tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/george-hw-bush-39567/articlesGeorge HW Bush – The Conversation2022-08-31T19:28:29Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1897272022-08-31T19:28:29Z2022-08-31T19:28:29ZMikhail Gorbachev’s legacy: sadly, history will judge this good man harshly<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482139/original/file-20220831-20-1mnn2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1992%2C1235&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">h</span> </figcaption></figure><p>No other person but the final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev – who has died aged 91 – could bring to life the eternal debate on the role of the individual in history. Does real change happen because of impersonal structural factors, or because of individual choice by influential people?</p>
<p>For many years I thought that the end of the USSR was inevitable. But the more I’ve been reading and thinking about it, the less inevitable it seems to me. And so the role of Gorbachev becomes ever more significant for the two epochal events: the end of the cold war and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>Historians still intensely <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1060586X.1992.10641355?journalCode=rpsa20">debate</a> the Soviet collapse. Some point to the long-term structural problems in the USSR from a lack of popular legitimacy of the Soviet rule and the simmering ethnic tensions, to the chronic inability of the Soviet planned economy to satisfy growing consumer demands and keep up the growth with the west.</p>
<p>But equally when Gorbachev came to power there still was a reasonably robust system in place which kept dissent at bay and maintained military parity with the west. In March 1985, when the general secretary came to power, there was nothing to <a href="https://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/armageddon-averted-soviet-collapse-1970-2000">suggest</a> the collapse of the whole system was inevitable in six years.</p>
<p>Gorbachev wanted to reform the Soviet system, not destroy it. He started his economic reforms by investing huge amounts in heavy industry alongside partial liberalisation of small trade, while controversially cracking down on alcohol consumption. But all of these, apart from the hugely <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-gorbachev-admits-botching-anti-alcohol-campaign/27018247.html">unpopular anti-drinking campaign</a>, were half measures. All of them only made things worse.</p>
<p>Gorbachev’s economic reforms undermined the command economy discipline. The retention of price controls by the state and ban on private property meant what was left of the old state system functioned worse than before – while the new market one couldn’t take off either. The <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674836808&content=toc">origins of vast illicit wealth</a>, legalised under Boris Yeltsin, was thanks to <em>perestroika</em>, his restructuring of the economic system.</p>
<p>Running into severe economic difficulties, which were exacerbated by collapsing oil prices, Gorbachev decided to switch his focus on to political reform. The aim was to give the Soviet system more legitimacy through partial democratisation. Gorbachev always thought that his reforms faced danger from the conservatives within the Soviet apparatus. Yet, it was the democrats, led by Yelstin, who destroyed him. </p>
<p>Gorbachev ended up falling between two stools. His reforms were too much for the conservatives, but too little for the democrats. He created the office of president to preserve his power as the Communist Party’s authority was increasingly undermined through public debates, revelations about the Soviet past and the growth of national movements in ethnic republics. But he never dared to face a popular election and, as a result, always lacked popular legitimacy, which was ironic as this was the aim of his political reforms. </p>
<p>Instead, Yeltsin got a popular <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-27-mn-430-story.html">mandate</a> with more than 80% of votes in the 1989 Russian elections. He emerged as an alternative centre of power with a mission to destroy Gorbachev – even if it meant dissolution of the USSR to boot.</p>
<p>In retrospect, it seems that Gorbachev simply didn’t understand how the Soviet system worked. He sincerely believed that it could be saved if he removed some elements such as the fear of repression and the command economy. But they turned out to be essential for its survival. Having removed them, the system unravelled as well. </p>
<p>Gorbachev emerged as the general secretary at a bifurcation point when the Soviet system was a crossroads. And he unintentionally tipped the balance towards its collapse. Judging on his own terms, he was a failure in the key task he set out for himself. He wanted to reform and improve the Soviet system, and instead he led it to its total disintegration.</p>
<h2>The end of the cold war</h2>
<p>The same sense of failure hangs over his foreign policy as well, which is where there is a huge gap in the western and Russian perceptions of his time in office. In the early 1980s, there was a huge build up of nuclear weapons in Europe with new intermediate missiles deployed by both the USSR and the US. Ronald Reagan’s “<a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reagan-evil-empire-speech-text/">evil empire</a>” reference to the Soviet Union was a reflection of the tensions and little room for compromise.</p>
<p>Gorbachev changed all that. Instead of a zero sum nuclear standoff, he wanted a new security based on shared interests and common values. Instead of security based on mutually assured destruction, Gorbachev offered one built on mutual trust. Just like in domestic reforms, the aim was not to give up Soviet power but to secure it on a new basis.</p>
<p>Key arms reduction treaties were negotiated with the US, including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-gorbachevs-1987-inf-missile-treaty-has-limited-the-arsenal-available-to-putin-189750?notice=Article+has+been+updated.">1987 INF treaty</a> getting rid of all intermediate range missiles, and the START 1 treaty which drastically reduced US and Soviet nuclear arsenals signed in 1990. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-gorbachevs-1987-inf-missile-treaty-has-limited-the-arsenal-available-to-putin-189750">Ukraine war: how Gorbachev's 1987 INF missile treaty has limited the arsenal available to Putin</a>
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<p>In 1988, Gorbachev even <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/%20116224%20.pdf">announced</a> a unilateral cut of 500,000 Soviet troops based in Europe.
In eastern Europe, the Soviet leader favoured a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinatra_Doctrine">Sinatra Doctrine</a>”, named after the famous song, allowing the Soviet satellites to do it reforms their way and refusing to back Communist regimes with Soviet force if they didn’t reform.</p>
<p>Again, Gorbachev expected reformed socialist governments to survive with a new bout of legitimacy. But that was a gross misunderstanding of the nature of those regimes, which were maintained by Soviet forces and enjoyed little local support.</p>
<p>The collapse of the Berlin Wall and German unification which followed were the final nail in the cold war’s coffin. It is this legacy which continues to irk the Russian leaders from Yeltsin to Putin. </p>
<p>Gorbachev enjoyed significant leverage through Soviet legal rights in Germany and the troops stationed there. The Germans needed Soviet cooperation for unification to happen and were willing to give a lot in return, including promises of “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300268034/not-one-inch/">not one inch east</a>” for Nato after the reunification. But Gorbachev utterly failed to use his leverage and extract any legally binding guarantees over future military expansion. The Russian leaders who succeeded him – and Gorbachev himself in his memoirs – accused the west of betrayal. </p>
<p>But it was his own inability to get any official guarantees that lies at the heart of Russian complaints. The naked truth is that Gorbachev’s idealism in foreign policy, with his emphasis on mutual interests and common values, only works if both sides equally subscribe to those views.</p>
<p>Unlike his western counterparts who knew exactly what they wanted (a reunification of Germany on their terms, nuclear and conventional arms cuts while retaining the freedom to expand Nato further east), Gorbachev simply didn’t know what he wanted beyond a grand vision of world peace. In the end, he simply stalled for time and kept asking the Germans and Americans for more money while hoping multiple problems would somehow solve themselves.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the end of the cold war is seen in the west as its victory as was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/29/us/state-union-transcript-president-bush-s-address-state-union.html">proclaimed</a> by George Bush in January 1992. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">George Bush proclaims the end of the cold war, January 1992.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Gorbachev wanted a new <a href="https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/which-way-out-of-ukraine-versailles-yalta-or-vienna">security</a> based on mutual interests and common values, but ended the cold war as essentially a politely wrapped up defeat of the country he once led.</p>
<h2>Gorbachev’s legacy</h2>
<p>It’s difficult to know how to assess Gorbachev given most of the things he set out to do didn’t actually work. Should he be given credit for the unintended consequences of his reforms? </p>
<p>There were many who benefited from Gorbachev’s policies - above all the former eastern bloc countries who were finally able to rejoin their natural place in the west, the EU and Nato.</p>
<p>Many people in the former USSR – myself included – also benefited from the new freedom and opportunities offered by <em>perestroika</em> and Soviet collapse. But for many more people the dislocation of the late 1980s and the 1990s was a huge hardship.</p>
