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This article covers the history of the United States from 1988 to present.

Inauguration of George H. W. Bush

Republican President Ronald Reagan's vice-president George H. W. Bush ascended to the presidency, defeating Democratic Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election. His 1988 election was the last presidential election until 2004 in which the victor won a clear majority in both the popular and electoral vote.

During the Cold War, the division of the world into two rival blocs had served to legitimize a broad and diffuse alliance not only with the Western European nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but many countries in the developing world. Starting in the late 1980s, however, the regimes of the Eastern European Warsaw Pact began to collapse in rapid succession. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" was seen as a symbol of the fall of the Eastern European Communist governments in 1989. U.S.-Soviet relations had greatly improved in the latter half of the decade, with the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987 and the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan as well as Cuban forces from Angola.

These developments undercut the rationale for providing support to such repressive governments as those in Chile and South Korea, which underwent processes of democratization with U.S. support during the same period as those of Warsaw Pact nations. Some U.S. commentators believed that this warming of relations between the two greatest powers of the Cold War should lead to a "peace dividend" where U.S. military spending would be drastically reduced. This argument was essentially lost in the political debate with the onset of the Gulf War. Instead, President George H. W. Bush argued for the emergence of "a new world order... freer 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, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony."

Nationalist agitation in the Baltic States for independence led to first Lithuania and then the other two states, Estonia and Latvia, declaring independence from the Soviet Union. On December 26, 1991, the USSR was officially disbanded, breaking up into fifteen constituent parts. The Cold War was over, and the vacuum left by the collapse of governments such as in Yugoslavia and Somalia revealed or reopened other animosities concealed by decades of authoritarian rule. While there was a certain reluctance among the U.S. public, and even within the government, to get involved in localized conflicts in which there was little or no direct U.S. interest at stake, these crises served as a basis for the renewal of Western alliances while communism was becoming less relevant. To this effect, President Bill Clinton would declare in his inaugural address: "Today, as an old order passes, the new world is more free but less stable. Communism's collapse has called forth old animosities and new dangers. Clearly America must continue to lead the world we did so much to make."

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has sought to revitalize Cold War institutional structures, especially NATO, as well as multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank through which it promotes economic reforms around the globe. NATO was set to expand initially to Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic and has since moved further eastward. In addition, U.S. policy placed a special emphasis on the neoliberal "Washington Consensus," manifesting in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which went into effect in 1994.

The U.S. often made moves to economically sanction countries which were said to be sponsoring terrorism, engaging in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or committing serious human rights abuses. There was sometimes a consensus for these moves, such as with the U.S. and European embargoes imposed on arms sales to China after its violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, as well as for the UN Security Council's imposition of sanctions on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. Support for other unilateral sanctions however, such as the ones levied on Iran and Cuba, were limited, leading Congress to impose measures intended to punish foreign companies which violated the terms of the U.S.'s own laws.

In a 1999 Foreign Affairs essay, Samuel P. Huntington wrote that to reinforce its status in the post-Cold War world,

the United States has, among other things, attempted or been perceived as attempting more or less unilaterally to do the following: pressure other countries to adopt American values and practices regarding human rights and democracy; prevent other countries from acquiring military capabilities that could counter American conventional superiority; enforce American law extra-territorially in other societies; grade countries according to their adherence to American standards on human rights, drugs, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, missile proliferation, and now religious freedom; apply sanctions against countries that do not meet American standards on these issues; promote American corporate interests under the slogans of free trade and open markets [NAFTA and GATT being the main examples of the free trade policy initiatives of the 1990s]; shape World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies to serve those same corporate interests; intervene in local conflicts in which it has relatively little direct interest; ... ; promote American arms sales abroad while attempting to prevent comparable sales by other countries; force out one U.N. secretary-general and dictate the appointment of his successor; expand NATO initially to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and no one else; undertake military action against Iraq and later maintain harsh economic sanctions against the regime; and categorize certain countries as 'rogue states,' excluding them from global institutions....¹

