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| George H. W. Bush was the 41st president of the United States serving from 1989-1993. He previously served as Vice President under Reagan. His administration was characterized by Humanitarianism. He was in office during the post-cold war world structure when everyone was trying to figure out what to do next. He felt the US should serve as the world's hegemonic power that would be the policeman and that it was unacceptable for aggression to be tolerated. During his term, the US became involved in the Iraq-Kuwait conflict, in which Iraq had occupied the oil-rich country of Kuwait. The US became involved in this war (Gulf War) Secondly, the US was involved in a civil war in Somalia. This event was a failure for the US and made the country reconsider if we should be getting involved in these conflicts at all. This Bush administration also helped the situation in Panama that started in the Reagan Administration (called 'Operation Just Cause') where it overthrew a repressive regime and helped to establish a new one. Bush also felt it extremely important to create diplomatic ties with Russia, especially Gorbachev. In The Cold War by Gaddis, he makes the Bush administration seem this way by using the term "ambivalence" when talking about the administration's thoughts to a world without the USSR (Gaddis 256). |
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First Gulf War = Reinforce the belief that the world economy was out of control or at least beyond the control of the advanced capitalist economy. (Frieden pg. 368) Economist perspective.
“The First Persian Gulf War,. Jan.–Feb., 1991, was an armed conflict between Iraq and a coalition of 32 nations including the United States, Britain, Egypt, France, and Saudi Arabia. It was a result of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990; Iraq then annexed Kuwait, which it had long claimed. Iraqi president Saddam Hussein declared that the invasion was a response to overproduction of oil in Kuwait, which had cost Iraq an estimated $14 billion a year when oil prices fell. Hussein also accused Kuwait of illegally pumping oil from Iraq's Rumaila oil field.” (InfoPlease.com) |
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| Globalization/Anti-Globalization Movement |
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Globalization is the move towards international integration, especially in relation to world economies and the liberalization of international trade. Globalization promotes free markets and the reduction of tariffs and trade barriers. The Anti-globalization movement challenges that globalization policies are detrimental to developing nations, allows corporations to dominate the markets, and fails to address international labor, environment, consumer, social, health, and safety issues.
Frieden states the viewed pros and cons of globalization quite well with:
The benefits of global capitalism come together with its costs. Companies borrow cheaply on international financial markets; this exposes them to the demands of foreign investors. Trade lets consumers buy inexpensive foreign production; this brings unwanted competition for domestic producers. Multinational corporations bring new technologies and methods; this drives domestic firms out of business. Foreign debt allows governments to spend more than they take in; this can lead to excruciating debt crises. . Governments open their borders to the world economy and provide some citizens the potential for wealth and success; this can consign other citizens to hardship and distress. (474) |
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Arab Nationalists are those individuals who believe in an ideal of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism is a broad term encompassing a number of different ideologies ranging from the socialist pan-Arabism of the Baath Party, to the localized self-determination movements of the Palestinians. What is universal among all forms of Arab Nationalism is the recognition and promotion of a shared identity among the Arab-speaking populations of Iraq, Syria, North Africa, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. Generally, Arab Nationalists also understand a common historical experience among Arab peoples. The height of the Arabian civilization, the expansive and prosperous Arabian Caliphate, is often recollected in Arab Nationalist and Pan-Arabist thought to contrast the modern situation of Arab Nations, who often struggle with failed economies and unstable governments. This movement reached its stride during the middle of the 20th century but soon lost steam after the Arab Nations suffered a number of humiliating defeats at the hands of their longtime rival, Israel. By the 1970's the enthusiasm for Arab Nationalism and Pan-Arabism was greatly lost among the Arab Nations. This said, it is still the driving force behind Fatah in Palestine and various local divisions of the Baath Party throughout the middle east.
Bradley, John R. Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
Owen, Roger State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. Routledge, 2004 (pp. 59-64) |
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Saddam Hussein was the 5th President of Iraq from 1979 until 2003. He came to power through the Ba’th Party (a political party in favor of an Arab socialist state) that he’d been involved with since 1957. With this group, he was involved in an attempt to assassinate the Iraqi president in 1959, and after it failed, Hussein went to law school in Cairo, and then returned to Iraq in 1963 after the Ba’th Party took power. He escaped from jail after the Ba’thist’s were removed from power, and he helped reinstall the group to power in 1968. He became president (more accurately, a dictator) and established nationalism through the oil industry and was a strong advocate of pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism, and Arab socialism. He tried to replace Egypt as the leading Arab country, gain control of the Persian Gulf, and he started and lost the wars against Iran (1980-88) and Kuwait (1990-91). He was thrown from power after the United States became fearful of Iraq’s WMD development and the U.S. became involved in the Iraq War in 2003. He was in hiding for months, and then captured by United States forces. The Iraqi High Tribunal sentenced him to death in 2006 for crimes against humanity, and he was executed.