<p>The Russians still have wide economic and personal freedoms that were unimaginable under the USSR, but are also ruled by a new, still actually popular, authoritarian <a href="https://theconversation.com/putin-is-sure-to-win-so-whats-the-point-of-elections-in-russia-93170">regime</a> with ever decreasing political freedoms. Could the same have been achieved without the trauma of the collapse and the 1990s transition? Probably not, but many will disagree.</p>
<p>International security has been enhanced from the west’s point of view as now the Russians are fighting on the Dnieper in Ukraine instead of holding the line on the Elbe in Germany. But the chances of escalation into a direct war between Russia and Nato are much greater now than in the whole of the cold war: the “red lines” are blurred while there’s essentially an uncontrollable military escalation spiral in Ukraine.</p>
<p>And any direct conflict with Nato would most likely involve – given Russia’s inferiority in conventional arms – tactical nuclear weapons. All this after huge nuclear arms cuts in the late 1980s, which should really be Gorbachev’s central legacy.</p>
<p>Not entirely surprising, that Gorbachev’s current successor in the Kremlin only believes in raw power as the ultimate argument in international relations. This is a real tragedy too.</p>
<p>Domestically, Putin’s <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20419058221108783">attitude</a> is shaped by Gorbachev’s perceived mistakes. Reform and liberalisation can lead to state collapse. This happened twice in 20th-century Russia: in 1917 and 1991. So, in no small measure thanks to Gorbachev, Putin believes that not letting go of control is key to the state and regime’s survival.</p>
<p>Gorbachev is still a puzzle for me – not least of all because of the contrast between the astuteness with which he climbed to the top, and his utter naivety when he got there about the Soviet system as a whole and power in international relations. Yet, Gorbachev was the individual who brought down the USSR and without whom the cold war would not have ended.</p>
<p>The best summing up of Gorbachev’s legacy came from one his closest aides: Gorbachev was good as messiah but lost as a politician.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189727/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Titov does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gorbachev failed in his two main aims: to hold togteher a reformed Soviet Union and cement its place in a new world order.Alexander Titov, Lecturer in Modern European History, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1561402021-02-26T17:32:54Z2021-02-26T17:32:54ZGulf War: 30 years on, the consequences of Desert Storm are still with us<p>It was a short message to end a short war. On February 26 1991, Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz put his signature to a letter addressed to the United Nations Security Council: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have the honour to notify you that the Iraqi Government reaffirms its agreement to comply fully with Security Council Resolution 660 and all other UN Security Council resolutions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few hours later, at 8am Baghdad time, a ceasefire entered into effect. The international military campaign, dubbed by the United States as “Operation Desert Storm”, had lasted only a few weeks. And yet, as <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/17/security-breach-iraq-officials-denounce-erbil-rocket-attack">recent rocket attacks against US targets in Iraq</a> illustrate, its consequences are still with us today. </p>
<p>But how did it all begin? The then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein criticised what he saw as Kuwaiti “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44376191.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Afee1d1e419e0f23c9d76953eec49a4b6">economic treachery</a>” related to the production and pricing of oil. When Kuwait refused to lower its oil production, Saddam began what would become a shortlived military intervention in the neighbouring oil-producing country. </p>
<p>Saddam’s motives in fact related to his need to replenish an impoverished Iraqi economy that had been severely undercut by a protracted and costly war against Iran (1980-1988), which resulted in more than 1.5 million estimated Iraqi and Iranian deaths. </p>
<p>Not quite grasping what <a href="http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/391121">the waning of the cold war</a> would mean for his own regional ambitions, Saddam ordered the invasion and annexation of Kuwait on August 2 1990. </p>
<p>Once diplomatic and economic pressure to deter Saddam failed, the US – under then president George HW Bush, assembled the largest international coalition since the second world war and – with the authorisation of the UN Security Council – began a five-week military operation that pushed Saddam’s forces back into Iraq and reinstated the Kuwaiti royal family at the helm of the country. </p>
<p>Military action included the systematic targeting of Iraqi infrastructure, including the sustained – and controversial – attack against retreating Iraqi military personnel along the road connecting Kuwait with Iraq, which was subsequently dubbed the “Highway of Death”.</p>
<p>The rapid military campaign was a success – and its implications were potentially massive. Before the intervention, <a href="https://bush41library.tamu.edu/archives/public-papers/2217">Bush had addressed the US Congress</a>, stressing the importance of the “unique and extraordinary moment”.</p>
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<p>The crisis in the Persian Gulf offers a great opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times … a new world order can emerge: a new era – freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The rapid success of the international military campaign, whose legitimacy was reinforced by unequivocal UN authorisation, ushered an era of triumphalist confidence in the possibilities of such a “new world order” and in the US ability to mould it.</p>
<h2>Reasons to be cheerful?</h2>
<p>Back then, there were reasons to be optimistic. One of them related to the cooperation – unseen up to that point – between Americans and Russians. Despite Iraq having been one of its main cold war clients in the region, the Soviet Union quickly endorsed the US-led military operation. Indeed, at the time of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, US secretary of state James Baker and Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze were in a meeting together and rapidly issued a joint statement of condemnation of Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait. </p>
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<img alt="Typed record of phone conversation between Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, 7 August 1990, with 'secret' written and crossed out at the top" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386674/original/file-20210226-17-1rf11q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386674/original/file-20210226-17-1rf11q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386674/original/file-20210226-17-1rf11q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386674/original/file-20210226-17-1rf11q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386674/original/file-20210226-17-1rf11q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386674/original/file-20210226-17-1rf11q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386674/original/file-20210226-17-1rf11q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Declassified telephone conversation reveals the true US-Soviet difficulties.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George H.W. Bush Presidential Library; National Security Archives digital collection edited by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton, ‘Inside the Gorbachev-Bush Partnership on the First Gulf War 1990’.</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2020-09-09/inside-gorbachev-bush-partnership-first-gulf-war-1990">Recently declassified sources</a> show that US-Soviet cooperation back then was more difficult than the leaders’ statements led the world to assume at the time. Yet speaking in October 1991, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?22391-1/middle-east-peace-conference-session">underlined</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>without a radical improvement and then a radical change in Soviet-US relations, we would never have witnessed the profound qualitative changes in the world that now make it possible to speak in terms of an entirely new age, an age of peace in world history.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He added that, “the right conclusions have been drawn from the Gulf War.” But had they? In Iraq, Saddam remained in power, and bombing and sanctions against his regime continued into Bill Clinton’s presidency. Until in 2003, in the wake of 9/11 and of the invasion of Afghanistan, the then president George W. Bush declared a new war against Iraq with the disputed justification of Iraq’s alleged development of weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>Many commentators saw the conflict as a way to deal with the “<a href="https://www.economist.com/special-report/2001/12/06/unfinished-business">unfinished business</a>” of the first Gulf War started by Bush’s father. Military “contractors” flooded into Iraq, with complex consequences that are still playing out. One of the last acts of the US presidency of Donald J. Trump involved pardoning four Blackwater security contractors. These were responsible for the 2007 Nisour Square massacre, a shooting that killed 14 Iraqi civilians, including nine-year-old Ali Abdul Razzaq. UN human rights experts condemned the presidential pardon as <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26633&LangID=E">an affront to international justice</a>. </p>
<p>The war of the early 2000s left behind a much weakened Iraqi state infrastructure, and a high body count – a situation that rendered Iraq an easy prey to the forces of the Islamic State, which took over Mosul in 2014, continuing a legacy of violence and brutalisation. </p>
