Bush, George H. W.
(b. June 12, 1924) Forty-first U.S. president (1989– 1993).
Born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, George H. W. Bush served in the Navy during World War II and later moved to Texas, where he amassed considerable personal wealth as an oilman. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1967 to 1971, as ambassador to the United Nations, as U.S. envoy to China, and as director of the CIA. From 1981 to 1988, he served as vice president under Ronald Reagan.
The Bush presidential campaign of 1988 promised in part to carry on the legacy of Reagan's foreign policy. Furthermore, given Bush's background and experience, he felt well qualified to pursue this area of policy over which presidents have considerable control. In his first year in office, Bush pursued a short-term engagement when he sent troops into Panama to capture its dictator, Manuel Noriega, after an American soldier was killed there in 1989.
The chief task that Bush inherited from Reagan in the foreign policy arena was overseeing relations with the crumbling Soviet Union and its European satellites, as the Cold War (1946–1991) was winding down. Toward that end, Bush established friendly relations with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. The opening of the Berlin Wall to free travel in 1989 marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War, and reunification of the two Germanys soon followed in October 1990. In Paris in November 1990, Bush, Gorbachev, and the leaders of twenty other nations that then made up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact joined in signing a mutual nonaggression pledge, thus proclaiming an end to the Cold War. The conference also produced a comprehensive arms control treaty under which the two sides agreed to sharply limit the numbers of tanks, artillery, and other non-nuclear weapons in Europe. Bush proclaimed the agreement as the beginning of a "new world order."
With the end of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy was set adrift until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. President Bush exercised personal diplomacy to amass and maintain a coalition of twenty-five nations to oppose Iraq. Through the United Nations Security Council, a series of resolutions were adopted to condemn Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait and to impose trade and financial embargoes on Iraq. Operation Desert Shield was designed to deter an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia. When Iraq refused to leave Kuwait, Bush persuaded Congress on January 12, 1991, to authorize the use of military force to end Iraq's occupation of its neighbor. On January 16, Operation Desert Storm began. For
George H. W. Bush.weeks U.S.-led coalition air forces struck Iraqi military command, communications systems, and infrastructure. Coalition forces used "smart bomb" technology and defensive Patriot missiles, which went over well in the media campaign back in the United States. Despite heavy military and civilian casualties, Iraq still refused to withdraw from Kuwait by the February 23 deadline. Bush, bolstered by his high public approval ratings, began the ground war the next day.
The ground war was successful in driving Iraq from Kuwait and destroying a large portion of Iraq's Republican Guard. After only 100 hours of ground war, President Bush called a halt to the war, but left many questioning why a number of the war's political goals had not been achieved. Controversy erupted over 1) why Saddam Hussein was left in power; 2) why the Republican Guard was only partially destroyed; 3) why Saddam was allowed to persecute the Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south of his country; 4) whether Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons capabilities as well as SCUD missile stockpiles were destroyed; 5) whether ending the war at 100 hours was merely a media ploy; 6) whether Iraq would pay for the destruction of the Kuwaiti oil wells and environmental damage; and 7) whether this war actually would lead to further instability in the region.
President Bush envisioned a new world order for foreign policy—building coalitions of nations that would protect the world from rogue states and that would pool their strengths to fight global problems like terrorism, and in doing so overcome the shortcomings of each. The success of Operation Desert Storm gave Americans the sense that the United States could lead these coalitions and, despite suffering the casualties of war, emerge stronger for having done so. By projecting strength and overcoming enemies, Presidents Bush and Reagan loosened the grip of the "Vietnam syndrome." As Bush himself said, "I think Desert Storm lifted the morale of our country and healed some of the wounds of Vietnam. I'm sure of it."
Bush, George W.; Clinton, William Jefferson; Powell, Colin; Reagan, Ronald; Triumphalism.
Bibliography
Duffy, Michael. Marching in Place: The Status Quo Presidency of George Bush. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Greene, John Robert. The Presidency of George Bush. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.
Parmet, Herbert S. George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee. New York: Scribners, 1997.
Schuman, Michael A. George H. W. Bush. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2002.
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