The collapse of the
President George H.W. Bush took the oath of office with foreign policy on his mind. He brought to the White House strong credentials: Congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, Permanent Representative to the People’s Republic of China, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Vice President of the United States. He started his career in military service in 1942, enlisting in the Navy on his 18th birthday and earning a commission as an ensign several days before his 19th birthday. He later served as a torpedo bomber pilot, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross; he was the last veteran of World War II to serve as president.
Patrician and self-effacing, President Bush engaged foreign dignitaries with
ease. He already knew most world leaders on a first-name basis. Former President
Ronald Reagan’s physical grace and soaring rhetoric led to unkind comparisons in
the lead-up to the 1988 campaign. The October 19, 1987, edition of Newsweek featured Bush on the cover with the caption:
“Fighting the ‘Wimp Factor.’” Whether from this portrayal of him or merely his
highly competitive instincts, Bush overwhelmed his opponents in Republican
primary debates and ran a highly aggressive general election campaign against
Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. While a majority of Americans voted for
him, Bush was a Burkean conservative in a burgeoning Information Age, and he did
not always connect with the average man on the street.
Democrats who comprised a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate bore lingering resentment from the 1988 campaign, while conservatives such as House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich recalled Bush’s track record as a political moderate. There were few coattails to President Bush’s electoral triumph, in other words, and neither a “Bush Revolution” in 1988 nor a class of “Bush Democrats” in the 101st Congress. In contrast, the so-called foreign policy establishment held him in high regard. Former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Zbigniew Brzezinski endorsed him for president—even though Brzezinski had mentored most of Bush’s opponent’s foreign policy advisers.
President Bush faced additional constraints. The massive tax cuts he himself had
termed “voodoo economics” in the 1980 Republican primary had stimulated the U.S.
economy but failed to increase tax revenues, while the 1985 Gramm-Rudman Deficit
Reduction Act triggered automatic spending cuts. Concern over the national debt
was the chief substantive issue of the 1988 campaign, and Bush had vowed to
reduce it without raising taxes. Inflation was tame and unemployment relatively
low, yet the transition to a post-industrial economy and the influx of
high-technology consumer products from Japan raised the specter of a decline in
America’s economic and technological leadership. The shock of the October 1987
stock market crash persisted, coming as it did in a year of two bestsellers,
Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and
Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, which
predicted a gloomy future for the West.
Bush rejected such pessimism, as it contrasted with developments in the international political system. Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s comprehensive reforms spoke to mankind’s universal yearning to live in an open society. Chinese Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms demonstrated the intellectual bankruptcy of communism. The ascent of democratic governments in the Philippines and Chile indicated that right-wing authoritarian regimes—as opposed to left-wing totalitarian ones—could in fact evolve into democracies. And the stirrings of liberty in Poland and Hungary offered tremendous opportunity to pierce the Iron Curtain.
Bush appointed as Secretary of State his best friend, James A. Baker, who in turn chose career foreign service officer Lawrence Eagleburger as his deputy. Another close associate, Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, became Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, a position he had held in the administration of President Gerald Ford. Scowcroft chose as his deputy Robert Gates, a career employee of the Central Intelligence Agency who had served on the National Security Council (NSC) under both Scowcroft and Brzezinski. Yet another veteran of the Ford administration, Congressman Richard Cheney, became Secretary of Defense after the Tower nomination debacle. With the addition of General Colin Powell, Reagan’s last national security adviser who became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1989, these individuals formed the core of the Bush foreign policy team and would all serve in some capacity for the entirety of the administration. They, in turn, assembled a roster of staffers who prided themselves on working in relative harmony with interdepartmental counterparts. These included Robert Blackwill, Condoleezza Rice, Philip Zelikow, Robert Hutchings, and Richard Haass at the NSC; Robert Zoellick, Dennis Ross, Robert Kimmett, and William Burns at the Department of State; and Paul Wolfowitz at the Department of Defense.
Presiding over this operation, Bush valued teamwork and loyalty. He extolled prudence and pragmatism, and did not entertain romantic visions such as a shield that could make nuclear weapons obsolete. Over time, he and his administration would strive to build what he termed in his September 11, 1991, address before a joint session of congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and federal budget deficit, a “new world order,” one “freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.”
Apartheid, the Afrikaans name given by the white-ruled
Although many of the segregationist policies dated back to the early decades of the twentieth century, it was the election of the Nationalist Party in 1948 that marked the beginning of legalized racism’s harshest features called Apartheid. The Cold War then was in its early stages. U.S. President Harry Truman’s foremost foreign policy goal was to limit Soviet expansion. Despite supporting a domestic civil rights agenda to further the rights of black people in the United States, the Truman Administration chose not to protest the anti-communist South African government’s system of Apartheid in an effort to maintain an ally against the Soviet Union in southern Africa. This set the stage for successive administrations to quietly support the Apartheid regime as a stalwart ally against the spread of communism.