<p>Many saw the end of the 1991 Gulf War as the beginning of an “age of peace”, to quote Gorbachev. The hope at that time was that the country – and the region – could prosper. Instead, the ceasefire of February 28 marked the end of a conflict that had been remarkably short, but whose consequences and unintended outcomes are still being felt to this day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amir Taha receives funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research Humanities PhD program.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lorena De Vita does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 1991 Gulf War was seen as the start of an age of peace, but paved the way for much future conflict.Lorena De Vita, Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations, Utrecht UniversityAmir Taha, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Humanities, University of AmsterdamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1497912020-11-11T16:55:33Z2020-11-11T16:55:33ZAlistair Cooke: Letter from America may be long gone, but it still speaks to this US election<p>Such has been the drama of the 2020 US election and its aftermath that opportunities for reflection have been in short supply. The BBC’s Today programme tried gamely to fill the gap providing two minutes of space for James Naughtie to ruminate on the election.</p>
<p>But how would veteran BBC journalist, the late Alistair Cooke, have observed the psychodrama of Donald Trump in his White House bunker? Naughtie was a great admirer of Cooke – presenting a tribute to him in 2008 to mark what would have been Cooke’s 100th birthday, where he eulogised about Cooke’s entwined metaphors and his commitment to language, to explain and to describe. </p>
<p>Indeed, Cooke’s personal approach to journalism was, at the time, a departure from the more formal language and structure of other commentators.</p>
<p>While there are many sources for us to learn about the US now, it’s worth considering the influence Cooke had in how people in Britain saw America, over nearly six decades. Cooke’s Letter from America radio programmes (which went out on BBC Radio’s Home and World services) remain the longest-running speech programme hosted by one individual, consisting of 2,869 broadcasts made between 1946 and 2004.</p>
<p>Cooke wanted to explain the US to British listeners through his Letters, making the country more accessible to an audience that, particularly in the early days, had few other sources of information to help them understand US culture and politics. </p>
<p>Amid the blaze of coverage of Trump’s downfall on both legacy and new media, listening back to Cooke’s broadcasts about the demise and defeat of previous US presidents recalls a kind of journalism rarely seen, or indeed heard, in contemporary broadcasting. It’s fascinating – and often very funny. </p>
<p>In a 1979 Letter, Cooke compared the American and British experience of electioneering – talking of his astonishment coming back to Britain 20 years earlier to cover an election to find no motorcades, skywriting aeroplanes or posters with slogans such as “Eden Is Leadin’” (referring to Anthony Eden, prime minister from 1955 to 1957). </p>
<p>The drama of rallies with the post-war Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, Cooke recalled, were the sort you might muster in the US “for a particularly heated parent-teacher meeting”.</p>
<p>But he also had shrewd insights, based on his decades of reporting. In the same Letter he mused on the increasing public relations aspect of politicking. “Mr Nixon,” he noted, was “the first American to be convinced that Richard Nixon as God created him was not quite right for exposure to the multitude.” Nixon subjected himself to a makeover by advertisers – something that Cooke concluded became a Faustian pact as Nixon became trapped by the image.</p>
<p>While contemporary commentators have tried to analyse what led to Biden’s victory and Trump’s defeat, Cooke was there before them in working out what could go wrong for a one-term incumbent. Musing on Jimmy Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Instead of doing what Franklin Roosevelt did in four elections, never mentioning the name of his opponent, [Carter] decided to make Ronald Reagan and his character the issue. The tactic backfired. The actual sight of Reagan in the debate obliterated the nuclear button-pressing Dr Strangelove of Mr Carter’s fancy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If Trump had perhaps taken the time to go back to these Letters, he might have learned from Carter’s mistakes and rethought his constant attacks on “Sleepy Joe”.</p>
<h2>Changing world</h2>
<p>What is also different about Cooke’s reporting from today is the way his own experience is an essential part of the narrative. For example, Cooke’s letter about Bill Clinton’s defeat of George H.W. Bush in 1992 shows the manner in which Cooke reflects on both his own character as well as his work as a journalist. Listeners were treated to a very particular view drawn from Cooke’s experience living among the New York elite, a subjective gaze of the personal viewpoint.</p>
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<p>In the early part of that Letter, Cooke described his posting to the US and being “slightly disturbed that I was going to have to move myself and my family to Washington,” when he was appointed chief US correspondent of The Guardian. He was very relieved when his editor gave him permission to stay in New York because, he said, it was “the best news base and the best home base for travel”.</p>
<p>In the latter part of the same letter, analysing why Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush, Cooke brings himself into the story by describing himself, revealing his attitudes and biases:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am – my generation are – probably more at home with WASPs and a Catholic friend or two than with the polyglot white, black, Latino, brown, Asian, multicultural society that America has increasingly become. But Clinton reached out to it… This was never clearer than on Thursday morning, when the New York Times carried a front-page photograph … Clinton in jeans, worn jeans of course, a check wool shirt… Not a suit, not a neck-tie, not a button-shirt in sight. “Well,” I said to my wife, “can you believe this, there is the next president of the United States and his buddies.” “He,” said my wife sternly, “is the president of those people and he dresses like them.” Quite right. Along with the passing of George Bush, we shall see, I fear, the passing of the blue blazer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cooke’s personal reporting in the Letters meant not only that they could be compelling listening, but they created a new style of reporting in which his viewpoint became the dominant way many elite listeners understood radio. While mainstream media may have dispensed with this style of reporting on their bulletins, he presaged a now-popular media form.</p>
<p>Listening back to Letters from America, they may not resemble modern Radio 4 reporting, but they recall successful new forms, such as the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07h19zz">BBC’s Americast</a> or <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/specials/politics/elections-101">CNN’s Election 101</a>. Alistair Cooke may not have been the inventor, but he can at least be cast as the forerunner of the political podcast.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glenda Cooper receives funding from the British Academy
She has also secured special permission from both the BBC (who own the copyright) to examine the broadcasts and from the Cooke family estate (who own the copyright) to analyse the transcripts and publish extracts from them.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Howard Tumber receives funding from the British Academy. He has also secured special permission from both the BBC (who own the copyright) to examine the broadcasts and from the Cooke family estate (who own the copyright) to analyse the transcripts and publish extracts from them.</span></em></p>The veteran British journalist explained America to English-speaking listeners around the world.Glenda Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of LondonHoward Tumber, Professor of Journalism and Communication, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1126812019-03-19T23:01:15Z2019-03-19T23:01:15ZTrump and Pence turning back progress on access to birth control and a woman’s right to choose<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263485/original/file-20190312-86678-5qf39.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women and men sitting with baby carriages in 1916 in front of The Sanger Clinic in Brooklyn, considered the first Planned Parenthood clinic.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection/Library of Congress</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last month, the U.S. administration officially announced its intention to block federal family planning funds for organizations that provide abortion referrals. <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/375852-pence-says-abortion-will-end-in-us-in-our-time">President Donald Trump and his anti-choice Vice-President Mike Pence first presented the idea last spring</a>. </p>
<p>If successful, it would mean a dramatic drop in funding for Planned Parenthood and restricted access for individuals to health services at Planned Parenthood clinics. There is nothing original about this policy move: it is old and tired. It is also harmful to the citizens of the United States. </p>
<p>Planned Parenthood is a <a href="https://100years.plannedparenthood.org">century-old organization</a>, based on the <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/our-history">first contraception clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y.</a> Founded by public health nurse Margaret Sanger, her sister Ethel Byrne and activist Fania Mindell in 1916, it was the inspiration for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America formed decades later. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264661/original/file-20190319-60969-1wcgoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264661/original/file-20190319-60969-1wcgoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264661/original/file-20190319-60969-1wcgoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264661/original/file-20190319-60969-1wcgoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264661/original/file-20190319-60969-1wcgoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264661/original/file-20190319-60969-1wcgoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264661/original/file-20190319-60969-1wcgoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence is telling anti-abortion advocates that Donald Trump is keeping his word on opposing abortion, calling him the ‘most pro-life president in American history.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)</span></span>
