| The United States of America — Reagan era | |||
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| 1980–1991 | |||
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 Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in 1982 | |||
| Location | United States | ||
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Thehistory of the United States from 1980 until 1991 includes the last year of theJimmy Carter presidency, eight years of theRonald Reagan administration, and the first three years of theGeorge H. W. Bush presidency, up to the collapse of theSoviet Union. Plagued by theIran hostage crisis, runawayinflation, and mounting domestic opposition, Carter lost the1980 United States presidential election to Republican Reagan.
In his first term, Reagan introduced expansionary fiscal policies aimed at stimulating the American economy after arecession in 1981 and 1982, including oil deregulation policies which led to the1980s oil glut. He met with Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev in four summit conferences, culminating with the signing of theINF Treaty. These actions accelerated the end of theCold War, which occurred in 1989–1991, as typified by the collapse of communism both in Eastern Europe, and in the Soviet Union, and in numerous Third World clients. The economy was in recession in 1981–1983, but recovered and grew sharply after that.
TheIran–Contra affair was the most prominent scandal during this time, wherein the Reagan Administration sold weapons toIran, and used the money forCIA aid to pro-American guerrillaContras in left-leaning Nicaragua.
A widely discussed demographic phenomenon of the 1970s was the rise of the "Sun Belt", a region encapsulating theSouthwest,Southeast, and especiallyFlorida andCalifornia (surpassingNew 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 theNortheast andMidwest—theRust Belt, which had steadily lost industry and had little population growth.[1] The rise of the Sun Belt was the culmination of changes that began in American society starting in the 1950s, as cheap air travel, automobiles, the interstate system, and the growth of air conditioning all spurred a mass migration south and west. Young, working-age Americans and affluent retirees all flocked to the Sun Belt.[2]
The rise of the Sun Belt has been producing a change in the nation's political climate, strengtheningconservatism. The boom mentality in this growing region conflicted sharply with the concerns of theRust Belt, populated mainly by those either unable or unwilling to move elsewhere, particularly minority groups and senior citizens. The Northeast and Midwest have remained more committed to social programs and more interested in regulated growth than the wide-open, sprawling states of theSouth andWest. Electoral trends in the regions reflect this divergence—the Northeast and Midwest have been increasingly voting forDemocratic candidates in federal, state and local elections while the South and West are now the solid base for theRepublican Party.[3][4]
As manufacturing industry gradually moved out of its traditional centers in the Northeast and Midwest, joblessness and poverty increased. The liberal response, typified by MayorJohn Lindsay of New York City was to dramatically increase welfare services and education, as well as public employment and public salaries, at a time when the tax base was shrinking.New York City barely averted bankruptcy in 1975; it was rescued using state and federal money, along with strict state control of its budget.[5][6]
Meanwhile, conservatives, based in the suburbs, the rural areas, and the Sunbelt railed against what they identified as the failures ofliberal social programs, as well as their enormous expenses. This was a potent theme in the 1980 presidential race and the1994 mid-term elections, when the Republicans captured the House of Representatives after 40 years of Democratic control.[7]
The liberal leaders of the 1960s, characteristic of the era of theGreat Society and thecivil rights movement, gave way to conservative urban politicians in the 1970s across the country, such asNew York City's Mayor,Ed Koch, a conservative Democrat.[8]
In the 1970s, theVietnam War and theWatergate scandal inflicted diminished confidence in thepresidency. International frustrations, including the fall ofSouth Vietnam in 1975, theIran hostage crisis in 1979, theSoviet intervention in 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.[9]
In the aftermath of theIranian Revolution, a sharp drop in oil production led to the1979 oil crisis. In response to this, Carter delivered a nationally televised speech, titledA Crisis of Confidence, in which he called for long-term limits on oil imports and the development of synthetic fuels. American "malaise", a term that caught on following his speech, in the late 1970s and early 1980s was not unfounded as the nation seemed to be losing itsself-confidence.[10]
Under the rule ofLeonid Brezhnev, the Soviet economy was falling behind. The Soviets were decades behind in computers and high technology, and its economy was heavily dependent on lucrative oil exports. Meanwhile, détente with the Soviets collapsed as the communists made gains across theThird World. Most dramatic was the fall ofSouth Vietnam in 1975 whenNorth Vietnam invaded andconquered the nation; American forces were 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 acrossAfrica,Southeast Asia, andLatin America. The Soviet Union, guided by theBrezhnev Doctrine,invaded Afghanistan in 1979 in a move roundly denounced by the West and Muslim countries.
