The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  While neglecting the Soviet Union, Bush continued to play the China card, building on the economic and political ties that Reagan had forged with Chinese leaders, who had assisted in toppling pro-Soviet governments in Afghanistan and Cambodia. As former ambassador to China, Bush intended to maintain close relations. His plans were almost derailed by Beijing’s brutal crackdown on prodemocracy demonstrators. As television viewers around the world looked on, the People’s Liberation Army slaughtered 3,000 demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, wounding 10,000 more. But Bush resisted pressure to punish China’s rulers, initially even opposing legislation allowing the 43,000 Chinese students in the United States to remain in the country beyond their one-year visas.

  Reagan and Bush meeting with Gorbachev on Governors Island during Gorbachev’s visit to New York for the UN address. Gorbachev sought their help on arms control and troop withdrawal, but Bush’s advisors remained skeptical and the CIA, ravaged by right-wing “reformers,” completely misread the changes occurring in the Soviet Union.

  Gorbachev hoped to jump-start the Soviet economy, which had been moribund since the late 1970s. He knew that the Soviet Union could no longer afford war in Afghanistan, support for third-world allies, and a military establishment that consumed more than 20 percent of GNP and more than half of total government expenditures. Soviet officials decided to cut their losses. They ended support for Cuban troops in Angola and Ethiopia and Vietnamese troops in Cambodia and pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan in early 1989. The third world, an arena that had looked so promising a decade earlier, was now unraveling. The Soviet people had tired of expensive and ill-advised adventures. The Afghan war had cost the lives of over 14,000 Soviets and hundreds of thousands of Afghans, drained scarce resources, and inflamed anti-Communist feeling throughout the Muslim world. Young Muslim radicals who had once turned to socialism now looked to radical Islam. The faltering Soviet economy no longer provided a viable model for development. Fed up with the repressive and costly policies of many of the Soviet Union’s third-world allies, who resisted his demands to change their ways, Gorbachev proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union both stop interfering in third-world affairs and let nations settle their disputes amicably.

  At the Moscow summit in May 1988, Gorbachev had asked Reagan to cosign a statement affirming peaceful coexistence and disavowing military interventions into other nations’ internal affairs. Reagan refused to sign. Undeterred, Gorbachev acted unilaterally. Historian Odd Arne Westad grasped the significance of this extraordinary reversal: “Gorbachev and his advisors . . . developed an understanding of the significance of national self-determination that went beyond those of the leaders of any major power in the twentieth century. The Soviet president practiced what both liberals and revolutionaries had been calling for at the beginning of the century—a firm and idealist dedication to letting the peoples of the world decide their own fates without foreign intervention.”16

  Not only did the United States not accept this principle, it worked actively to subvert it, exploiting the openings Gorbachev had provided in the third world. The United States continued to fuel Islamic radicalism. Many of the U.S.-backed jihadis who had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan joined the Islamist cause in Chechnya, Bosnia, Algeria, Iraq, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Kashmir, and elsewhere. Ethnic and tribal conflicts also erupted in Africa and the Balkans.

  Gorbachev urged Eastern European governments to embrace the spirit of perestroika. Poland was the first to act. In April 1989, the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski agreed to free elections. In June, candidates from the Solidarity trade union federation, with clandestine CIA support, soundly defeated the Communists, who peacefully relinquished power, agreeing to participate in a Solidarity-led coalition government. Unlike in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviets did not intervene. In May, Estonia and Lithuania declared their sovereignty. Latvia followed in July. Gorbachev encouraged the reformers. In late July, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze explained the Soviet acceptance of these changes to Secretary of State Baker: “If we were to use force, then it would be the end of perestroika. We would have failed. It would be the end of any hope for the future, the end of everything we’re trying to do, which is to create a new system based on humane values. If force is used, it will mean that the enemies of perestroika have triumphed. We would be no better than the people who came before us. We cannot go back.”17

  Other Eastern European nations followed suit. In October, the ruling Communists in Hungary declared themselves social democrats and established a republic. That month, following Gorbachev’s visit to Berlin, demonstrators drove Erich Honecker from power in East Germany. And finally, on November 9, 1989, East and West Berliners jointly began tearing down the Berlin Wall, desecrating the Cold War’s most reviled symbol. Gorbachev’s foreign policy advisor, Anatoly Chernyaev, wrote in his diary, “The Berlin Wall has collapsed. This entire era in the history of the Socialist system is over. . . . This is the end of Yalta [and] the Stalinist legacy. . . . This is what Gorbachev has done. . . . He has sensed the pace of history and helped history to find a natural channel.” But the transformation of Europe was far from over. The Czech parliament responded to demonstrations and a general strike by electing poet Václav Havel prime minister. One by one, all the Eastern European Communist governments fell. The world watched in disbelief. A peaceful revolution had occurred across the socialist bloc as citizens, burdened by decades of government repression and bureaucratic ineptitude, clamored for a better life. Gorbachev rejected the long-held view that controlling Eastern Europe was crucial to Soviet security. He believed that removing the drain of Eastern Europe would allow the Soviet Union and its allies to rapidly develop humane, democratic socialist systems.