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<p>Planned Parenthood occupies a central role in the provision of comprehensive sexuality education and reproductive services for American women. </p>
<p>Approximately 20 per cent of women in the U.S. will rely on a service performed by Planned Parenthood in her lifetime. Nearly half of its client base is related to sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and treatment, with another 27 per cent for contraception. </p>
<p>This means about three-quarters of Planned Parenthood Federation’s caseload is related to sexual health. <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/4a/0f/4a0f3969-cf71-4ec3-8a90-733c01ee8148/190124-annualreport18-p03.pdf">Only three per cent of its client base visits it for abortion-related services</a>. </p>
<p>At least 60 per cent of Planned Parenthood clients <a href="https://www.istandwithpp.org/defund-defined">use either Medicaid funding or Title X</a>.</p>
<h2>Title X</h2>
<p>Designed in 1970, and supported by both Democrats and Republicans (and Republican President Richard Nixon) to prioritize the needs of low-income families or uninsured people, Title X is the only federal grant program that provides individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2000/08/title-x-gag-rule-formally-repealed">Title X “requires counsellors in federally funded family planning clinics to provide a woman facing an unintended pregnancy with non-directive counselling on all of her options and with referrals for services upon request.”</a></p>
<p>In the U.S., it has been the most comprehensive and effective source of public funds for reproductive rights care. Unlike the more <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2001/02/title-x-three-decades-accomplishment">restrictive Medicaid health-care program for those below the poverty line</a>, Title X has no eligibility criteria. </p>
<p>Almost half (42 per cent) of clients accessing Title X-funded clinics have no health insurance, 38 per cent are covered by Medicaid and 19 per cent have private health insurance, according to the <a href="https://www.nationalfamilyplanning.org/title-x_title-x-key-facts">National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association</a>. More than 50 per cent of Title X patients identify as Black or Latino.</p>
<h2>Recycling old policies</h2>
<p>Trump and Pence have recycled a policy fragment from the end days of the Reagan administration. </p>
<p>In 1988, the secretary of health issued a new regulation that prohibited Title X projects from engaging in counselling, referrals or activities that advocated abortion as a method of family planning. That 1988 law required all Title X projects <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/500/173">“to maintain an objective integrity and independence from the prohibited abortion activities by the use of separate facilities, personnel and accounting records.”</a> </p>
<p>During the conservative Congresses of the 1980s and 1990s, Title X family planning funding suffered severe cuts. By 1999, taking inflation into account, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2001/02/title-x-three-decades-accomplishment">the program’s funding level was 60 per cent lower than it was in 1979</a>. </p>
<p>But even with the funding cuts, as of 2016, Title X funded 91 family-planning service grantees, of which 43 were non-profit clinics such as Planned Parenthood.</p>
<p>In 1988, after the first iteration of the <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2000/08/title-x-gag-rule-formally-repealed">anti-Title X domestic “gag rule” was announced</a>, a coalition of pro-choice groups, including Planned Parenthood, challenged it in court. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264663/original/file-20190319-60949-18aduk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264663/original/file-20190319-60949-18aduk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264663/original/file-20190319-60949-18aduk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264663/original/file-20190319-60949-18aduk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264663/original/file-20190319-60949-18aduk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264663/original/file-20190319-60949-18aduk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264663/original/file-20190319-60949-18aduk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Hundreds of abortion rights supporters gathered at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis two years ago to protest one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws signed by then Gov. Mike Pence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mykal McEldowney/The Indianapolis Star/AP)</span></span>
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<p>Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s 1991 Rust v. Sullivan decision granted deference to the secretary’s interpretation of Title X, citing “lack of Congressional intent in the legislative history.” </p>
<p>In affirming the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the secretary, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/500/173">the Court of Appeals held that the regulations were a permissible construction of the statute and consistent with the First and Fifth Amendments</a>.</p>
<p>After the Rust vs. Sullivan decision, both houses of Congress voted to overturn the domestic gag rule. However, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2000/08/title-x-gag-rule-formally-repealed">President George H.W. Bush vetoed the vote</a>. </p>
<p>In January 1993, in his first week in office, President Bill Clinton repealed it and the restrictive interpretation never had a chance to become fully implemented. However, both Pence and Trump wish to reactivate it now. </p>
<p>Given the Supreme Court precedent and the current makeup of the Supreme Court, it is likely this iteration of the domestic gag rule will become policy. </p>
<p>While pro-choice groups have already announced challenges, the court’s history of interpretation on the gag rule doesn’t bode well for those supporting reproductive choices and access for all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112681/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Haussman has received funding in the past from the International Council of Canadian Studies.She has volunteered for the Democratic Party in the US and the Liberal party in Canada.</span></em></p>The Trump administration’s proposal to block federally funded organizations from providing comprehensive reproductive health care will deprive millions of people access to sexual health services.Melissa Haussman, Professor of Political Science, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1080502018-12-06T04:56:38Z2018-12-06T04:56:38ZGeorge Bush Sr could have got in on the ground floor of climate action – history would have thanked him<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249183/original/file-20181206-128187-rgqc6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=915%2C1094%2C4175%2C2258&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George HW Bush during his successful 1988 election campaign.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-01/george-h-w-bush-s-death-spurs-tributes-from-clintons-to-trump">tributes</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/12/01/the-ignored-legacy-of-george-h-w-bush-war-crimes-racism-and-obstruction-of-justice/">critiques</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/02/george-hw-bush-family#img-1">personal reminsces</a> on the life of former US president George H.W. Bush, there has been plenty of reflection on his war record – but less on how he handled himself during the early skirmishes of the climate battle.</p>
<p>Scientists had been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/22/us/study-finds-warming-trend-that-could-raise-sea-levels.html">warning of potential problems</a> from the buildup of greenhouse gases for a decade before Bush took office. The warnings culminated in 1988, when NASA climatologist James Hansen, after testifying to a Senate panel, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/19/james-hansen-nasa-scientist-climate-change-warning">uttered the famous words</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By then, Bush’s presidential run was gaining steam. After eight years as vice-president to Ronald Reagan, he wanted the top job, and in Michael Dukakis he faced a Democrat opponent with relatively strong environmental credentials.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-well-miss-george-h-w-bush-americas-last-foreign-policy-president-95560">Why we'll miss George H.W. Bush, America's last foreign policy president</a>
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<p>On August 31, 1988, on the campaign trail, Bush <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/21/opinion/some-white-house-effect.html">promised</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those who think we are powerless to do anything about the ‘greenhouse effect’ are forgetting about the ‘White House effect’. In my first year in office, I will convene a global conference on the environment at the White House. It will include the Soviets, the Chinese… The agenda will be clear. We will talk about global warming.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bush won the election, and hosted his promised summit <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/21/opinion/some-white-house-effect.html">in April 1990</a>. But he fudged his promise for a clear and open discussion of global warming.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bert-Bolin">Bert Bolin</a>, the “father of climate science” and founding chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found himself mysteriously not invited to the summit. Leaked briefing papers showed the Bush administration’s line was that it was “not beneficial to discuss whether there is or is not warming… In the eyes of the public we will lose this debate.”</p>
<h2>Denial and obfuscation</h2>
