Chapter 27 Give Me Liberty (last one of APUSH!!!)

1. The Post-Cold War World

★President George H. W. Bush spoke of the coming of a new world order. But no one knew what its characteristics would be and what new challenges to American power might arise.

A New World Order?

● Bush’s first major foreign policy action was a throwback to the days of American interventionism in the Western Hemisphere.

● The United States installed a new government and flew General Manuel Antonio Noriega (involved in the international drug trade) to Florida, where he was tried and convicted on drug charges.

The Gulf War

● A far more serious crisis arose in 1990 when Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait, an oil-rich sheikdom on the Persian Gulf. (Iraqi dictator- Saddam Hussein)

● Bush rushed troops to defend Kuwait and warned Iraq to withdraw from the country or face war.

● The Iraqi invasion so flagrantly violated international law that Bush had succeeded in building a forty-nation coalition committed to restoring Kuwait’s independence, secured the support of the United Nations, and sent half a million American troops along with a naval armada to the region.

● Feb. 1991 U.S. launched Operation Desert Storm to drive the Iraqi army from Kuwait.

● The Gulf War was the first post-Cold War international crisis.

○ Relying on high-tech weaponry like cruise missiles that reached Iraq from bases and aircraft carriers hundreds of miles away, the United States was able to prevail quickly and avoid the prolonged involvement and high casualties of Vietnam.

● In the war’s immediate aftermath, Bush’s public approval rating rose to an unprecedented 89 percent.

Visions of America’s Role

● In a speech to Congress, President Bush identified the Gulf War as the first step in the struggle to create a world rooted in democracy and global free trade.

● It remained unclear how this broad vision would be translated into policy.

● General Colin Powell and Dick Cheney outlined different visions of the future

○ Post-Cold War as a dangerous environment with conflicts vs. the United States possessing the power to reshape the world and prevent hostile states from achieving regional power.

● For the rest of the 1990s, it was not certain which definition of the American role in the post-Cold War world would predominate.

The Election of Clinton

● Despite victory in the Cold War and the Gulf, more and more Americans believed the country was on the wrong track.

● No one seized more effectively on the widespread sense of unease than Bill Clinton, a former governor of Arkansas.

● Clinton won the Democratic coalition in 1992.

● A charismatic campaigner, Clinton conveyed sincere concern for voters’ economic anxieties.

● Bush was further weakened when conservative leader Pat Buchanan delivered a fiery televised speech at the Republican National Convention that declared cultural war against gays, feminists, and supporters of abortion rights.

● The eccentric Texas billionaire Ross Perot also entered the fray as a third candidate.

○ He attacked Bush and Clinton as lacking the economic know-how to deal with the recession and the ever-increasing national debt.

● Perot’s support faded as election day approached, but he still received 19 percent of the popular vote, the best result for a third party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.

Clinton in Office

● In his first two years in office, Clinton turned away from some of the social and economic policies of the Reagan and Bush years.

● He appointed several blacks and women to his cabinet, including Janet Reno, the first female attorney general, and named two supporters of abortion rights, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, to the Supreme Court.

● “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy by which officers would not seek out gays for dismissal from the armed forces.

● Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)- a cash payment for low-income workers which started during the Ford administration.

● Clinton obtained congressional approval in 1993 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a treaty negotiated by Bush that created a free-trade zone consisting of Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

● Hillary Clinton had the plan to address the rising cost of healthcare and the increasing number of Americans who lacked health insurance.

● The United States had the world’s most advanced medical technology and a woefully incomplete system of health insurance.

● Doctors and health insurance and drug companies attacked Hillary’s plan vehemently, fearing government regulations that would limit reimbursement for medical procedures and the price of drugs.

The “Freedom Revolution”

● With the economy recovering slowly from the recession and Clinton’s first two years in office seemingly lacking in significant accomplishments, voters in 1994 turned against the administration.

● For the first time since the 1950s, Republicans won control of both houses of Congress.

