LG211: America and the Wider World A New World Order – the challenge of grand strategy after the Cold War

The End of the Cold War 1989 – the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Fall of Berlin Wall GHW Bush elected president Initially marked by uncertainty on how to proceed: The “pause” Vice President Quayle v Secretary of State Baker “Squeezers” v “dealers”: what is the best option for the US? By the end of 1989, it had become apparent that the USSR was genuine. The US responds by ‘dealing’. What would the US response be? Isolation or engagement? The re-emergence of an old domestic cleavage

Challenges and Change The Panama Crisis: Part of the ‘War on Drugs’ First hangover of waking up as the sole superpower Noriega had been supported in return for help with Contras in Nicaragua Indicted on drugs charges by two grand juries in Florida The US froze his assets – offer of safe haven Noriega upped anti-American rhetoric and began harassing US military personnel Dec 20, 1989 ‘Operation Just Cause’. Long live AC/DC! Highway to Hell… Noriega captured in January and convicted, 1992

Challenges and Change Iraq invades Kuwait, August 2, 1990 Bush saw this a test of US commitment to allies and international law. Despite mixed messages: no “opinion on inter-Arab disputes such as your border dispute with Kuwait” The following months saw an increase in pressure: Economic sanctions and troop build up UN resolution “All means necessary”, November 1990 Operation Desert Storm, Jan 16 th 1991 “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all” GHW Bush, 1991 Criticism for leaving Saddam in power

A new world order? Post Cold War – an opportunity to build “ a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.” George H.W. Bush 1991 The question was what type of world would emerge? In other words what would be the general shape of the emergent World order now that Communism was gone? A liberal view – Francis Fukuyama A realist view – Samuel Huntington

A new liberal peace? Francis Fukuyama “The end of history and the last man?” 1989 Argued that the end of the Cold War represented not just an end to a particular conflict but the end of mankind’s ideological evolution Liberal-Democracy and market capitalism emerged as the final endpoint of human civilisation Fukuyama himself had mixed feelings about this, regretting the boredom that was likely to follow…History and the Last Man Conflict would remain in the ‘historical’ world but the zone of post-historical peace would continue to extend.

A clash of civilisations? Samuel Huntington “The Clash of Civilizations?” 1993 “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. … The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” Outlined a number of civilizations – Western, Orthodox, Sinic, Islamic Most importantly argued that “Islam has bloody borders” States would continue to play a pivotal role but interests would be redefined in cultural terms

US Hegemony after the Cold War? Within the US much of the debate centred on the decline of US power Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988) Lebow and Stein We all lost the Cold War (1994) Mearsheimer (1990) and others predicted that states such as Japan and Germany would develop nuclear weapons to counter US power