5.2.1 The end of the Cold War and the new world order
For the US the end of the Cold War was an historical moment readily assimilated into the national collective narrative about American exceptionalism and manifest destiny. In mainstream public discourse the Cold War did not ‘end’ so much as the US ‘triumphed’ over its Soviet adversaries. In the year following fall of the Berlin Wall, leading elite press outlets The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post collectively published more than 30 editorials and opinion
pieces about America’s Cold War ‘victory’.9
9. Factiva database search (November 5, 2018).
When talking about American foreign policy motivations Bush was forced to address the demise of America’s main enemy of the previous 50 years. Following in the footsteps of Presidents Roosevelt, Nixon, Carter and Reagan, Bush used the concept of a ‘new world order’ in February 1990 to describe the post-Cold War landscape and America’s role within it.10 Bush used the phrase more frequently than his predecessors, mentioning it 92 times in public statements over the course of his four-year presidency. Although Bush provided greater detail each time he used the term, he maintained its core tenet elucidated in his 11 September 1990 address to a joint session of Congress:
Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: a new era—free from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world. . . can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavour. Today that new world is struggling to be born. . . A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognise the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.11
Conjuring an image of a new world “struggling to be born” Bush argued the new global order would not arise organically; the US had to fight for and build it. Bush appealed to his domestic audience’s association of the US with the virtuous elements of this new world; his definition positioned America on the side of freedom, peace and justice, protecting the oppressed and vanquishing evil, using frames reflecting
10. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address for Navy and Total Defense Day, ed. Address for Navy and Total Defense Day, October 27, 1941, In 1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt described Adolf Hitler’s “plans for conquest” during the Second World War as an attempt to create a new world order: Richard Nixon, Toasts of the President and Premier Chou En-lai of China at a Banquet Honoring the Premier in Peking, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, February 25, 1972, Richard Nixon used it to refer to the emerging rapprochement between the US and the then-communist China in 1972–1973: Richard Nixon, Fourth Annual Report to the Congress on United States Foreign Policy, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, May 3, 1973; Jimmy Carter, Visit of Lieutenant General Obasanjo of Nigeria Toasts of the President and Lieutenant General Obasanjo at a Dinner Honoring the Nigerian Head of State, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, October 11, 1977, Jimmy Carter used it in 1977 to describe a “more just world economic system”: Jimmy Carter, Visit of President Perez of Venezuela Toasts of the President and President Perez at a Dinner Honoring the Venezuelan President, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, June 28, 1977; Ronald Reagan, Toasts of President Reagan and President Soeharto of Indonesia at the State Dinner, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, October 12, 1982, Ronald Reagan adopted the term in 1982 to refer to the work incumbent on the US to “achieve an overall improvement in the inequalities in the world. . . which guarantees political justice, economic justice and social justice”:
11. George H. W. Bush, Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, September 11, 1990.
normative ideas of American exceptionalism/manifest destiny and fighting evil. As Jeffrey Engel points out, Bush knew the end of the Cold War removed the most stabilising part of the post-World War II international system and this rhetorical vacuum needed filling. As the Cold War was brought to a dramatic end, Bush reminded his US allies they required a new enemy on which to base their alliances and “this new enemy was instability”.12
In his speech on 11 September 1990, Bush framed the Gulf War, then in its pre-combat phase as Operation Desert Shield as a response to the “first assault on the new world that we seek.”13 Winning the Gulf War would thus vindicate the power and necessity of American global leadership, reinforcing the normative ideas central to American foreign policy narratives. Bush thus tied American actions in Iraq to America’s moral responsibilities to shape the post-Cold War order.
5.2.2 The Gulf War, moral duty and the Vietnam Syndrome
The Gulf War—Operation Desert Storm—launched on 16 January 1991 and was the first widely-publicised, inter-state war of the post-Cold War era.14 Bush ended the Gulf War on 27 February 1991 following a swift and powerful air and ground campaign targeting Iraqi positions in Kuwait.15 Proponents considered the war a tactical and strategic victory. Iraqi forces were pushed out of Kuwait with many soldiers surrendering to coalition troops. In a war mobilising over 950,000 coalition troops—including 500,000 from the US—only 147 of a total 382 coalition soldiers who died during the war were killed by hostile fire. Coalition ground forces did not pursue Iraqi troops deep into Iraqi territory but its aerial campaign resulted in widespread destruction of Iraq’s military and civilian infrastructure and an estimated
12. Engel, “When George Bush Believed the Cold War Ended and Why That Mattered,” 118.
13. Bush, Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit .
14. For more on Bush’s decision-making process in the lead-up to war see H. W. Brands, “George Bush and the Gulf War of 1991,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1 (2004): 113–32.