○ They proclaimed their triumph the “Freedom Revolution.”

● Newt Gingrich had devised a platform called the Contract with America, which promised to curtail the scope of government, cut back on taxes and economic and environmental regulations, overhaul the welfare system, and end affirmative action.

● With the president and Congress unable to reach agreement on a budget, the government in December 1995 shut down all nonessential operations, including Washington D.C., museums and national parks.

● Gingrich discovered that in 1994 they had voted against Clinton, not for the full implementation of the Contract with America.

Clinton’s Political Strategy

● Like Truman after the Republican sweep of 1946, Clinton rebuilt his popularity by campaigning against a radical Congress.

● In his state of the union address of January 1996, he announced that “the era of big government is over,” in effect turning his back on the tradition of Democratic Party liberalism and embracing the antigovernment outlook associated with Republicans since the days of Barry Goldwater.

● In 1996, Clinton signed into law a Republican bill that abolished the program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), commonly known as “welfare.”

● Thanks to stringent new eligibility requirements imposed by the states and the economic boom of the late 1990s, welfare roles plummeted. Clinton made it disappear from political debate.

● Clinton’s political strategy, “triangulation,” meant embracing the most popular Republican policies, like welfare reform, while leaving his opponents with extreme positions unpopular among middle class voters, such as hostility to abortion rights ad environmental protection.

● Clinton’s passion for free trade alienated many working-class Democrats but convinced much of the middle class that the party was not beholden to the unions.

● Clinton had accomplished for Reaganism what Eisenhower had done for the New Deal, and Nixon for the Great Society- consolidating a basic shift in American politics by accepting many of the premises of his opponents.

Clinton and World Affairs

● Like Jimmy Carter before him, Clinton’s primary political interests concerned domestic, not international, affairs.

● Clinton, like Carter, took steps to encourage the settlement of long-standing international conflicts and tried to elevate support for human rights to a central place in international relations. He achieved only mixed success.

● 1993 agreement in Oslo, Norway- The Oslo Accords seemed to outline a road to Mideast peace. But neither side proved willing to implement them fully.

● Clinton brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders to Camp David to try to work out a final peace treaty. The meeting failed and violence soon resumed.

● More than 800,000 people were slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide, and 2 million refugees fled the country.

The Balkan Crisis

● The most complex foreign policy crisis of the Clinton years arose from the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a multiethnic state in southeastern Europe that had been carved from the old Austro-Hungarian empire after WWI.

● Within a few years, the country’s six provinces dissolved into five new states.

● Ethnic conflict plagued several of these new nations.

○ Ethnic cleansing- a terrible new term meaning the forcible expulsion from an area of a particular ethnic group- now entered the international vocabulary.

● By the end of 1993, more than 100,000 Bosnians, nearly all of them civilians, had perished in the Balkan crisis.

● With the Cold War over, protection of human rights in the Balkans gave NATO a new purpose.

● UN troops, including 20,000 Americans, arrived as peacekeepers.

● In 1998, ethnic cleansing again surfaced, this time by Yugoslavian troops and local Serbs against the Albanian population of Kosovo, a province of Serbia.

Human Rights

● During Clinton’s presidency, human rights played an increasingly important role in international affairs.

● Hundreds of nongovernmental agencies throughout the world defined themselves as protectors of human rights.

● Human rights emerged as a justification for interventions in matters once considered to be the internal affairs of sovereign nations.

● New institutions emerged that sought to punish violations of human rights.

● The Rwandan genocide produced a UN-sponsored war crimes court that sentenced the country’s former prime minister to life in prison.

2. Globalization and its Discontents

★The company’s worldwide reach symbolized globalization, the process by which people, investment, goods, information, and culture increasingly flowed across national boundaries. Globalization has been called “the concept of the 1990s.”

The Computer Revolution

● Many commentators spoke of the 1990s as the dawn of a “new economy,” in which computers and the Internet would produce vast new efficiencies and the production and sale of information would occupy the central place once by the manufacturer of goods.