Inside South Africa, riots, boycotts, and protests by black South Africans
against white rule had occurred since the inception of independent white rule in
1910. Opposition intensified when the Nationalist Party, assuming power in 1948,
effectively blocked all legal and non-violent means of political protest by
non-whites. The African National Congress (ANC) and its offshoot, the Pan
Africanist Congress (PAC), both of which envisioned a vastly different form of
government based on majority rule, were outlawed in 1960 and many of its leaders
imprisoned. The most famous prisoner was a leader of the ANC,
The international community had begun to take notice of the brutality of the Apartheid regime after white South African police opened fire on unarmed black protesters in the town of Sharpeville in 1960, killing 69 people and wounding 186 others. The United Nations led the call for sanctions against the South African Government. Fearful of losing friends in Africa as de-colonization transformed the continent, powerful members of the Security Council, including Great Britain, France, and the United States, succeeded in watering down the proposals. However, by the late 1970s, grassroots movements in Europe and the United States succeeded in pressuring their governments into imposing economic and cultural sanctions on Pretoria. After the U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, many large multinational companies withdrew from South Africa. By the late 1980s, the South African economy was struggling with the effects of the internal and external boycotts as well as the burden of its military commitment in occupying Namibia.
Defenders of the Apartheid regime, both inside and outside South Africa, had promoted it as a bulwark against communism. However, the end of the Cold War rendered this argument obsolete. South Africa had illegally occupied neighboring Namibia at the end of World War II, and since the mid-1970s, Pretoria had used it as a base to fight the communist party in Angola. The United States had even supported the South African Defense Force’s efforts in Angola. In the 1980s, hard-line anti-communists in Washington continued to promote relations with the Apartheid government despite economic sanctions levied by the U.S. Congress. However, the relaxation of Cold War tensions led to negotiations to settle the Cold War conflict in Angola. Pretoria’s economic struggles gave the Apartheid leaders strong incentive to participate. When South Africa reached a multilateral agreement in 1988 to end its occupation of Namibia in return for a Cuban withdrawal from Angola, even the most ardent anti-communists in the United States lost their justification for support of the Apartheid regime.
The effects of the internal unrest and international condemnation led to dramatic
changes beginning in 1989. South African Prime Minister
The impact of Mandela’s release reverberated throughout South Africa and the world. After speaking to throngs of supporters in Cape Town where he pledged to continue the struggle, but advocated peaceful change, Mandela took his message to the international media. He embarked on a world tour culminating in a visit to the United States where he spoke before a joint session of Congress.
After Prime Minister de Klerk agreed to democratic elections for the country, the
United States lifted sanctions and increased foreign aid, and many of the U.S.
companies who disinvested in the 1980s returned with new investments and joint
ventures. In April 1994,
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, was formed in 1989 in Australia as an informal forum in which member nations could discuss free trade and economic cooperation along the Pacific Rim. From the perspective of the United States, it has been a crucial institution for economic engagement within the region.
APEC was one of many multilateral trade organizations that emerged in the
post-Cold War era. As the bipolarity of the Cold War came to an end, the new
world order was marked in part by increasing globalization and the growth of
regional trading blocs. The
Although the countries bordering the Pacific Ocean were extremely diverse in terms of linguistic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, they shared rapidly developing economic power and common economic interests. Recognizing this, a number of countries in the region began to discuss the creation of a regional organization that would promote free trade and further economic integration in the hope that such a move would benefit the entire region. The resulting organization, APEC, brought together developed and developing economies and promoted the idea of a regional Pacific Rim identity in an effort to increase Pacific-wide cooperation.
Since 1989, APEC has expanded from its original 12 members to include 21 member
economies. The founding members were Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada,
Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand and the United States. In 1991, the
During its first five years of operation, APEC established its core objectives. In the 1991 Seoul Declaration, APEC member economies proclaimed the creation of a liberalized free trade area around the Pacific Rim as the principle objective of the organization. A 1994 meeting held in Bogor, Indonesia set as the organization’s goal the achievement of “free and open trade and investment” for the region, establishing 2010 as the target date for developed economies and 2020 for developing ones. Each subsequent annual meeting has addressed the implementation of the Bogor Goals along with pertinent issues for the economic and security interests of the member economies. The topics that may be addressed at annual meetings are not proscribed, but the focus tends to be on trade liberalization, promoting business, and economic cooperation.
The United States has long been an active participant in the activities of APEC.
In 1993 in Seattle, Washington, President
On November 9, 1989, thousands of jubilant Germans brought down the most visible symbol of division at the heart of Europe—the Berlin Wall. For two generations, the Wall was the physical representation of the Iron Curtain, and East German border guards had standing shoot-to-kill orders against those who tried to escape. But just as the Wall had come to represent the division of Europe, its fall came to represent the end of the Cold War. In the White House, President George H. W. Bush and his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, watched the unfolding scene on a television in the study, aware of both the historical significance of the moment and of the challenges for U.S. foreign policy that lay ahead.