Max Boot, another influential contemporary commentator on U.S. policy, argues that the very ambitious goals of the U.S. in the post-Cold War period "aims to instill democracy in lands that have known tyranny, in the hope that doing so will short-circuit terrorism, military aggression, and weapons proliferation." He adds: "This is an ambitious undertaking, the most successful examples of which are post-World War II Germany, Italy and Japan. In those cases, the US Army helped transform militaristic dictatorships into pillars of liberal democracy—one of the most significant developments of the twentieth century." [1]

Main article: Persian Gulf War

The considerable dependence of the industrialized world on oil, with much of the proved oil reserves situated in Middle Eastern countries, became evident to the U.S., first in the aftermath of the 1973 world oil shock and later in the second energy crisis of 1979. Although in real terms oil prices fell back to pre-1973 levels through the 1980s, resulting in a windfall for the oil-consuming nations (especially North America, Western Europe, and Japan), the vast reserves of the leading Middle East producers guaranteed the region its strategic importance. By the early 1990s the politics of oil still proved as hazardous as it did in the early 1970s.

Conflict in the Middle East triggered yet another international crisis on August 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded and attempted to annex neighboring Kuwait, as its nineteenth province. Leading up to the invasion, Iraq complained to the United States Department of State about Kuwaiti slant drilling. This had been ongoing for years, but now Iraq needed oil revenues to pay off its debts from the Iran-Iraq War and avert an economic crisis. Saddam ordered troops to the Kuwaiti border, creating alarm over the prospect of an invasion. April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq, met with Saddam in an emergency meeting, where the Iraqi president stated his intention to continue talks. Iraq and Kuwait then met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait.

U.S. officials feared that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was then on the verge of armed conflict with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Washington's since the 1940s. The Western world condemned the invasion as an act of aggression; U.S. President George H.W. Bush compared Saddam to Hitler and declared that if the United States and international community did not act, aggression would be encouraged elsewhere in the world.

The U.S. and Britain, two of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, convinced the Security Council to give Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait. The Western world was determined to not let the Kuwaiti oil supply fall under the control of Saddam, fearing it would have a dire impact on the global economy. Saddam at that time was pushing oil exporting countries to raise prices and cutback production. Westerners, however, remembered the destabilizing effects of the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.

Saddam ignored the deadline and the Security Council declared war on Iraq. The war commenced in January 1991, with U.S. troops forming the majority of the coalition which participated in Operation Desert Storm. By the time Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait in late February, Iraq had lost an estimated 20,000 troops, with some sources citing as many as 100,000 casualties on the Iraqi side.

President Clinton's First Cabinet, 1993

Riding high on the success of the first Gulf War, Bush enjoyed very high approval ratings for his job as president. However, economic problems dogged Bush, and with the entry of H. Ross Perot into the campaign for the 1992 presidential election, Bush found himself on the losing end of a three-way race among receiving only 38% of the vote, while victor Bill Clinton won 43% and independent candidate Ross Perot received 19%. Ross Perot's 19% of the qualified his Reform Party to receive Federal Election Commission matching funds for campaign contributions in the 1996 election, thus laying the ground work for another three-way race during the 1996 presidential election.

Clinton entered office as one of the youngest presidents in U.S. history and the first of the Baby Boom generation to reach the White House. Promising to focus on and resolve some of the United States' many domestic issues, he entered office with high expectations, despite receiving only 43 percent of the popular vote. Immediately, however, he was troubled by controversy over the personal backgrounds of some of his appointees and by political clashes stemming from his announcement that he would permit homosexuals to serve openly in the U.S. military.

These events in 1993 seemed to set the pattern for a man who would become one of the more divisive U.S. presidents, regarded with great affection by some and abhorrence by others. One early domestic success of the Clinton Administration was the enactment of the 1993 assault rifle ban. The ban was widely decried by the Republican Party, which allowed it to lapse in 2003 during which period Republicans controlled the Congress and Presidency. Bill Clinton's 1994 proposal of a national health care system, championed by his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, ignited a political firestorm on the right, which vigorously opposed it on the general principle that government size should be reduced not expanded. The proposed system did not survive the debate.

Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House

The New Deal, the Great Society, and Watergate helped solidify Democratic control of Congress, but the 1980s and early 1990s were a period of fragmentation of their coalition, when the popularity of Democratic incumbents as constituent servants masked growing disenchantment with Congress' governing capacities. Democrats suddenly lost control of the House and the Senate for the first time in four decades in the 1994 midterm elections. Once in power, House Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich (left), faced the difficulty of learning to govern after forty years as the minority party while simultaneously pursuing their "Contract with America" which they unveiled on the steps of Congress on September 27, 1994.

Year by year, polarization grew in Washington between the president and his adversaries on the right, the Republicans which assumed the majority in the House of Representatives in January 1995 and elected Newt Gingrich Speaker of the House. There was a surge in the market of new media outlets that gave more voice to the right. Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show was a spectacular success and a major influence in the GOP legislative victory. The Weekly Standard was formed in 1995 and after the election of George W. Bush would advertise itself as the most read publication in the White House. These new media amplified the ever-louder quarrels, causing some to speak of a new 'culture war' in U.S. politics. The more extreme right-wing voices, which veered into uncompromising hostility toward the Federal government--particularly after the botched Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, were somewhat discredited, however, after the Oklahoma City bombing, in April 1995, by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

Along with strong backing from traditional Democrats and liberals, Clinton was able to garner the support of moderates who appreciated his centrist "New Democrat" policies, which steered away from the expansion of government services of the New Deal and Great Society and allowed him to "triangulate", taking away many of the Republicans' top issues. One example of such compromises was welfare reform legislation signed into law in 1996. The new law required welfare recipients to work as a condition of benefits and imposed limits on how long individuals may receive payments, but did allow states to exempt 20% of their caseloads from the time limits. Clinton also pursued tough federal anti-crime measures, steering more federal dollars toward the war on drugs, and calling for the hiring of 100,000 new police officers. By the end of his administration, the federal government had experienced the country's longest economic expansion and produced a budget surplus. The first year of the budget surplus was also the first year since 1969 in which the federal government did not borrow from the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds for the first time since Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.

Clinton was reelected in 1996, defeating Republican Senator Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan who had become the 1996 Reform Party nominee.

Many voters in 1992 and 1996 had been willing to overlook long-standing rumors of extramarital affairs by Clinton, deeming them irrelevant. These matters came to a head, however, in February 1998 when reports surfaced of ongoing sexual relations between Clinton and a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clinton initially and vigorously denied the relationship; "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." His wife Hillary described the allegations as fraudulent smears dredged up by a "vast, right-wing conspiracy." Clinton was forced to retract his assertions in August 1998 after the Lewinsky matter came under investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who had been looking into various allegations of past misdeeds by Clinton for several years. Since Clinton's denials had extended to a deposition before Starr's office, impeachment proceedings began in the House against the President on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

The matter climaxed as Clinton was impeached in the United States House of Representatives, but not convicted at his trial by the U.S. Senate. A public backlash occasioned Newt Gingrich to resign after a poor showing in the 1998 midterm elections. His heir apparent, Speaker-elect Bob Livingston was forced to resign from Congress before impeachment proceedings began due to confirmed report of his extramarital affairs. After the impeachment trial ended, a scandal-weary and embarrassed U.S. public seemed largely satisfied to have the matter resolved.

Clinton's terms in office will be remembered for the nation's domestic focus during this period. The six years span of 1994 through 2000 witnessed the emergence of what many commentators called a technology-driven "new economy," and relatively high increases in real output, low inflation rates, and a drop in unemployment to below five percent. The Internet and related technologies made their first broad penetrations into the economy, prompting a Wall Street technology-driven bubble, which Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan described in 1996 as "irrational exuberance".

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States was the world's dominant military power and Japan, sometimes seen as the largest economic rival to the U.S., was caught in a period of stagnation. China was emerging as the U.S.'s foremost trading competitor in more and more areas. Localized conflicts such as those in Haiti and the Balkans prompted President Clinton to send in U.S. troops as peacekeepers, reviving the Cold-War-era controversy about whether policing the rest of the world was a proper U.S. role. Islamic radicals overseas loudly threatened assaults against the U.S. for its ongoing military presence in the Middle East, and even staged the first World Trade Center attack, a truck bombing in New York's twin towers, in 1993, as well as a number of deadly attacks on U.S. interests abroad.

