New World Order: Global Events 1990-1994

Welcome to the 99s, like you've never seen it before. The concept of a new world order has been around since Woodrow Wilson, but George Bush's 1990 speech roused conspiracy theorists on both sides of the spectrum and renewed criticisms of American imperialism on the left. Bush called for nations to fulfill the long-held promise of a new world order where brutality will go unrewarded and aggression will meet collective resistance. While calling for using the military less and ending ideological differences, Bush made it clear that America would continue its practice of interfering and acting as the biggest superpower on a planet teeming with world powers. It was the US and its allies versus everybody else.

Writer Francis Fukuyama argued in a 1989 essay and later a 1992 book that after the fall of the Soviet Union, or "the end of history," there was nothing left to challenge liberalism. Alan Bloom, who you'll remember from the '80s, called Fukuyama brilliant and bold. The 1989 essay seemed especially prophetic because it was published before the Velvet Revolution, Tiananmen Square, and other high-intensity moments from the end of the Cold War. Fukuyama's writings differed from political realism, or the belief that nations only acted when it was crucial to their own interests, by arguing that nations had a shared interest and would no longer need to be in a stifling competition with each other.

Summed up Fukuyama in retrospect: "If a society wanted to be modern, there was no alternative to a market economy and a democratic political system." Not everyone wanted to be modern, of course, and not everyone could put in place the institutions and policies necessary to make democracy and capitalism work. But no alternative system would yield better results. How true would this assessment be? By the end of the '90s, the "new world order" was criticized and turned into conspiracy theory fodder that we'll address in episode 6, and George Bush wouldn't survive a second election. "New World Order" fell out of mainstream use, but the old quest for American dominance and imperialism would be taken up by Bill Clinton and subsequent presidents. And because of that, before we dive into all of the glorious, shocking, iconic, and little-known moments of the '90s in America over the next year, we have to check out what was happening around the world. I dare you to take a shot of alcohol every time I mention "shock therapy," "structural adjustment," "IMF," or "the World Bank." But it'd be irresponsible of me. When you watch the rest of this series, keep in mind that most of these major world events were always looming in the background of American society, shaping opinion, the economy, demographics, and triggering events in our future. In this episode of "Intellectual Does the '90s," we'll be taking a trip around the globe to understand geopolitics in the first half of the decade and examining the one-term presidency of George Bush.

"Fight the Real [Music] Enemy."

"There will be a job sucking sound going south."

"1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted [Music] pleasure."

At the top of the decade, the World Health Organization declared that tuberculosis, once nearly eradicated, was making a comeback. In 1990, the same year that the WHO removed homosexuality from its list of diseases, over 25,700 TB cases were reported in America alone. There were an estimated 7.5 million cases worldwide, with over half in India, China, and Indonesia. Of those cases, 2.5 million deaths occurred. Because HIV weakens the immune system and was continuing to ravage populations, the risk of TB infections grew among people with HIV, predicting millions more deaths in the future. The WHO declared an official World Health Emergency over TB in 1993, which would compound the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis, becoming more widespread in Africa and Asia. 1993 is the same year that America placed a ban on immigrants infected with AIDS. As for the WHO, supervisory agency, the 45-year-old United Nations, TB and HIV were just one of the many simultaneous catastrophes they were dealing with.

The UN was now one of the most powerful entities in the world, described a writer for Time magazine in 1992. "Thanks to the end of the Cold War, the world is reaching out more than ever to UN mediators, technocrats, and blue-helmeted soldiers." No longer are the US and the Soviet Union competing for influence among the 166 members of the General Assembly or threatening each other with vetoes in the Security Council. In 1991, the UN got a new Secretary-General named Boutros Boutros-Ghali from Egypt, who was supposed to fix the overstaffed, underfunded, and mismanaged UN that journalist Bonnie Angelo called "hobbled by petty politics."

In this new world order of intergovernmental cooperation, despite the illusion of prioritizing human rights, trade remained at the forefront of geopolitics. On April 15th, 1994, 123 nations signed an agreement in Marrakesh, Morocco, to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade with the World Trade Organization, set to begin on January 1st, 1995. The decision for America to join was contentious. A letter asked Clinton to delay the Congressional vote in summer 1994, signed by Gloria Steinem and Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Buchanan and Jerry Brown, and the editors of the liberal *Progressive* magazine and right-wing *American Spectator* magazine. During the 8 years of debating and legislating the WTO, critics, including Ralph Nader, pointed out that the WTO would erode labor rights and the rights of consumers, and that it would prioritize industry and profits over the environment—things that will become evident in the second half of the decade.

But for now, let's make our way around the globe, starting in Europe. In 1990, the UK was impacted by recession. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's massively unpopular poll tax, which charged everyone the same fee for government services regardless of income, had been tested in Scotland in 1989 and was now set to be rolled out in England and Wales. There were over 6,000 documented anti-poll tax demonstrations or actions in early 1990, culminating with massive unrest dubbed the "Poll Tax Riots" on March 31st. Roughly 180 to 250,000 people are believed to have joined the march from Kennington Park to Trafalgar Square. In the ensuing chaos, 113 people were injured, and a later investigation determined the blame lay on internal police incompetency. Cops were filmed in over 50 hours of footage assaulting people and/or arresting them on trumped-up charges.

The Tories, led by Margaret Thatcher, were 20% behind the Labour Party after the poll tax was introduced, and the Iron Lady's key enemies saw a potential end. She had been in charge for 11 years, and during this period, the Conservative Tories hadn't won more than 44% of the vote. Her victories always benefited from a third party taking votes away from Labour. Thatcher's main enemy was Tory Michael Heseltine, who was pro-Europe, while Thatcher had been drifting towards a primary relationship with America. Thatcher initially backed the European Union in its goal of erecting a single market but later balked at the idea of one central European bank and currency, putting her out of step with the centers in her party. Her Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, dramatically resigned, giving a speech in which he accused Thatcher of being a poor leader, utilizing a cricket metaphor by saying, "The bats have been broken by the team captain." This resignation encouraged Michael Heseltine to challenge her in the annual election. Though Thatcher won more votes than Heseltine, a 1975 rule requiring a 15% lead triggered a second vote. Though Thatcher assured the press she would continue fighting, after meeting with members of her cabinet who may have misled her on her chances of losing, she pulled out of the race, stunning the country.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we're leaving Downing Street for the last time after 11 and a half wonderful years, and we're very happy that we leave the United Kingdom in a very, very much better state than when we came here 11 and a half years ago."

Interesting. A fictional version of the Iron Lady quit her prime minister role on a new TV show called *House of Cards* one week before the real one did. Another Tory named John Major eventually became prime minister, and he beat Labour leader Neil Kinnock in the general election. Thatcher had been against joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which required members to keep its exchange rate above a certain limit. When John Major became prime minister, he joined the ERM, and on September 16th, 1992, the UK government was forced to withdraw Sterling from the ERM because the pound was collapsing, leading to the day of economic freefall being called "Black Wednesday." First, the Bank of England and other central banks spent several billion pounds worth of foreign currencies buying the pounds others wanted to sell. Then, the Bank of England raised interest rates 2% to try to persuade speculators to stop selling. When that failed, it raised them another 3%, but still, the enemy kept coming. By the end of the day, the pound had fallen several points below its supposed ERM floor. The government had to act. This ultimately damaged the Conservative Party's reputation and the economy in the following years.

Of course, all of that gets drowned out when you think about the royal family, whose 1992 was one for the tabloids. So, before the '90s, much of the news and official writings about the royal family were positive and sanitized, while tabloids had become more invasive in the '80s. Gossip about the royal family really rose in the '90s, and '92 was a standout year.

"1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure."

*Diana: Her True Story*, the bestselling tell-all book, was published in May. It revealed precious details about Prince Charles' affair with Camilla Parker Bowles and Diana's eating disorder and poor mental health, removing the veil of secrecy from the uptight royal family. Diana had secretly provided information to the author, Andrew Morton, via audio recordings. The book offered the fascinated public a different, behind-the-scenes view of the powerful monarchy, whose credibility and implied superiority was now being questioned.

The *Daily Mirror* has published excerpts of what it claims is an intimate 1989 telephone conversation between the Prince and his former girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles. Buckingham Palace has refused to comment. A November 1992 fire at Windsor Castle caused £47.5 million in damage, and it was to be paid for with public funds, causing outrage. According to one poll, 76% of Britain wanted to cut taxpayers' support for the Royals. The royal family is Britain's longest-running soap opera. The British taxpayer funds this spectacle to the tune of £10 million or $15 million a year—a small price to pay for fairy tale romances. But is that price too high when the ending and the princess are unhappy? To quell criticism of the Crown, earlier that year, the Queen volunteered to start paying taxes on her personal income and take her children off the public payroll. After the fire, her taxes began. At the time, one in 10 workers was unemployed, and the country was in its longest recession since the '30s. The same month of the fire, Prince Charles and Princess Diana went on a trip to South Korea and looked so miserable that a reporter called them "the glums." Right after, in December, it was announced that the pair was separating. Throughout this same period, Diana continued her work as a philanthropist, donating money to various causes from HIV/AIDS to cancer research. To learn more about the failure of royal romances like "Tampon Gate" and the impact of the press, check out the deep cut on the Intellectual Media Patreon.