Not even the most optimistic observer of President’s Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Berlin speech calling on Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” would have imagined that two years later the communist regimes of Eastern Europe would collapse like dominoes. By 1990, the former communist leaders were out of power, free elections were held, and Germany was whole again.
The peaceful collapse of the regimes was by no means pre-ordained. Soviet tanks crushed demonstrators in East Berlin in June 1953, in Hungary in 1956, and again in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Soviet military planners were intimately involved in the Polish planning for martial law in 1980, and Soviet troops remained stationed throughout Eastern Europe, as much a guarantee for Soviet security as an ominous reminder to Eastern European peoples of Soviet dominance over their countries.
The Reagan administration’s strong rhetoric in support of the political
aspirations of Eastern European and Soviet citizens was met, following 1985,
with a new type of leader in the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of
perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (transparency) further legitimized popular calls for reform
from within. Gorbachev also made clear—at first secretly to the Eastern European
leaders, then increasingly more public—that the Soviet Union had abandoned the
policy of military intervention in support of communist regimes (the Brezhnev
Doctrine).
On February 6, 1989, negotiations between the Polish Government and members of
the underground labor union Solidarity opened officially in Warsaw. Solidarity
was formed in August 1980 following a series of strikes that paralyzed the
Polish economy. The 1981 Soviet-inspired imposition of martial law drove the
organization underground, where it survived due to support from Western labor
organizations and Polish émigré groups. The results of the “Round Table Talks,”
signed by government and Solidarity representatives on April 4, included free
elections for 35% of the Parliament (Sejm), free
elections for the newly created Senate, a new office of the President, and the
recognition of Solidarity as a political party. On June 4, as Chinese tanks
crushed student-led protests in Beijing, Solidarity delivered a crushing
electoral victory. By August 24, ten years after Solidarity emerged on the
scene, Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-communist Prime Minister in
Eastern Europe.
In Hungary, drastic changes were also under way. The government, already the most liberal of the communist governments, allowed free association and assembly and ordered opening of the country’s border with the West. In doing so, it provided an avenue to escape for an ever-increasing number of East Germans. The Hungarian Party removed its long-time leader, Janos Kadar, agreed to its own version of the Round Table talks with the opposition, and, on June 16, ceremoniously re-interred Imre Nagy, the reformist communist leader of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. By October 23, ten months after political reforms began, Hungary adopted a new constitution allowing a multi-party system and competitive elections.
The economic collapse of East Germany led increasing numbers of East Germans to seek to emigrate to the West. Thousands sought refuge in West German embassies in other communist countries, eventually forcing the government to allow them to emigrate via special trains. Visiting Berlin in early October, Gorbachev cautioned the East German leadership of the need to reform, and confided in his advisors that East German leader Erich Honecker had to be replaced. Two weeks later, Honecker was forced to resign, while hundreds of thousands marched in protest throughout major East German cities. On November 9, as the world watched on television, the East German Government announced the opening of all East German borders. In a fluid situation, the Berlin Wall came down when an obviously ill-prepared East German spokesman told reporters that the new travel regulations also applied to Berlin. Before the end of the month, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl unveiled a plan for reunification of the two Germanies.
As the Wall came down and the fears of a Soviet reaction receded, the dominoes started falling at a quickened pace. In October, riot police arrested hundreds in Prague after an unsanctioned demonstration; only weeks later, hundreds of thousands gathered in Prague to protest the government. Alexander Dubcek, the reformist communist who led the Prague Spring in 1968, made his first public appearance in over two decades. A new, non-communist government took the country’s reins on December 5, and on December 29, Vaclav Havel, the famed playwright and dissident, was elected President. In Bulgaria, protests lead to the removal of Todor Zhivkov, the long-time leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party, and his replacement with reformist communist, Petar Mladenov. The new government quickly announced that the government would hold free elections in 1990.
Only in Romania did the events turn violent. Nicolae Ceausescu, an increasingly idiosyncratic relic of Stalinist times, refused any reforms. On December 17 in Timisoara, the army and police fired into crowds protesting government policies, killing dozens. Protests spread to other cities, with hundreds killed when Ceausescu ordered the violent repression of demonstrations on December 21. By the next day, Ceausescu was forced to flee Bucharest and was arrested by Army units in the countryside. The interim government, led by a reformist communist Ion Iliescu, held a quick mock trial and Ceausescu and his wife were executed on December 25.
By the summer of 1990, all of the former communist regimes of Eastern Europe were replaced by democratically elected governments. In Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, newly formed center-right parties took power for the first time since the end of World War II. In Bulgaria and Romania, reformed communists retained control of the governments, but new center-right parties entered Parliaments and became active on the political scene. The course was set for the reintegration of Eastern Europe into Western economic, political, and security frameworks. Writing in his journal on November 10, 1989, Anatoly Chernyaev, foreign policy advisor to Gorbachev noted that the fall of the wall represented “a shift in the world balance of forces” and the end of Yalta.