<p>In May 1989, Al Gore, who had unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination the previous year, accused the president of seeking to dodge the climate issue, after it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/09/science/white-house-admits-censoring-testimony.html">emerged</a> that the Bush Administration had censored Hansen’s Congressional testimony, altering his conclusions about global warming data to make them seem less certain.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, climate deniers were becoming increasingly active, including in the Bush White House. A coal industry-sponsored documentary titled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greening_of_Planet_Earth#cite_note-Heat-4">The Greening of Planet Earth</a> began circulating, while Bush’s chief of staff John Sununu became a vocal roadblock to climate policy, throwing up bureaucratic obstacles and winning Cabinet battles against those who wanted a stronger policy. Bush himself reportedly had <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/nyt-mag-nathaniel-rich-climate-change/566525/">no strong interest in global warming</a> and was largely briefed on it by non-scientists.</p>
<p>Yet the world pressed on with the climate issue, setting the June 1992 <a href="http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html">Rio Earth Summit</a> as the deadline for completing a new United Nations treaty that would formalise the global negotiation process. The US administration said that Bush – up for re-election in November – would refuse to attend if the treaty text included targets and timetables for emissions reductions. Bush’s <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/05/us-lifestyle-is-not-up-for-negotiation/">words were</a>: “The American way of life is not up for negotiations. Period.” It’s a sentiment we’re still used to hearing from many of today’s politicians.</p>
<p>The major dilemma facing international negotiators was whether to accommodate the United States and have a weak treaty, or push ahead without them. The fate of the <a href="http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf">Convention on the Law of the Sea</a> – which languished for almost a decade without ratification because of US opposition – pushed them towards compromise. It took a British initiative – with UK Environment Secretary Michael Howard flying to the US to convince the Americans they could sign on – before Bush would agree to attend.</p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/10/31/bush-was-aloof-in-warming-debate/f14bea92-884c-401b-9870-5bef72960806/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b9368e5b329b">October 1992 Washington Post profile</a> paints a picture of a man who was not really engaged in the global warming issue. Based on interviews with more than 20 policy officials and other advisers, Bush was described as being:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…detached, uninterested, and as his brief remarks in the April meeting showed, responsive only to the politics of a complex issue. He never sat for a full-dress scientific briefing on it or exercised control over administration policy, even after infighting among administration officials became public, or leaders of other industrialised nations pledged action.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Historic compromises</h2>
<p>The Rio deal – the <a href="https://unfccc.int/">UN Framework Convention on Climate Change</a> – was quickly signed and ratified by enough countries, including the US, to become international law. The first annual summit was held in Berlin in 1995, and negotiators are <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-they-meet-in-poland-for-the-next-steps-nations-are-struggling-to-agree-on-how-the-ambitions-of-the-paris-agreement-can-be-realised-107712">currently gathered in Katowice, Poland</a>, for the 24th round of talks. Along the way, the negotiations have delivered the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. </p>
<p>But the key battle, which has never been won, was for the implementation of binding targets and timetables for countries, especially wealthy ones, to cut their emissions. The inherent weakness of Paris Agreement, which does not contain binding targets and is <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-countries-need-to-at-least-double-their-efforts-on-climate-study-49731">not currently on track</a> to meet its stated goals, is the result of compromises made decades ago.</p>
<p>Bush’s son, George W. Bush, had a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2001/mar/29/globalwarming.usnews">far worse record on climate action</a> during his own presidency. But Bush senior was in the White House during the formative years of the international climate effort. He had the chance to be a genuine leader, had he seized it. But when we needed decisive, brave and far-sighted leadership, instead we got the same backing-in of corporate interests, and nearsighted defence of the status quo, that we have grown so used to seeing from political leaders.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/15th-century-chinese-sailors-have-a-lesson-for-trump-about-climate-policy-78752">15th-century Chinese sailors have a lesson for Trump about climate policy</a>
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<p>There is of course plenty of blame to go around for our species’ failure to address climate change. One of Bush’s oldest friends, who served as secretary of state, James Baker, has tried to get Republicans on board with climate action, including with the recent <a href="http://fortune.com/2018/09/10/baker-shultz-climate-plan/">Baker-Shulz carbon dividend plan</a>. But many high-profile Republicans, the current president included, still wear their climate recalcitrance as a badge of honour.</p>
<p>We are living with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-changes-signature-was-writ-large-on-australias-crazy-summer-of-2017-73854">consequences</a> today. And the children who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-30/australian-students-climate-change-protest-scott-morrison/10571168">went on strike last Friday</a>, fighting a battle they should not have had to join, will live with them for the rest of their lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108050/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Hudson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>George H.W. Bush, who has passed away aged 94, was US president when the world began grasping the climate issue in earnest. But he was pivotal in setting the US on a course of blocking climate action.Marc Hudson, PhD Candidate, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1080182018-12-03T11:37:21Z2018-12-03T11:37:21ZGeorge H.W. Bush laid the foundation for education reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248483/original/file-20181203-194932-1ri33m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President George H.W. Bush in 1990.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/washington-dc-usa-1990-president-george-718857319?src=M0-3E8Z8HAlcSliupLb0VQ-1-1">Mark Reinstein/www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>George H.W. Bush fulfilled his desire – articulated late in his 1988 campaign for president – to be <a href="https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/negp/reports/negp30.pdf">“the education president</a>.” It just took three decades.</p>
<p>It’s true that Bush passed no education bills during his one term as president.</p>
<p>His next three successors, by contrast, all produced signature education legislation: <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/legislation/GOALS2000/TheAct/index.html">Goals 2000</a> for Bill Clinton, <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml">No Child Left Behind</a> for George W. Bush and both <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html">Race to the Top</a> and the <a href="https://www.ed.gov/essa">Every Student Succeeds Act</a> for Barack Obama. All, however, followed a plan drawn up by George H.W. Bush. He was – in my view as an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=d-pest4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">education historian</a> – the architect of sweeping change.</p>
<p>The cornerstone of the Bush education blueprint was an elite bipartisan consensus. Like his predecessor in the White House – Ronald Reagan – Bush was sympathetic to the free market. But unlike Reagan, Bush was a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2014/05/16/george-h-w-bushs-profile-in-pragmatism/#3516f4181a3d">pragmatist</a>, and as vice president had watched Reagan fail in his push for tuition vouchers. But Bush was also a consummate Washington insider, less intent on dismantling government than on improving it. In the long wake of the alarmist <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html">A Nation at Risk</a> report, which suggested that American students were falling behind their international peers, Bush offered a new vision for federal involvement in education. Rather than choosing between the unregulated market and the heavy hand of government to fix schools, Bush offered a third way, <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?22949-1/america-2000-education-initiatives">making the case</a> that entrepreneurial activity in education should be encouraged and carefully monitored by the state. That vision, which shaped an entire generation of education reformers, remains the foundation of an enduring consensus among liberals and conservatives alike.</p>
<h2>Federal government as catalyst</h2>
<p>Beyond establishing a vision, Bush threw his energies into school reform projects large and small. In keeping with his belief that the federal government could <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-1991-book1/html/PPP-1991-book1-doc-pg395-2.htm">“serve as a catalyst”</a> in promoting change, he was an early advocate for charter schools, which he successfully <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED327985.pdf">framed</a> as a bipartisan marriage of entrepreneurism and government, and which he pitched not as devices of the free market, but as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/28/opinion/school-choice-without-harm.html">an experimentation</a> against inequality. Through the <a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/npo-spotlight/new-american-schools">New American Schools Development Corporation</a>, for instance, Bush funded the Community Learning Centers of Minnesota project – the first endeavor <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED371513.pdf">“based on the charter school concept, a variation of the school choice approach</a>.” In so doing, he created a model that would be replicated a thousand times over.</p>
