became increasingly uncompetitive, with Japan as the leading beneficiary. The high value of the dollar made it difficult for foreigners to buy American goods and encouraged Americans to buy imports, coming at a high price to the industrial export sector. Steel and other heavy industries declined due to excessive demands by labor unions and outdated technology that made them unable to compete with Japanese imports. The consumer electronics industry (which had begun declining in the 1970s) was one of the worst victims of dumping and other unfair Japanese trade practices. American consumer electronics also suffered from poor quality and a relative lack of technical innovation compared to Japanese electronics, in part because the Cold War had caused most American scientific and engineering effort to go into the defense sector rather than the consumer one. By the end of the decade, it had virtually ceased to exist. On the bright side, the upstart computer industry flourished during the 1980s.
The U.S. balance of trade
grew increasingly unfavorable; the trade deficit grew from $20 billion to well over $100 billion. Thus, American industries such as automobile
s and steel
, faced renewed competition abroad and within the domestic market as well. The auto industry was given breathing space after the Reagan administration imposed voluntary import restraints on Japanese manufacturers (allowing them to sell a maximum of 1.3 million vehicles in the US per year) and imposed a 25% tariff on all imported trucks (a lighter 3% tariff was put on passenger cars). The Japanese responded by opening assembly plants in the US to get around this, and in doing so were able to say that they were providing Americans with jobs. The VIR was repealed in 1985 after auto sales were booming again, but the tariffs remain in effect to this day. With the event of CAFE regulations, small cars came to dominate in the '80s, and much like with electronics, Japanese makes bested American ones in terms of build quality and technical sophistication.
The enormous deficits were in large measure holdovers from Lyndon Johnson's commitment to both "guns and butter" (the Vietnam War and the Great Society) and the growing competition from other G7 nations after their postwar reconstruction, but it was the Reagan administration that chose to let the deficits develop.
Reagan asked Congress for a line-item veto which would allow him to lower the deficits by cutting spending that he thought was wasteful, but he did not receive it. He also called for a balanced budget amendment which would mandate that the federal government spends no more money than it takes in, which never materialized.
would develop as superpower relations deteriorated to a level not seen since the 1960s.
Reagan's foreign policy was generally considered more successful and well thought out then his domestic. He favored a hawkish approach to the Cold War, especially in the Third World
arena of superpower competition. In the wake of the Vietnam debacle, however, Americans were increasingly skeptical of bearing the economic and financial cost of large troop commitments. The administration sought to overcome this by backing the relatively cheap strategy of specially trained counterinsurgencies or "low-intensity conflicts" rather than large-scale campaigns like Korea and Vietnam, which were enormously costly both in money and human life.
The Arab-Israeli conflict was another impetus for military action. Israel invaded
Lebanon
to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO). But in the wake of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacre
, which provoked a political crisis in Israel and international embarrassment, U.S. forces moved into Beirut
to encourage Israeli withdrawal. Previously, the administration stood by Israel's invasion of Lebanon in mid-1982 to maintain the support of Israel on one hand, but also to quell the influence of Israel's pro-Soviet enemy Syria
in Lebanon. However, U.S. intervention
in the multi-sided Lebanese civil war had disastrous consequences. On October 23, 1983, the Marine Barracks Bombing killed 241 American troops. Shortly afterward, the U.S. withdrew its remaining 1600 soldiers.
In Operation Urgent Fury the United States for the first time invaded and successfully rolled back a Communist regime. On October 19, the small island nation of Grenada had undergone a coup d'état by Bernard Coard, a staunch Marxist-Leninist seeking to strengthen the country's existing ties with Cuba, the Soviet Union, and other Communist states. The prime minister was killed and insurgents had orders to shoot on sight. Over 1000 Americans were on the island, mostly medical students and their families, and the government could not guarantee their security. The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States
, the regional security association of neighboring states led by Prime Minister Eugenia Charles
of Dominica
officially called on the United States for protection. In a short campaign launched Oct. 25, fought primarily against armed Cuban construction workers, the US military invaded and took control, and democracy was restored to Grenada.
Reagan launched an air strike against Libya
after it was found to have connections to a bombing in Berlin which killed two American soldiers.
The Reagan administration also supplied funds and weapons to heavily militarily-influenced governments in El Salvador beginning in 1980 and Honduras, and to a lesser extent in Guatemala
, which was ruled by right-wing military autocrat General Efraín Ríos Montt
from 1982-83. It reversed ex-President Jimmy Carter's official condemnation of the Argentine
junta
for human rights
abuses and allowed the CIA to collaborate with Argentine intelligence in funding the Contras. Central America was the administration's primary concern, especially El Salvador and Nicaragua
, where the Sandinista revolution brought down the formerly U.S.-backed Somoza family
rule. The two countries had been historically dominated by multinational corporation
s and wealthy landowning oligarchs
while most of their population remained in poverty; as a result, predominantly Marxist revolutionary leaders had won increasing support from the peasantry in both nations.
In 1982 the CIA, with assistance from the Argentine national intelligence agency, organized and financed right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua, known as the Contras. The tracing of secret funds for this scheme led to the revelations of the Iran-Contra Affair
. In 1985 Reagan authorized the sale of arms in Iran
in an unsuccessful effort to free U.S. hostages in Lebanon
; he later professed ignorance that subordinates were illegally diverting the proceeds to the Contras, a matter for which Marine
Lieutenant Colonel
Oliver North
, an aide to National Security Advisor John M. Poindexter, took much of the blame. Reagan's approval ratings plummeted in 1986 as a result of the scandal, and many Americans began to seriously question his judgement. While the president's popularity improved in his final two years, he would never again enjoy the support he had had in 1985. Predictably, the Democrats regained control of Congress in the 1986 midterm elections. Oliver North meanwhile achieved a brief celebrity status in 1987 during his testimonies before Congress.
In sub-Saharan Africa
, the Reagan administration, with help from apartheid South Africa
, also attempted to topple the substantially Cuban and Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist FRELIMO and MPLA dictatorships of Mozambique
and Angola
, respectively, during those countries' civil wars. The administration intervened on the side of insurgent groups RENAMO in Mozambique and UNITA
in Angola, supplying each group with covert military and humanitarian aid.
In Afghanistan, Reagan massively stepped up military and humanitarian aid for mujahideen
fighters against the Soviet proxy government there, providing them with Stinger
anti-aircraft missiles. U.S. allies Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan
also provided the rebels with significant assistance. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
reduced and eventually ended his country's commitment to Afghanistan as Soviet troops there were bogged down in guerrilla war.