At the end of this month, while the 1,200-year-old British Monarchy was going through changes and drama, the UK was becoming more modern. First, the UK was the home of Tim Berners-Lee, who was creating the World Wide Web in 1990. In December 1993, British Parliament ended the practice of stores being closed on Sunday, with *The Guardian* reporting, "Large stores will be allowed to open for a maximum of 6 hours between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Smaller shops will be allowed to stay open for as long as they like." This was after massive backlash from the Labour Party, called to protect workers who refused to work on Sunday. That same year, the drug that will become known as Viagra was synthesized by a group of Pfizer scientists in Sandwich, Kent.

On May 6th, 1994, the English Channel Tunnel officially opened after 6 years of construction, linking underwater trains between the British Island and the European Mainland. The Queen and the President of France attended the opening ceremony of the $10 billion achievement. The Queen started her historic journey from the new Channel Tunnel terminal at London's Waterloo Station aboard one of the Eurostar passenger trains that will eventually whisk travelers from London to Paris and Brussels in around 3 hours.

Despite innovations, the old problems persisted in the UK. The early '90s saw the continuation of Provisional Irish Republican Army resistance, aka "the Troubles." One of the most significant was the mortar attack at 10 Downing Street in 1991, which houses the Prime Minister. After three more bombs, the IRA announced a ceasefire in 1994. The 1991 UK census was the first to include a question about ethnicity, and it revealed that black people were 1.6% of the country's population. Many were immigrants from former and current British colonies, and they, of course, dealt with racism.

Eighteen-year-old Stephen Lawrence was an aspiring architect when he was stabbed to death on April 22nd, 1993, while waiting for a bus with his best friend in southeast London. His parents, who immigrated from Jamaica to the UK in the '60s, were pissed that police didn't investigate the murder quickly enough. They didn't search suspects' homes for 4 days and waited two weeks to arrest. By June 5th, five white men were arrested, but two would never be indicted because of a lack of evidence, and the other three were acquitted, despite the fact that they were members of a gang who committed other racist attacks in the weeks prior. Stephen Lawrence's murder and the soft handling of the culprits would impact Black UK and the media in the second half of the '90s.

In Ireland, in 1990, the country elected Mary Robinson to become the first female president. Under her leadership, homosexuality was decriminalized, contraceptives and divorce were legalized, and women were allowed to sit on juries. Two years after the historic election, the largely Catholic nation was surprised when the Irish Supreme Court ruled that a 14-year-old rape victim could travel to the UK to get an abortion, sparking protests that abortion should be legalized in the country for everybody.

At a 1992 protest in Dublin, singer Sinéad O'Connor predicted things would change: "Admit that a girl who's been raped should be allowed to leave the country for having an abortion, then why not come right out? Miss, she should be allowed to have it here. Absolutely, absolutely. Abortion will be legalized in this country very soon." Later that year, O'Connor infamously ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II during an appearance on *Saturday Night Live* to protest the long-running abuses in the Catholic Church, which had long perpetuated abuse.

"Fight the Real Enemy." Sinéad later said, "It's not the man, obviously, it's the office and the symbol of the organization that he represents. In Ireland, we see our people are manifesting the highest incidence in Europe of child abuse. This is a direct result of the fact that they're not in contact with their history as Irish people, and the fact that in the schools, the priests have been beating the [expletive] out of the children for years and sexually abusing them. This is the example that's been set for the people of Ireland." Sinéad was dragged by the media, banned from SNL for life, and this is what Joe Pesci had to say after he appeared on the show the following week:

"There was an incident on the show last week. Sinéad O'Connor tore up a picture of the Pope, and I thought that was wrong. So I asked somebody to paste it back together. Joe, we have that [Music] picture there. Hi. I think that's a lot better. Thank you. 'Cause if it was my show, I would have gave us such a smack. Boo."

The long-antiquated views of the Catholic Church were further magnified that same year when the Vatican finally withdrew its condemnations of 16th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei for "vehement suspicion of heresy," finally admitting that he was right and that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

In France, the $5 billion Disneyland Paris opened in 1992, and not everyone was happy with the US invasion. Cultural critics bemoaned it as a "cultural Chernobyl," and there were protests as America's soft power was growing globally, which we discuss in the next episode. Proudly nationalistic countries who did lots of business with the US were concerned about Americanization. In 1994, French Culture Minister Jacques Toubon passed the Toubon Law, which after 1996 made use of French mandatory in all TV broadcasts and required French radio stations to play a limited amount of non-French music. Claim the *LA Times*: "Nike has to find a suitable translation for its slogan 'Just Do It,' and McDonald's will have to find a new name for 'cheeseburger'," said Toubon. "We support the concept of linguistic pluralism. If one day all mankind spoke in one language, or rather in one international code, this would lead to a dramatic impoverishment of culture and cultural exchange, and finally, it would mean a regression of humanity. I don't think having everybody speak English or American English would be a sign of progress," Toubon said. Those opposed to the law believed it is fashionable to insert foreign words into their speech. "On television is imposing a cultural model made in the USA. For example, the trend at the moment is to play street basketball, and this leads to children dressing like the American basketball players, walking like them, and using the same vocabulary. I think this may cause our society to break down into tribes. The ultimate risk would be that our Republic, our common thing, disappears."

This prioritization of the French language was accompanied by far-right anti-immigration sentiment sweeping the nation, and Austria, Sweden, Italy, and Switzerland too. In 1990, there was a 10% increase in France's immigration, and 40% of the 100,000 immigrants were from North Africa. Presidential hopeful and former prime minister Jacques Chirac complained about the "noise and smell of immigrants." In June 1991, the previous month, the state announced it would forcibly deport undocumented immigrants. Like other center-right politicians, Chirac was beefing up his xenophobic rhetoric to compete with the growing influence of the National Front party, which harassed immigrants, advocated violence, and won a few electoral positions thanks to growing support from the working class. It was led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, a Holocaust denier and racist. They were all challenging the ruling Socialist Party, who unsuccessfully tried to be hardliners on immigration to beef up support. They were replaced with center-right leadership in March 1993, which immediately enacted strict nationality laws to curb immigration, like restricting migrants from bringing families or expelling foreigners with no forms of identification.

The xenophobia was accompanied by Islamophobia, as most of the North African immigrants were Muslim. The erection of the Grand Mosque in Lyon between 1992 and 1994 boosted support of the National Front. In October 1993, school teachers protested four schoolgirls from Morocco and Turkey for wearing hijabs, and they were expelled. France codified this bigotry into law the following year by banning the wearing of hijabs in state schools, affecting nearly 1,000 North African girls. A Turkish imam was deported for saying God takes precedence over French law. There were multiple protests and riots, and 31 girls would be expelled from school by the end of the year.

In 1994, a French biscuit brand, St. Michel, collaborated with Safariland Africa to create "Bamboula's Village," based around its popular racist tree, the "Bamboula" chocolate biscuit. That's right, they created a human zoo. The park manager hired a troop of 25 performers from the Ivory Coast, paid them 1/4 of the French minimum wage, took their passports, and had them build and live in huts for touring visitors. Women were made to perform bare-chested, and when the performers were hurt or ill, they were examined by veterinarians. The various human rights abuses were publicized by an anti-human zoo group suing the village, as black French people reported an uptick in being called "Bamboula," which was a slur from colonial times. Two days before a court ordered an expert to examine the performers, they were all sent back to the Ivory Coast, and the park owner was ordered to pay a paltry one franc to groups who filed litigation over human rights abuses and to pay their legal fees. The village was closed and faded into French history.

In the newly unified Germany, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, xenophobia increased because of fears of immigrants taking jobs and homes, plus, you know, racism. There were 1,000 arson attacks against foreign people and their property between 1990 and 1992, like in Hoyerswerda. In 1991, in the former East German city of Rostock, there were a large number of Vietnamese and Roma refugees who stayed in and outside of a tower with a sunflower. The city provided no food, water, or bathrooms, leading to theft and people using the bathroom in public. Local residents grew angry and hostile. For 3 days in August 1992, hundreds of Germans threw stones and Molotov cocktails into the sunflower tower where 150 Vietnamese refugees and some Germans were trapped inside. The fire brigade, who attempted to intervene, received no police protection. Only a few protesters were convicted of violence against police, but none for attempting to kill the refugees until 2002, when three men were charged with attempted murder. After the Rostock riots, over the next few years, there were more German-led arson against immigrants, including in the city of Mölln in November 1992, when three members of a Turkish family were killed by neo-Nazis in a house fire. The German government then banned one neo-Nazi group before banning another a few months later. Five more Turkish people were murdered in the following year by Nazi skinheads in Solingen in May 1993. And the whole time, there were anti-Nazi protests.