Meeting in Malta on December 2, Bush and Gorbachev “buried the Cold War at the bottom of the Mediterranean” as one of Gorbachev’s staffers later described. In his memoirs, Bush noted that the rapport he built with Gorbachev at that meeting would prove beneficial later on. And while Scowcroft did not yet feel the Cold War was over, he noted that U.S. policy at the time evolved, “from quietly supporting the transformations to cultivating Soviet acquiescence, even collaboration, in them.”
After his inauguration in January 1989,
Conditions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, however, changed rapidly. Gorbachev’s decision to loosen the Soviet yoke on the countries of Eastern Europe created an independent, democratic momentum that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and then the overthrow of Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe. While Bush supported these independence movements, U.S. policy was reactive. Bush chose to let events unfold organically, careful not to do anything to worsen Gorbachev’s position.
With the policy review complete, and taking into account unfolding events in Europe, Bush met with Gorbachev at Malta in early December 1989. They laid the groundwork for finalizing START negotiations, completing the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, and they discussed the rapid changes in Eastern Europe. Bush encouraged Gorbachev’s reform efforts, hoping that the Soviet leader would succeed in shifting the USSR toward a democratic system and a market oriented economy.
Gorbachev’s decision to allow elections with a multi-party system and create a presidency for the Soviet Union began a slow process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Following the May 1990 elections, Gorbachev faced conflicting internal political pressures: Boris Yeltsin and the pluralist movement advocated democratization and rapid economic reforms while the hard-line Communist elite wanted to thwart Gorbachev’s reform agenda.
Facing a growing schism between Yeltsin and Gorbachev, the Bush administration opted to work primarily with Gorbachev because they viewed him as the more reliable partner and because he made numerous concessions that promoted U.S. interests. Plans proceeded to sign the START agreement. With the withdrawal of Red Army troops from East Germany, Gorbachev agreed to German reunification and acquiesced when a newly reunited Germany joined NATO. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the United States and the Soviet leadership worked together diplomatically to repel this attack.
Yet for all of those positive steps on the international stage, Gorbachev’s domestic problems continued to mount. Additional challenges to Moscow’s control placed pressure on Gorbachev and the Communist party to retain power in order to keep the Soviet Union intact. After the demise of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and the Caucasus demanded independence from Moscow. In January 1991, violence erupted in Lithuania and Latvia. Soviet tanks intervened to halt the democratic uprisings, a move that Bush resolutely condemned.
By 1991, the Bush administration reconsidered policy options in light of the growing level of turmoil within the Soviet Union. Three basic options presented themselves. The administration could continue to support Gorbachev in hopes of preventing Soviet disintegration. Alternately, the United States could shift support to Yeltsin and the leaders of the Republics and provide support for a controlled restructuring or possible breakup of the Soviet Union. The final option consisted of lending conditional support to Gorbachev, leveraging aid and assistance in return for more rapid and radical political and economic reforms.
Unsure about how much political capital Gorbachev retained, Bush combined elements of the second and third options. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was vast, as were Soviet conventional forces, and further weakening of Gorbachev could derail further arms control negotiations. To balance U.S. interests in relation to events in the Soviet Union, and in order to demonstrate support for Gorbachev, Bush signed the START treaty at the Moscow Summit in July 1991. Bush administration officials also, however, increased contact with Yeltsin.
The unsuccessful August 1991 coup against Gorbachev sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. Planned by hard-line Communists, the coup diminished Gorbachev’s power and propelled Yeltsin and the democratic forces to the forefront of Soviet and Russian politics. Bush publicly condemned the coup as “extra-constitutional,” but Gorbachev’s weakened position became obvious to all. He resigned his leadership as head of the Communist party shortly thereafter—separating the power of the party from that of the presidency of the Soviet Union. The Central Committee was dissolved and Yeltsin banned party activities. A few days after the coup, Ukraine and Belarus declared their independence from the Soviet Union. The Baltic States, which had earlier declared their independence, sought international recognition.
Amidst quick, dramatic changes across the landscape of the Soviet Union, Bush administration officials prioritized the prevention of nuclear catastrophe, the curbing of ethnic violence, and the stable transition to new political orders. On September 4, 1991, Secretary of State James Baker articulated five basic principles that would guide U.S. policy toward the emerging republics: self-determination consistent with democratic principles, recognition of existing borders, support for democracy and rule of law, preservation of human rights and rights of national minorities, and respect for international law and obligations. The basic message was clear—if the new republics could follow these principles, they could expect cooperation and assistance from the United States. Baker met with Gorbachev and Yeltsin in an attempt to shore up the economic situation and develop some formula for economic cooperation between the republics and Russia, as well as to determine ways to allow political reforms to occur in a regulated and peaceful manner. In early December, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus met in Brest to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), effectively declaring the demise of the Soviet Union.
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state. People all over the world watched in amazement at this relatively peaceful transition from former Communist monolith into multiple separate nations.