Reagan also expressed opposition to the Vietnam
ese-installed Communist regime of Heng Samrin
(and later, Hun Sen
) in Cambodia
, which had ousted the genocidal Khmer Rouge
regime after Vietnam invaded the country. The administration approved military and humanitarian aid to the republican KPNLF
and royalist Funcinpec
insurgents. The Reagan administration also supported continued UN recognition of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
(a tripartite rebel alliance of the KPNLF, Funcinpec, and the Khmer Rouge) over the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea regime. Reagan also continued American support for the autocratic Philippine
President Ferdinand Marcos
, an ardent anti-Communist. In a 1984 presidential debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters
, he explained his administration's support of Marcos by stating, "I know there are things there in the Philippines that do not look good to us from the standpoint right now of democratic rights, but what is the alternative? It is a large communist movement" http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/philippines/tl03.html, referring to active Communist guerrillas operating in the Philippines at the time. The U.S. also had significant strategic military interests in the Philippines, knowing that Marcos's government would not tamper with agreements to maintain U.S. naval bases in the country. Marcos was later ousted in 1986 by the mostly peaceful People Power movement, led by Corazón Aquino
.
Reagan was sharply critical of the United Nations
, once the darling of liberals. He repudiated its repudiation of its corruption, inefficiency and anti-Americanism/ In 1985-7 the U.S. withdrew from UNESCO
, which had failed in its cultural missions, and began to deliberately withhold its UN dues. American policymakers considered this tactic an effective tool for asserting influence in the UN. When the UN and UNESCO mended their ways, the US returned and paid its dues.
". While it was Jimmy Carter who had officially ended the policy of détente
following Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
, East-West tensions in the early 1980s reached levels not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis
. The Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI) was born out of the worsening U.S.-Soviet relations of the Reagan Era
. Popularly dubbed "Star Wars" at the time, SDI was a multi-billion dollar research project for a missile defense system that could shoot down incoming Soviet missiles and eliminate the need for mutually assured destruction.
While the Soviets had enjoyed great achievements on the international stage before Reagan entered office in 1981, such as the unification of their socialist ally, Vietnam
, in 1976, and a string of socialist revolutions in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa, the country's strengthening ties with Third World
nations in the 1960s and 1970s only masked its weakness. The Soviet economy suffered severe structural problems. Reform stalled between 1964–1982 and supply shortages of consumer goods become even more notorious.
East-West tensions eased rapidly after the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev
. After the deaths of three elderly Soviet leaders in a row since 1982, the Politburo elected Gorbachev Soviet Communist Party chief in 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership. Under Gorbachev, relatively young reform-oriented technocrats rapidly consolidated power, providing new momentum for political and economic liberalization, and the impetus for cultivating warmer relations and trade with the West.
Focused on perestroika
, Gorbachev struggled to boost production of consumer goods, which would be impossible given the twin burdens of the Cold War arms race on one hand, and the provision of large sums of foreign and military aid, which the socialist allies had grown to expect, on the other. Under Gorbachev, Soviet policymakers increasingly accepted Reagan administration warnings that the U.S. would make the arms race a huge burden for them. The Soviets were already spending massive amounts on defense, and developing a counterpart to SDI was far more than their economy could handle. The result in the Soviet Union was a dual approach of concessions to the United States and economic restructuring (perestroika) and democratization (glasnost
) domestically, which eventually made it impossible for Gorbachev to reassert central control. Reaganite hawks have since argued that pressures stemming from increased U.S. defense spending was an additional impetus for reform.
During the Cold War
, the division of the world into two rival blocs had served to legitimize a broad and diffuse alliance not only with the Western Europe
an nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but many countries in the developing world. Starting in the late 1980s, however, the regimes of the Eastern Europe
an 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 Cuba
n forces from Angola
.
These developments undercut the rationale for providing 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 led 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 reluctance 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."
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has sought to revitalize Cold War institutional structures, especially NATO, as well as multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund
and World Bank
through which it promotes economic reforms around the globe. 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 moves to economically sanction countries which were said to be sponsoring terrorism
, engaging in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
or committing serious human rights
abuses. There was sometimes a consensus for these moves, such as with the U.S. and European embargo
es imposed on arms sales to China
after its violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
, as well as for the UN Security Council's imposition of sanctions on Iraq
after its invasion of Kuwait
. Support for other unilateral sanctions however, such as the ones levied on Iran
and Cuba, were limited, leading Congress to impose measures intended to punish foreign companies which violated the terms of the U.S.'s own laws.
In a 1999 Foreign Affairs
essay, Samuel P. Huntington
wrote that to reinforce its status in the post–Cold War world,
Max Boot
, another influential contemporary commentator on U.S. policy, argues that the very ambitious goals of the U.S. in the post–Cold War period
He adds:
Republican President Ronald Reagan
's vice-president George H. W. Bush
ascended to the presidency, defeating Democratic Massachusetts
governor Michael Dukakis
by an electoral landslide in the 1988 election
. The campaign was marked by numerous blunders by Dukakis, including most famously a campaign ad featuring Dukakis in an M1 Abrams
tank.
In 1989, the invasion of Panama
took place and Manuel Noriega
was captured and put on trial.
Initially, Bush inherited an economy that continued the strong rally that had begun in the final months of 1982. However, the Federal Reserve continued with restrictive monetary policy, limiting economic growth in the late 1980s. When the 1990 oil price shock hit in mid-1990, consumer spending contracted and the economy entered recession. Unlike the early 1980s recession
, the recession beginning in 1990 was relatively mild. Some of the hardest hit areas were in the Northeast and California, while much of the South was less affected.
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
presidency, eight years of the Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
administration, and the first two years of the George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
presidency, up to the collapse of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Plagued by the Iran hostage crisis
Iran hostage crisis
The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian...
and mounting domestic opposition, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Republican Reagan. In his first term, Reagan introduced expansionary fiscal policies aimed at stimulating the American economy after a recession in 1981 and 1982
Early 1980s recession
The early 1980s recession describes the severe global economic recession affecting much of the developed world in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The United States and Japan exited recession relatively early, but high unemployment would continue to affect other OECD nations through at least 1985...
, including oil deregulation policies which led to the 1980s oil glut
1980s oil glut
The 1980s oil glut was a serious surplus of crude oil caused by falling demand following the 1970s Energy Crisis. The world price of oil, which had peaked in 1980 at over US$35 per barrel , fell in 1986 from $27 to below $10...
. He met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
in four summit conferences, culminating with the signing of the INF Treaty. These actions accelerated the end of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
war, which occurred during the early part of the Bush presidency, and the removal of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
. The second largest stock market crash
Black Monday (1987)
In finance, Black Monday refers to Monday October 19, 1987, when stock markets around the world crashed, shedding a huge value in a very short time. The crash began in Hong Kong and spread west to Europe, hitting the United States after other markets had already declined by a significant margin...
(percentage-wise) in United States history occurred in 1987, preceding another recession. The largest scandal of the years was the Iran-Contra affair
Iran-Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair , also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or Iran-Contra-Gate, was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of...