But lest you think the racism in Germany was limited to violent attacks, in 1994, an official at Hypo Bank, the fourth largest bank in the country, acknowledged that it sometimes refused to open bank accounts to black people.

In September, eight months after the first McDonald's finally opened its doors in Moscow, Pizza Hut followed, also opening a location in Beijing. "The Communist world was forever changed," reported the *New York Times*. In the Moscow Hut, with toppings like salmon and sardines, the pizzas catered to the Russians' craving for salty foods. The same year, the USSR and America agreed to end chemical weapon production and began allegedly destroying their stock.

As for the Soviet Union, the value of consumer goods it manufactured in 1990 was only about 2.1 trillion, and tax revenues were declining as local governments withheld giving money to the central authority because they wanted sovereignty. Revenue from alcohol also dropped after Gorbachev's "dry law," a 2-year policy from 1985 to 1987 that raised the cost of alcohol, prosecuted public intoxication, and restricted sales. The cost of the Soviet-Afghan War, Chernobyl, and cleaning up the 1990 Baku pogrom of Armenians added to the financial pressure, along with anti-Soviet demonstrations. Gorbachev was facing mounting scrutiny from liberals who wanted more lenient policies, like Russian Republic leader Boris Yeltsin, who advocated for Russian autonomy, and he faced criticism from hardline Marxist-Leninists who were pissed off at *perestroika* and *glasnost* opening the floodgates for more freedoms and dissent. Because the central authority could remove him as General Secretary, Gorbachev held a presidential election to be decided by the Congress of People's Deputies—people most loyal to him. He won, becoming the USSR's first and only president and replaced the Politburo with the Presidential Council.

In May 1990, Gorbachev met with Bush for continued peace negotiations and approved the unified German state in a treaty that France, the UK, and the US co-signed. Gorbachev's choice to condemn Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in December pissed off Soviet hardliners because they saw Iraq as an ally in the Persian Gulf. But Gorbachev also disagreed with US plans for a ground assault against Iraq, instead calling for peaceful solutions, leading to him winning a Nobel Peace Prize. Gorbachev then publicized the "500 Days" program to quickly transition the Soviet economy into the global market via shock therapy by further decentralizing and inviting more private corporations to invest in the economy.

In March 1991, the Warsaw Pact ended, dissolving the Eastern European military alliance and further weakening the Soviet Union's influence. Seven countries joined NATO, including the unified Germany and the new Slovak and Czech separate nations. The devolution of Soviet policy continued when Gorbachev begged for loans from the G7 and other nations to aid in expensive reforms. In May 1991, most countries were reluctant, but Germany gave $60 billion, and America gave a $1.5 billion credit guarantee to be used for the purchase of American wheat. This was too much for the Soviet hardliners to bear. In August '91, eight of them led a coup attempt in Moscow and placed Gorbachev under house arrest. Boris Yeltsin urged Moscow citizens to fight the coup, and tens of thousands of protesters formed chains around the Russian Parliament to end the whole thing, which failed 3 days after it began. Shortly after, Gorbachev ratified the amendment that made the Communist Party the ruling party, essentially destroying the one-party state. His status and that of the Soviet Union's was severely weakened, and America was also worried because it would rather deal with one liberalizing Soviet Union than multiple newly independent nation-states.

By November, the KGB, the main Soviet security agency, stopped operating. On December 8th, the representatives of Soviet nations—Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine—signed an accord establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States and dissolving the Soviet Union. On Christmas Day, 1991, the Kremlin replaced the Soviet flag with the Russian tricolor flag moments after Gorbachev [Applause] resigned. 15 countries became independent, including Armenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Ukraine.

The fall of the Soviet Union sent a bunch of countries into a spiral. Boris Yeltsin, who was given a year of special power by Parliament in 1991, immediately lifted price controls in December, causing average Russian consumer prices to shoot up by 2,000%. A third of the population slipped below the poverty line within a year. Yeltsin wanted to quickly release market forces in a dose of shock therapy, like all of the Eastern European post-Soviet states would, apart from Belarus. Warned a *New York Times* columnist: "Boris Yeltsin's shock therapy for Russia is likely to bring economic anarchy that destroys democracy throughout the former Soviet Union." Economist Naomi Klein argued in her book *The Shock Doctrine* that numerous countries in the midst of economic, political, and wartime conflicts would experience manipulated shocks to the economy, creating disaster and confusion to facilitate the goals of Western powers and world financial institutions. That'll be a recurring theme during this episode.

America supported Yeltsin because it proposed that an unstable ruble would usher in communism again. In addition to a $6 billion International Monetary Fund loan, Russia accepted over $3.6 billion from America through the Freedom Support Act of 1992. After the lifted price controls and loans, the next step was the mass privatization of once state-controlled industries, and the biggest transfer of state assets to private owners in world history. But that transfer wasn't anywhere near equitable. In October 1992, the country issued 148 million privatization vouchers that could be used to buy shares of state assets that were going private. The vouchers were worth about 10,000 rubles or $40, and to people experiencing sky-high inflation, they were a quick exchange for some cash. Because the vouchers could be bought and traded, a concentrated group of future oligarchs—who were former black market smugglers, Russian mafia members, or the few legit business owners from the period of *perestroika*—went around buying up vouchers. When the state enterprises were auctioned off around the country, most were vastly undervalued. Between 1992 and 1994, 15,000 such firms were auctioned off, making 70% of the Russian economy private and in the hands of a select few who would become billionaires. 50% of Russians were living on less than $4 a day between 1993 and 1995, which was 48% more than between 1987 and 1988.

The continued economic downturn caused a constitutional crisis in 1993 between Yeltsin and Parliament, who opposed shock therapy and voted to repeal Yeltsin's powers. Boris then led a self-coup, eliminating the opposing governmental bodies, and protests followed. After killing over 147 people during the October coup of 1993, Yeltsin consolidated his power by banning leftist papers and groups, imprisoning dissenters, and fixing a new version of the Constitution to expand his power. That same year, it was reported that there were over 5,000 organized crime groups in Russia with over 100,000 members. Organized crime had been around throughout the Soviet era, but the '90s would see the Russian Mafia go global.

Heaped on all of this was the fact that Yeltsin was an alcoholic. And during his first of many trips to the White House in 1994, he ended up alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk, clad in his underwear, yelling for a taxi, according to Clinton biographer Taylor Branch, trying to get pizza. And he attempted the same stunt the next night. No matter the issue, Yeltsin's pliability to US interests made him the ideal leader of Russia, and he had the Bush and Clinton administration support throughout his tenure. Along with hyperinflation, the budding oligarchy, the rise of the Russian mafia, a failed war in Chechnya (who had declared independence from Russia in 1991), and Yeltsin's drinking and health problems, there was a collapse of public health infrastructure that dropped life expectancy rates and sharply increased untreated chronic diseases.

In the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, the death of President Josip Tito back in 1980 brewed up nationalist sentiment in the various republics, and things boiled over in 1990 during the sovereignty mania sweeping other countries. At a 1990 summit debating reforms, Slovenia delegates walked out, before being joined by Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia. In 1991, the six republics of Yugoslavia held several successful independence referendums that were opposed by President of Serbia Slobodan Milošević and ethnic Serbs in each Republic. The breakup of Yugoslavia was on, and economic sanctions from the European Economic Community and the US would follow.

In Croatia, the country was mostly ethnic Croats (approximately 78.1%) and 12% were Serb. Serbs were highly populated and concentrated in areas specifically along the border with Bosnia. During World War II, when Croatia was a Nazi puppet state, Croats had been encouraged to genocide Serbs, making Serbs wary of living in an independent Croatia with a Croat majority. On June 25th, 1991, Croatia and Slovenia officially became independent, so the Yugoslav Army invaded Slovenia, beginning the low-casualty 10-day war, which resulted in the Brioni Agreement, compelling Yugoslavia to withdraw and force Croatia and Slovenia to postpone their independence by 3 months. Slovenia benefited from location and demographics; it was farther away, plus Serbs, and by extension Yugoslavia, were uninterested because of the low population of Serbs. So, Serbian rebel groups took over towns in Croatia, calling their occupied territory "Krajina." The Yugoslav Army, mostly made up of Serbs, invaded Croatia in July 1991, reportedly to keep the peace at borders, but instead allowing Serbians to occupy towns. The presidents of all six republics were called for a meeting headed by UN peacekeeper Lord Peter Carrington to create a document recognizing all six republics as sovereign nations. The proposal needed five votes to pass and was approved by everyone but Serbia. Serbia then blackmailed the president of Montenegro into changing his vote. Macedonia managed to break away from the Republic in a peaceful referendum, but Croats and Serbs in Croatia fought until a 1992 ceasefire, which created a 2-year stalemate.