With the dissolution of Soviet Union, the main goal of the Bush administration was economic and political stability and security for Russia, the Baltics, and the states of the former Soviet Union. Bush recognized all 12 independent republics and established diplomatic relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. In February 1992, Baker visited the remaining republics and diplomatic relations were established with Uzbekistan, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Civil war in Georgia prevented its recognition and the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States until May 1992. Yeltsin met with Bush at Camp David in February 1992, followed by a formal state visit to Washington in June. Leaders from Kazakhstan and Ukraine visited Washington in May 1992.
During his visits to Washington, politics, economic reforms, and security issues dominated the conversations between Yeltsin and Bush. Of paramount concern was securing the nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union and making certain nuclear weapons did not fall into the wrong hands. Baker made it clear that funding was available from the United States to secure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the former Soviet Union. The Nunn-Lugar Act established the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program in November 1991 to fund the dismantling of weapons in the former Soviet Union, in accordance with the START and INF Treaties and other agreements. Bush and Baker also worked with Yeltsin and international organizations like the World Bank and IMF to provide financial assistance and hopefully prevent a humanitarian crisis in Russia.
Issued on October 18, 1990, National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 15–90 presented a dire warning to the U.S. policy community:
Yugoslavia will cease to function as a federal state within a
year, and will probably dissolve within two. Economic reform will not stave
off the breakup. [...] A full-scale interrepublic war is unlikely, but
serious intercommunal conflict will accompany the breakup and will continue
afterward. The violence will be intractable and bitter. There is little the
United States and its European allies can do to preserve Yugoslav
unity.
The October 1990 judgment of the U.S. intelligence community, as Thomas Shreeve noted in his 2003 study on NIE 15–90 for the National Defense University, “was analytically sound, prescient, and well written. It was also fundamentally inconsistent with what US policymakers wanted to happen in the former Yugoslavia, and it had almost no impact on US policy.” By January 1992, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ceased to exist, having dissolved into its constituent states.
Yugoslavia—the land of South (i.e. Yugo) Slavs—was created at the end of World War I when Croat, Slovenian, and Bosnian territories that had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire united with the Serbian Kingdom. The country broke up under Nazi occupation during World War II with the creation of a Nazi-allied independent Croat state, but was reunified at the end of the war when the communist-dominated partisan force of Josip Broz Tito liberated the country. Following the end of World War II, Yugoslavian unity was a top priority for the U.S. Government. While ostensibly a communist state, Yugoslavia broke away from the Soviet sphere of influence in 1948, became a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, and adopted a more de-centralized and less repressive form of government as compared with other East European communist states during the Cold War.
The varied reasons for the country’s breakup ranged from the cultural and religious divisions between the ethnic groups making up the nation, to the memories of WWII atrocities committed by all sides, to centrifugal nationalist forces. However, a series of major political events served as the catalyst for exacerbating inherent tensions in the Yugoslav republic. Following the death of Tito in 1980, provisions of the 1974 constitution provided for the effective devolution of all real power away from the federal government to the republics and autonomous provinces in Serbia by establishing a collective presidency of the eight provincial representatives and a federal government with little control over economic, cultural, and political policy. External factors also had a significant impact. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, the unification of Germany one year later, and the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union all served to erode Yugoslavia’s political stability. As Eastern European states moved away from communist government and toward free elections and market economies, the West’s attention focused away from Yugoslavia and undermined the extensive economic and financial support necessary to preserve a Yugoslav economy already close to collapse. The absence of a Soviet threat to the integrity and unity of Yugoslavia and its constituent parts meant that a powerful incentive for unity and cooperation was removed.
Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia’s president from 1989, took advantage of the vacuum created by a progressively weakening central state and brutally deployed the use of Serbian ultra-nationalism to fan the flames of conflict in the other republics and gain legitimacy at home. Milosevic started as a banker in Belgrade and became involved in politics in the mid-1980s. He rose quickly through the ranks to become head of the Serbian Communist Party in 1986. While attending a party meeting in the Albanian-dominated province of Kosovo in May 1987, Serbians in the province rioted outside the meeting hall. Milosevic spoke with the rioters and listened to their complaints of mistreatment by the Albanian majority. His actions were extensively reported by Serbian-controlled Yugoslav mass media, beginning the process of transforming the former banker into the stalwart symbol of Serbian nationalism. Having found a new source of legitimacy, Milosevic quickly shored up his power in Serbia through control of the party apparatus and the press. He moved to strip the two autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina of their constitutionally-guaranteed autonomy within Serbia by using mass rallies to force the local leaderships to resign in favor of his own preferred candidates. By mid-1989 Kosovo and Vojvodina had been reintegrated into Serbia, and the Montenegro leadership was replaced by Milosevic allies.