, wherein weapons had been sold to Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, and the proceeds used by the CIA to aid Contras in Nicaragua.
Changing demographics and the growth of the Sun Belt
The most widely discussed demographic phenomenon of the 1970s was the rise of the "Sun BeltSun Belt
The Sun Belt or Spanish Belt is a region of the United States generally considered to stretch across the South and Southwest . Another rough boundary of the region is the area south of the 36th parallel, north latitude. It is the largest region which the U.S government does not recognize officially...
", the Southwest, Southeast, and especially Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
and California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
(surpassing New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
as the nation's most populous state in 1964). By 1980, the population of the Sun Belt had risen to exceed that of the industrial regions of the Northeast and Midwest
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
, which were experiencing a decline in population. The rise of the Sun Belt continued a trend in the growth of suburbs since the 1950s, mostly because of the increasing mobility brought by the growing popularity of automobiles. In addition, the rise of the service sector, at the expense of industry and manufacturing, facilitated demographic shifts to the "frontiers" from the more industrialized states in the Northeast and Midwest.
The rise of the Sun Belt has been producing a change in the nation's political climate, strengthening conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
. The boom mentality in this growing region conflicted sharply with the concerns of the so-called Rust Belt
Rust Belt
The Rust Belt is a term that gained currency in the 1980s as the informal description of an area straddling the Midwestern and Northeastern United States, in which local economies traditionally garnered an increased manufacturing sector to add jobs and corporate profits...
, a highly congested region, saddled with a declining economic base, and home to large, impoverished minority groups. The Northeast and Midwest have remained more committed to social programs and more interested in regulated growth than the wide-open, sprawling areas of the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
and West
Western United States
.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
. Electoral trends in the regions reflect this divergence—the Northeast and Midwest have been increasingly voting for Democratic candidates in federal, state and local elections while the South and West are now the solid base for the Republican Party.
As industries moved their plants and headquarters from the inner cities and urban centers to the suburbs with lower tax and looser regulatory environments, many saw a contraction of their economic base as municipalities lost the revenues from the enterprises that had departed. In the nation's major urban areas unemployment increased, expanding demand for social services, while tax bases declined. New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
barely averted bankruptcy in 1975.
The fiscal problems of the nation's major urban centers were occurring in the broader context of demographic shifts in the country since the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, which forced large cities to cope with declining tax bases. Meanwhile, conservatives railed against what they saw as the failures of liberal social programs, a potent theme in the 1980 presidential race and the 1994 mid-term elections, when the GOP captured the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
after 40 years of Democratic control.
The liberal leaders of the 1960s, characteristic of the era of the Great Society
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States promoted by President Lyndon B. Johnson and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice...
and the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
, gave way to conservative urban politicians in the 1970s across the country, such as New York Mayor Ed Koch
Ed Koch
Edward Irving "Ed" Koch is an American lawyer, politician, and political commentator. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and three terms as mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989...
, a conservative Democrat.
Rejection of U.S./Soviet détente
The 1970s inflicted damaging blows to the American self confidence. The Vietnam WarVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
shattered confidence in the presidency. International frustrations, including the fall of South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
in 1975, the Iran hostage crisis
Iran hostage crisis
The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian...
in 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the growth of international terrorism, and the acceleration of the arms race raised fears over the country's ability to control international affairs. The energy crisis, high unemployment, and very high inflation and escalating interest rates made economic planning difficult and raised fundamental questions over the future of American prosperity.
American "malaise," a term that caught on following Carter's 1979 "crisis of confidence speech," in the late 1970s and early 1980s was not unfounded as the nation seemed to be losing its self confidence.
Under dictator Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
the Soviet economy was falling behind—it never could use computers, for example—and kept alive because of oil exports. Meanwhile détente with the Soviets collapsed as the Communists scored successes in 1975 when North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
invaded and conquered South Vietnam
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front on April 30, 1975...
, with American forces involved only to rescue American supporters. Nearly a million refugees fled, most who survived came to the U.S. Other communist movements, backed by Moscow or Beijing, were spreading rapidly across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. And the Soviet Union seemed committed to the Brezhnev Doctrine
Brezhnev Doctrine
The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet Union foreign policy, first and most clearly outlined by S. Kovalev in a September 26, 1968 Pravda article, entitled “Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries.” Leonid Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the...
, sending troops to Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
in a move roundly denounced by the West and Muslim countries.
Reacting to all these perceptions of American decline internationally and domestically, a group of academics, journalists, politicians, and policymakers, labeled by many as "new conservatives" or "neoconservatives", since many of them were still Democrats, rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s (especially after the nomination of George McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....
in 1972), and also blamed liberal Democrats for the nation's weakened geopolitical stance. Many clustered around Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson
Henry M. Jackson
Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson was a U.S. Congressman and Senator from the state of Washington from 1941 until his death...
, a Democrat, but they later aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
and the Republicans, who promised to confront pro-Soviet communist expansion. Generally they were anti-communist Democrats and opposed to the welfare programs of the Great Society. But their main targets were the old policies of containment
Containment
Containment was a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet...
of communism and Détente
Détente
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War...
with the Soviet Union. They wanted rollback
Rollback
In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, which means a working relationship with that state...
and the peaceful end of the Communist threat rather than aimless negotiations, diplomacy, and arms control.
Led by Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz
Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...
, the neoconservatives attacked the foreign policy orthodoxy in the Cold War as "appeasement
Appeasement
The term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...
", an allusion to Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
's negotiations at Munich in 1938. They regarded concessions to relatively weak enemies of the United States as "appeasement" of "evil," attacked détente, opposed most-favored nation trade status for the Soviet Union, and supported unilateral American intervention in the Third World as a means of boosting U.S. leverage over international affairs. Before the election of Reagan, the neoconservatives, gaining in influence, sought to stem the antiwar sentiments caused by the U.S. defeats in Vietnam and the massive casualties in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
that the war induced.
During the 1970s, Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick was an American ambassador and an ardent anticommunist. After serving as Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser in his 1980 campaign and later in his Cabinet, the longtime Democrat-turned-Republican was nominated as the U.S...
, a political scientist and later U.S. Ambassador to the
United States Ambassador to the United Nations
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations is the leader of the U.S. delegation, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. The position is more formally known as the "Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, with the rank and status of Ambassador...
United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
under Ronald Reagan, increasingly criticized the Democratic Party. Kirkpatrick became a convert to the ideas of the new conservatism of once liberal Democratic academics. She drew a distinction between authoritarian dictators, who she believed were capable of embracing democracy and who were, not coincidentally, allies of the United States, and communist totalitarian dictators, who she viewed as unyielding and incapable of change.