Immigration, most of it from Latin America and Asia, swelled during the 1990s, laying the groundwork for great changes in the demographic makeup of the U.S. population in coming decades, such as Hispanics replacing African-Americans as the largest minority.

Though his election had been the focus of intense controversy which led eventually to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore where the court ruled 5-4 in the former's favor, George W. Bush was sworn in as President on January 20, 2001. This made the 2000 election the third presidential election in which the electoral vote winner did not receive a majority of the popular vote. The first eight months of his term in office were relatively uneventful; however, it had become clear by that time that the economic boom of the late 1990s was at an end. The year 2001 was plagued by a nine-month recession, witnessing the end of the boom psychology and performance, with output increasing only 0.3% and unemployment and business failures rising substantially. President Bush approved a large federal tax cut with the intent of revitalizing the economy.

President Bush addresses rescue workers at Ground Zero in New York, September 14, 2001: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

On the morning of September 11 2001, four airliners were hijacked; two of them were flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, destroying both towers and taking just under 3,000 lives. The fourth plane crashed in southern Pennsylvania after some passengers fought back and are believed to have caused the piloting hijackers to crash. The immense shock, grief and anger brought on by the attacks profoundly altered the national mood; it was found that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network sponsored the attacks and President Bush announced a "war on terror."

Congress approved several measures to protect against future attacks, including creating the Department of Homeland Security and passing the USA PATRIOT Act, which was criticized by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. The administration's military response was to invade Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban government that supported and sheltered them. The U.S. was joined by a coalition which included forces from more than a dozen countries, and was successful in removing the Taliban from power, although fighting continues between the coalition and Afghans of various factions.

In 2002, the GDP growth rate rose to 2.8%. A major short-term problem in the first half of 2002 was a sharp decline in the stock market, fueled in part by the exposure of dubious accounting practices in some major corporations. Another was unemployment, which experienced the longest period of monthly increase since the Great Depression. The robustness of the market, combined with the unemployment rate, led some economists and politicians to refer to the situation as a "jobless recovery." Nevertheless, the United States between 2003-2005 has made a significant economic recovery from the post 9/11 recession.

In his State of the Union address in January 2002, President Bush called Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "axis of evil," accusing them of supporting terrorism and seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration began making a public case for an invasion of Iraq, on the grounds that Saddam Hussein supported terrorism, had violated the 1991 U.N.-imposed ceasefire, and possessed biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, among other charges. [2]

Some important allies of the U.S., including India, Japan, Turkey, New Zealand, France, Germany, and Canada, did not believe that the evidence for the President's accusations was well-founded enough to justify a full-scale invasion, especially as military personnel were still needed in Afghanistan. The United Nations Security Council did not approve of the invasion, and the U.S. therefore provided most of the forces in the invasion of Iraq. With the support of a coalition whose major partners included the United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, Spain, and Italy, Iraq was invaded on March 20, 2003.

After six weeks of combat between the coalition and the Iraqi army, the invading forces had secured control of many key regions; Saddam had fled his palace, his regime clearly over; on May 1, Bush declared, under a sign reading "mission accomplished," that major ground operations were at an end. Saddam Hussein's sons Qusay and Uday were killed by U.S. forces; Saddam himself was captured in December 2003 and taken into custody. Nevertheless, fighting with the Iraqi insurgency continued and escalated through the 2004 U.S. national elections and beyond.

With casualties increasing and the cost of the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq estimated at over $200 billion, the war has lost about one-third of its supporters in the U.S. since the end of major operations was announced. Recent polls suggest that international displeasure with the United States is at an all-time high, with a majority of people in Europe believing that the country is too powerful and acts mainly in self-interest, and a vast majority in predominantly Muslim nations believing that the United States is arrogant, belligerent, or hateful to Islam. [3]

George W. Bush was re-elected in November 2004, defeating Democratic contender John Kerry in the electoral vote, and receiving 51% of the popular vote. Republicans also made gains in both houses of Congress, contrary to recent mid-term electoral trends.