The ongoing effects of democratization in Eastern Europe were felt throughout Yugoslavia. As Milosevic worked to consolidate power in Serbia, elections in Slovenia and Croatia in 1990 gave non-communist parties control of the state legislatures and governments. Slovenia was the first to declare “sovereignty” in 1990, issuing a parliamentary declaration that Slovenian law took precedence over Yugoslav law. Croatia followed in May, and in August, the Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina also declared itself sovereign. Slovenia and Croatia began a concerted effort to transform Yugoslavia from a federal state to a confederation. With the administration of George H. W. Bush focused primarily on the Soviet Union, Germany, and the crisis in the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia had lost the geostrategic importance it enjoyed during the Cold War. While Washington attempted during the summer of 1990 to marshal some limited coordination with its Western allies in case the Yugoslav crisis turned bloody, Western European governments maintained a wait-and-see attitude. At the same time, inter-republic relations in Yugoslavia spiraled out of control. Slovenia overwhelmingly voted for independence in December 1990. A Croatian referendum in May 1991 also supported full independence. Secretary of State James Baker traveled to Belgrade to meet with Yugoslav leaders and urge a political solution to no avail. Slovenia and Croatia both declared formal independence on June 25, 1991.
The Yugoslav Army (JNA) briefly intervened in Slovenia, but it withdrew after 10 days, effectively confirming Slovenia’s separation. The Serb minority in Croatia declared its own independence from the republic and its desire to join Serbia, sparking violence between armed militias. The JNA intervened in the conflict ostensibly to separate the combatants, but it became quickly apparent that it favored the Croatian-Serbs. The war that followed devastated Croatia, resulting in tens of thousands dead, and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, a referendum on independence took place in March 1992, but was boycotted by the Serb minority. The republic declared its independence from Yugoslavia in May 1992, while the Serbs in Bosnia declared their own areas an independent republic. Macedonia itself also declared independence following a September 1991 referendum, and a U.S. peacekeeping and monitoring force was dispatched to the border with Serbia to monitor violence.
Croatia and Slovenia were internationally recognized in January 1992, with Bosnia’s independence recognized soon thereafter. The three countries joined the United Nations on May 22, 1992. Serbia and Montenegro formed a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a successor state to old Yugoslavia, but the international community did not recognize its successor claim. Over the next three years, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions from their homes, as Europe witnessed the most horrific fighting on its territory since the end of World War II. In 1998–1999, violence erupted again in Kosovo, with the province’s majority Albanian population calling for independence from Serbia. A NATO bombing campaign and economic sanctions forced the Milosevic regime to accept a NATO-led international peace keeping force. The province was placed under U.N. administrative mandate. With the economy crumbling, Milosevic lost his grip on power in 2001, was arrested, and turned over to the International Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. He died in prison in 2006, before his trial concluded. In 2008, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized by the United States and most European states, despite Russian objections.
The establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China in 1979, together with Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, inaugurated a decade of vibrant cultural exchange and expanding economic ties between the two countries. However, the Chinese Government’s violent suppression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, cooled U.S.-Chinese relations considerably. To the present day, the Department of State marks the anniversary of the suppression by issuing a statement calling on the Chinese Government to end harassment of those who participated in the protests and to fully account for those killed, detained, or missing.
The demonstrations began on April 15, when Chinese students gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where so many student and mass demonstrations had taken place since the early 20th century, to mark the death of the popular pro-reform Chinese leader Hu Yaobang. The demonstration became a forum to protest corruption and inflation, and call for broader political and economic reforms to build on the reforms that had already transformed China considerably in the post-Mao era.
The Chinese leadership was divided on how to handle the demonstrations. As the
numbers of protesters swelled to the tens of thousands, some leaders who saw the
protests as a direct challenge to Communist Party rule labeled the demonstrators
“counter-revolutionary” in an April 26 editorial in the government-run People’s Daily newspaper. Other officials sympathetic to
the protestors’ demands for political reform favored a conciliatory approach, as
represented by General Secretary of the Communist Party Zhao Ziyang’s visit with
protestors on May 4 to hear and acknowledge their concerns.
Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s impending state visit on May 15 invigorated the protests. Some protestors initiated hunger strikes to increase pressure on the government. Foreign media that arrived to cover the visit turned their attention to the protests and heightened international—especially Western—awareness of the protesters and their demands. The crowds in the Square grew beyond students to include a broad segment of Chinese society, from workers to ordinary citizens from Beijing and beyond, and reportedly exceeded one million in number. Gorbachev’s visit occupied Chinese officials’ attention until his departure on May 18. On May 19, Zhao visited the protesters once more to make an emotional appeal for hunger strikes to end. The Chinese leadership imposed martial law in Beijing on May 20. The protests continued.
On the night of June 3 and 4, the People’s Liberation Army stormed the Square with tanks, crushing the protests with terrible human costs. Estimates of the numbers killed vary. The Chinese Government has asserted that injuries exceeded 3,000 and that over 200 individuals, including 36 university students, were killed that night. Western sources, however, are skeptical of the official Chinese report and most frequently cite the toll as hundreds or even thousands killed. Similar protests that had taken place in other Chinese cities were soon suppressed and their leaders imprisoned.