● Computers had first been developed during and after WWII to solve scientific problems and do calculations involving enormous amounts of data.

● Research for the space program of the 1960s spurred the development of improved computer technology, notably the miniaturization of parts thanks to the development of the microchip on which circuits could be imprinted.

● Videocassette recorders, handheld video games, cellular phones, and digital cameras were mass-produced at affordable prices during the 1990s, mostly in Asia and Latin America rather than the United States.

● Beginning in the 1980s, companies like Apple and IBM marketed computers for business and home use.

● By the year 2000, nearly half of all American households owned a personal computer, used for entertainment, shopping, and sending and receiving electronic mail.

● The Internet expanded the flow of information and communications more radically than any invention since the printing press.

The Stock Market Boom and Bust

● Economic growth and talk of a new economy sparkled a frenzied boom in the stock market that was reminiscent of the 1920s.

● Investors, large and small, poured funds into stocks, spurred by the rise of discount and online firms that advertised aggressively and charged lower fees than traditional brokers.

● Investors were especially attracted to the new “dot coms”- companies that conducted business via the Internet and seemed to symbolize the promise of the new economy.

● The NASDAQ, a stock exchange dominated by new technology companies, rose more than 500 percent from 1998 to 1999.

● Talk of a new economy had been premature.

The Enron Syndrome

● Enron, a Houston-based energy company that epitomized the new economy- it bought and sold electricity rather than actually producing it- reported as profits billions of dollars in operating losses

● In the early twenty-first century, the bill came due for many corporate criminals.

● A number of former chief executives faced long prison terms. Fruits of Deregulation

● The sectors of the economy most affected by the scandals- energy, telecommunications, and stock trading- had all been subjects of deregulation.

● Enron could manipulate energy prices because Congress had granted it an exemption from laws regulating the price of natural gas and electricity.

● Many stock frauds stemmed from the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, a New Deal measure that separated commercial banks, which accept deposits and make loans, from investment banks, which invest in stocks and real estate and take larger risks.

● Banks took their new freedom as an invitation to engage in all sorts of misdeeds, owing that they had become so big that if anything happened, the federal government would have no choice but to rescue them.

● The Bush and Obama administrations felt they had no choice but to expend hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to save the banks from their own misconduct.

Rising Inequality

● The boom that began in 1995 benefited nearly all Americans.

● For the first time since the early 1970s, average real wages and family incomes began to grow significantly.

● It aided low-skilled workers, especially non-whites, who had been left out of previous periods of growth.

● The wealth of the richest Americans exploded during the 1990s.

● Bill Gates, head of Microsoft and the country’s richest person, owned as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of the American population put together.

● Thanks to NAFTA, which enabled American companies to expand their business in Mexico, by 2010 Wal-Mart was also the largest employer in that country.

○ First, in 1970, was General Motors for the country’s largest corporate employer.

3. Culture Wars

The Newest Immigrants

● Because of shifts in immgration, cultural and racial diversity have become increasingly visible in the United States.

● Until the immigration law of 1965, the vast majority of twentieth century newcomers hailed from Europe.

● About 50 percent came from Latin America and the Caribbean, 35 percent from Asia, and smaller numbers from the Middle East and Africa.

● In 2010, the number of foreign-born persons living in the United States stood at more than 40 million, of 13 percent of the population.

● By 2010, more than 4 million Muslims resided in the United States, and the combined population of Buddhists and Hindus eceeded 1 million.

● New ethnic communities emerged, with homes, shops, restaurants, foreign-language newspapers, radio, and television stations, and ethnic professionals like businessmen and lawyers.

● Post-1965 immigration formed part of the worldwide uprooting of labor arising from globalization.

● Those who migrated back to the United States came from a wide variety of backgrounds.