<p>Perhaps most significantly, Bush laid the foundation for <a href="https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/negp/reports/negp30.pdf">standards-based accountability</a>. Before he took office, the federal government had little involvement in the governance of public schools. President Lyndon Johnson had increased Washington’s reach through the <a href="https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/the-nations-main-k-12-law-a-timeline.html">Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965</a>, which channeled vast new sums to schools. But Johnson and his successors – including Jimmy Carter, who <a href="https://education.laws.com/department-of-education">elevated</a> the Department of Education to the Cabinet – had done little to position the federal government as a kind of executive suite in public education. Bush changed that, and sought to do so by developing top-down accountability through curricular standards and aligned tests.</p>
<p>Less than a year after taking office, the Bush administration worked with the National Governors’ Association to organize the <a href="https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/09/24/05summit.h34.html">1989 Charlottesville education summit</a> – a meeting at which then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton distinguished himself as an ally. A few short months later, in his <a href="https://www.infoplease.com/homework-help/us-documents/state-union-address-george-hw-bush-january-31-1990">1990 State of the Union address</a>, Bush proposed his <a href="http://www.capenet.org/pdf/Outlook171.pdf">America 2000</a> legislation, which called for standardized tests that would “tell parents and educators, politicians, and employers just how well our schools are doing.”</p>
<h2>Enduring influence</h2>
<p>At the time he was defeated in his bid for reelection, Bush had little to show for his plans. The charter sector in the early 1990s remained minuscule. Congress sank America 2000 shortly after it was proposed.</p>
<p>Over time, however, Bush’s grand design was gradually realized. Rechristening Bush’s failed America 2000 legislation as Goals 2000, Bill Clinton gave incentives to states to create curricular standards and aligned tests, and he doled out millions of dollars in grants to charter school developers. George W. Bush advanced his father’s work through No Child Left Behind, as well as through strong support for the charter sector, which doubled in size under his administration. Barack Obama offered continued support to the charter sector, while also ensuring the future of accountability testing through <a href="https://www.ed.gov/essa?src=rn">Every Student Succeeds Act</a>. In short, the Bush paradigm has had remarkable endurance across time and across different administrations.</p>
<p>This is not to say that federal policy has had a positive effect on schools over the past quarter-century. No Child Left Behind is today viewed by policy experts, educators and even many of its original backers as a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pam.21978">failure</a>. And charter schools, despite receiving generally positive press, have produced <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112340">mixed results</a> while largely <a href="https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/08/24/we-must-diversify-charter-school-options.html">failing to produce real innovation</a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the endurance of these efforts reveals Bush’s particular genius for working within complex democratic bureaucracies to build lasting power. The Department of Education, once a sleepy backwater, today exercises tremendous influence. And in wielding that influence, Bush’s successors – both Republicans and Democrats – have also advanced his administrative agenda. Phrases like “standards and accountability” and “school choice,” once deployed only by policy wonks, are now common terms in the national education dialogue.</p>
<p>George H.W. Bush’s ideas persisted well after he left office. That’s because they were rooted in compromise between elites on both sides of the aisle and because they were patiently developed through bureaucratic institutions and the law. For good or ill, it seems, true power lies not in the issuance of ideological proclamations or executive orders – it lies in statecraft. Leaders, after all, may come and go. But their policies can continue to shape the world long after they leave office.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Schneider does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though his education initiative staggered while he was in office, the late former President George H.W. Bush had an influence that continues to shape education policy, an education historian says.Jack Schneider, Assistant Professor of Education, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/715902018-12-01T15:17:20Z2018-12-01T15:17:20ZGeorge H. W. Bush: I knew him as a great man who was thoughtful, intelligent and kind<p>George H. W. Bush, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/01/politics/george-h-w-bush-dead/index.html">who died on November 30 aged 94</a>, was a lovely man. He was polite, genteel, intelligent and thoughtful. He was careful, considerate and kind. </p>
<p>We called him “41” because he was the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/george-hw-bush-41st-president-of-the-united-states-dies-at-94/2018/11/30/42fa2ea2-61e2-11e8-99d2-0d678ec08c2f_story.html">41st American president</a> – between 1989 and 1993. As a faculty member at the <a href="http://bush.tamu.edu/">Bush School of Government</a> at Texas A&M University for ten years, I met him several times. The first time was December 2005, when he arranged a lunch to meet us. He asked each member of the new faculty to stand up and introduce ourselves.</p>
<p>At the end, the Secret Service asked us all to remain at our seats while the former president exited the room. But he didn’t just sweep out. He stopped to chat with several board members, faculty and staff along the way. I was still surprised when he stopped at me. He put his hands on my shoulders, and said: “Hi, Gina! Welcome to the Bush School!”</p>
<p>I started to thank him, but he interrupted me to say how excited he was that I was bringing my work on decision making and foreign aid to the Bush School. He asked if he could drop by my statistics class some time to tell the students the importance of the skills I was teaching them. He gave me a quick hug and moved on. </p>
<p>In that moment, I saw clearly the human being behind the statesman and public servant who had served as president during the uncertain years around the collapse of the Soviet Union. </p>
<h2>Personal touch</h2>
<p>I had heard it said of George H. W. Bush that despite his reputation as a nerdy or wishy-washy president, one only needed to be in the same room with him once in order to realise how and why he was elected. That was true.</p>
<p>This man had represented the state of Texas in the US House of Representatives. He had been ambassador to China and directed the CIA. Ultimately, he had served the country as both vice president (under Ronald Reagan) and president. And he knew my name, my research, and the subject I taught. He made me feel like I was important to him, to his work, to the world in general. He made me feel special. I think he did that for just about everyone.</p>
<p>During my time on the Bush School faculty, I met 41 several more times, and attended a collection of his speeches and events. Several years after our first meeting, at a reception he and his wife, Barbara, hosted in their apartment on campus, I plopped down next to him in a patio chair on the veranda where he was sitting on his own. I started to make a silly comment about how the best-known person at the party was sitting alone, but before I could finish, he turned to me. “Hi, Gina,” he said. “How are those statistics classes going?”</p>
<p>He had the ability to make you think he was addressing you personally, even if you were one among 10,000 others. His statements were carefully crafted pieces of inspiration, with a little dose of laughter and a touch of poignancy. They made you want to be a public servant. They made you want to be his friend.</p>
<p>His presidency oversaw substantial change both domestically and globally, including the <a href="https://adata.org/learn-about-ada">Americans with Disabilities Act</a>, the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview">Clean Air Act Amendments</a>, and a budget deal in 1990 that ushered in prosperity for the decade to follow. Under his administration the country navigated the events of Tiananmen Square, the first Gulf War, the end of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the negotiation of NAFTA.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/george-h-w-bush-americas-last-foreign-policy-president-77513">George H.W. Bush: America's last foreign policy president</a>
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<p>It’s understandable that 41 had political opponents, people who remember certain decisions in a poor light. That would be true of anyone in his position. We do live in a pluralist society, after all.</p>
<h2>Legacy</h2>
<p>What is amazing is the positive legacies he left despite the tumult and criticism. He consciously stepped out of the spotlight during the end of the Cold War so the nations of Eastern Europe could decide their own future without outsiders taking the credit. He created the <a href="https://beone.pointsoflight.org/">Points of Light Foundation</a> to honour community servants for their dedication and sacrifice. He founded a school designed to create, educate and train future generations of public servants that would help America and the rest of the world act nobly, honourably, and with conviction.</p>
<p>There were no major scandals during 41’s presidency. He did not leave office and speak negatively about subsequent administrations. If he was unexciting, it was because he wasn’t controversial – he didn’t deliver quips and barbs in public. He gave people credit for their achievements, and demurred when the spotlight came back to him. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1022248119495479301"}"></div></p>
