12. THE WORLD'S SOLE SUPERPOWER

THE ONE-TERM PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE H.W. BUSH (1989-1993)

The Lockerbie bombing (December 1988).  Perhaps as the result of an effort by Libyan dictator Gaddafi to see what the newly elected American President was made of (would he be tough like Reagan?) ... at the end of 1988 a Pan Am passenger jet (Flight 103) exploded in the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland – with everyone on board and 11 people on the ground killed.  Under the subsequent investigation of the explosion, the trail led back to Libya.  But nothing was done immediately to punish Gaddafi.

However long-standing (and already struggling because of earlier security concerns) Pan Am was sued for failing to take security precautions (but Pan Am reminded its opponents that it received hundreds of notices daily about security concerns and had no way to check out each and every one of them), bringing one of America's oldest and largest global airline companies to bankruptcy and extinction.

The breakup of the Soviet Empire in East Europe (1989).  Although President Bush had little to do with what was about to break out in the Soviet Empire, events there would form a huge part of America's political focus during the Bush years (January 1989 to January 1993).

Gorbachev's reforms – not surprisingly to those who understand these things – set off another "revolution of rising expectations," which once underway would get way out of Gorbachev's ability to control.  The well-announced new freedoms of glasnost and perestroika were also received in the European satellite countries as some kind of permission to move to the same freedoms in their own countries – first in Poland, then East Germany and Czechoslovakia, etc. – and finally the very repressive Romania.  1989 would be the banner year for this event. 

Poland had actually been heading down this road since 1980 under what started out as a labor organization: Solidarność (Solidarity).  It had been suppressed by the Polish military (fearful that it would invite another Soviet invasion) but had survived nonetheless.  And now in the new Gorbachev era, it was an active participant in Poland's 1989 summer elections – in which Solidarity trounced the Polish Communist Party.  Gorbachev made no move to dismiss the election results.

Lech Walesa leading the strike of workers at the Lenin 
Shipyards in Gdansk, Poland – August 30, 1980

Striking Solidarity workers at the Lenin Shipyard – 1980

Polish military under Gen. Jaruzelski, fearful of a Soviet 
military reprisal (such as occurred in Czechoslovakia in 1968),
retake Poland from Solidarity – December 1981

Polish Round Table Talks took place in Warsaw, Poland from 
February 6 to April 4, 1989 beginning the challenge of the East 
European "Soviet satellite" countries to Communist domination

Now began a mad dash of other East European countries to attempt the same kind of national elections – with virtually the same results:  the Communists were swept from power and replaced by new national parties.  The most dramatic was the event taking place in East Germany – when East Germans began to flood into newly free Czechoslovakia and Hungary ...embarrassing the East German Communist leader Honecker sufficiently so that he stepped down from power.  At this point, the East German government simply disintegrated.  In November East Germans found themselves free to leave the country – and by Christmas German youths had taken to smashing down (or trying anyway, because it was quite sturdy!) the Berlin Wall.

Germany

Celebrating the collapse of East German Communism atop 
the Berlin Wall – November 10, 1989

Germans dancing atop the Berlin Wall

East and West Berliners celebrating the end of 28 years
of separation by the Berlin Wall – November 10, 1989.

Hammering down the Berlin Wall

Bashing the Berlin Wall - 1989

Vaclav Havel & peaceful Prague protest – November 1989

Wenceslas Square during the Velvet Revolution – November 1989

A pro-reform rally in Wenceslas Square in Prague
November 1989.

Czechs in Prague celebrating their new freedoms
... won under the leadership of Vaclav Havel - January 1990 

Only in Romania was the new order met by violence, when Romanian dictator Ceaucescu had his troops attack protesters – until the soldiers actually joined the protesters.  In late December he and his wife were arrested and rather immediately executed by a firing squad.  The last of the Soviet satellite nations had made their escape from the Soviet Empire. 

Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena
(he had appointed his wife as Deputy Prime Minister)



Romanian protesters in Bucharest - December 1989



On December 22, the Romanian army would join
the side of the protesters

Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena
arrested on December 22,1989

The Disintegration of the Soviet Union itself (1989-1991).   But the momentum did not stop with East Europe.  At the same time, minority Soviet Republics (from Estonia, Latvia, etc., on the Baltic Sea, South to Moldova and Ukraine, and East across Asia to the Turkish "stans" of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc.) were demanding independence from the Soviet Union itself.  Even the Russian Federation (headed up by the Moscow Mayor Boris Yeltsin) was calling for independence from the Soviet Union.  Gorbachev was quickly losing control of political events over the country that he theoretically still presided over.

So angry were the old Communist hardliners in Gorbachev's own cabinet over his reforms that in August of 1991 they attempted a coup against Gorbachev, which did not go very well – when Yeltsin led angry Russian protesters to virtually imprison the plotters inside the Parliament Building.  Thus the coup failed.  But in the end, it also undercut Gorbachev's authority so badly that Russia's political leadership seemed simply to have passed on to Yeltsin.  And by the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was no more when all of the former Soviet Republics (including even Russia) had declared their national independence.

Tanks on Kalininsky Prospekt

Demonstration in the streets of Moscow during the August 1991
coup d'etat attempt.  A BTR-70 personnel carrier is surrounded
by the demonstrators.
   

Boris Yeltsin on a tank addressing fellow Moscovites

Boris Yeltsin addresses the Moscow crowd

Tragedy at Tiananmen Square.  Chinese youth were watching closely developments in the Soviet Union ... and decided that they wanted to go down the same road to full political freedom.  In April of 1989 thousands, then tens of thousands, of youth gathered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to demonstrate support for full release from the Chinese government's political restraints on Chinese society.

At first the Chinese government did nothing, while a bitter debate developed between the hardliners and the appeasers.  Finally Deng, seeing social disintegration as the possible result of appeasement, moved toward the side of the hardliners, and the decision was made at the beginning of June to forcibly clear the square of its (possibly a million by this time) youth gathered there.

Thus on the night of June 3-4 the Chinese military was ordered to clear the square, by whatever means necessary.  Guns and even tanks were brought into use, resulting in the clearing of the square – but also the death of countless youth in the process.  And thus the political movement such as it was (not always clear what exactly it hoped to achieve) came to an end in China.

Bush, in company with the rest of Western leaders, was outraged at the Chinese government's actions.  But Bush soon backed off, trying to keep a positive attitude toward Deng's China and its efforts to Westernize, without disintegrating socially like Russia in the process.

Serious problems begin to develop in the late spring of 1989 – 
as Chinese students demand some of the same reforms that 
they see Communism undergoing in Eastern Europe 

Students in Tiananmen square calling for reforms in China
similar to those undertaken in Russia by Gorbachev
Spring of 1989

April 22, 1989 - thousands (200,000?) of  students at Tiananmen 
Square gather to honor Liberal reformer  Hu Yaobang

Police and protesters meet at a line drawn up 
in front of the  Great Hall of the People

Student demonstrators gather in ever greater numbers 
in Tiananmen Square, Beijing – April 27, 1989

Students in Tiananmen Square in silent protest before the Red Army 
late spring 1989.

A student protester seated before the Chinese military – May 1989.

In mid-May a number of the students undertook a hunger-strike
to protest in favor of democracy

By the beginning of June hundreds of thousands (even a million?)
had convened on Tiananmen Square



On June 4th, masses of troops are brought in
to clear the Square of the protesters

The clearing of the Tiananmen Square by soldiers turns violent
   


On the night of June 3-4 the soldiers begin their move
to clear the Square of protesters

The aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protest

Burned out personnel-carriers

Tanks advancing on the remaining protesters

A student defying Chinese T-59 tanks in Tiananmen Square
 June 5, 1989

A lone protester and Chinese T-59 tanks at Tiananmen Square

The Gulf War or "Desert Storm" (1990-1991).   In the meantime, a very big problem had developed in the Middle East when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had his Iraqi army invade and occupy the tiny (but oil rich) neighbor, Kuwait.  The whole thing ended up as a huge political miscalculation by Saddam – one that threatened to start up another Arab oil crisis.  But Bush was determined to prevent that from happening.