So, remember how I said Croatian Serbs were concentrated in areas, including along the border with Bosnia? Well, Bosnia was the most multiethnic and multicultural region of Yugoslavia. In 1991, it included 44% Bosniacs (or Bosnian Muslims), 31% of the population were Serbian, and 17.7% were Croat, 8% were Yugoslav. During the Bosnian Independence referendum, most of the Bosniacs and Croats voted for Independence, while Serbs boycotted the vote. In January '92, the Bosnian Serbs voted to break away from Bosnia in their own independence referendum, which Bosnia disregarded. Yugoslavia was increasingly growing pro-Serb in place of being pro-communism, and the Yugoslav preservationists were whittled from its diverse groups to being mainly about Serbians and Montenegrins. So, in April 1992, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dropped Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia to become just the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, made up of just Serbia and Montenegro. The new goal was to take over parts of Croatia and Bosnia to increase "Greater Serbia."

The Bosnian Serbs, declaring their own independent state, began attacking Sarajevo after a Serb was killed by a Bosniac. The Yugoslav Army transferred all Bosnian Serb members to the country to help, and by "help," I mean they laid daily siege to the capital city of Sarajevo until 1995, killing approximately 5,000 people. This photo of Maja Vreća, dressed up in the middle of the siege on her way to work despite snipers everywhere and explosions, is a famous display of defiance. A Bosnian Serb leader mused over US reluctance to intervene, saying, "The United States sends 2,000 Marines, then they have to send 10,000 more to save the 2,000. This is the best way to have another Vietnam," teasing the foreign policy mistakes still haunting the country. Most nations, including America, originally believed that what was happening in Yugoslavia was a European problem and that intervening would not be beneficial. Colin Powell, like in his assessment of Somalia, argued that American troops should be sent in full force for conflicts or not at all, and only when it was advantageous. As such, he refused to offer humanitarian aid, deployment of ground troops, or air strike assistance.

As the Bosnian Serbs continued taking more control of various areas, including leading those near-daily attacks on the capital for years, the once-allied Croats and Bosniacs fell out and began fighting by October 1992, kicking off the Croat-Bosniak War, or "the war within a war." And I know this is confusing, but stay with me. This war within a war happened because the Croats began desiring to take over areas along the Croatian border so that they could be absorbed by Croatia, because like the Serbs, they wanted their own independent nation. A plan by the UN to carve the country into ethnic regions was rejected by Bosnian Serbs, and the Croats and the Bosniacs signed an agreement to stop fighting each other in 1994. And then America threatened more sanctions and possible intervention, but this was not a guarantee.

The entire time, Bosnian Serbs were encouraged by extremists to ethnically cleanse the Bosniac and Croatian citizens. An estimated 100,000 people would be killed between '92 and '95, and 80% of them were Bosnian Muslim. In 1992, it was revealed that girls and women were being sent by train to rape camps. CNN interviewed two Serb soldiers captured and jailed by Muslim forces in Sarajevo. In the presence of their captors, they told us, "They had been ordered to rape and kill Muslim women. They told us it was good for the soldiers' morale. Then they told us we would have to kill them because there wasn't enough food and there would be more women. I killed only two." The international community estimates that Serbs may have systematically raped as many as 20,000 Muslim women as a weapon of war, though they admit they may never know the real figure because of the code of silence among women who are overwhelmed by feelings of shame and resentment. Resentment because stories like these have been filtering out for more than 6 months now as the world stood silently by. Approximately 50,000 Bosniac women were raped in these places with the intention to plant the seeds of Serbs in Bosnia. As a result, 2 to 4,000 children were born, and women were only released when pregnant, though most were murdered or died. There were also rumors circulating of the sexual abuse of men in detention camps. Still, the Bush administration didn't comment.

By July 1992, 10,000 Bosnians were fleeing a day. And the international Jewish community, seeing the parallel between the genocide and the Holocaust, were outraged. By August, the UN and US agreed to provide humanitarian aid, but the US, who under Bush refused to agree the ethnic cleansing qualified as genocide, refused to send troops. All of the UN peacekeepers sent into Bosnia during this time were European, and their presence would make the UN hesitant to authorize air strikes in the future. Also, the UN peacekeepers were unauthorized to intervene in most cases of violence, making them essentially useless. In December 1992, Bush finally recognized the ethnic cleansing happening in Bosnia was genocide. By the time of the next administration, Bill Clinton and others avoided labeling the crisis a genocide because of the legal obligation that would follow. During his campaign, he talked about taking down the Serbs, but as soon as he got into office, his attention was diverted elsewhere, as we'll dive into in the next episode.

Observers ran through a litany of excuses. To many observers, it was a tragedy that the US had sympathy for, but it was a consequence of the breakup of Yugoslavia and unwinnable like *Black Hawk Down*. Coming up shortly, only made intervention seem more unwise. Clinton implemented an interventionist approach by supporting tight economic sanctions on Bosnia and calling on the slow-moving UN to act. The economic sanctions did nothing, as Clinton let the genocide simmer to neoliberal and conservative American approval. The only outspoken opposition to his policy from within was Madeleine Albright and later National Security Advisor Tony Lake. Colin Powell clashed with Albright over whether or not to intervene, but in September 1993, when he was quitting his position as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he changed his tune and said he predicted troops being sent in in the following months.

As the violence worsened, the Clinton administration, including Albright and Lake, proposed not just threatening air strikes but a policy of dropping armed shipments to the Bosnian capital for poorly trained Bosniacs, which would require the UN to lift its arms embargo. The "lift and strike" plan of arming civilians was first championed by the Bosnian president in 1992 and later supported by US senators. Clinton took up the lift and strike cause to strengthen his interventionist policy and separate himself from Bush. Secretary of State Warren Christopher wasn't enthusiastic about the plan, and neither were the European allies he tried to sell it to, so the proposal was no longer supported.

By 1994, around this time, the UN had approximately 30,000 troops in the Former Yugoslav territory, with 12,000 in Bosnia alone. In February 1994, after a bomb killed 68 civilians in a market, NATO issued an ultimatum, telling Serbs to give up their weapons in 10 days or else. The Serbs refused and then launched a series of devastating attacks that would continue into the next year, as Serbian leadership set its sights on destroying three Muslim enclaves to end the war once and for all.

On August 2nd, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The devastation of the Iran-Iraq War had been costly, and Iraq owed over $14 billion to Kuwait. Iraq was also threatened by Kuwait's oil production, which they believed drove down their profits. Plus, the invasion satisfied Iraqi nationalists who disliked that Kuwait had become an independent nation after the intervention of the British government. But the invasion caused global outrage from India to France to China to the Soviet Union to the US, which leader Saddam Hussein hadn't anticipated.

[Expletive] a week before the invasion, the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Hussein that "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait." Historians and analysts have debated over whether or not this quote was directly about Iraq invading Kuwait and if Hussein took this comment as a sign that the US would look the other way. Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and China placed trade embargoes on Iraq, while others demanded Iraqi troops withdraw. Bush quickly mobilized 100,000 American troops to stand by in Saudi Arabia and waited until after the midterm elections, when a UN resolution authorized military force in the region. Bush compared Hussein to Hitler and hyped up the invasion as a potential domino effect, claiming that Hussein would invade Saudi Arabia after Kuwait without US intervention. He claimed that 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks were at the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which a *St. Petersburg Times* reporter named Jean Heller investigated. Coincidentally, Heller is an Ohio State University grad, who also broke the news about the Tuskegee syphilis experiments in 1972. She found that there weren't Iraqi troops at the border in such large numbers. She wrote, "Only days after the Soviet photos were taken, the Pentagon said Iraqi forces in and around Kuwait had grown to 360,000 men and 2,800 tanks—a sizable enough movement of troops and equipment to leave telltale marks and scars on the landscape that should be visible by satellite." So, Soviet analysts, whose cameras captured the photos she used for proof, said, "We're willing to concede, at least for purposes of argument, that it is not impossible that all Iraqi activity is below the level of resolution. But if there were tent cities, if there were bunkers, if there were staging, supply, and maintenance areas, we find it really hard to believe that we missed them." When confronted by Jean Heller, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney told her, "Trust us."

So, all these alleged troops near the Saudi Arabian border is one reason that Congress decided to get the war cracking. But the other was because in October 1990, testimony from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah sent shockwaves. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come to the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the children to die on the cold floor." Though she informed a congressional caucus that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators to watch them die, this stirring testimony was initially supported by Amnesty International, but they refuted it when they couldn't find proof. "I'm glad I'm 15, old enough to remember Kuwait before Saddam destroyed it, and young enough to rebuild it. Thank you." It was later revealed that not only was Nayirah the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, but that her testimony was organized by a public relations firm working for Citizens for a Free Kuwait, the astroturf group created by the Kuwaiti government to rally support for US intervention.