Ronald Reagan and the elections of 1980
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
's prospects for reelection in the U.S. presidential election of 1980 were strengthened when he easily beat back a primary challenge by liberal icon Senator Edward Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...
of Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. Against the backdrop of economic stagflation and perceived American weakness against the USSR abroad, Ronald Reagan, former governor of California, won the Republican nomination in 1980 by winning most of the primaries. After failing to reach an unprecedented deal with Ford, who would be a sort of co-president, Reagan picked his chief primary rival, George H.W. Bush, as the vice-presidential nominee. During the campaign, Reagan relied on Jeane Kirkpatrick as his foreign policy adviser to identify Carter's vulnerabilities on foreign policy.
Reagan promised an end to the drift in post-Vietnam U.S. foreign policy and a restoration of the nation's military strength. He also promised an end to "big government" and to restore economic health by use of supply-side economics
Supply-side economics
Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering barriers for people to produce goods and services, such as lowering income tax and capital gains tax rates, and by allowing greater flexibility by reducing...
.
Supply-side economists were against the welfare state built up by the Great Society
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States promoted by President Lyndon B. Johnson and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice...
. They asserted that the woes of the U.S. economy were in large part a result of excessive taxation, which "crowded out" money away from private investors and thus stifled economic growth. The solution, they argued, was to cut taxes across the board, particularly in the upper income brackets, in order to encourage private investment. They also aimed to reduce government spending on welfare and social services geared toward the poorer sectors of society which had built up during the 1960s.
The public, particularly the middle class in the Sun Belt region, agreed with Reagan's proposals, and voted for him in 1980. Critics charged that Reagan was insensitive to the plight of the poor, and that anyway the economic troubles of the 1970s were beyond any president's ability to control or reverse.
The presidential election of 1980 was a key turning point in American politics. It signaled the new electoral power of the suburbs and the Sun Belt, with the Religious Right
Religious right
The term religious right may refer to religiously motivated right wing movements such as:*Christian right*Hindu nationalism *Islamism*Jewish right*Theravada...
for the first time a major factor. Moreover, it was a watershed ushering out the commitment to government anti-poverty programs and affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
characteristic of the Great Society
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States promoted by President Lyndon B. Johnson and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice...
. It also signaled a commitment to a hawkish foreign policy.
A third-party candidacy by Representative John B. Anderson
John B. Anderson
John Bayard Anderson is a former United States Congressman and Presidential candidate from Illinois. He was a U.S. Representative from the 16th Congressional District of Illinois for ten terms from 1961 through 1981 and an Independent candidate in the 1980 presidential election. He was previously...
of Illinois, a moderate Republican, did poorly. The major issues of the campaign were the economic stagflation, threats to national security, the Iranian hostage crisis, and the general malaise that seemed to indicate America's great days were over. Carter seemed unable to control inflation and had failed in his rescue effort of the hostages in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
. Carter dropped his détente-oriented advisers and moved sharply to the right against the Soviets, but Reagan said it was too little, too late.
Reagan won a landslide victory with 489 votes in the electoral college to Carter's 49. Republicans defeated twelve Democratic senators to regain control of the Senate for the first time in 25 years. Reagan received 43,904,153 votes in the election (50.7% of total votes cast), and Carter, 35,483,883 (41.0%). John Anderson won 5,720,060 popular votes.
Reagan administration
After years of unstinting praise from the right, and unrelenting criticism from the left, historian David Henry lines finds that by 2010 a consensus had emerged among scholars that Reagan revived conservatism and turned the nation to the right by demonstrating a "pragmatic conservatism" that promoted ideology within the constraints imposed by the divided political system. Furthermore, says Henry, the consensus agrees that he revived faith in the presidency and American self-confidence, and contributed critically to ending the Cold War.Reagan's approach to the presidency was somewhat of a departure from his predecessors; he delegated a great deal of work to his subordinates, letting them handle most of the government's day-to-day affairs. As an executive, Reagan framed broad themes and made a strong personal connection to voters. He used very strong aides especially chief of staff James Baker
James Baker
James Addison Baker, III is an American attorney, politician and political advisor.Baker served as the Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan's first administration and in the final year of the administration of President George H. W. Bush...
(Ford's campaign manager), and Michael Deaver
Michael Deaver
Michael Keith Deaver was a member of President Ronald Reagan's White House staff serving as White House Deputy Chief of Staff under James Baker III and Donald Regan from January 1981 until May 1985.-Early life:...
as deputy chief of staff, and Edwin Meese
Edwin Meese
Edwin "Ed" Meese, III is an attorney, law professor, and author who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Administration , the Reagan Presidential Transition Team , and the Reagan White House , eventually rising to hold the position of the 75th Attorney General of...
as White House counsel, as well as David Stockman
David Stockman
David Alan Stockman is a former U.S. politician and businessman, serving as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan and as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget ....
at the Bureau of the Budget and his own campaign manager Bill Casey
Bill Casey
William D. "Bill" Casey is a Canadian politician. He is a former Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons.-Life and career:...
at the CIA.
On March 30, 1981, Reagan was shot in Washington by a disturbed nonpolitical man. He recovered fully, with opponents silenced in the meanwhile.
Reagan stunned the nation by appointing the first woman to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor is an American jurist who was the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States. She served as an Associate Justice from 1981 until her retirement from the Court in 2006. O'Connor was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981...
in 1981. He promoted conservative leader William Rehnquist
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer, jurist, and political figure who served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States and later as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States...
to Chief Justice in 1986, with arch-conservative Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia
Antonin Gregory Scalia is an American jurist who serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice on the Court, Scalia is the Senior Associate Justice...
taking Rehnquist's slot. His fourth appointment in 1987 proved controversial, as the initial choice had to withdraw (he smoked marijuana in college), and the Senate rejected Robert Bork
Robert Bork
Robert Heron Bork is an American legal scholar who has advocated the judicial philosophy of originalism. Bork formerly served as Solicitor General, Acting Attorney General, and judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit...
. Reagan finally won approval for Anthony Kennedy
Anthony Kennedy
Anthony McLeod Kennedy is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, having been appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Since the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, Kennedy has often been the swing vote on many of the Court's politically charged 5–4 decisions...
.
Reaganomics and the 1981 federal budget
Ronald Reagan promised an economic revival that would affect all sectors of the population. He proposed to achieve this goal by cutting taxes and reducing the size and scope of federal programs. Critics of his plan charged that the tax cuts would reduce revenues, leading to large federal deficits, which would lead in turn to higher interest rates, stifling any economic benefits. Reagan and his supporters, drawing on the theories of supply-side economicsSupply-side economics
Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering barriers for people to produce goods and services, such as lowering income tax and capital gains tax rates, and by allowing greater flexibility by reducing...
, claimed that the tax cuts would increase revenues through economic growth, allowing the federal government to balance its budget for the first time since 1969.