Merriam Webster, Saddam Hussein.
Wikipedia, Saddam Hussein. |
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War between Iran and Iraq, from September 1980 and August 1988. Iraq invaded Iran. The fighting ended through a cease fire through talks.
1979 = Iraq gets new leader, Hussein, friendship treaty with Soviets, Shiite sects = Hussein worried about Iran, Iraq ruled by Sunni but majority of population is Shiite, attacked Iran, hoping to take advantage in Iran.
Iran Contra affair – Iran switches sides during the middle of the war, U.S. offers to help Iraq (Migal lecture, 5/4/11)
Thre most important "departure from determinism during the Cold War had to do with, obviously, hot wars". After 1945 super powers did not fight eachother. Wars were limited between superpowers and smaller powers or between smaller powers (Irann - Iraq War) (Gaddis, 261). |
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| Arc of Instability/Crisis |
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| This is the area that runs from North Africa up and through the Arabs states of the Middle East to Turkey and Iran and the borders with Turkmenistan, Kryghistan, Tajikastan, and then running down back toward South Asia Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. It corresponds roughly with areas of Fundamentalist Islam, and the oil producing nations. In Samuel P. Huntington’s, “The Clash of Civilizations?” pgs 31-34 he describes the “crescent shaped Islamic bloc” that borders with Western and Asian Civilizations and, the violence that has occurred there historically and with increasing regularity in the last few decades. |
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| George W. Bush was the 43rd president of the United States. His presidential term was from 2001 to 2008. "The most significant event of President Bush’s tenure came on September 11, 2001, when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil. President Bush responded with a comprehensive strategy to protect the American people." |
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| Project for a New American Century |
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| The Project for the New American Century was an American think tank organized by neoconservatives left over from the Reagan and Bush Administrations. The PNAC's stated goal was "to promote American global leadership" This goal was based on the view that "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world" and maintains peace and order throughout the world via a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity. The "Four Essential Missions" of the project included "...the safety of the American homeland; the preservation of a favorable balance of power in Europe, the Middle East and surrounding energy producing region, and East Asia; and the general stability of the international system of nation-states relative to terrorists." The PNAC affected the Bush Administration's military and foreign policies, specifically national security and the Iraq War. |
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| A realist is an individual that promotes national security and individual power interests over world cooperation that is driven by self interest. A realist is interested in maintaining hegemony and superpower status in order to protect national interest worldwide. A key example of a realist would be in the Post Cold War, especially in the Bush Adminstration. (Assassin's Gate) It was key that the Bush administration promoted neoconservativism that influenced the US to maintain military supremacy, as well as keep itself as the leading world power in the World. Bush was concerned with fighting any attack of terrorism or threat to American legitimacy. |
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| the series of 2011 revolutions occurring in predominantly Arab and Middle East Countries. For various political and economic reasons, the people of certain countries have risen up in opposition to the ruling powers in their respective countries. Anthony Shadid, in the NY Time article "Uncharted Ground After End of Egypt's Regime", writes, "Egypt will face the meaning of its revolution, as will an Arab world that shares its demographic of a younger generation taking the stage." So far, Egypt and Tunisia have had revolutions. However, other Middle-East/Arab countries currently are in varying degrees of civil unrest, from civil war to minor protests. |
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a branch of American Conservativism that is most known for its advocacy of using American economic and military power to promote liberal democracy in other countries. Although neoconservatives generally endorse free-market economics, they often believe cultural and moral issues to be more significant, and so have tended to be less thoroughgoing in opposition to government intervention in society than more traditionally conservative and libertarian members of the Republican Party. (wikipedia)
From lecture on May 20th, lecture 22 by Prof. Kasaba:
Neo-conservatives are one of the four factors that led to the Iraq War. The ideology came from Republicans working in the Bush Administration. They believed that the US should be the only superpower and that they should do everything in its power so that other countries cannot challenge it. This is the only way that the US can gain safety and protection.
Neoconservative thought is seen in the Defense Planning Guidance, the Project for a New American Century, and Bush's commencement speech at West Point.
The memebers of the Project for a New American Centruy and main neoconservative thinkers are Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, William Bennett, Dan Quayle, Jeb Bush, James Bolton, and Zalmay Khalilzad. (www.newciv.org) |
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