In November, the UN gave Iraq one final chance to leave Kuwait by January 15th, 1991, and in the process, authorized states like the US to use all necessary means if Iraq didn't leave. In December, Iraq proposed a withdrawal from Kuwait if a solution was provided for the Israel-Palestine issue and Israel was stripped of its weapons of mass destruction, to which the Allied Forces refused. Iraq didn't leave Kuwait, and the January 15th deadline arrived. The US resolution authorizing war passed the Senate by six votes, and all the Democrats who voted against were ridiculed as weak. "No blood for oil!" chanted anti-war protesters in the streets of downtown Chicago and other cities. However, polls showed the majority of white, Asian, and Latino respondents saying the US should go to war.

Late on January 16th, air strikes began, and troops were deployed in Operation Desert Storm, kicking off the Gulf War. The US was joined by the British Royal Air Force, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and of course, Kuwait, and they quickly beat back Iraqis from the region with their victories hyped up and trumpeted by CNN's 24/7 coverage. The station's coverage boosted its ratings by 12 times, as it was the first continuous live footage of an American war. The whole thing was done by February 28th, 1991. "Kuwait is liberated. Iraq's army is defeated. Our military objectives are met." Hussein, who was allowed to stay in power, welcomed his troops back into Iraqi borders. Furious along the way of its retreat, the Iraqi military set fire to hundreds of oil reserves, including 605 to 732 oil wells. The fires raged on from April until November, severely damaging air quality and Kuwaiti respiratory systems. Iraq declared some of its chemical weapons and materials to the UN and claimed it didn't have a biological weapons program as the UN embarked on the process of disarming the country as punishment for the invasion. The quick and easy victory, nicknamed the "video game war" due to the tech technology used, was the first time American war was broadcasted live. Fittingly, it would be memorialized in the Electronic Arts game *Desert Strike*.

Operation Desert Storm boosted Bush's approval ratings from 58% to 86% and seemed to ease the post-Vietnam anxiety Americans were having about intervening in other countries, said Bush frenemy Newt Gingrich. "Begrudgingly, the number of people who don't like George Bush is almost down to the number of people running for the Democratic nomination." Gingrich and other Republicans happily reminded voters that Democrats had voted against the Gulf War, encouraging their image as the weak party who couldn't handle foreign policy. The victory of Desert Storm made a 1992 reelection for Bush seem more probable, but when Saddam Hussein violated a UN no-fly zone policy by sending out war planes who return to base when US fighters moved to intercept them, the cracks in the victory were evident. And while the Gulf War was spun as an easy victory with few casualties under Bush, the US dropped 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraq, and Iraq occupied Kuwait. Before the end, there were thousands of civilian casualties. Additionally, returning soldiers would be struck with a mysterious lifelong debilitating illness known as Gulf War syndrome.

After the Kuwaiti invasion, Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iraq and isolated the country. In a shock felt around the world, oil prices rose because Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait were all major suppliers of oil, sending prices up from $21 a barrel to a peak of $46, which lasted 9 months. But then Saudi output surged above pre-invasion levels. This was good for their coffers, as it was spending a considerable amount of money and time to court Sunni Muslims from around the world, who were 90% of the globe's 1 million Muslims. One example is the $6 million it provided to the building of the Grand Mosque in Lyon, France.

On July 3rd, 1990, 1,426 Muslims died, mostly by suffocation, in a pedestrian tunnel leading outside of Mecca. Many of the pilgrims were Malaysian, Indonesian, and Pakistani. Saudi Arabia resisted calls.

For an international investigation into failed safety and ventilation measures, said King.

"Fod it is God's will, which is above everything. Had they not died there, they would have died elsewhere and at the same predestined moment." The leader of a group of Indonesian Muslim Scholars said the Saudi government cannot run from the responsibility for the tunnel disaster simply saying it was an act of God.

The incident renewed calls by the Shiite majority Iran to have domain over Mecca. Lastly, Saudi Arabia stripped native-born Osama Bin Laden of his nationality in 1994, though he had left the country 3 years previously.

So, during the '80s, the Mujahideen Rebels fought against the Soviet-backed Afghani government, often with the United States footing the bill. The cash-strapped Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988, the same year that a young Saudi financier named Osama Bin Laden and 15 others created Al-Qaeda to continue their jihad against threats to a purely Islamic Nation.

After the withdrawal of the Soviets, several revolutionary jihadists felt empowered by their victory over the Soviet Union and intended to take the fight elsewhere. For instance, Al-Qaeda, just one of many groups, would turn its attention to the USA.

But as for Afghanistan, in 1992, the Mujahideen took over numerous areas before taking the capital city, Kabul. The infighting and rivalries among Mujahideen groups, which had been kept at bay by a common Soviet enemy, caused a civil war. Various factions took over the country's 30 provinces. People were tortured, women were raped and kidnapped, and fleeing refugees were forced to pay various tolls to leave, mainly to Pakistan.

In 1994, in Kabul, a 15-year-old girl was gang-raped and her father killed because he allowed her to go to school. Guards were abducting girls and young women and shooting them dead if they didn't agree to go. Some were taken as wives, some simply raped, and others sold into sex slavery. In Pakistan, there were also reports of women being stoned to death.

Two Afghan women's groups operated in the refugee camps of Pakistan, providing education and healthcare to Afghan children and women. Both groups received threats, and there were assassinations and attempts. Because the 1980s warfare drained Afghanistan's coffers, there were few jobs, massive food and water shortages, and no public services. There was a thriving trade of smuggling legal goods to avoid steep tariffs, meaning smugglers had to pay tolls to various warlords.

In 1993, a group of Afghan Sunni Muslims, mostly ethnically Pashtun, who had attended ultraconservative religious schools in Pakistan, formed the Taliban, meaning "students of Islam." In the chaos of the civil war, the religious group wrangled control of the toll road and streamlined the process for smugglers, meaning they paid one toll and could transport their goods safely. In the process, the Taliban members spread propaganda about themselves as righteous, moral crusaders who would restore order and traditional Islamic values. In the midst of the terror, rapes, and murder, the Taliban gained more followers. They were viewed as a potential ally by the international community, including the United States. Meanwhile, foreign oil companies, who wanted to avoid dealing with Russia and Iran, lusted after Afghani oil reserves, which were untapped.

In November 1994, the Taliban took control of the southern city of Kandahar, and by the next year, they would have control of nine of Afghanistan's 30 provinces. In the second half of the decade, the Taliban would come to embrace drug smuggling, shelter Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, and destroy the rights of Afghan women.

1991: The United Nations revoked the 1975 Soviet-backed resolution that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. That same year, on May 24th, the surprise Operation Solomon airlifted 14,500 Ethiopian Jews into Israel, away from the continuing Eritrean War of Independence, which would officially end the next day.

Meanwhile, the unrest of Palestinians from the First Intifada continued through 1991. The violence was often fatal, and 1,162 Palestinians were killed versus 160 Israelis.

In 1993, Palestinian and Israeli leadership signed the Declaration of Interim Self-Government, or the Oslo Accords, which was seen as the end of the Intifada. It was the first face-to-face meeting of the government of Israel and PLO leadership. However, in the next year alone, over 110 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and an additional 38 killed by Israeli civilians.

One of the most infamous was the February 25th, 1994, attack on the Cave of the Patriarchs mosque in Hebron, in which American-Israeli extremist Baruch Goldstein opened fire on attendees, killing 25 and injuring 125. Goldstein was beaten to death by a crowd afterward.

Jewish Israelis were segregated from entering major Palestinian areas and vice versa, but the violence and attacks against Palestinians would continue in the second half of the decade, as well as retaliatory attacks by Palestinians.

Israel also carried out Operation Accountability, or the 7-Day War, against Southern Lebanon in July 1993, displacing 300,000 Lebanese and Palestinian refugees and killing 120 civilians. Their three goals were to: one, punish Hezbollah and militant Palestinians; two, make the South Lebanese area less appealing as a tactical base for Hezbollah; and three, to create a flow of refugees towards Beirut that would pressure Lebanon to rein in Hezbollah, who was receiving aid from Iran and Syria. With this intent to sow terror, Israel was violating international humanitarian law. The US, who was supplying over $1.8 billion in aid to Israel a year, helped broker a ceasefire within a week, though violence would continue in the second half of the decade. After all, Israel purchased approximately $4 billion in arms from America in the early '90s.

Lastly, in 1994, Israel and Jordan reached a peace agreement, ending 46 years of war and opening up the borders between the two countries. While Syria ignored the news, Hezbollah launched attacks on small towns.

In Sierra Leone, in 1991, the rebel United Front, who opposed a long-standing dictatorship, began selling diamonds in the east of the country to buy weapons. The RU F didn't advocate any specific political position, instead falling back on "no more slaves, no more masters," "power and wealth to the people." The Sierra Leone Army was unable to suppress the RU F, and soldiers on both sides attacked, looted, and raped their way across the country as the violence spread for the rest of the decade, leading to over 50,000 deaths and an abundance of mutilation, child soldiers, and sex slavery. The RU F abandoned its early promise to overthrow the government and protect the people and instead focused on protecting its diamond trade, which, along with violence, was destroying the economy.