Reagan's 1981 economic legislation, however, was a mixture of rival programs to satisfy of all his conservative constituencies (monetarists, cold warriors, middle-class swing voters, and the affluent). Monetarists were placated by tight controls of the money supply
Money supply
In economics, the money supply or money stock, is the total amount of money available in an economy at a specific time. There are several ways to define "money," but standard measures usually include currency in circulation and demand deposits .Money supply data are recorded and published, usually...
; cold warriors, especially neoconservatives like Kirkpatrick, won large increases in the defense budget; wealthy taxpayers won sweeping three-year tax rate reductions on both individual (marginal rates would eventually come down to 50% from 70%) and corporate taxes; and the middle class saw that its pensions and entitlements would not be targeted. Reagan declared spending cuts for the Social Security
Social Security (United States)
In the United States, Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs...
budget, which accounted for almost half of government spending, off limits due to fears over an electoral backlash, but the administration was hard pressed to explain how his program of sweeping tax cuts and large defense spending would not increase the deficit.
Budget Director David Stockman
David Stockman
David Alan Stockman is a former U.S. politician and businessman, serving as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan and as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget ....
raced to put Reagan's program through Congress within the administration's deadline of forty days. Stockman had no doubt that spending cuts were needed, and slashed expenditures across the board (with the exception of defense expenditures) by some $40 billion; and when figures did not add up, he resorted to the "magic asterisk"--which signified "future savings to be identified." He would later say that the program was rushed through too quickly and not given enough thought. Appeals from constituencies threatened by the loss of social services were ineffectual; the budget cuts passed through the Congress with relative ease.
The recession of 1982
Rust Belt
The Rust Belt is a term that gained currency in the 1980s as the informal description of an area straddling the Midwestern and Northeastern United States, in which local economies traditionally garnered an increased manufacturing sector to add jobs and corporate profits...
" (the industrial Midwest and Northeast) descended into virtual depression conditions as steel mills and other industries closed. Many family farms in the Midwest and elsewhere were ruined by high interest rates and sold off to large agribusinesses.
Reagan allowed the Federal Reserve to drastically reduce the money supply to cure inflation, but it resulted in the recession deepening temporarily. His approval ratings plummeted in the worst months of the recession of 1982. Democrats swept the mid-term elections, making up for their losses in the previous election cycle. At the time, critics often accused Reagan of being out of touch. His Budget Director David Stockman, an ardent fiscal conservative, wrote, "I knew the Reagan Revolution was impossible--it was a metaphor with no anchor in political and economic reality."
The economy recovered in 1983 and 1984. A factor in the recovery from the worst periods of 1982-83 was the radical drop in oil
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
prices due to increased production levels of the mid 1980s
1980s oil glut
The 1980s oil glut was a serious surplus of crude oil caused by falling demand following the 1970s Energy Crisis. The world price of oil, which had peaked in 1980 at over US$35 per barrel , fell in 1986 from $27 to below $10...
, which ended inflationary pressures on fuel prices. The virtual collapse of the OPEC
OPEC
OPEC is an intergovernmental organization of twelve developing countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. OPEC has maintained its headquarters in Vienna since 1965, and hosts regular meetings...
cartel enabled the administration to alter its tight money policies, to the consternation of conservative monetarist economists, who began pressing for a reduction of interest rates and an expansion of the money supply, in effect subordinating concern about inflation (which now seemed under control) to concern about unemployment and declining investment.
By the middle of 1983, unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
fell from 11 percent in 1982 to 8.2 percent. GDP
Gross domestic product
Gross domestic product refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living....
growth was 3.3 percent, the highest since the mid-1970s. Inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
was below 5 percent. When the economy recovered, Ronald Reagan declared it was Morning in America
Morning in America
"Morning in America" is the common name of an effective political campaign television commercial formally titled "Prouder, Stronger, Better" and featuring the opening line "It's morning again in America." The ad was part of the 1984 U.S. presidential campaign of Republican Party candidate Ronald...
. He defeated Walter Mondale
Walter Mondale
Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...
in the 1984 presidential election by a large landslide.
Rising Deficits
Following the economic recovery that began in 1983, the medium-term fiscal effect of Reaganomics was a soaring budget deficit as spending continually exceeded revenue due to tax cuts and increased defense spending. Military budgets rose while tax revenues, despite having increased as compared to the stagnant late 1970s and early 1980s, failed to make up for the spiraling cost.The 1981 tax cuts, one of the largest in U.S. history, also eroded the revenue base of the federal government in the short-term. The massive increase in military spending (about $1.6 trillion over five years) far exceeded cuts in social spending, despite wrenching impact of such cuts spending geared toward some of the poorest segments of society. Even so, by the end of 1985, funding for domestic programs had been cut nearly as far as Congress could tolerate.
In this context, the deficit rose from $60 billion in 1980 to a peak of $220 billion in 1986 (well over 5 % of GDP). Over this period, national debt more than doubled from $749 billion to $1,746 billion.
Since U.S. saving rates were very low (roughly one-third of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
's,) the deficit was mostly covered by borrowing from abroad, turning the United States within a few years from the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's greatest debtor. Not only was this damaging to America's status, it was also a profound shift in the postwar international financial system, which had relied on the export of U.S. capital. In addition, the media and entertainment industry during the 1980s glamorized the stock market and financial sector (e.g. the 1987 movie Wall Street
Wall Street (film)
Wall Street is a 1987 American drama film released by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Oliver Stone and stars Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, and Daryl Hannah. The screenplay was written by Stanley Weiser and Stone...
), causing many young people to pursue careers as brokers, investors, or bankers instead of manufacturing and making it unlikely that any of the lost industrial base would be restored any time soon.
The deficits were keeping interest rates, although lower than the 20% peak levels earlier in the administration due to a respite in the administration's tight money policies, high and threatening to push them higher. The government was thus forced to borrow so much money to pay its bills that it was driving up the price of borrowing. Although supply-siders promised increased investment as a result of top-rate and corporate tax cuts, growth and investment suffered for now in the context of high interest rates. In October 1987, a sudden and alarming stock market crash took place, but the Federal Reserve responded by increasing the money supply and averted what could have been another Great Depression.
Perhaps more alarmingly, Reagan-era deficits were keeping the U.S. dollar overvalued. With such a high demand for dollars (due in large measure to government borrowing), the dollar achieved an alarming strength against other major currencies. As the dollar soared in value, so American exports became increasingly uncompetitive, with Japan as the leading beneficiary. The high value of the dollar made it difficult for foreigners to buy American goods and encouraged Americans to buy imports, coming at a high price to the industrial export sector. Steel and other heavy industries declined due to excessive demands by labor unions and outdated technology that made them unable to compete with Japanese imports. The consumer electronics industry (which had begun declining in the 1970s) was one of the worst victims of dumping and other unfair Japanese trade practices. American consumer electronics also suffered from poor quality and a relative lack of technical innovation compared to Japanese electronics, in part because the Cold War had caused most American scientific and engineering effort to go into the defense sector rather than the consumer one. By the end of the decade, it had virtually ceased to exist. On the bright side, the upstart computer industry flourished during the 1980s.