Reacting to all these perceptions ofAmerican 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 stillDemocrats, rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s, especially after the nomination ofGeorge McGovern in the1972 presidential election, and blamed liberal Democrats for the nation's weakened geopolitical stance. Many clustered around SenatorHenry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat, but they later aligned themselves withRonald Reagan andRepublicans, who promised to confront pro-Soviet Communist expansion. They were largelyanti-communist Democrats and opposed to the welfare programs of theGreat Society. But their main targets were the old policies ofcontainment of communism anddétente with the Soviet Union. They wantedrollback and the peaceful end of the Communist threat rather than aimless negotiations, diplomacy, and arms control.[11]
Neoconservatives attacked the foreign policy orthodoxy ofcontainment in theCold War asappeasement, an allusion to the British concessions toNazi Germany in theMunich Agreement in 1938. They regarded concessions to relatively weak enemies of the United States as appeasing "evil", attackeddétente, opposedmost-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. BeforeReagan's election in November 1980, neoconservatives sought to stem the antiwar sentiments caused by the U.S. defeats in theVietnam War and the associated massive casualties inSoutheast Asia that the war induced.
During the 1970s,Jeane Kirkpatrick, a political scientist and laterU.S. Ambassador to theUnited 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.[12]
In the late 1970s, the U.S. was gripped by the worst economy since the 1930s with American automobile and steel industries confronting serious challenges, the ongoingIran hostage crisis, and the Soviet Union expanding globally inAfrica,Asia,Latin America, and elsewhere. In the1980 Winter Olympics, theU.S. amateur Olympic hockey team defeated theirprofessional Soviet counterparts in theMiracle on Ice, providing some symbolic sense of renewed American optimism.
Conservative sentiment was growing, in part due to a disgust at the excesses of thesexual revolution and the failure of liberal policies such as thewar on poverty to deliver on their promises. PresidentJimmy Carter's prospects for reelection in theU.S. presidential election of 1980 were strengthened when he easily beat back a primary challenge by liberal icon SenatorEdward Kennedy ofMassachusetts. Against the backdrop of economicstagflation 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 withFord, who wanted to 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 onJeane Kirkpatrick as his foreign policy adviser to identify Carter's vulnerabilities on foreign policy.[13]
Reagan promised to rebuild the U.S. military, which had sharply declined in strength and morale after the Vietnam War, and restore American power and prestige on the international front. He also promised an end to "big government" and to restore economic health by use ofsupply-side economics.
Supply-side economists were against the welfare state built up by theGreat 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 stifledeconomic growth. The solution, they argued, was to cut taxes across the board, particularly in the upper income brackets, in order to encourageprivate investment. They also aimed to reduce government spending onwelfare andsocial services geared toward the poorer sectors of society which had built up during the 1960s.
The public, particularly the middle class in theSun 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 the economic troubles of the 1970s were beyond any president's ability to control or reverse.[14]
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 theReligious Right for the first time a major factor. Moreover, it was a watershed ushering out the commitment to governmentanti-poverty programs andaffirmative action characteristic of theGreat Society. It also signaled a commitment to a hawkish foreign policy.
