The Decade in Politics
1991

1991 will be forever remembered as the year the United States military finally redeemed itself for Vietnam, visiting an all-things-holy smackdown on Saddam Hussein, losing over 100 soldiers and killing untold thousands of Iraqis in the name of the freedom of the Kuwaiti people (the fact that the conflict was really all about oil was such a blatant subtext that it's hardly worth mentioning; on the other hand, the fact that Kuwait was not, nor is, a country that gives much credence to things like political freedom is an inconvenient item worth remembering).

When the broad sweeping histories of the late 20th Century are written, scholars will likely note that the Persian Gulf Conflict was the West's first major post-Cold War operation, and it expressed concretely the New World Order that President Bush had been touting since the Berlin Wall came down. The United States would lead the world, but it was to be a first among equals, promoting peace, free trade and freedom around the world.

But 1991 was also the beginning of a conflict that directly contradicted Bush's vision: the Yugoslavian Wars. Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia declared their independence that year, and it took the latter two some four years of war with Yugoslavia and ethnic Serb militias to cement their separation (Slovenia, luckily, was spared all but a minimal amount of fighting).

Where Bush wanted to see a new vocabulary of Pax Americana take over the international lexicon, the world saw a different set of words emerge: ethnic cleansing. Refugee flows. Low-intensity conflict. Where we were supposed to be seeing images of newly liberated Eastern Europeans heartily embracing democratic capitalism, we saw instead emaciated men standing behind barbed wire and children being caught by sniper fire in downtown Sarejevo. And where we were supposed to see the United States take the lead in pushing for world peace, we saw a government afraid to get involved and willing to pretend the Balkans didn't exist.

It was hoped, of course, that Europe would step into the breech. But despite a few half-hearted efforts, the European Union failed to do anything, failed even to decide not to do anything. The Balkan Wars were proof that the EU had a long way to go before it could claim to act as a whole, and in its failing assured that, by default and without a clear idea of what it was going to do, the United States would remain the world's only hegemon.

1991, then, was the year of a vision gone horribly awry. By failing to replicate the leadership shown in the Persian Gulf, President Bush made his New World Order a moribund idea before it ever really got off the ground. He set the stage for eight years of Clinton spent struggling to define a coherent foreign policy, and it should be no small surprise that the latest Bush administration has opted to keep a low profile and a minimal presence on the world stage.

Eventually, of course, the United States will have to decide where it stands in the post-Cold-War world. Is it one among many, a first among equals or the straight-out top dog? In the wake of the collapse of the New World Order, politicians and diplomats have seemed content to put off such a decision. But it is not something that can be avoided forever — another international conflict is inevitable, and without a clear idea of itself, the world community will hardly be able to stop it.

— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)