The U.S. balance of trade
Balance of trade
The balance of trade is the difference between the monetary value of exports and imports of output in an economy over a certain period. It is the relationship between a nation's imports and exports...
grew increasingly unfavorable; the trade deficit grew from $20 billion to well over $100 billion. Thus, American industries such as automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
s and steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
, faced renewed competition abroad and within the domestic market as well. The auto industry was given breathing space after the Reagan administration imposed voluntary import restraints on Japanese manufacturers (allowing them to sell a maximum of 1.3 million vehicles in the US per year) and imposed a 25% tariff on all imported trucks (a lighter 3% tariff was put on passenger cars). The Japanese responded by opening assembly plants in the US to get around this, and in doing so were able to say that they were providing Americans with jobs. The VIR was repealed in 1985 after auto sales were booming again, but the tariffs remain in effect to this day. With the event of CAFE regulations, small cars came to dominate in the '80s, and much like with electronics, Japanese makes bested American ones in terms of build quality and technical sophistication.
The enormous deficits were in large measure holdovers from Lyndon Johnson's commitment to both "guns and butter" (the Vietnam War and the Great Society) and the growing competition from other G7 nations after their postwar reconstruction, but it was the Reagan administration that chose to let the deficits develop.
Reagan asked Congress for a line-item veto which would allow him to lower the deficits by cutting spending that he thought was wasteful, but he did not receive it. He also called for a balanced budget amendment which would mandate that the federal government spends no more money than it takes in, which never materialized.
Foreign policy: Third World
With Reagan's promises to restore the nation's military strength, the 1980s saw massive increases in military spending, amounting to about $1.6 trillion over five years. A new arms raceArms race
The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...
would develop as superpower relations deteriorated to a level not seen since the 1960s.
Reagan's foreign policy was generally considered more successful and well thought out then his domestic. He favored a hawkish approach to the Cold War, especially in the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
arena of superpower competition. In the wake of the Vietnam debacle, however, Americans were increasingly skeptical of bearing the economic and financial cost of large troop commitments. The administration sought to overcome this by backing the relatively cheap strategy of specially trained counterinsurgencies or "low-intensity conflicts" rather than large-scale campaigns like Korea and Vietnam, which were enormously costly both in money and human life.
The Arab-Israeli conflict was another impetus for military action. Israel invaded
1982 Lebanon War
The 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...
Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization
Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...
(PLO). But in the wake of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacre
Sabra and Shatila massacre
The Sabra and Shatila massacre took place in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon between September 16 and September 18, 1982, during the Lebanese civil war. Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were massacred in the camps by Christian Lebanese Phalangists while the camp...
, which provoked a political crisis in Israel and international embarrassment, U.S. forces moved into Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
to encourage Israeli withdrawal. Previously, the administration stood by Israel's invasion of Lebanon in mid-1982 to maintain the support of Israel on one hand, but also to quell the influence of Israel's pro-Soviet enemy Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
in Lebanon. However, U.S. intervention
Multinational Force in Lebanon
The Multinational Force in Lebanon was an international peacekeeping force created in 1982 and sent to Lebanon to oversee the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization...
in the multi-sided Lebanese civil war had disastrous consequences. On October 23, 1983, the Marine Barracks Bombing killed 241 American troops. Shortly afterward, the U.S. withdrew its remaining 1600 soldiers.
In Operation Urgent Fury the United States for the first time invaded and successfully rolled back a Communist regime. On October 19, the small island nation of Grenada had undergone a coup d'état by Bernard Coard, a staunch Marxist-Leninist seeking to strengthen the country's existing ties with Cuba, the Soviet Union, and other Communist states. The prime minister was killed and insurgents had orders to shoot on sight. Over 1000 Americans were on the island, mostly medical students and their families, and the government could not guarantee their security. The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States
Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States
The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States , created in 1981, is an inter-governmental organisation dedicated to economic harmonisation and integration, protection of human and legal rights, and the encouragement of good governance between countries and dependencies in the Eastern Caribbean...
, the regional security association of neighboring states led by Prime Minister Eugenia Charles
Eugenia Charles
Dame Mary Eugenia Charles, DBE was Prime Minister of Dominica from 21 July 1980 until 14 June 1995. She was Dominica's first, and to date only, female prime minister, as well as the nation's longest serving prime minister...
of Dominica
Dominica
Dominica , officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean Sea, south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its size is and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of . The Commonwealth...
officially called on the United States for protection. In a short campaign launched Oct. 25, fought primarily against armed Cuban construction workers, the US military invaded and took control, and democracy was restored to Grenada.
Reagan launched an air strike against Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
after it was found to have connections to a bombing in Berlin which killed two American soldiers.
The Reagan administration also supplied funds and weapons to heavily militarily-influenced governments in El Salvador beginning in 1980 and Honduras, and to a lesser extent in Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
, which was ruled by right-wing military autocrat General Efraín Ríos Montt
Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt is a former de facto President of Guatemala, dictator, army general, and former president of Congress. In the 2003 presidential elections, he unsuccessfully ran as the candidate of the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front .Huehuetenango-born Ríos Montt remains one of the most...
from 1982-83. It reversed ex-President Jimmy Carter's official condemnation of the Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
junta
Military dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a form of government where in the political power resides with the military. It is similar but not identical to a stratocracy, a state ruled directly by the military....
for human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
abuses and allowed the CIA to collaborate with Argentine intelligence in funding the Contras. Central America was the administration's primary concern, especially El Salvador and Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, where the Sandinista revolution brought down the formerly U.S.-backed Somoza family
Somoza
The Somoza family was an influential political dynasty who ruled Nicaragua as an hereditary dictatorship. Their influence exceeded their combined 43 years in the de facto presidency, as they were the power behind the other presidents of the time through their control of the National Guard...
rule. The two countries had been historically dominated by multinational corporation
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
s and wealthy landowning oligarchs
Business oligarch
Business oligarch is a near-synonym of the term "business magnate", borrowed by the English speaking and western media from post-Soviet parlance to describe the huge, fast-acquired wealth of some businessmen of the former Soviet republics during the privatization in Russia and other post-Soviet...
while most of their population remained in poverty; as a result, predominantly Marxist revolutionary leaders had won increasing support from the peasantry in both nations.
In 1982 the CIA, with assistance from the Argentine national intelligence agency, organized and financed right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua, known as the Contras. The tracing of secret funds for this scheme led to the revelations of the Iran-Contra Affair
Iran-Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair , also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or Iran-Contra-Gate, was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of...