  Gorbachev saw this as a new beginning, but many U.S. policy makers hailed it as the ultimate vindication—the triumph of the capitalist West after decades of Cold War. It was “the end of history,” State Department policy planner Francis Fukuyama declared, anointing Western liberal democracy “the final form of human government.” In September 1990, Michael Mandelbaum, director of East-West studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, exulted, “the Soviets . . . have made it possible to end the cold war, which means that for the first time in 40 years we can conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about triggering World War III.”18 The United States would soon test that hypothesis.

  When Bush traveled to Poland and Hungary in July, he deliberately avoided saying or doing anything that might provoke a Soviet response. Having previously derided “the vision thing,” even the tearing down of the Berlin Wall failed to elicit a jubilant response on his part. He explained, “I am not an emotional kind of guy.” He told Gorbachev, “I have conducted myself in ways not to complicate your life. That’s why I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall.” “Yes, we have seen that” and “appreciate” it, Gorbachev replied.19

  Though willing to allow for the radical transformation of Eastern Europe, Gorbachev hoped the end of the Cold War would lead to the dissolution of NATO as well as the Warsaw Pact. Recognizing that that might not happen, he insisted that NATO at least not expand farther to the east. He was even willing to allow for reunification of the two Germanys as long as NATO troops and weapons were not permitted on former East German soil. But he and other Russian leaders who believed they had received ironclad U.S. and German promises that eastward expansion by NATO would never be permitted were in for a rude awakening when the Clinton and second Bush administrations continued expanding right up to Russia’s doorstep. Russian leaders expressed outrage and a sense of betrayal. Although U.S. officials, over the years, have insisted that no such promises were ever given, recently released documents appear to substantiate the Russian claims.

  In February 1990, Bush, Baker, and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl sought ways to convince Gorbachev to remove the 380,000 Soviet troops in East Germany and renounce legal claims of occupation dating back t
o Germany’s surrender in 1945. They wanted to avoid the growing demand from many of the newly liberated countries to demilitarize Central and Eastern Europe, a move that would have diminished the U.S. domination of Europe. Baker met with Gorbachev on February 9 and asked him, “Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position?” Baker recorded Gorbachev’s reply that “any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable.”

  Helmut Kohl met with Gorbachev the following day and stated that “naturally NATO could not expand its territory” into East Germany. On February 10, German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher conveyed the same message to Eduard Shevardnadze, stating, “We are aware that NATO membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.” To make sure that his Soviet counterpart understood that this applied to all of Eastern Europe and not just Germany, Genscher added, “As far as the nonexpansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general.”

  Upon receiving Kohl’s assurance, Gorbachev approved German reunification. But no legally binding papers were signed. The deal was not in writing. And Gorbachev later compounded the problem by agreeing in September to allow NATO expansion into East Germany in exchange for desperately needed financial assistance from Germany.

  Clearly, Gorbachev thought there had been an agreement and felt that he had been blindsided. The United States and West Germany had promised not to expand NATO “as much as a thumb’s width further to the East,” he insisted. President Dmitri Medvedev was equally perturbed, contending in 2009 that the Soviet Union had gotten “none of the things that we were assured, namely that NATO would not expand endlessly eastwards and our interests would be continuously taken into consideration.” U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock has agreed that the Soviet Union was given a “clear commitment.” The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel conducted its own investigation in late 2009, finding that “after speaking with many of those involved and examining previously classified British and German documents in detail, SPIEGEL has concluded that there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslavakia.” Historian Mary Elise Sarotte, author of an award-winning book on this period, explained, “In summary, Gorbachev had listened to Baker and Kohl suggest to him for two days in a row that NATO’s jurisdiction would not move eastward, and at the end he agreed to let Germany unify.”20

  Celebrants atop the falling Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Gorbachev saw Soviet communism’s collapse as a new beginning, but many U.S. policy makers hailed it as the ultimate vindication.

  The United States, for its part, appreciated Gorbachev’s restraint in Eastern Europe but didn’t hesitate to use force in its own backyard. Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega had long been the United States’ boy in Central America. He had twice attended the U.S. Army School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone and had been on the CIA payroll since the 1960s. Corrupt and unscrupulous, he profited from assisting Colombia’s Medellín drug cartel, but he also fingered Medellín rivals to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. His assistance to the contras in Nicaragua won him protection from top Reagan administration officials, including William Casey, Elliott Abrams, and Oliver North. But his 1988 indictment on U.S. federal drug charges and his overturning of Panama’s 1989 presidential election finally convinced Bush that he was more of a liability than an asset. With U.S. encouragement, Panamanian military officers attempted a coup. The United States, however, offered no assistance. The chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, David McCurdy, bemoaned the “resurgence of the wimp factor.”21