A third-party candidacy by RepresentativeJohn B. Anderson of Illinois, a moderate Republican, did poorly. The major issues of the campaign were the economic stagflation, threats to national security, theIranian 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 inTehran. Carter dropped his détente-oriented advisers and moved sharply to the right against the Soviets, but Reagan said it was too little, too late.[15]
Reagan won a landslide victory with 489 votes in the electoral college to Carter's 49. Republicans defeated twelve Democratic senatorsto 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 B. Anderson won 5,720,060 (6.6%) popular votes.
After years of unstinting praise from the right, and unrelenting criticism from the left, historian David Henry 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.[16]
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 staffJames Baker (Ford's campaign manager), andMichael Deaver as deputy chief of staff, andEdwin Meese as White House counsel, as well asDavid Stockman at the Bureau of the Budget and his own campaign managerBill Casey at the CIA.[17]
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 leaderWilliam Rehnquist to Chief Justice in 1986, with arch-conservativeAntonin 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 rejectedRobert Bork. Reagan finally won approval forAnthony Kennedy.[18]
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 ofsupply-side economics, 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 all his conservative constituencies (monetarists, cold warriors, middle-class swing voters, and the affluent). Monetarists were placated by tight controls of themoney 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 theSocial 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 DirectorDavid 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"[19]—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 soaringbudget deficit. Government borrowing, along with the tightening of the money supply, resulted in sky highinterest 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 theFederal 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."
Unemployment reached a peak of 11% in late 1982, after which recovery began. A factor in the recovery from the worst periods of 1982–83 was the radical drop inoil prices due toincreased production levels of the mid-1980s, which ended inflationary pressures on fuel prices. The virtual collapse of theOPEC cartel enabled the administration to alter its tight money policies, to the consternation of conservative monetarist economists, who began pressing for a reduction ofinterest 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 wasMorning in America. Housing starts boomed, the automobile industry recovered its vitality, andconsumer spending achieved new heights.[20] Blue-collar workers were, however, mostly left behind in the economic boom years of the Reagan Administration, and the old factory jobs that had once offered high wages to even unskilled workers no longer existed.[21]
Reagan went on to defeatWalter Mondale in the1984 presidential election by a massive 49 out of 50 state landslide.
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 totax cuts and increaseddefense 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.
The1981 tax cuts, some 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 trillion.
Since U.S. saving rates were very low (roughly one-third ofJapan'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 movieWall 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 high (although lower than the 20% peak levels earlier in the administration due to a respite in the administration's tight money policies), 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 alarmingstock 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, 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 consumerelectronics industry (which had begun declining in the 1970s) was one of the worst victims of dumping and other unfair Japanese trade practices. Americanconsumer 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 asautomobiles andsteel, 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 1980s, 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 fromLyndon Johnson's commitment to both "guns and butter" (the Vietnam War and the Great Society) and the growing competition from otherG7 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 abalanced budget amendment which would mandate that the federal government spends no more money than it takes in, which never materialized.
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 newarms race would develop as superpower relations deteriorated to a level not seen since theKennedy administration a generation earlier.
Reagan's foreign policy was generally considered more successful and more thoughtful and strategic than his predecessor. He favored a hawkish approach to theCold War, especially in theThird World arena of superpower competition. In the wake of theVietnam War, 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.
TheArab–Israeli conflict was another impetus for military action.Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy thePalestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But in the wake of the 1982Sabra and Shatila Massacre, which provoked a political crisis inIsrael, U.S. forces moved intoBeirut to encourage Israeli withdrawal. The Reagan administration stood by Israel's invasion ofLebanon in mid-1982 to maintain the support of Israel on one hand, but also to quell the influence of Israel's pro-Soviet enemySyria in Lebanon. However,U.S. intervention in the multi-sided Lebanese civil war had disastrous consequences. On October 23, 1983, theMarine Barracks Bombing killed 241 American troops. Shortly afterward, the U.S. withdrew its remaining 1,600 soldiers.[22]
InOperation Urgent Fury in theCaribbean nation ofGrenada, 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 withCuba, the Soviet Union, and otherCommunist states. The prime minister was killed and insurgents had orders to shoot on sight. Over 1,000 Americans were on the island, mostly medical students and their families, and the government could not guarantee their security. TheOrganisation of Eastern Caribbean States, the regional security association of neighboring states led by Prime MinisterEugenia Charles ofDominica officially called on the United States for protection. In a short campaign launched Oct. 25, fought primarily against armed Cuban construction workers, the U.S. military invaded and took control, and democracy was restored to Grenada.[23]
In 1986, Reaganlaunched an air strike againstLibya after Libya'sMuammar Gaddafi was found to have connections to theWest Berlin discotheque bombing, which killed two American soldiers.