In Liberia, at the dawn of the '90s, President Samuel Doe was extremely unpopular. Less than a decade after he overthrew Americo-Liberian rule in the 1980 coup, the country was suffering from a struggling economy. It couldn't renew its IMF loan, and the US was distancing itself. Many young, affected men were fleeing, and a bunch ended up in Libya, learning about leftism and training under Muammar Gaddafi. One of those men was Charles Taylor. Gaddafi's protégé, he founded the National Patriotic Front of Liberia in the Ivory Coast in 1989. Shortly after, he and his armed rebels invaded Northwest Liberia.

In 1990, a fracture in Taylor's group led to a militia called The Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia, led by Prince Johnson. There were also Doe's Liberian Armed Forces, and the country was plunged into violence and chaos between these three groups. War became extremely profitable for all involved, and more warlords emerged, though Taylor controlled 95% of the territory by 1990. Prince Johnson also publicly tortured and murdered Samuel Doe before the year was over. In the midst of the mass murders that killed 150,000 people, over 800,000 were displaced, and thousands of children were forced to be soldiers.

In 1990, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Gambia decided to merge their military might together into the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group to intervene in Liberia. But ECOMOG troops were looting, and the various warring factions refused to cede power to it. The fighting would continue into the second half of the decade.

By the way, Libya was hit with UN sanctions from 1992 onward because of its role in the 1988 Pan Am bombing in Scotland. Sanctions severely impacted its economy and involvement with global politics. Gaddafi staved off a coup attempt in 1993 and would fight extremist Muslims for the rest of the decade.

In Nigeria, military president Ibrahim Babangida had promised to restore civilian rule by 1990, the same year of a failed coup attempt against him. But the deadline was extended to 1993, when the elections were held. Wealthy Aruba businessman Moshood K.O. Abiola won, which Babangida annulled 11 days later. This caused rioting, and over 100 people were killed. By the time Babangida brought on an interim government in August, the interim government was overthrown by Sani Abacha, a powerful general who was initially welcomed. In September, he decreed that he was above court jurisdiction and that he would detain anyone for up to 3 months without a trial. Thanks to his personal security force of 3,000 men, who were trained in North Korea and Libya, dissidents like MKO Abiola, who insisted that he was the president of Nigeria, were sent to prison.

In 1994, Abiola's charge was treason, which sparked a two-month strike by oil workers beginning in July. Production was down by 40% within 5 weeks, but Abiola remained jailed through the end of the strike, which saw labor leaders arrested, fleeing into hiding, or executed.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo transitioned into a tense and highly challenged multi-party democracy in 1992, and we'll be back to look at what happened at the end of the series.

In Sudan, there was an ongoing civil war from 1983 that would continue the entire decade. Sudan also backed Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, which encouraged Clinton to attempt to isolate Sudan. Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, and Kenya attempted to bring about peace in Sudan from 1993 onward, with little effect.

Speaking of Eritreans, they voted in favor of independence from Ethiopia in May 1993, and they officially gained independence in May.

In Somalia, America had been supplying aid since the '80s, which had continued under the Bush administration. In addition to the Isaaq genocide carried out by the Somalian government from 1987 to 1989, there were numerous human rights abuses and civil war infighting since 1980. The socialist country, ruled by Siad Barre since 1969, was in the middle of a fierce drought that was causing starvation and malnutrition. By the time Barre fled the country in 1991, Muhammad Farah Aidid led armed opposition groups in fighting the Somali National Army, and the US wanted to capture him in the fighting and reinstall an ally.

Staunch pragmatists like Colin Powell urged the United States to stay out of the Somalian conflict, which Bush ignored because of Somalia's strategic position at the mouth of the Red Sea. Bush wanted to protect US interests while depicting the choice to intervene as a humanitarian effort. So, on December 4th, 1992, 28,000 US troops were deployed to the country to assist with famine relief as part of a larger UN initiative. Keep in mind that the very next month, Clinton was set to be inaugurated, and the Bush administration claimed the UN would be ready to take control by that day, January 20th, and that US troops would be withdrawn. This didn't happen.

During the 1992 campaign season, Bush had frequently cited Clinton's lack of a foreign policy record, and by intervening in December, he was immediately passing the political baton, making Somalia a key feature of the new newbie Clinton's early agenda.

During Clinton's early days, there were a series of violent conflicts between America and Aidid's troops, who were attacking UN troops. Clinton's primary policy became outing Aidid, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. On August 22nd, Clinton authorized Operation Gothic Serpent, a military opt to capture Aidid. It went very wrong during the Battle of Mogadishu on October 3rd, which also came to be known as "Black Hawk Down." When the US attacked a house of civilians and tribal leaders, the Somali militia shot down two US helicopters, and there was heavy fire on the trapped Army Rangers who attacked the house of civilians. In the deadliest battle for Americans since Vietnam, 18 Americans were killed, which was magnified in the press compared to the 315 Somalis killed and 812 injured. A convoy came and saved the remaining US troops, but the Clinton administration was further embarrassed by a circulated video of a naked Ranger being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

"I am proposing this plan because it will let us finish leaving Somalia on our own terms and without destroying all the two administrations have accomplished there. For if we were to leave today, we know what would happen. Within months, Somali children again would be dying in the streets. Our own credibility with friends and allies would be severely damaged. Our leadership in world affairs would be undermined at the very time when people are looking to America to help promote peace and freedom in the post-Cold War world. And all around the world, aggressors, thugs, and terrorists will conclude that the best way to get us to change our policies is to kill our people."

Troops were sent in to reinforce, but all were withdrawn by March 31st, 1994. The search for Aidid was abandoned. The fallout of "Black Hawk Down" impacted Clinton's handling of the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides because more Americans became vocal against intervening in global affairs.

Two years before the 1961 withdrawal of Belgium from Rwanda-Urundi, which split the colony into the nations of Rwanda and Burundi, an ethnic majority, the Hutus, gained political and social power over the Tutsis that would continue for over 30 years. The German and Belgian colonizers had catalyzed the hatred between the two groups with phrenology and a divisive caste system. Facing violence and killings, 40 to 70% of Tutsis left Rwanda, and approximately 50 to 70,000 went to Uganda and settled with other Rwandan exiles known as Banyarwanda, and they were treated like outcasts.

After 1961, Tutsis remaining in Rwanda, about 18% of the population, were treated like second-class citizens and subjected to violence, a flip of their previous dominance. Fast forward to 1990: Banyarwanda were barred from going back to Rwanda and stripped of citizenship by Hutu leadership. The Rwandan Patriotic Front, made up of those Tutsis who were exiled or fled, formed near the Ugandan border and invaded Rwanda in 1990 and came to be led by Paul Kagame. They were trained and supplied by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and squared off against the Rwandan Armed Forces, who were backed by France and Belgium.

The president, Hutu Juvenal Habyarimana, claimed to want peace and agreed to negotiate through the UN while secretly beginning practice massacres against Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. Between 1990 and March 1993, 10,000 Tutsis were detained and 2,000 were murdered.

On August 4th, 1993, the UN brokered a peace agreement between the RPF and Rwanda called the Arusha Accords. Before this agreement to share power between the rebels and the government, it was reported that the Hutu government had imported 85 tons of munitions and 581,000 machetes, which was enough machetes for one in three adult men, but this statistic has been disputed.

At the time of the Arusha Accords, there were 2,500 UN peacekeepers in Rwanda from Belgium, Tunisia, Bangladesh, and Ghana, led by Major General Roméo Dallaire, who requested another 5,000 troops and authorization to fight. Two days before additional troops were sent, "Black Hawk Down" occurred, leading to UN troops being banned from taking action or seizing weapons in the event that a PR scandal occurred.

That same month, there were killings of Tutsis by Hutus in nearby Burundi until December, and reprisal massacres leading to approximately 116,000 people dead. It all started because the first democratically elected president, a Hutu named Melchior Ndadaye, was assassinated in a failed military coup by Tutsis. This is often overshadowed by Rwanda, but Burundi would devolve into more violence as the power of the state crumbled.

So, meanwhile, the CIA knew that the Hutu leadership had a growing list of people they were going to execute, including politically moderate Hutus who supported the Arusha Accords. In January 1994, the CIA privately estimated that 500,000 people were going to die in Rwanda, and Roméo Dallaire had sent a fax to UN officials warning them that there were arms caches and assassination plots. The UN denied Dallaire's request to raid the caches.

On April 6th, 1994, President Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated when his jet was shot down by an unknown party. Also on the plane was Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, who came to power after Burundi's civil war. Hutu supremacist media quickly claimed the assassination was by the RPF, while the RPF accused extremist Hutus of assassinating the president to rouse anti-Tutsi violence and seize power.