<p>George H. W. Bush was one of the last true statesmen from an era that seems to be drawing to a close. My favourite quotation of his is etched on the Bush Presidential Library. It comes from his <a href="http://www.thisnation.com/library/sotu/1991gb.html">1991 State of the Union address</a>, in which he referred to American participation in the first Gulf War:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Let future generations understand the burden and the blessings of freedom. Let them say we stood where duty required us to stand. Let them know that, together, we affirmed America and the world as a community of conscience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When future generations look back at us today, will they see that we stood up against adversity at home and in foreign lands, that we opened our eyes to aggression and stood where duty required us to stand? </p>
<p>If we try to behave according to his standards, they might.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gina Yannitell Reinhardt has received funding from the British Academy, the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the US National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>‘He had the ability to make you think he was addressing you personally, even if you were one among 10,000 others.’Gina Yannitell Reinhardt, Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/955602018-12-01T14:28:33Z2018-12-01T14:28:33ZWhy we’ll miss George H.W. Bush, America’s last foreign policy president<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248220/original/file-20181201-194950-1rdpjv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unlike every president who followed him, George H.W. Bush had a background in foreign policy. In 1972, Bush was serving as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Dave Pickoff</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are many reasons to miss George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States. A World War II hero, he later served his country with great distinction in a number of important positions before becoming vice president and then president. </p>
<p>The outpouring of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/us/george-bush-death-reactions.html">warm feelings</a> first for his wife, Barbara Bush, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/04/barbara-bush-obituary">who passed away earlier this year</a>, and now for him, reflects not only the role President and Mrs. Bush played in American history but also the decency they represented in a political system that now has become full of indecency. </p>
<p>Strikingly, George H.W. Bush was also the last person elected president of the United States with any prior foreign policy experience. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248216/original/file-20181201-194950-1oshqy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248216/original/file-20181201-194950-1oshqy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248216/original/file-20181201-194950-1oshqy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248216/original/file-20181201-194950-1oshqy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248216/original/file-20181201-194950-1oshqy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248216/original/file-20181201-194950-1oshqy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248216/original/file-20181201-194950-1oshqy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">George H.W. Bush as a senate candidate in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ed Kolenovsky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He entered office with one of the most impressive resumes of any president, having served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, ambassador to the United Nations and Ronald Reagan’s vice president. </p>
<p>He left office with an impressive list of achievements, including the unification of Germany within NATO. As historian Jeffrey Engel has reminded us in his excellent recent book, “<a href="https://www.smu.edu/News/2017/jeffrey-engel-book-02nov2017">When the World Seemed New,</a>” this was far from assured. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterand were deeply opposed to Germany’s unification, while Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev opposed not only unification but the incorporation of the former East Germany into NATO. Germany’s leadership in Europe as a force for democracy and human rights since those years has clearly vindicated President Bush’s instincts to support West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in his efforts in 1990. </p>
<p>A major high point of the George H.W. Bush presidency, however, was also the harbinger of disappointments to come: the swift military victory that reversed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and seemed to herald a new era in world affairs – but left Saddam Hussein in power.</p>
<p>In 1991, it seemed America could do anything it wanted to in the world – politically, diplomatically and militarily. But no one could have imagined 27 years ago the role that Iraq would come to play in American foreign policy in the ensuing years and the loss of American lives, money, standing and self-confidence that resulted from U.S. involvement in that country. </p>
<h2>A new world order?</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Bush with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at Camp David on June 2, 1990.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A month after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, in September 1990, Bush and Gorbachev issued <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=18809">a joint statement noting that</a> “no peaceful international order is possible if larger states can devour their smaller neighbors.” That same month, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/09/12/bush-out-of-these-troubled-times-a-new-world-order/b93b5cf1-e389-4e6a-84b0-85f71bf4c946/?utm_term=.a71472024fb5">Bush declared</a>, “We’re now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders.”</p>
<p>The problem was that while the United Nations was set up to prevent powerful states from invading weaker neighbors, as Germany and Japan had done in the 1930s and 1940s, the main challenges of the post-Cold War world – prior to Russia invading Ukraine in 2014 – were different. They were mainly internal challenges: failed states and civil wars in places like Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans, Afghanistan and eventually Iraq after the disastrous U.S. occupation following the 2003 war.</p>
<p>The U.S. effort to put together an international coalition against Iraq in 1990 was stunning. Secretary of State James Baker met with every head of state or foreign minister whose country held a seat on the U.N. Security Council. That meant not just meeting with those countries that had permanent seats like the Soviet Union and China, but also those holding rotating seats such as Ivory Coast, Romania and even Cuba. </p>
<p>Baker’s efforts were successful. The Security Council passed U.N. <a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/575/28/IMG/NR057528.pdf?OpenElement">Resolution 678</a> on Nov. 29, 1990 and established Jan. 15, 1991 as the deadline for Iraq to withdraw its troops from Kuwait or face a U.S.-led international coalition to force its withdrawal. </p>
<p>The coalition made good on the threat. As Colin Powell told my co-author Derek Chollet and me in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/536355281">an interview for our book on the period</a>, “The Gulf War was the war against the Russians we didn’t have. There were no trees and no hills, but that’s what we were trained to fight. The Iraqis sat there and we kicked the shit out of them.”</p>
<p>For those who had suffered through the morass of Vietnam and the crisis of American confidence that followed, it was the ultimate feel-good moment. An estimated 800,000 people packed the National Mall to cheer their military heroes. Bush came out of the war with a <a href="http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/dec/02/john-wisniewski/democratic-leader-offers-cautionary-tale-gov-chris/">90 percent public approval rating</a>.</p>
<h2>The Iraq problem</h2>
<p>And yet, the following year, a candidate with no foreign policy experience who had avoided military service in Vietnam won the presidency. By 1992, the Cold War was over, and Bill Clinton campaigned with the mindset that it was “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/us/1992-campaign-democrats-clinton-bush-compete-be-champion-change-democrat-fights.html?mcubz=0">the economy, stupid</a>.”</p>
<p>But while Clinton defeated Bush, he inherited the Iraq problem from his predecessor, who had chosen not to remove Saddam Hussein in order to keep his U.N. coalition together. Clinton was faced for eight years with patrolling the no-fly zones established over the north and south of Iraq to protect the Kurdish and Shiite populations. </p>
<p>Clinton passed the Iraq problem off to George W. Bush, who in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11 made the fateful decision to go to war in 2003 – this time without U.N. authorization. Bush and his “coalition of the willing” removed Saddam Hussein, leaving the United States as an occupying power. And while <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug/12/barack-obama/obama-sticks-to-his-iraq-plan/">Barack Obama promised</a> – a promise on which, for a fleeting moment, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-announces-end-of-iraq-war-troops-to-return-home-by-year-end/">he seemed to deliver</a> – a U.S. withdrawal from the country, he was forced to go back in militarily with the rise of the Islamic State, handing off the Iraq problem to his successor to manage. Even as Donald Trump presided over tremendous military success against ISIS, Iraq remains a diplomatic and military challenge for the United States. The 2003 war left Iran ascendant in the region, and it cost the United States not only significant blood and treasure, but so much of the standing and legitimacy it gained in 1991.</p>