● Many immigrants were well-educated professionals

● Thanks to cheap global communications and jet travel, modern-day immigrants retain strong ties with their countries of origin, frequently phoning and visiting home.

The New Diversity

● Latinos formed the largest single immigration group.

● Mexico’s poverty, high birth rates, and proximity to the USA made it a source of massive legal and illegal immigration.

● Latinos made up the largest minority group.

● Latino communities were poor

● Latinos lagged behind in education.

● After 1965, Asians began to immigrate more.

○ Achieved remarkable success

○ Household income surpassed that of whites

● Multiracial America highlighted that a two-way race system didn’t characterize Americans.

○ More racial representation in film in sports

● Multiracial marriages became legal in more states

The Changing Face of Black America

● Blacks became more equal to Whites.

● Individuals from Africa began to migrate from 1970 to 2010.

● Nigeria, Ghana, and Ethiopia provided the largest number of African immigrants, and they settled overwhelmingly in urban areas, primarily in New York, California, Texas, and the District of Columbia.

● Some were impoverished refugees fleeing civil wars in Somalia, Sudan, and Ethiopia, but many more were professionals—more than half the African newcomers had college educations, the highest percentage for any immigrant group. Indeed, some African countries complained of a “brain drain” as physicians, teachers, and other highly skilled persons sought opportunities in the United States that did not exist in their own underdeveloped countries.

● Black unemployment rate was higher than that of Whites.

● Housing segregation and poverty was prevalent during the time.

● SCHOOL SEGREGATION

○ City public schools had many minority students.

○ Most school funding comes from taxpayer dollars, so those in poor communities have less funding for school.

The Spread of Imprisonment

● Both political parties decided imprisonment is better than rehabilitation.

● Drug addiction was treated as a crime, rather than as a mental illness.

● Crime rates rose in the 1970s and declined in the 1990s.

● Struggling communities battered by deindustrialization saw prisons as a source of jobs and income.

● Prison systems provided jobs to a lot of people.

The Burden of Imprisonment

● More blacks were imprisoned because of drugs.

● Criminal records made job searches difficult.

○ People’s children were forced to live with relatives.

● Blacks were more likely to receive the death penalty.

● Rodney King was beaten by LAPD cops and the jury found them not guilty. It sparked protests and riots among black populations for reform. Latinos joined as well.

The Continuing Rights Revolution

●AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ––1990 law that prohibited the discrimination against persons with disabilities in both hiring and promotion. It also mandated accessible entrances for public buildings.

● Gay rights focused on AIDS and safe sex.

● Changes in homosexual attitudes and acceptions was prominent during the time period.

Native Americans in the New Century

● Population was growing.

● Some Indians were given money for the land that was stripped away from them in the past.

● Indian casinos began.

● Half of today’s Indians live in five western states (California, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, and Washington).

● Although some tribes have reinvested casino profits in improved housing and health care and college scholarships for Native American students, most Indian casinos are marginal operations whose low-wage jobs as cashiers, waitresses, and the like have done little to relieve Indian poverty. Native Americans continue to occupy the lowest rung on the economic ladder. At least half of those living on reservations have incomes below the poverty line.

Multiculturalism

●MULTICULTURALISM––Term that became prominent in the 1990s to describe a growing emphasis on group racial and ethnic identity and demands that jobs, education, and politics reflect the increasingly diverse nature of American society.

● Black Studies, Latino Studies, Women’s Studies, and the like. Literature departments added the writings of female and minority authors.

The Identity Debate

● Conservatives were against multiculturalism.

● 1994: Proposition 187:: denied undocumented immigrants and their children access to welfare, education, and most health services

● In California, Republicans’ anti-immigrant campaigns inspired minorities to mobilize politically and offended many white Americans.

Cultural Conservatism

●CULTURE WARS––Battles over moral values that occurred throughout the 1990s. The Culture Wars touched many areas of American life—from popular culture to academia. Flashpoints included the future of the nuclear family and the teaching of evolution.