. In 1985 Reagan authorized the sale of arms in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
in an unsuccessful effort to free U.S. hostages in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
; he later professed ignorance that subordinates were illegally diverting the proceeds to the Contras, a matter for which Marine
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...
Oliver North
Oliver North
Oliver Laurence North is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer, political commentator, host of War Stories with Oliver North on Fox News Channel, a military historian, and a New York Times best-selling author....
, an aide to National Security Advisor John M. Poindexter, took much of the blame. Reagan's approval ratings plummeted in 1986 as a result of the scandal, and many Americans began to seriously question his judgement. While the president's popularity improved in his final two years, he would never again enjoy the support he had had in 1985. Predictably, the Democrats regained control of Congress in the 1986 midterm elections. Oliver North meanwhile achieved a brief celebrity status in 1987 during his testimonies before Congress.
In sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...
, the Reagan administration, with help from apartheid South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, also attempted to topple the substantially Cuban and Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist FRELIMO and MPLA dictatorships of Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
and Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
, respectively, during those countries' civil wars. The administration intervened on the side of insurgent groups RENAMO in Mozambique and UNITA
UNITA
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola is the second-largest political party in Angola. Founded in 1966, UNITA fought with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the Angolan War for Independence and then against the MPLA in the ensuing civil war .The war was one...
in Angola, supplying each group with covert military and humanitarian aid.
In Afghanistan, Reagan massively stepped up military and humanitarian aid for mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
fighters against the Soviet proxy government there, providing them with Stinger
FIM-92 Stinger
The FIM-92 Stinger is a personal portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile , which can be adapted to fire from ground vehicles and helicopters , developed in the United States and entered into service in 1981. Used by the militaries of the U.S...
anti-aircraft missiles. U.S. allies Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
also provided the rebels with significant assistance. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
reduced and eventually ended his country's commitment to Afghanistan as Soviet troops there were bogged down in guerrilla war.
Reagan also expressed opposition to the Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
ese-installed Communist regime of Heng Samrin
Heng Samrin
Heng Samrin is a Cambodian politician. He was the chairman of the People's Republic of Kampuchea and the State of Cambodia , and later vice chairman and chairman of the National Assembly of Cambodia since 2006....
(and later, Hun Sen
Hun Sen
Hun Sen is the current Prime Minister of Cambodia.He has been the sole leader of the Cambodian People's Party , which has governed Cambodia since the Vietnamese-backed overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979...
) in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, which had ousted the genocidal Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
regime after Vietnam invaded the country. The administration approved military and humanitarian aid to the republican KPNLF
Khmer People's National Liberation Front
The Khmer People's National Liberation Front was a political front organized in 1979 in opposition to the Vietnamese-installed People's Republic of Kampuchea regime in Cambodia...
and royalist Funcinpec
Funcinpec
FUNCINPEC is a royalist political party in Cambodia. Before the 2008 election, FUNCINPEC and the Cambodian People's Party formed a coalition government, although FUNCINPEC's significance has decreased steadily since 1998, when it had an equal relationship with the CPP in the coalition.FUNCINPEC is...
insurgents. The Reagan administration also supported continued UN recognition of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
The Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea was a coalition government in exile composed of three Cambodian political factions: Prince Norodom Sihanouk's Funcinpec party, the Party of Democratic Kampuchea and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front formed in 1982, broadening the de...
(a tripartite rebel alliance of the KPNLF, Funcinpec, and the Khmer Rouge) over the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea regime. Reagan also continued American support for the autocratic Philippine
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
President Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos, Sr. was a Filipino leader and an authoritarian President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He was a lawyer, member of the Philippine House of Representatives and a member of the Philippine Senate...
, an ardent anti-Communist. In a 1984 presidential debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters
League of Women Voters
The League of Women Voters is an American political organization founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt during the last meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association approximately six months before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote...
, he explained his administration's support of Marcos by stating, "I know there are things there in the Philippines that do not look good to us from the standpoint right now of democratic rights, but what is the alternative? It is a large communist movement" http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/philippines/tl03.html, referring to active Communist guerrillas operating in the Philippines at the time. The U.S. also had significant strategic military interests in the Philippines, knowing that Marcos's government would not tamper with agreements to maintain U.S. naval bases in the country. Marcos was later ousted in 1986 by the mostly peaceful People Power movement, led by Corazón Aquino
Corazon Aquino
Maria Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco-Aquino was the 11th President of the Philippines and the first woman to hold that office in Philippine history. She is best remembered for leading the 1986 People Power Revolution, which toppled Ferdinand Marcos and restored democracy in the Philippines...
.
Reagan was sharply critical of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, once the darling of liberals. He repudiated its repudiation of its corruption, inefficiency and anti-Americanism/ In 1985-7 the U.S. withdrew from UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
, which had failed in its cultural missions, and began to deliberately withhold its UN dues. American policymakers considered this tactic an effective tool for asserting influence in the UN. When the UN and UNESCO mended their ways, the US returned and paid its dues.
The end of the Cold War
The Reagan administration adopted a hard-line stance toward the USSR. Early in his first term, the president attacked the rival superpower as the "evil empireEvil empire
The phrase evil empire was applied to the Soviet Union especially by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities, in calling for a rollback strategy that would, in his words,...
". While it was Jimmy Carter who had officially ended the policy of détente
Détente
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War...
following Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, East-West tensions in the early 1980s reached levels not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
. The Strategic Defense Initiative
Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
(SDI) was born out of the worsening U.S.-Soviet relations of the Reagan Era
Reagan Era
The Reagan Era or Age of Reagan is a periodization of recent American history used by historians and political observers to emphasize that the conservative "Reagan Revolution" led by President Ronald Reagan in domestic and foreign policy had a permanent impact...
. Popularly dubbed "Star Wars" at the time, SDI was a multi-billion dollar research project for a missile defense system that could shoot down incoming Soviet missiles and eliminate the need for mutually assured destruction.
While the Soviets had enjoyed great achievements on the international stage before Reagan entered office in 1981, such as the unification of their socialist ally, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, in 1976, and a string of socialist revolutions in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa, the country's strengthening ties with Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
nations in the 1960s and 1970s only masked its weakness. The Soviet economy suffered severe structural problems. Reform stalled between 1964–1982 and supply shortages of consumer goods become even more notorious.
East-West tensions eased rapidly after the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
. After the deaths of three elderly Soviet leaders in a row since 1982, the Politburo elected Gorbachev Soviet Communist Party chief in 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership. Under Gorbachev, relatively young reform-oriented technocrats rapidly consolidated power, providing new momentum for political and economic liberalization, and the impetus for cultivating warmer relations and trade with the West.