  In December 1989, Bush decided to act unilaterally, and bypass Congress, in violation of the War Powers Act of 1973. He sent 15,000 troops to assist the 12,000 already in the country to overthrow Noriega and take down his Panamanian Defense Forces and paramilitary units in what the United States called “Operation Just Cause.” Bush attempted to defend the invasion, claiming that he had acted “only after reaching the conclusion that every other avenue was closed and the lives of American citizens were in grave danger.”22 One reporter pushed Cheney for an explanation: “Mr. Secretary, following the failed coup in Panama, you came into this room and you made a number of arguments justifying our decision not to get more heavily involved. You . . . said it wasn’t up to the United States . . . to go willy-nilly around the world knocking off governments. . . . Why is your earlier assessment, which you made in this room two months ago, not valid anymore?” Cheney responded, apparently with a straight face, “I think we as a Government bent over backward to avoid having to take military action,” only invading when it became clear that “American lives were at risk.”23

  Latin Americans angrily condemned the return to gunboat diplomacy. Mexico proclaimed that “fighting international crimes is no excuse for intervention in a sovereign nation.”24 Cuba denounced the “new imperialist aggression” and said it showed “the disdain of the United States for international law.”25 The Organization of American States voted 20–1 to “deeply deplore” the invasion.26 Only a U.S. veto blocked similar UN Security Council action.

  Latin Americans’ bitterness about the invasion, which violated the charter of the OAS, would persist for years. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda, the editors of the Nicaragua-based magazine Envío wrote that in December 1989, “the government of George Bush Sr. ordered the invasion of Panama, a military operation that bombed civilian neighborhoods and killed thousands of Panamanians just to flush out a single man, Manuel Noriega. . . .” “Was that not state terrorism?” they asked.27

  Soviet U.S. expert Georgi Arbatov warned that the invasion would strengthen Soviet hard-liners, who would see through the hypocrisy of the United States’ praising Soviet nonintervention while it was itself overthrowing governments. They had good reason to feel that way. The invasion was indeed a signal that Soviet inaction would not curb U.S. bellicosity; it might, in fact, embolden the United States to act more recklessly. The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward pointed to Colin Powell’s support for the invasion as critical to Bush’s decision making. Powell declared, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”28 Neocon Elliott Abrams concluded that the United States should have invaded sooner and speculated that “the reduced danger of escalation makes limited military action more rather than less likely.”29

  U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents escort General Manuel Noriega onto a U.S. aircraft. Despite the fact that the Panamanian strongman had long enjoyed CIA funding and U.S. protection for assisting the contras in Nicaragua and fingering his drug cartel’s rivals to the DEA, in December 1989, Bush sent some 15,000 troops to assist the 12,000 already in the country to overthrow Noriega and take down his Panamanian Defense Forces. Latin Americans angrily condemned the return to gunboat diplomacy.

  Noriega eluded U.S. forces for almost a week before seeking asylum at the Vatican Embassy. The United States surrounded the embassy with enormous speakers and, despite Vatican protests, blasted rock music—songs like “I Fought the Law (And the Law Won),” “Nowhere to Run,” and “You’re No Good”—around the clock. Noriega was sentenced to jail in the United States for drug trafficking. In the aftermath of the seemingly successful and popular military action, the supine Congress failed to challenge the president for flouting the War Powers Act, which requires the White House to seek congressional approval for the use of force in other countries.

  But Bush wasn’t finished. The Reagan administration had cozied up to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, removing Iraq from the State Department list of terrorist states and backing it in its war against Iran. Even Saddam’s use
of chemical weapons to crush Kurdish resistance had elicited little protest. Following a clumsy attempt by the United States to pin that crime on Iran, Bush extended an additional $1.2 billion in credits and loans to Saddam while Kuwait demanded that Iraq repay the money it had borrowed to wage war against Iran. Kuwait also refused to abide by the OPEC oil quotas, driving down the price of oil at a time when Iraq desperately needed the revenue to repay over $40 billion in accrued debts. Further angering Saddam, Kuwait, which had been part of Iraq until 1961, rejected Iraq’s claims on their disputed border.

  U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie met with Saddam in Baghdad on July 25, 1990, assuring him that Bush “wanted better and deeper relations” and had “no opinion” on its border dispute with Kuwait, which had been no friend of the United States.30 Senator and former UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan described Kuwait to fellow senators as “a particularly poisonous enemy of the United States” whose “anti-Semitism was at the level of the personally loathsome.”31 Saddam took Glaspie’s remarks as a signal that the United States would acquiesce in his Kuwaiti takeover. The following week, three Iraqi divisions entered Kuwait, giving Iraq control of one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. In September, Glaspie effectively confirmed that she had led Saddam on, telling the New York Times, “I didn’t think—and nobody else did—that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.”32