Post-Cold War American Foreign Policy
Part I: The Bush and Clinton Years
VUS.13~ What impact have presidents of the United States since 1988 had on foreign policy?
With the end of the Cold War, the United States changed its goals and policies in the area of foreign affairs. Involvement in conflicts in other areas of the world has been an integral (fundamental or basic) part of United States foreign policy in the post-Cold War modern era.
George Herbert Walker Bush, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s vice president, succeeded Reagan as president in 1989. The Bush administration initially experienced many foreign policy successes as a result of the fall of communism in both Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. During the first year of the Bush presidency, German citizens tore down the Berlin Wall, which since 1961 had served as the most important symbol of the Cold War division of Europe into western democratic and eastern communist nations. Soon after the Berlin Wall fell, communist governments collapsed in every East European satellite of the Soviet Union. In addition to East Germany, communists lost power in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia, which later split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. All the former members of the Warsaw Pact embraced democracy and free market capitalism. The Bush administration then witnessed the reunification of Germany in late1990 under the democratic leadership of West Germany and by the end of 1991 the complete breakup of the Soviet Union into fifteen separate nations.
In addition, President George Bush had to deal with mounting tension in Yugoslavia, a non-aligned communist government in the Balkans region of Eastern Europe which began to show signs of collapse in 1990. Being non-aligned during the Cold War meant Yugoslavia had remained neutral, siding neither with the United States and its NATO allies nor with the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact friends. Historically, the Balkan peninsula of Europe has consisted of many different ethnic groups, who have practiced several different religions. Following World War II, communist-led Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1990 several of these republics elected non-communist governments, even though the federal Yugoslavian government was still under one-party communist rule.
In mid-1991, Slovenia and Croatia, two of the six republics in the Yugoslav federation, announced their independence and seceded from Yugoslavia. Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence in early 1992, followed by Macedonia. These actions left only Serbia and Montenegro as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Bosnia-Herzegovina, like post-World War II Yugoslavia, possessed several different ethnic groups, including the Bosnians who were Muslims, the Serbs who were Eastern Orthodox Christians, and the Croats who were Roman Catholics. When the Serbian part of the population objected to independence, civil war broke out in April 1992 between the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. This war continued throughout the remainder of the Bush presidency and during the first administration of President William J. (Bill) Clinton. The war in Bosnia attracted worldwide attention, when it became known that Serbian forces were practicing “ethnic cleansing” against Bosnian Muslims and Croats. Serbian troops brutally removed more than two million people from their homes and forced them into refugee camps. Reports surfaced of mass murders of civilians, massacres of Muslim men and boys, and the existence of concentration camps. Observers compared Serbian “ethnic cleansing” to Nazi Germany’s attempted genocide of European Jews during World War II. International concern increased when it became apparent that Croats were also committing atrocities (acts of violence) against Muslims. Neither President Bush nor President Clinton was willing to intervene directly in Bosnia by committing American ground troops to the conflict. Instead, both American presidents tried to work first through the United Nations and later through NATO. In late 1995, the warring factions finally signed a peace treaty. Under the terms of this treaty, NATO troops would enforce peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina. NATO sent a peacekeeping force of 60,000 troops to the Balkans region, including 20,000 Americans committed by the Clinton administration.
American involvement in the events following the collapse of Yugoslavia reflected three foreign policy goals of the United States in the post-Cold War world. First, the United States has committed foreign aid in the form of both military equipment and economic assistance to countries which have maintained friendly relations with the United States or expressed commitment to a democratic form of government. Second, the United States has sent millions of dollars of humanitarian aid to peoples suffering as a result of civil wars, natural disasters, or epidemics caused by disease. Third, both Republican and Democratic presidents since the Cold War have voiced support for a worldwide respect for human rights.
The American belief in these three goals influenced the actions of the Bush administration, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. In August 1990 Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, ordered Iraqi troops to invade and occupy Kuwait, its small oil rich neighbor. President George H. W. Bush joined other world leaders in condemning this action as an unwarranted encroachment on Kuwaiti national sovereignty. They feared that Hussein might next threaten Saudi Arabia and its vast oil reserves. The United Nations Security Council unanimously denounced the Iraqi invasion and imposed strict economic sanctions (penalties) on Iraq. Some world leaders voiced concern that Iraqi control over the Kuwaiti oil fields might allow Hussein to control the world oil market. President Bush worked hard to assemble a coalition (alliance or partnership) of nations in opposition to the Iraqi invasion. Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union all supported this American-led coalition. In mid-January 1991, the United States and its allies launched Operation Desert Storm, a massive air assault on Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait. After five weeks of coalition bombing, the American-led coalition launched a ground attack on Kuwait and Iraq. Iraqi resistance quickly collapsed, thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered, and coalition forces liberated Kuwait City, Kuwait’s capital city. The remaining Iraqi troops began a hasty retreat. By the end of February 1991, President Bush announced a cease fire and the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) had ended. This was the first war where American women served in a combat role. Although Saddam Hussein remained in power in Iraq, the American-led international coalition had achieved its goal of freeing Kuwait from Iraqi rule and restoring sovereignty (self-rule) to Kuwait’s leaders.
Both President George H.W. Bush and his successor Bill Clinton supported the removal of tariff barriers to trade with other nations. They believed the elimination of tariffs would increase trade, which would result in economic expansion and the creation of thousands of new jobs for the American worker. Efforts for tariff reduction reached a climax in 1993, when President Clinton won congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This formal agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico provided for the reduction of all trade tariffs and most business restrictions over the next fifteen years. In effect, NAFTA created a single market, or regional trading block, larger than the European community. Opponents of NAFTA argued the removal of tariffs on Mexican imports would cause many American manufacturers to move their operations south of the border, where Mexican workers receive much lower wages than their American counterparts. This would result in the elimination of thousands of American jobs, especially in manufacturing.
The Clinton administration achieved additional success in two other areas of foreign policy. First, President Clinton restored full diplomatic relations with communist Vietnam, which symbolized that the American people had finally moved past the domestic divisions caused by the Vietnam War. Second, in the early nineties the South African government ended its policy of racial apartheid, a word meaning “apart-ness.” Apartheid was a brutal system of racial segregation and discrimination against the nation’s overwhelming black majority by which the small white minority had ruled South African since the early seventeenth century. At the same time the white controlled government released from prison Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC, founded in 1912, was an organization committed to racial justice and equal rights for black South Africans. After it became clear to the world that the black majority would rule South Africa and Mandela would emerge as the nation’s leader, the Clinton administration lifted economic sanctions against the Republic of South Africa. These sanctions, which Congress had passed in 1986, had severely restricted trade between the United States and South Africa in order to condemn apartheid and attempt to pressure the white South African government to repeal its racially discriminatory laws.
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VA/US History Narrative 26