Hutus strategically got the UN peacekeepers to pull out by murdering the new constitutional leader, Madame Agathe Uwilingiyimana, 14 hours later. She was the first and only female prime minister, and 10 Belgian peacekeepers who were accompanying her were murdered and mutilated. Five Ghanaian peacekeepers who had been with her weren't killed. Within 4 days of the president's assassination, 32,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were murdered.

On April 15th, Belgium asked America to support a full withdrawal of the UN Force because it was embarrassed to pull out alone. By April 25th, 90% of the UN's troops were withdrawn, and Dallaire had only 450 troops to help protect 25,000 Rwandans in safe areas and could only mediate or offer humanitarian aid. Within 2 weeks of the plane being shot down, the death toll was over 100,000 people. It's important to note the brutality of these murders; most were done with machetes.

"America at large wasn't paying attention or even pretending to care," said US Senator Bob Dole. "I don't think we have any national interest there. The Americans are out, and as far as I'm concerned, in Rwanda, that ought to be the end of it."

On April 28th, State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly embarrassed the Clinton administration by attempting to skirt the genocide issue: "We, we have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred. How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide? Um, Alan, that's just not a question that I'm in a position to answer."

On May 1st, an internal Department of Defense memo cautioned officials against using the term "genocide" because a genocide finding could commit the US to actually do something. Meanwhile, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of the UN complained, "The member states are fatigued. When I was elected in 1991, we thought the UN would be able to solve all the world's problems with a few thousand troops. Suddenly, we discovered that rather than one or two operations, we had 17. Rather than a few thousand, we needed 70,000 soldiers. Rather than spending $600 million for peacekeeping, we needed $4 million."

On May 3rd, the US officially proclaimed distance from the Rwanda crisis. It specified that America would only support other nations carrying out UN missions if it was in the national interest of America. Even while many orders to murder Tutsis were given out over radio stations, the Pentagon rejected Dallaire's request to use the American Air Force to jam radio signals in Rwanda, citing the cost of $8,500 per flight hour. The Pentagon claimed this money was better utilized for food relief, which never happened. Clinton continued to insist there wasn't enough money for a crisis of such little American interest.

But of course, there was interest, especially in the black community. In October 1994, an Ebony article noted that mainstream media wasn't documenting the ways black people were responding to the genocide. Africa F.A.R.E., a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit, maintained a field office in Kigali and distributed clean water, medical supplies, and shelter, thanks to numerous donations from individuals and black churches. Celebrities like Janet Jackson, Harry Belafonte, and Whoopi Goldberg donated money and aid. Representative Donald Payne of New Jersey was the foreign policy spokesman for the Congressional Black Caucus, and he loudly critiqued the crisis and urged Clinton's administration to act.

International leaders considered designating safe zones in which to deploy 5,000 armed troops, having troops invade the country and find Tutsis to bring back, or having Tutsis find their own way to safe zones. As the international community debated on strategy, 300,000 people were dead in less than 40 days, and thousands of women had been raped. The RPF and Kagame faced criticism for focusing on capturing Kigali, the Hutu stronghold, rather than heading south to protect Tutsis. Some refugees managed to find protection by some Hutus, like the 1,268 people who stayed at a hotel manned by Paul Rusesabagina.

On May 6th, the UN agreed to send 5,000 armored troops, but bickering over cost and transportation meant another month slipped by, leading to a total of over 800,000 deaths. The UN Security Council then authorized France, who was cozy with Hutu leadership, to intervene in Southwest Rwanda, where they designated safe zones that the Hutus controlled. By the way, France had stayed allied with Hutus even though they knew from the beginning they were planning to kill Tutsis, so it's no surprise that multiple Tutsi people inside safe zones still ended up dead.

On July 17th, 1994, the Tutsi RPF rebels captured Kigali, forcing 1.7 million Hutus and officials to flee to Zaire and Tanzania, ending the genocide. The RPF established a government, while the UN replaced French troops with Ethiopian ones. Weeks after Clinton had said there was no money for Tutsi victims of genocide, he allocated $320 million in emergency relief to Hutu refugee camps, where 2,000 people were dying a day. "The flow of refugees across Rwanda's borders has now created what could be the world's worst humanitarian crisis in a generation. It is a disaster born of brutal violence and, according to experts, now on its way. It is now claiming one life every minute. Today, I am announcing an immediate and massive increase in our response." As Donald Payne said, "Too little, too late."

As for Rwanda, the country appointed a Hutu as president, but Paul Kagame, who became both minister of defense and vice president, was the one truly in charge. The country would also be forced to face the aftermath of a massive increase of HIV/AIDS due to the hundreds of thousands of girls and women who were raped and the destruction of public health infrastructure.

In Zimbabwe, the 25-year state of emergency first enacted by Robert Mugabe was lifted in 1990, the same year he won reelection as president. Before and during the March 1990 elections, newspapers claimed he was still adamant about establishing a one-party Marxist-Leninist state, even as communism crumbled in much of the world. However, Mugabe was also applauded for protecting the interests of the estimated 120,000-strong white community. Mugabe not only won re-election but so did 117 members of his party, the ZANU-PF. The elections were not free or fair. Mugabe then pivoted to free-market economics and accepted an IMF loan in 1991. Meanwhile, from 1992 onward, discontent brewed over his plans to take land from white colonizers to redistribute to native Zimbabweans in his most ambitious land reform programs yet.

Nelson Mandela was released from his 27-year captivity in a South African prison on February 11th, 1990, 8 days after President F.W. de Klerk removed a ban on anti-apartheid groups. Mandela's African National Congress and the government began negotiations. The country was bubbling with contention and violence. Fighting between Xhosa and Zulu people led to over 500 dead by August 1990, and that same year, nearly 1% of South African adults were HIV positive. By 1994, approximately 5 to 7.6% of pregnant women were HIV positive. The country held a national AIDS convention in 1992 that the African National Congress adopted 2 years later in an attempt to curb the spread. Still, the infection rate would worsen in South Africa and other African countries throughout the rest of the decade.

Under the leadership of F.W. de Klerk, South Africa announced a repeal of apartheid legislation on July 17th, 1991. Several countries, including the US, then lifted sanctions, and the country became eligible to participate in the Olympics again. Many anti-apartheid activists called this premature, as black South Africans still couldn't vote. To avoid violence, in December, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa began, setting up a transitional government and new constitution for a 1994 election featuring universal suffrage. While 68% of whites voted in a whites-only referendum to continue negotiations with the ANC, right-wing Afrikaners were growing increasingly angry at the dismantling of apartheid, and their militias grew in number. "They, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, directly opposed de Klerk's attempts to ease or end apartheid," said leader Eugene Terre'Blanche. "Do you think these elections are free and fair? Would you not try to stop them from happening? It is a stitch-up between de Klerk and Mandela. De Klerk has sold the whites down the river. He is the Judas."

They attacked and terrorized black people and anti-apartheid sympathizers, and de Klerk and the National Party had initially presented a 5-year plan to keep South Africa segregated, which many South African blacks approved of, but not Mandela. Despite calls for and acts of violence and terrorism to preserve minority rule, it didn't stop the 1994 elections or universal suffrage. By the way, there was a group of ethnic Zulus in the right-wing Inkatha Freedom Party, and some members killed ANC supporters and even signed a pact with the Afrikaner supremacists.

Mandela won with 63% of the vote, and several ANC candidates were victorious, ending the National Party's dominance and ending de Klerk's short stint as president. Mandela's legacy would be complicated, starting with the fact that he inherited a bankrupt state, its economy ruined by years of divestment and sanctions, a state with decades of formalized racism and tribalism. To make matters worse, the new post-apartheid government was burdened with debt, and to avoid looking unstable to world leaders, Mandela's government made timely payments to the tune of $4.5 billion by the mid-'90s, compared to the $85 million paid out to victims of apartheid. Mandela's deputy, Thabo Mbeki, encouraged neoliberal policies despite the ANC's long-term promises to nationalize industries like banking and mining and land reform via the Freedom Charter. Per one South African economist, in 1994, white farmers owned 77.5 million hectares of farmland out of the total surface area of 122 million hectares. These numbers would barely budge, and yet white colonizers continued to play victim.

In 1994, Mandela rejected the demand of racist whites for a separate homeland in South Africa, and more violence by the Afrikaner Resistance Movement would follow, along with a high poverty rate, worsening HIV rates, and criticisms by the South African left that Mandela was too focused on celebrity and being accommodating to former enemies.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega surrendered on January 3rd, 1990, to the US forces who had invaded the country in December 1989 during Operation Just Cause. Noriega had been holed up in the Vatican's embassy in Panama, and the US military blasted rock music non-stop until he came out, including "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses, "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood, and "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister.