In the aftermath, President George H.W. Bush denounced the actions in Tiananmen Square and suspended military sales as well as high level exchanges with Chinese officials. Many members of the U.S. Congress, the American public, and international leaders advocated broader economic sanctions, some of which were implemented. U.S. leaders met with Chinese nationals studying in the United States as a symbolic gesture of commitment. Questions of relations with China, in particular the granting of Most-Favored-Nation trading status, were controversial questions for the remainder of President Bush’s term and into the term of President Bill Clinton.
At the end of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988, Iraq emerged with its state intact and a reinforced sense of national pride, but laden with massive debts. Iraq had largely financed the war effort through loans, and owed some $37 billion to Gulf creditors in 1990. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein called on the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to cancel the Iraqi debt they held, arguing that the loans should be considered payments to Iraq for protecting the Arabian Peninsula from Iranian expansionism, but his appeals went unanswered. The Gulf states’ refusal to cancel Iraq’s war debts contributed to Saddam Hussein’s decision to make threats against Iraq’s rich, but militarily weak, neighbor Kuwait.
After Kuwait rejected Saddam’s debt-forgiveness demands, he threatened to reignite a conflict over the long-standing question of ownership of the Warbah and Bubiyan Islands, to which Iraq ascribed importance because of the secure access they afforded to its ports on the Khawr 'Abd Allah—the waterway to the Persian Gulf that remained the only viable alternative to the closed Shatt Al-'Arab, cluttered with debris from the Iran-Iraq War.
The dispute over the Bubiyan and Warbah Islands was a key point of contention in the lengthy history of territorial conflict between Iraq and Kuwait. In 1961, when the United Kingdom ended its protectorate over Kuwait, then Iraqi Prime Minister General 'Abd Al-Karim Qasim asserted that Kuwait was an "integral part of Iraq" because it had been part of the former Ottoman province of Al-Basrah. Iraq threatened to exert its sovereignty over Kuwait, but the consequent deployment of British troops to Kuwait forced the Iraqis to back down. Although subsequent regimes relinquished this claim by recognizing Kuwait's independence, Ba’athist Iraq never formally accepted a common boundary between the two countries.
Still, there had been no major incidents regarding the border dispute until 1990, when Iraq was in the throes of the postwar economic crisis. In July, Saddam accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of breaking with Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) production quotas and over-producing crude oil for export, which depressed prices, depriving Iraq of critical oil revenues. In addition, Saddam Hussein alleged that Kuwait was stealing oil from the Rumayla oil field that straddled the Iraq-Kuwait border. He also demanded that Kuwait cede control of the Bubiyan and Warbah Islands to Iraq.
During this period, there was a deterioration of relations between the United States and Iraq. Iraq accused the United States and Israel of deliberately weakening Iraq by encouraging Kuwait to reduce oil prices. When Iraq began to threaten Kuwait early in July 1990, the United States staged maneuvers in the Gulf to warn Iraq against taking military action against the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Despite this show of U.S. force, President George H.W. Bush adopted a conciliatory policy toward Saddam Hussein in hopes of moderating the Iraqi regime and policies. The Bush administration tried to maintain economic and political relations with Iraq, and on April 12, 1990, sent a delegation of American senators led by Senator Robert Dole to meet with Hussein. Senator Dole brought a message from the White House suggesting that the United States wanted to improve relations with Iraq. A letter from President Bush to Saddam delivered by U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie on July 27 echoed this sentiment.
But on August 2, 1990, a force of one hundred thousand Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait and overran the country in a matter of hours. The invasion of Kuwait led to a United Nations Security Council embargo and sanctions on Iraq and a U.S.-led coalition air and ground war, which began on January 16, 1991, and ended with an Iraqi defeat and retreat from Kuwait on February 28, 1991.
Although the United States was aware of Hussein’s threats to Kuwait, it did not anticipate the Iraqi military incursion. The Iraqi Republican Guard units moved toward Kuwait City while Iraqi Special Forces secured key sites, including the islands of Warba and Bubayan, Kuwaiti air fields, and the palaces of the Emir and the Crown Prince. There was some Kuwaiti resistance to the Iraqi invasion, but the Iraqi forces easily suppressed Kuwait’s defenses. Members of the Kuwaiti royal family escaped to Saudi Arabia where they appealed for international support. On August 28, Iraq declared that Kuwait had become its nineteenth province.
International condemnation of the Iraqi invasion was widespread and virtually unanimous. Within days, the United States led efforts to organize an international coalition, which, working through the United Nations Security Council, passed Resolution 660 demanding Iraq’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal, Resolution 661 imposing economic sanctions, and Resolution 663 declaring the annexation of Kuwait null and void.
The United States and Saudi Arabia agreed to a deployment of U.S. forces to Saudi Arabia to protect the peninsula. At the same time, the United States and the coalition insisted on Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait, but Iraq refused to withdraw and began looting Kuwait and destroying its infrastructure.