<p>Thus the promise of the Gulf War – the U.S. dominant like no other since ancient Rome, confident that it could rule the world on behalf of freedom and democracy – gave way over time to doubt and confusion. In the post-Cold War world, the U.S. military was largely called upon to handle internal conflicts – in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya and, throughout it all, Iraq – and the results have proved deeply dissatisfying. </p>
<p>In 1991, George H.W. Bush declared victory and celebrated with a parade. In 2011, there was no parade for Libya. There will be no parade for Afghanistan. If Donald Trump ever holds a military parade in Washington, D.C. as he once discussed, it will take place in an America exhausted from its long wars and feeling far less confident in its role in the world than it was back in the George H.W. Bush years.</p>
<p>It’s fitting that George H.W. Bush, World War II military hero and Cold War veteran, is the last president to preside over what at the time felt awesome: a major military victory fought on behalf of the entire world against a dictator. </p>
<p>His successors, none of whom served in the military and all of whom have wrestled with post-Cold War challenges, have been vexed not only by Iraq, but by challenges posed by nonstate actors while trying to manage regional threats emanating from China, Russia and Iran. While Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Donald Trump have each in their own way tried to define American leadership, George H.W. Bush’s presidency represents the moment at the end of the Cold War when anything seemed possible for the United States in world affairs, and the underlying challenges were only just beginning to become visible.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-h-w-bush-americas-last-foreign-policy-president-77513">updates a version</a> published on June 12, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95560/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Goldgeier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The first President Bush had some impressive foreign policies wins, but could he be best remembered for getting the US entangled in Iraq?James Goldgeier, Professor at the School of International Service and Visiting Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/775132017-06-12T11:01:20Z2017-06-12T11:01:20ZGeorge H.W. Bush: America’s last foreign policy president<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173304/original/file-20170611-4841-1k2la4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unlike every president who followed him, George H.W. Bush had a background in foreign policy. In 1972, Bush was serving as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Dave Pickoff</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>George H.W. Bush was the last person elected president of the United States with any prior foreign policy experience. </p>
<p>Bush, <a href="https://www.apnews.com/2435119a81f4491c839408cccc39c79d">who has died at age 94</a>, entered office with one of the most impressive resumes of any president, having served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, ambassador to the United Nations and Ronald Reagan’s vice president. </p>
<p>He left office with an impressive list of achievements, including managing the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany. But a major high point of his presidency was also the harbinger of disappointments to come: the swift military victory that reversed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and seemed to herald a new era in world affairs – but left Saddam Hussein in power.</p>
<p>In 1991, it seemed America could do anything it wanted to in the world. Twenty-seven years after Bush left Saddam Hussein in power, United States forces <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-usa/u-s-forces-to-stay-in-iraq-as-long-as-needed-spokesman-idUSKBN1L408A">are still engaged in Iraq,</a> and the US is far less confident of its global role.</p>
<h2>A New World Order?</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173308/original/file-20170612-307-1rwvabf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bush with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at Camp David on June 2, 1990.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A month after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, in September 1990, Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev issued <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=18809">a joint statement noting that</a> “no peaceful international order is possible if larger states can devour their smaller neighbors.” That same month, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/09/12/bush-out-of-these-troubled-times-a-new-world-order/b93b5cf1-e389-4e6a-84b0-85f71bf4c946/?utm_term=.a71472024fb5">Bush declared</a>, “We’re now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders.”</p>
<p>The problem was that while the United Nations was set up to prevent powerful states from invading weaker neighbors, as Germany and Japan had done in the 1930s and 1940s, the main challenges of the post-Cold War world – prior to Russia invading Ukraine in 2014 – were different. They were mainly internal challenges: failed states and civil wars in places like Somalia, Rwanda, Balkans, Afghanistan and eventually Iraq after the disastrous U.S. occupation following the 2003 war.</p>
<p>The U.S. effort to put together an international coalition against Iraq in 1990 was stunning. Secretary of State James Baker met with every head of state or foreign minister whose country held a seat on the U.N. Security Council. That meant not just meeting with those countries that had permanent seats like the Soviet Union and China, but also those holding rotating seats such as Ivory Coast, Romania and even Cuba. </p>
<p>Baker’s efforts were successful. The Security Council passed U.N. <a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/575/28/IMG/NR057528.pdf?OpenElement">resolution 678</a> on Nov. 29, 1990 and established Jan. 15, 1991 as the deadline for Iraq to withdraw its troops from Kuwait or face a U.S.-led international coalition to force its withdrawal. </p>
<p>The coalition made good on the threat. As Colin Powell told my co-author Derek Chollet and me in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/536355281">an interview for our book on the period</a>, “The Gulf War was the war against the Russians we didn’t have. There were no trees and no hills, but that’s what we were trained to fight. The Iraqis sat there and we kicked the shit out of them.”</p>
<p>For those who had suffered through the morass of Vietnam and the crisis of American confidence that followed, it was the ultimate feel-good moment. An estimated 800,000 people packed the National Mall to cheer their military heroes. Bush came out of the war with a <a href="http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/dec/02/john-wisniewski/democratic-leader-offers-cautionary-tale-gov-chris/">90 percent public approval rating</a>.</p>
<p>And yet, the following year, a candidate with no foreign policy experience who had avoided military service in Vietnam won the presidency. He defeated the incumbent president who was himself a war hero and had led the Gulf War coalition to such success. By 1992, the Cold War was over, and Bill Clinton campaigned with the mindset that it was “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/us/1992-campaign-democrats-clinton-bush-compete-be-champion-change-democrat-fights.html?mcubz=0">the economy, stupid.</a>”</p>
<p>But while Clinton defeated Bush, he inherited the Iraq problem from his predecessor, who had chosen not to remove Saddam Hussein in order to keep his U.N. coalition together. Clinton was faced for eight years with patrolling the no-fly-zones established over the north and south of Iraq to protect the Kurdish and Shiite populations. </p>
<p>Clinton passed the Iraq problem off to George W. Bush, who in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11 went to war in 2003 – this time without U.N. authorization. Bush and his “coalition of the willing” removed Saddam Hussein, leaving the United States as an occupying power. And while <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug/12/barack-obama/obama-sticks-to-his-iraq-plan/">Barack Obama promised</a> – a promise on which, for a fleeting moment, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-announces-end-of-iraq-war-troops-to-return-home-by-year-end/">he seemed to deliver</a> – a U.S. withdrawal from the country, he was forced to go back in militarily with the rise of the Islamic State, handing off the Iraq problem to his successor to manage.</p>
<p>Thus the promise of the Gulf War – the U.S. dominant like no other since ancient Rome, confident that it could rule the world on behalf of freedom and democracy – gave way over time to doubt and confusion. In the post-Cold War world, the U.S. military was largely called upon to handle internal conflicts – in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya and, throughout it all, Iraq – and the results have proved deeply dissatisfying. </p>
<p>In 1991, George H.W. Bush declared victory and celebrated with a parade. In 2011, there was no parade for Libya. There will be no parade for Afghanistan. Stability in Iraq remains elusive – the US could not celebrate a clear-cut military victory there. </p>
<p>It’s fitting that George H.W. Bush, World War II military hero and Cold War veteran, was the last president to preside over what at the time felt awesome: a major military victory fought on behalf of the entire world against a dictator. Instead, his successors, none of whom served in the military and all of whom have wrestled with post-Cold War challenges, have been vexed not only by Iraq, but by challenges posed by nonstate actors while trying to manage regional threats emanating from China, Russia and Iran. While Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Donald Trump have each in their own way tried to define American leadership, George H.W. Bush’s presidency represents the moment at the end of the Cold War when anything seemed possible for the United States in world affairs, and the underlying challenges were only just beginning to become visible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Goldgeier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The first President Bush had some impressive foreign policies wins, but could he be best remembered for getting the US entangled in Iraq?James Goldgeier, Professor at the School of International Service and Visiting Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.