The Reagan administration also supplied funds and weapons to heavily militarily-influenced governments inEl Salvador beginning in 1980 andHonduras, and to a lesser extent inGuatemala, which was ruled by right-wing military autocrat GeneralEfraín Ríos Montt from 1982–83. It reversed ex-President Jimmy Carter's official condemnation of theArgentinejunta forhuman rights abuses and allowed theCIA to collaborate with Argentine intelligence in funding theContras.
Central America was the Reagan administration's primary concern, especially El Salvador andNicaragua, where theSandinista revolution brought down U.S.-backedAnastasio Somoza Debayle's rule in 1979. The two countries had been historically dominated bymultinational corporations and wealthy landowningoligarchs while most of their population remained in poverty; as a result, predominantlyMarxist 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 theIran–Contra affair. In 1985, Reagan authorized the sale of arms inIran in an unsuccessful effort to free U.S. hostages inLebanon; he later professed ignorance that subordinates were illegally diverting the proceeds to the Contras, a matter for whichMarineLieutenant ColonelOliver North, an aide to National Security AdvisorJohn 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 never again enjoyed the level of support he had had in 1985. Democrats regained control ofCongress in the 1986 midterm elections.Oliver North, meanwhile, achieved a brief celebrity status in 1987 during his testimonies before Congress.
Insub-Saharan Africa, the Reagan administration, with help fromapartheidSouth Africa, also attempted to topple the substantially Cuban and Soviet-backed Marxist–LeninistFRELIMO andMPLA dictatorships ofMozambique andAngola, respectively, during those countries' civil wars. The administration intervened on the side of insurgent groupsRENAMO[citation needed] in Mozambique andUNITA in Angola, supplying each group with covert military and humanitarian aid.
In Afghanistan, Reagan massively stepped up military and humanitarian aid formujahideen fighters against theSoviet proxy government there, providing them withStinger anti-aircraft missiles. U.S. alliesSaudi Arabia andPakistan also provided the rebels with significant assistance.General SecretaryMikhail 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 theVietnamese-installed Communist regime ofHeng Samrin (and later,Hun Sen) inCambodia, which had ousted the genocidalKhmer Rouge regime after Vietnam invaded the country. The administration approved military and humanitarian aid to the republicanKPNLF and royalistFuncinpec insurgents. The Reagan administration also supported continued UN recognition of theCoalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (a tripartite rebel alliance of the KPNLF, Funcinpec, and the Khmer Rouge) over the Vietnamese-backedPeople's Republic of Kampuchea regime. Reagan also continued American support for the autocraticPhilippine PresidentFerdinand Marcos, an ardent anti-Communist. In a 1984 presidential debate sponsored by theLeague 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"[1], 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 peacefulPeople Power movement, led byCorazón Aquino.
Reagan was sharply critical of theUnited Nations, once the darling of liberals. He repudiated what he felt was its corruption, inefficiency and anti-Americanism. In 1985–1987 the U.S. withdrew fromUNESCO, 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 U.S. returned and paid its dues.[24]
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 empire". While it was Jimmy Carter who had officially ended the policy ofdétente following Soviet intervention inAfghanistan, East-West tensions in the early 1980s reached levels not seen since theCuban Missile Crisis. TheStrategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was born out of the worsening U.S.-Soviet relations of theReagan Era. Popularly dubbed "Star Wars" at the time, SDI was a multibillion-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 withThird World nations in the 1960s and 1970s only masked its weakness. The Soviet economy suffered severe structural problems and started suffering from an increased stagnation in the 1970s. Documents being circulated in the Kremlin in 1980, when Carter was still president, expressed the bleak view that Moscow ultimately could not win the technological or ideological battle with the US.