Saddam had been long involved in an Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) which started up when Saddam attempted to grab ethnically Arab lands located just across the Iraqi border in ethnically Persian Iran (Persian Iran is not Arab in language or culture – though certainly Muslim, although of the dissenting Shi'ite variety, as are most of the Arabs in that part of the Muslim world).  But this merely bogged the two countries down in a campaign of vast mutual destruction ...until in 1988 when the United Nations was able to work out a truce between the two countries.  At the end of this war Iraq found itself hugely in debt due to the fact that its oil industry had been mostly shut down during that long war.

Then tensions had grown between Iraq and Kuwait, when Iraq accused Kuwait of not only overproducing oil sales (thus keeping prices very low) but also slant-drilling below ground – right into Iraqi oil fields near their border.  There was also Iraqi resentment over the very existence of Kuwait in the first place – carved out of former Mesopotamia (Iraq) after World War One – simply to give the British oil company, British Petroleum, an oil source it could continue to control.  Also Saddam had the usual Arab desire to play the part of grand leader of the larger Arab world.

On top of this, Saddam thought he had the go-ahead from America via the American Ambassador who seemed to offer only an indifferent response when Saddam told her of his plans to grab Kuwait.  Besides, Iraq was something of an American ally – being the third-largest recipient of American foreign aid (especially during the Iran-Iraq War).

Thus when Saddam invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, he was stunned to find himself in trouble with Bush, who demanded that he get his troops out of Kuwait.  But at that point Saddam felt he could not do that – for such a retreat would deeply undermine his ever-shaky position as Iraqi dictator.

This was importantly due to the fact that he was a Sunni Arab, supported by the smaller Sunni Arab portion of the Iraqi population, holding tight control over the majority Shi'ite Arab portion of the population, the latter group resenting deeply Saddam and his Sunni Ba'athist Party's dominance in Iraqi political affairs.  Thus it was that his position in Iraq was very fragile.

Negotiations between Saddam and Bush dragged on ... going nowhere in the process.  But in the meantime, Bush was putting together a grand coalition of European and Arab countries (other Arab countries were also afraid of Saddam's ambitions), including Saudi Arabia, which let America use its land as a base to build up a large coalition force there.  By mid-January the coalition army was ready to move.

The Iraqi Army and Air Force proved to be no match to the coalition forces which quickly downed and blasted everything Saddam could muster.   In the matter of simply a few days, the Iraqi Army was chased from Kuwait.

Of course at the first gun shots, the "anti-imperialist" voices of the American Left waxed indignant – but soon were silenced by the stunning success of Bush and his coalition forces.

Then Bush halted his attack on the retreating Iraqis.  He had no interest in going any further after Saddam.  He had kicked him out of Kuwait.  That was as far as he was going to go.  Furthermore, he had no desire whatsoever to find himself having to take responsibility for a shattered country of conflicting ethnic groups (60% Shi'ite Arabs, 20% Sunni Arabs, and 20% Sunni Kurds) groups that hated each other and were held together as a society only by the tight grip of the Ba'athist organization that Saddam headed up in Baghdad.  No, America was not going to get itself caught up in nation-building.  Vietnam had taught President Bush the dangers of such arrogance.  America would not be fixing Iraq.  To try to do so would be for America to fall into a "quagmire," as Bush's Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney would later (1994) explain the decision.

President George Bush enjoys Thanksgiving Dinner 
with U. S. troops stationed in the Persian Gulf

Keesee and Sidwell, p. 633

Gulf War – Air raid over Baghdad January, 1991.