Focused on perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
, Gorbachev struggled to boost production of consumer goods, which would be impossible given the twin burdens of the Cold War arms race on one hand, and the provision of large sums of foreign and military aid, which the socialist allies had grown to expect, on the other. Under Gorbachev, Soviet policymakers increasingly accepted Reagan administration warnings that the U.S. would make the arms race a huge burden for them. The Soviets were already spending massive amounts on defense, and developing a counterpart to SDI was far more than their economy could handle. The result in the Soviet Union was a dual approach of concessions to the United States and economic restructuring (perestroika) and democratization (glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
) domestically, which eventually made it impossible for Gorbachev to reassert central control. Reaganite hawks have since argued that pressures stemming from increased U.S. defense spending was an additional impetus for reform.
During the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, the division of the world into two rival blocs had served to legitimize a broad and diffuse alliance not only with the Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
an nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but many countries in the developing world. Starting in the late 1980s, however, the regimes of the Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
an Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
began to collapse in rapid succession. The "fall of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
" 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
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is a 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Signed in Washington, D.C. by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on December 8, 1987, it was ratified by the United States Senate on May 27, 1988 and...
(INF) in 1987 and the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan as well as Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n forces from Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
.
These developments undercut the rationale for providing support to such repressive governments as those in Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
and South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, 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
Peace dividend
The peace dividend is a political slogan popularized by US President George H.W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1990s, purporting to describe the economic benefit of a decrease in defense spending. It is used primarily in discussions relating to the guns versus butter...
" 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
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
. Instead, President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
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
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
for independence led to first Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
and then the other two states, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
and Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
, declaring independence from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. 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
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
and Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
revealed or reopened other animosities concealed by decades of authoritarian rule. While there was a certain reluctance 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
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
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."
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has sought to revitalize Cold War institutional structures, especially NATO, as well as multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
and World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
through which it promotes economic reforms around the globe. NATO was set to expand initially to Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, and the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
and has since moved further eastward. In addition, U.S. policy placed a special emphasis on the neoliberal
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
"Washington Consensus
Washington Consensus
The term Washington Consensus was coined in 1989 by the economist John Williamson to describe a set of ten relatively specific economic policy prescriptions that he considered constituted the "standard" reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries...
", manifesting in the North American Free Trade Agreement
North American Free Trade Agreement
The North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA is an agreement signed by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement...
(NAFTA), which went into effect in 1994.
The U.S. often made moves to economically sanction countries which were said to be sponsoring terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
, engaging in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
or committing serious human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
abuses. There was sometimes a consensus for these moves, such as with the U.S. and European embargo
Embargo
An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce and trade with a particular country, in order to isolate it. Embargoes are considered strong diplomatic measures imposed in an effort, by the imposing country, to elicit a given national-interest result from the country on which it is...
es imposed on arms sales to China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
after its violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
, as well as for the UN Security Council's imposition of sanctions on Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
after its invasion of Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
. Support for other unilateral sanctions however, such as the ones levied on Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and Cuba, were limited, leading Congress to impose measures intended to punish foreign companies which violated the terms of the U.S.'s own laws.
In a 1999 Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
essay, Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an influential American political scientist who wrote highly-regarded books in a half-dozen sub-fields of political science, starting in 1957...
wrote that 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 extra-territoriallyExtraterritorialityExtraterritoriality is the state of being exempt from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Extraterritoriality can also be applied to physical places, such as military bases of foreign countries, or offices of the United Nations...
in other societies; grade countries according to their adherence to American standards on human rights, drugPsychoactive drugA psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...
s, terrorism, nuclear proliferationNuclear proliferationNuclear proliferation is a term now used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information, to nations which are not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the...
, missile proliferation, and now religious freedomFreedom of religionFreedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
; apply sanctions against countries that do not meet American standards on these issues; promote American corporate interests under the slogans of free tradeFree tradeUnder a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
and open marketsFree marketA free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
[NAFTA and GATT being the main examples of the free trade policy initiatives of the 1990s]; shape World BankWorld BankThe World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
and International Monetary FundInternational Monetary FundThe International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
policies to serve those same corporate interests; intervene in local conflicts in which it has relatively little direct interest; ... ; 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 PolandPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, HungaryHungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and the Czech RepublicCzech RepublicThe Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
and no one else; undertake military action against IraqIraqIraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and later maintain harsh economic sanctions against the regime; and categorize certain countries as 'rogue states,' excluding them from global institutions....1
Max Boot
Max Boot
Max Boot is an American author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He has been a prominent advocate for American power. He once described his ideas as "American might to promote American ideals." He self-identifies as a conservative, once joking that "I grew up in the...
, another influential contemporary commentator on U.S. policy, argues that the very ambitious goals of the U.S. in the post–Cold War period
- "aims to instill democracy in lands that have known tyranny, in the hope that doing so will short-circuit terrorism, military aggression, and weapons proliferation."
He adds:
- "This is an ambitious undertaking, the most successful examples of which are post–World War II Germany, Italy and Japan. In those cases, the US Army helped transform militaristic dictatorships into pillars of liberal democracy—one of the most significant developments of the twentieth century." http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/boot.htm
George H. W. Bush administration
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
's vice-president George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
ascended to the presidency, defeating Democratic Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
governor Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...
by an electoral landslide in the 1988 election
United States presidential election, 1988
The United States presidential election of 1988 featured no incumbent president, as President Ronald Reagan was unable to seek re-election after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Reagan's Vice President, George H. W. Bush, won the Republican nomination, while the...
. The campaign was marked by numerous blunders by Dukakis, including most famously a campaign ad featuring Dukakis in an M1 Abrams
M1 Abrams
The M1 Abrams is a third-generation main battle tank produced in the United States. It is named after General Creighton Abrams, former Army Chief of Staff and Commander of US military forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972. The M1 is a well armed, heavily armored, and highly mobile tank designed for...
tank.
In 1989, the invasion of Panama
United States invasion of Panama
The United States Invasion of Panama, code-named Operation Just Cause, was the invasion of Panama by the United States in December 1989. It occurred during the administration of U.S. President George H. W...
took place and Manuel Noriega
Manuel Noriega
Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno is a Panamanian politician and soldier. He was military dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989.The 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States removed him from power; he was captured, detained as a prisoner of war, and flown to the United States. Noriega was tried on...
was captured and put on trial.
Initially, Bush inherited an economy that continued the strong rally that had begun in the final months of 1982. However, the Federal Reserve continued with restrictive monetary policy, limiting economic growth in the late 1980s. When the 1990 oil price shock hit in mid-1990, consumer spending contracted and the economy entered recession. Unlike the early 1980s recession
Early 1980s recession
The early 1980s recession describes the severe global economic recession affecting much of the developed world in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The United States and Japan exited recession relatively early, but high unemployment would continue to affect other OECD nations through at least 1985...
, the recession beginning in 1990 was relatively mild. Some of the hardest hit areas were in the Northeast and California, while much of the South was less affected.