East-West tensions eased rapidly after the rise ofMikhail 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 onperestroika, 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 theCold War, the division of the world into two rival blocs had served to legitimize a broad and diffuse alliance not only with theWestern European nations of theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but many countries in the developing world. Starting in the late 1980s, however, the regimes of theEastern EuropeanWarsaw Pact began to collapse in rapid succession. The "fall of theBerlin 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 theIntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987 and the withdrawal ofSoviet forces from Afghanistan as well asCuban forces fromAngola. These developments undercut the rationale for providing support to such repressive governments as those inChile andSouth Korea, which underwent processes of democratization with U.S. support during the same period as those of Warsaw Pact nations.
Reagan's vice-presidentGeorge H. W. Bush easily won the 1988 Republican nomination and defeatedDemocratic Massachusetts governorMichael Dukakis by an electoral landslide in the1988 election. The campaign was marked by numerous blunders by Dukakis, including most famously a campaign ad featuring Dukakis in anM1 Abrams tank.
Unlike Reagan, Bush downplayed vision and emphasized caution and careful management. His main foreign policy advisors were Secretaries of State James Baker andLawrence Eagleburger, and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Bush entered the White House with a long and successful portfolio in foreign affairs including ambassadorial roles to China in the United Nations, director of the CIA, and official visits to 65 foreign countries as vice president.
Momentous geopolitical events that occurred during Bush's presidency include:[25][26][27]
Except for theTiananmen Square massacre in China, all the events strongly favored the United States. Bush took the initiative in the invasion of Panama and the START treaties. Otherwise, he was mostly a passive observer trying not to interfere or gloat about the events. Given the favorable outcomes, scholars generally give Bush high marks in foreign policy, except for his unwillingness to condemn the Tiananmen Square crackdown. He thought long-term favorable relations with China were too important to jeopardize. In terms of gaining public support, Bush never tried to mobilize much popular support for his foreign policy, and in domestic affairs his support was steadily slipping.[28]
Bush argued for the emergence of "anew 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."[29]
Nationalist agitation in theBaltic States for independence led to firstLithuania and then the other two states,Estonia andLatvia, declaring independence from the USSR . 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 inYugoslavia andSomalia 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, PresidentBill 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 theInternational Monetary Fund andWorld Bank through which it promotes economic reforms around the globe. NATO was set to expand initially to Hungary, Poland, and theCzech Republic and has since moved further eastward. In addition, U.S. policy placed a special emphasis on theneoliberal "Washington Consensus", manifesting in theNorth 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 besponsoring terrorism, engaging in the proliferation ofweapons of mass destruction or committing serioushuman rights abuses. There was sometimes a consensus for these moves, such as with the U.S. and European embargoes imposed on arms sales toChina after its violent suppression of theTiananmen Square protests of 1989, as well as for the UN Security Council's imposition of sanctions on Iraq after itsinvasion 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 1999Foreign Affairs essay,Samuel P. Huntington wrote that to reinforce its primacy 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 are designed:
Initially, Bush inherited an economy that continued the strong rally that had begun in the final months of 1982. However, theFederal Reserve continued with restrictive monetary policy, limiting economic growth in the late 1980s. When the1990 oil price shock hit in mid-1990, consumer spending contracted and the economy entered recession. Unlike theearly 1980s recession, the recession beginning in 1990 was relatively mild. Some of the hardest hit cities were in California and the Northeast, while much of the South was less affected.
US History at Wikibooks
Postwar United States travel guide from Wikivoyage
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