15. Spencer, US Leadership in Wartime: Clashes, Controversy and Compromise, 779–888.
death toll of 205,500.16
The US ultimately enjoyed military victory but the idea of defending Kuwait and safeguarding American oil supplies was inadequate for mobilising domestic American enthusiasm for the war.17 Without a motivating Cold War narrative, Bush framed the Gulf War in equally stark terms: Iraqi forces were committing atrocities in Kuwait and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was as evil as Hitler. Bush talked of the “rape”
of Kuwait and recounted the (false) story of Iraqi soldiers killing staff and premature babies in incubators at a Kuwaiti hospital.18 Bush frequently referred to Hussein as
“brutal”19 and “evil”,20 describing Iraqi forces as Hussein’s “henchmen” committing
“horrible crimes and tortures” that were “an affront to mankind and a challenge to freedom of all”.21
These images recalled normative expectations of US moral responsibility to prevent atrocities and fight evil. Bush presented the Gulf War as more than a just cause;
it was analogous to WWII, the archetypal ‘good’ war. Bush’s framing choices transformed the Gulf War from a strategic encounter into a “moral imperative”22 in which victory demonstrated America’s military strength, commitment to vanquishing evil and realising its divinely ordained post-Cold War vision: “the kind of blessing that enables good people to accomplish great deeds”.23 Bush proclaimed a ‘National
16. Human Rights Watch, Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: Civilian Casualties during the Air Campaign and Violations of the Laws of War (Human Rights Watch, June 1, 1991), accessed July 27, 2014; Beth Osborne Daponte, “A Case Study in Estimating Casualties from War and Its Aftermath: The 1991 Persian Gulf War,” The PSR Quarterly Review 3, no. 2 (1993): 65.
17. Steven Hurst, “The Rhetorical Strategy of George H. W. Bush during the Persian Gulf Crisis 1990–91: How to Help Lose a War You Won,” Political Studies 52 (2004): 384.
18. Ben-Porath, “Rhetoric of Atrocities: The Place of Horrific Human Rights Abuses in Presidential Persuasion Efforts,” 189.
19. George H. W. Bush, The President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Conflict, ed.
Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, March 1, 1991; George H. W. Bush, Interview With Middle Eastern Journalists, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, March 8, 1991; George H. W. Bush, Question-and-Answer Session With Reporters in Bethesda, Maryland, ed. Gerhard Peters and
John T. Woolley, March 27, 1991.
20. Bush, The President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Conflict ; George H. W. Bush, Radio Address to United States Armed Forces Stationed in the Persian Gulf Region, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, March 2, 1991.
21. George H. W. Bush, Address to the Nation Announcing Allied Military Action in the Persian Gulf, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, January 16, 1991.
22. Bush, Radio Address to United States Armed Forces Stationed in the Persian Gulf Region.
23. George H. W. Bush, Remarks at the Community Welcome for Returning Troops in Sumter, South Carolina, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, March 17, 1991.
Day of Prayer’ during the Gulf War24 and on 7 March 1991 he decreed 4, 5, and 7 April ‘National Days of Thanksgiving’ to celebrate the God-given victory.25 Kjell Lejon has commented on the religious and moral overtones of Bush’s communications during the Gulf War arguing Bush saw the normative idea of a ‘just war’, “as a powerful instrument of legitimation in US policy”.26 For Bush, defeating evil in the Gulf War was both a “moral and ontological battle”.27
With repeated references to the Vietnam War throughout February and March 199128 Bush addressed lurking domestic fears America’s military deployments inevitably become longer, costly and more fraught. Bush argued the Gulf War exorcised America’s Vietnam Syndrome demons,29 “bur[ying] the spectre of Vietnam. . . forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula”.30 Without ever admitting US failures in Vietnam, Bush framed the Gulf War as the better example for understanding US military activity as a redemptive force at home and abroad, with victory achieved at low cost to US soldiers. Speaking before US troops returning from the Gulf Bush told them:
You helped this country liberate itself from old ghosts and doubts. And when you left, it was still fashionable to question America’s decency, America’s courage, America’s resolve. No one, no one in the whole world doubts us any more. What you did, you helped us revive the America of our old hopes and dreams.31
The Gulf War became a critical plot point in Bush’s post-Cold War narrative of a new world order where America defeated evildoers without being haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam. The extent to which Bush could convincingly claim Americans had “kicked”
the Vietnam Syndrome,32 however, relied on more than trouncing a weaker foe on
24. George H. W. Bush, Proclamation 6243—For a National Day of Prayer, February 3, 1991, ed.
Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, February 1, 1991.
25. George H. W. Bush, Remarks Commemorating the National Days of Thanksgiving in Houston, Texas, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, April 7, 1991, This proclamation was called for by
a joint resolution of Congress on 28 Mar 1991.
26. Kjell Lejon, George H.W. Bush : Faith, Presidency, and Public Theology (Frankfurt: Interna-tionaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2014), 189.
27. Ibid., 180.
28. Ibid., 169.
29. Simons, Vietnam Syndrome.
30. Bush, Radio Address to United States Armed Forces Stationed in the Persian Gulf Region.
31. Bush, Remarks at the Community Welcome for Returning Troops in Sumter, South Carolina.
32. George H. W. Bush, Remarks to the American Legislative Exchange Council, ed. Gerhard
the battlefield, it required a demonstrated exit strategy; the war should be clearly
‘over’ with US soldiers seen returning home. But instead of withdrawing troops in March 1991, Bush found himself confronting a humanitarian crisis in northern Iraq and pressured to respond with a humanitarian intervention. This situation raised uncomfortable questions about the decisiveness of America’s Gulf War victory, the scope of America’s moral responsibilities to the Iraqi people, and the viability of the US exit strategy.