By October 30, the Bush administration made a decision to push Iraq out of Kuwait by force if necessary. Bush increased the U.S. force presence and petitioned the United Nations for authorization to use force. The result was UN Resolution 678, which authorized the use of force to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, but gave Iraq a forty-five day grace period to withdraw. Led by the United States, an international coalition of nations amassed forces in the region to help liberate Kuwait.
After the deadline for withdrawal passed, the coalition led by the United States attacked Iraq by air. Within twenty-four hours, coalition forces controlled the skies and bombarded such strategic sites as the Iraqi command and control facilities, Saddam Hussein’s palaces, the Ba’th Party headquarters, power stations, intelligence and security facilities, hydroelectric stations, oil refineries, military-industrial complexes, and Iraq’s missile facilities. Coalition aircraft subsequently targeted Iraqi troops in Kuwait
In retaliation, Saddam Hussein launched missile attacks against Israel and on coalition force bases in Saudi Arabia. But Israel refused to retaliate and coalition forces took the offensive by launching a land campaign that began on February 24 and lasted four days. Comprising forces from thirty-four countries, including a number of Arab countries, the coalition forces liberated Kuwait City and drove Iraqi forces into a retreat. On March 2, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 686, which set forth conditions for a cease-fire. Iraq was obligated to accept its provisions, which included sanctions and payment of reparations for war damages. Iraq was obligated to return property stolen from Kuwait. The United States continued to put pressure on Iraq through the United Nations, which passed Security Council Resolution 687 establishing the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to inspect Iraq’s suspected chemical and biological weapons capabilities. The United States subsequently sought to ensure that the trade embargo imposed on Iraq the previous year through Resolution 661 remained in place and that Iraq was stripped of chemical weapons and missiles and its nuclear research capabilities. In the chaos following the war, spontaneous Shiite rebellions in the South and Kurdish unrest in northern Iraq broke out but were eventually suppressed by Saddam Hussein and his Revolutionary Guards.
On March 6, 1991, President
The Conference’s long-term impact, however, was more limited than the Bush administration had hoped. Following Madrid, Israeli, Syrian, Jordanian, and Palestinian representatives continued to meet for bilateral talks in Washington, and multilateral talks commenced in Moscow in 1992. Yet by 1993, the Washington talks had become deadlocked and were overtaken by secret Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Jordanian negotiations, which produced the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles (the so-called “Oslo Accord”) of September 1993 and the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty of October 1994.
From the Intifada to Madrid
The United States began trying to convene an international Middle East peace
conference during the final year of intifada,as a precondition to
negotiations. In July 1988, Jordan’s King Hussein rendered the Shultz Plan
unworkable when he renounced his kingdom’s links to the West Bank.
Throughout 1989–1990, U.S. peacemaking efforts centered on a plan put forward by
Israeli Prime Minister
By March 1991, the Persian Gulf War had created a more favorable context for American peacemaking efforts. The Bush administration’s successful military campaign against Iraq left the President enormously popular at home, and highlighted America’s increasingly dominant role in a post-Cold War Middle East. The Soviet Union had not strongly opposed American intervention, and Arab states, including former Soviet client Syria, joined the coalition against Saddam Hussein. At the same time, the administration felt a need to reward its Arab partners for their support by pushing for progress on the Palestinian issue. Since the PLO backed Iraq during the war, it had alienated Egypt, Syria, and most of the Gulf States, and lost influence over Palestinians in the occupied territories. The Bush administration thus had an opportunity to bring Palestinians into the diplomatic process under conditions that the Israelis might accept.
Between March and October 1991, Baker succeeded in getting Arab leaders and Palestinian representatives from the occupied territories to drop their demands that PLO officials and Palestinians from East Jerusalem participate in an international peace conference. Instead, the Arab parties agreed that the Palestinians would only be represented by delegates from the occupied territories, and as part of a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation. Simultaneously, Baker and Bush put pressure on Shamir to drop Israel’s insistence on bilateral negotiations by withholding $10 billion in loan guarantees that he had requested to help settle Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union. The President insisted that Shamir would have to promise that the funds would not be used to finance new settlement activity in the occupied territories. Shamir refused to accept Bush’s demand, but it undoubtedly played a role in his decision to come to Madrid.
The Conference and its Aftermath
The Madrid Conference opened October 30, 1991, and ended on November 4. Though the parties largely stuck to their traditional positions and did not negotiate seriously with each other, they nevertheless agreed to remain in dialogue. Bilateral talks between Israeli officials and their Arab counterparts would begin in Washington in December 1991, while multilateral negotiations began in Moscow in January 1992. From the beginning, the bilateral talks were generally regarded as the more significant of the two tracks. While these talks acquired greater momentum following the election of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in June 1992, they failed to yield results before the Clinton administration took office. Ultimately, the Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Palestinian tracks established at Madrid would be circumvented by the parties themselves. Frustrated by the Palestinian delegation’s inability to move forward without Arafat’s approval, the Israelis decided to negotiate directly with the PLO, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993. King Hussein and the Israelis likewise decided to move forward independently of the Madrid framework, holding direct talks which produced a peace treaty by October 1994.