● Christian Coalition became a force that launched crusades against gay rights, abortion, secularism in public schools, and government aid to the arts.

● In the 1990s, the country was fighting old battles between religion and modern culture.

●DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT 1996 law that barred gay couples from receiving federal benefits. Declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Family Values in Retreat

● FAMILY VALUES––conservative beliefs that stressed nuclear family, heterosexual marriage, and traditional gender roles.

● More divorces, children born out of wedlock, etc.

● Men still earned more money than women.

● Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania reaffirmed a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

○ Highlighted that women had independent control over their bodies.

The Antigovernment Extreme

● Private militias spread anti-government views. They were usually violent.

● They thought they were losing freedom and cited works of Thomas Jefferson and things from the American Revolution.

● Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal office in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

4. Impeachment and the Election of 2000

The Impeachment of Clinton

● From the day Clinton took office, charges of misconduct bedeviled him. In 1998, it became known that Clinton had carried on an affair with Monica Lewinsky, an intern at the White House.

● Clinton denied the affair, but then he was lying under oath.

● In December 1998, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice. He became the second president to be tried before the Senate. Early in 1999, the vote took place. Neither charge mustered a simple majority, much less than the two-thirds required to remove Clinton from office.

● Clinton remained popular, highlighting how Americans’ opinions on sexual activities changed

The Disputed Election

● Al Gore (democrat) was nominated to succeed Clinton, and Republicans chose George W. Bush.

One of the closest in history; took a month for it to be finalized.

● Bush claimed a margin of a few hundred votes.

● Democrats wanted to recount the Florida ballots, but the Supreme Court later stopped them from doing so.

● Jeb Bush was Florida governor.

● Bush v. Gore Name of the supreme court case that determined the winner.

● Urban areas liked Gore, while the South and Rural areas liked Bush.

● Whites liked Bush, minorities liked Gore.

● Women used to vote Republican, but 11 percent voted democrat in 2000.

A Challenged Democracy

● Bush didn’t win the popular vote; he won the vote of the electoral college.

● Modern technology still couldn’t count the votes efficiently.

● Campaign cost a lot of money.

● Many people didn’t bother to vote.

● Major issues like health care were not addressed during the campaign.

● Lack of interest and effort in the election year.

5. THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11

● On the morning of September 11, 2001, hijackers seized control of four jet airliners filled with passengers. They crashed two into the World Trade Center in New York City, causing infernos that soon collapsed the center’s two skyscrapers.

● A third plane hit a wing of the Pentagon, the country’s military headquarters in Washington, D.C., and a fourth plane, in which passengers tried to overpower their plane’s hijackers, crashed in a field near Pittsburgh, killing all aboard.

● Counting the 19 hijackers, the more than 200 passengers, pilots, and flight attendants, and victims on the ground, almost 3,000 people died on September 11. The victims also included nearly 400 police and firefighters who rushed to the World Trade Center and died when the “Twin Towers” collapsed.

● The Bush administration quickly blamed Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden, for the attacks. A wealthy Islamic fundamentalist from Saudi Arabia, bin Laden had joined the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and he developed a relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and used U.S. funds to help build his mountain bases. But after the Gulf War, his anger turned against the United States, which retained military bases in Saudi Arabia and support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. The attacks also made newly prominent ideas embedded in the nation’s past—that freedom was the central quality of American life and that the United States had a mission to spread freedom through the world and fight freedom’s enemies.

● Bin Laden once was cooperative with the CIA, but he turned against the USA in the 1990s because of the military bases in the Middle East.

● Bin Laden viewed America as a disgusting place with anticonservative values. The USA’s progression inspired his people, and that was a factor that hurt his reputation and power strength.

● After the Gulf War, bin Laden declared war on the USA.

● Terrorists associated with Al Qaeda exploded a truck bomb at the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six persons.

● 9/11 was a complete surprise.

● 9/11 highlighted that freedom was an essential part of the USA’s mission.