As the situation in Iraq became increasingly difficult, policymakers began looking for new options. This led to the formation of the Iraq Study Group, a nonpartisan commission chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. This produced a variety of proposals; some of the more notable ones were to seek decreased US presence in Iraq, increased engagement with neighboring countries, and greater attention to resolving other local conflicts, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The recommendations were generally ignored and the U.S. direct involvement in the Iraq war continues to this day (September 2007).

Flooding due to Hurricane Katrina

In August and September of 2005, two powerful hurricanes, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, struck the Gulf Coast region. Katrina broke the levees of New Orleans and flooded 80% of the low-lying city. Extensive devastation and flooding also occurred from Mobile, Alabama west to Beaumont, Texas, with the Mississippi coastline especially hard hit. At least 1,800 lives were lost in the worst domestic calamity since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Port facilities, oil rigs and refineries in the Gulf region were damaged, further increasing already high U.S. fuel prices.

Residents of New Orleans, many of whom were impoverished and unable (or unwilling) to evacuate before the storm, were trapped for days by the floodwaters. Thousands had to be rescued by the U.S. military from their rooftops or from unsanitary and dangerous shelters in public buildings. State and local authorities were overwhelmed by the scale of the events. Their response to the disaster, as well the federal government's, were harshly criticized by legislators and citizens who saw in the confusion a dangerous unreadiness and inability to preserve public safety. President Bush promised that the federal government would underwrite the rebuilding of New Orleans and other storm-damaged areas, the cost of which was estimated to run as high as $200 billion.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (December 2007)

Following the 2006 mid-term elections, the Democratic party took back Congress. The first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was also elected. Following the end of this election, media focus began to turn towards the 2008 Presidential Elections. With Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and Republican Candidates such as Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John Mccain coming under the spotlight. The current Democratic congress has the lowest approval ratings in the history of polling at 14%^{[citation needed]}.

During the months of May-June 2007, Edward Kennedy and other senators co-sponsored Senate Bill 1348 and reform Bill 1639. The purpose of this bill called for immigration reform under the intent of bringing Amnesty and citizenship. This bill greatly divided the American public from its government. On June 7, 2007 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid removed this bill from debate. On June 14, 2007 President Bush initiated the supporters of this bill to return it to the Senate floor. On June 26, 2007 the Senate voted 64-35 for cloture and for greater debate. On June 27, 2007 27 Amendments were debated with only 5 considered into Senate Bill 1639. On June 28, 2007 a cloture vote considered ending debate was held. The outcome of 53-45 against cloture meant the end to the 2007 Immigration Bill. In the days to come, immigration will remain a closely contested battle between conservatives who believe the borders with Mexico must be secured before amnesty is considered, and supporters of immigration reform who believe that amnesty and secure borders can be delivered as simultaneous issues.

Main article: United States general elections, 2008

The nation went into the 2008 election cycle having a Republican president and Democratic Congress both with extremely low approval ratings. Initially, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and Arizona Senator John McCain appeared to be front-runners for the Republican party; New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards were apparent front-runners for the Democrats. Other candidates popularly considered possible candidates that did not run included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former Secretary of State and retired General Colin Powell.

As 2007 wore on, Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul began to receive a lot of grassroots support, especially from the internet, where his campaign was able to receive a record $4.3 million in a twenty-four hour period, in a completely grassroots sponsored effort that his supporters have coined a "money bomb." Congressman Paul has stood out from his Republican collegues in the race for his strong anti-war stance, and has been able to form a contingent of supporters ranging from anti-war Democrats, disenchanted Republicans who feel the Bush administration had created too much big government, and libertarians across the board. Though these efforts have sparked some media attention, his campaign is still often considered to be a "long shot". Meanwhile, scandals involving misuse of taxpayer money and the hiring of illegal immigrants began to appear among front-runners Giuliani and Romney, as Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee began to rise in the polls.

¹ Sentence taken from Samuel Huntington. 'The Lonely Superpower," Foreign Affairs, March/April 1999, 37-8.