Refueling an F-117 bomber over Iraq.

Infrared image of a Iraqi telecommunications building
about to be blown up by a Stealth-fired intelligent rocket

Sighted missile targeting Iraq

A US bomber attack on the Iraqi positions.

US tank assault on Iraqi lines – February 1991.

Iraqi troops surrendering.

US Marines taking Iraqi prisoners.

A Saudi soldier inspects a burned-out Iraqi armored vehicle and dead Iraqi solder

America's allied Arab troops celebrating victory

US soldiers and Kuwaiti oil fields set ablaze
by retreating Iraqis – February 1991

Burning oil well silhouetted by a destroyed Iraqi tank.

Wreckage and burning oil fields in Kuwait in the wake
of a rapidly retreating Iraqi army

The Gulf War in Kuwait - March 2, 1991

Red Adair's team putting out the Kuwaiti oil well fires 
started by the retreating Iraqis

United Nations inspectors destroying
suspected Iraqi bioweapons – 1996

In his early years in office, during the horrible economic recession he stepped into, Reagan had lowered taxes in an effort to put money in people's pockets so as to help get the economy back up and moving again.  This of course cut Federal tax revenues at a time when Reagan was also trying to rebuild American military strength.  Then when the economy began to move, Regan could have – should have – moved toward a balanced budget of government expenditures being matched by government tax receipts – by raising taxes or cutting back on government programming, or both.  But Reagan did neither.  And as a consequence, the Federal debt grew monumentally, more than tripling over Reagan's eight years in office.

Bush, in his 1988 presidential campaign – at a time when America was again experiencing a small recession – promised American voters that during his presidency there would be no new taxes: "read my lips – no new taxes."  But unemployment brought on by the recession meant that the government was going to be spending more money for federal unemployment benefits – at a time that tax revenues would also be down even further.  Thus the deficit continued to climb.

Finally in 1992 – in cooperation with the Democratic Party controlled Congress – a range of tax increases were put in place to slow up the growth in the deficit.  But it was a presidential election year – and those increases (plus his promise of "no new taxes") would be played against him by his political opponents (two actually) in the presidential race that year.

---

THE 1992 CAMPAIGN AND ELECTION

Ross Perot.  Indeed, the failure of Bush to bring the growing federal deficit under control gave billionaire businessman, Ross Perot, just the right cause he needed to put himself in the running for President as an independent, third-party candidate.  He voiced concerns Americans had about this matter or that – sometimes taking a Democrat position, sometimes a Republican position.  His rankings in the polls also rose and fell – causing Perot at one point to back out of the race – then reenter again.  He even flew off to Vietnam to demonstrate his ability to conduct a new style of diplomacy – only to have the Vietnamese refuse him entry into their country.    And – his unusual campaign was heavily financed by his own immense personal fortune. 

Bush, Ross Perot and Bill Clinton during the 1992 Presidential debates

The 1992 campaign and election.  The presidential campaign of 1992 was an amazing balance of all three candidates.  In June, polls put Perot at 39% approval, Bush 31% and Clinton (not yet officially the Democratic Party candidate) at 25%.  The debates helped Clinton move ahead, the sense of economic slump undercut Bush, and Perot – despite his zaniness – was able to hang on to a respectable size of support.

What was sad for Bush was that the economy was actually picking up again – in fact would go on to be the largest and longest growth period in American history.  But this was not yet perceived by the American voters.  Thus when elections were finally held in November, Clinton came in with 43% of the popular vote, Bush 37.4% and Perot nearly 19%.  It is easy to wonder what the results would have been if Perot had not been in the race – hacking away at the Washington Establishment (Bush and company) for its poor economic performance.

But in any case, the electoral college gave Clinton a full majority win with 370 votes to Bush's 168 votes (and Perot, nothing).  Clinton would thus be entering the White House the following January (1993).

---

   
Go on to the next section:

The Boomer Clinton Takes the White House

---

  Miles H. Hodges