Noriega had been a longtime ally of the US against the USSR until the mid-'80s when his drug trafficking activities in support of the Cubans and Sandinistas were exposed to the public. In 1992, he was convicted by a Miami jury of assisting Colombia's cocaine cartel and sentenced to 40 years, this despite the fact that the US had knowledge that Noriega had been trafficking drugs since 1971. The guy who testified against Noriega was a massive trafficker serving time in the US.

For the invasion of Panama, the US was criticized internationally, but polls of Panamanian citizens showed that many wished the US would have invaded sooner. "But did Bush's invasion of Panama do what he said it would do?" added the New York Times in 1991. "One of President Bush's stated reasons for invading Panama in December 1989 was to combat drug trafficking, but since General Noriega's arrest, the price of cocaine in Panama has fallen, and more of the drug that is being intercepted in the United States is being traced back here."

In Haiti, a coup by the military on September 29th, 1991, ended the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a priest and the first democratically elected president after the 29-year Duvalier dictatorship. Aristide had only been in power for 9 months and was focusing on human rights and social, political, and economic improvements. The new military regime, led by General Raoul Cédras, quickly began abusing citizens to international condemnation. There were 1,500 to 2,000 deaths by January 1992 and the exile of over 10,000 refugees fleeing arrest, torture, and rape. The main targets were clergy, journalists, trade unionists, and students and human rights activists who opposed the new regime.

Most refugees went to America, where the United States Coast Guard was intercepting them and sending them back to Haiti after 12,000 were stuffed into Guantanamo Bay because they were categorized as economic refugees rather than victims of political repression. None were found to have grounds for asylum. There were tons of protests, like when tennis legend Arthur Ashe was arrested on the White House lawn in 1992. Bush's policy of returning the Haitians to Haiti meant putting them in harm's way. Between 1991 and 1994, the military junta killed approximately 5,000 Aristide supporters.

One of the junta leaders and prominent killer, Emmanuel Constant, was on the CIA payroll until 1991, and he fed information about Aristide. This CIA buffer, along with the US's reluctance to step in, made the junta feel more powerful. The Congressional Black Caucus and others urged Bill Clinton to intervene in Haiti, but after the failures of "Black Hawk Down," the desire to mediate in foreign affairs was low. Still, Clinton sent two to 300 troops who arrived on October 10th, 1993, but they left after being faced by a crowd of protesters.

On the CIA payroll, the CIA also spread its propaganda campaign against Aristide to the US. Jesse Helms encouraged the CIA to send experts to Congress to inform them that Aristide was clinically manic-depressive, prone to violence, and generally unreliable. They also drummed up fake medical records. So, as Aristide languished in exile, Haitians continued to be at the mercy of the junta or simply fled.

The US and UN appealed to various Caribbean countries to take the refugees, which Barbados and the Dominican Republic refused to do. In the DR, it was reported that locals were arresting, beating up, and robbing Haitians who arrived. The Dominican Republic's wealthiest families also relied on forced labor from Haitians and for years had lured Haitians to the island with empty promises of high pay. From 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., often under armed guard, Haitians did the strenuous task of cutting sugar cane, earning $25 to $50 by the end of their 8-month tenures in the bateys or settlements around the sugar mills. The US, who was the largest consumer of Dominican sugar, increased the Dominican Republic's sugar quota in 1989 and 1990.

Cuba sheltered 1,441 shipwrecked people and accepted 62 more under refugee status, and Belize permanently resettled 100 Haitians under the stipulation that they test negative for HIV. Jamaica accepted 100 Haitians, finally caving to pressure. On September 16th, 1994, Clinton sent Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, and Senator Sam Nunn for one last peaceful attempt at getting the junta to step down, which they refused. Clinton gave the order to invade, and 25,000 US military personnel arrived on September 19th. The junta backed down, and President Aristide was restored to power. The US saw the casualty-free incident as a success and moved on, but in the years that followed, Haiti became increasingly dependent on foreign aid, as a key part of returning Aristide back to power was contingent on him agreeing to International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans.

In Jamaica, 1993 officially marked the year that tourism became the top foreign exchange earner, bringing in $953 million into the economy. Under leader Percival Patterson, there was a modernization of Jamaican infrastructure and the financial industry. In 1995, he made the bold move to end Jamaica's 19-year relationship with the International Monetary Fund.

Meanwhile, the '90s would be known in Cuba as the "Special Period." It was impacted by the fall of the Soviet Union in multiple ways. Until 1991, the USSR had been providing dwindling resources to Cuba, namely $4.3 billion in subsidies, or 21.2% of Cuba's gross national product. They also provided cheap oil, food, and machinery in exchange for sugar. So, the fall of the Soviets meant all of this was over.

The US saw a potential way to finally destroy Fidel Castro's regime. In 1992, Democratic Congressman Robert Torricelli introduced the Cuban Democracy Act, which would tighten Cuban sanctions with the intent to wreak havoc on that island. The bill passed, and Bush signed it. By the way, it was reported that Torricelli received donations from the anti-Castro Cuban American National Foundation. The law targeted countries who helped Cuba with a denial of debt reduction and forgiveness and restricted the lucrative trade between Cuba and US subsidiaries not operating on US soil. The second layer of the law created a flow of humanitarian donations, postal services, and telecommunications to and from Cuba to create good PR among a population that would blame Castro for Cuba's deteriorating conditions.

"Many young Cubans were pondering leaving the island, but others didn't want to," said one. "I'm one of those who doesn't want to leave. I'm a patriot. I'm against the Americans. I'm against the United States blockade against the Cubans." The same youth had criticisms, saying, "The Soviet Union helped us, so what happened? We didn't use the money to build a future. Now we don't even have toilet paper. How is it possible that today we have nothing?"

The 1993 impact of the Storm of the Century caused $1 billion in damage and 10 deaths. Later that year, Castro's own illegitimate and ignored daughter fled the island. There was strict rationing of energy and food. Gas sales were suspended, so 700,000 bikes were passed out by 1994, and there were daily blackouts for up to 20 hours a day. Infrastructure and indoor plumbing failed due to the embargo. Over 300 imported medicines disappeared from shelves, and by 1993, over 50,000 Cubans had optic neuropathy from vitamin B deficiency.

Cuba had to reassess its economic policy and find a way to insert itself into international markets. So, Cuba turned state companies into for-profit enterprises, amended the constitution to allow private and corporate property, regulated foreign investment, and decriminalized hard currency and the circulation of the US dollar. It also created a Ministry of Tourism, welcoming private investors from Spain, Germany, and Jamaica. 1992 alone saw 500,000 tourists from Canada, Spain, Italy, and Latin America, which was double the previous record for tourism. These tourists brought foreign money, which was accepted at stores and restaurants. Cuba also strengthened its relationships with other countries and created a long-term goal to continue developing its biotechnology industry.

There were also social changes. The state became more tolerant of religious institutions, and there was a swelling of grassroots organizing and community problem-solving. Many Cubans pointed out the viciousness of America continuing to hold a blockade, which, if dropped, would provide a boost in tourism and decrease the money spent on imports of much-needed food, energy, and medicine from less than 103 miles away, said the Cuban foreign minister Ricardo Alarcón. "If a Cuban socialist society keeps existing here after the end of the Cold War, after there is no communist danger to the United States, there is no political justification for hostility," saying the US would be the only country in the world that doesn't do business with Cuba.

The social changes were also occurring in Cuba's racial politics, as a small Afro-Cubano pride movement began to brew, summed up in a Louise Bardock in a 1994 Vanity Fair article. An elderly woman who describes herself as a mulata tells me, "Castro's secret weapon: Los Negros," she says, pointing to her brown arm. "Not me, I'm fed up, but the others are not, and we are many more than Los Blancos." Of the more than 1 million Cuban exiles now living in South Florida, approximately 95% are white, while unofficially, more than 58% of Cuba's 10.7 million people are black, mulato, or some shade in between. These black Cubans had benefited from an improvement in life expectancy, literacy, and anti-racism reforms, but despite that, Castro and nearly all of Cuba's high-ranking officials were white, male, and older. Additionally, because the Cuban government allowed cash remittances from Cubans in the States, most of the citizens receiving money from loved ones during the economic devastation of the Special Period were, you guessed it, white Cubans.

White Cubans were continuing to attempt to flee to Miami but having less luck than earlier, whiter groups of refugees who were growing their political control in Florida. The July 13th, 1994, sinking of a tugboat carrying 72 Cubans to Florida led to the death of 41 passengers, though Cuba insisted it was an accident. In August, thousands of Cubans flooded the streets of Havana in what would be called Malecón to protest their conditions and Castro. Castro announced that the Cuban Coast Guard would temporarily allow people to leave. "This wasn't to be nice either," said Castro, "either the US take serious measures to guard their coast, or we will stop putting obstacles in the way of people who want to leave."

The sudden scramble of 30 to 35,000 balseros, or raft people, to flee into Florida collided with growing US anti-immigration sentiment and shifted US policy to focus on Cuban exiles. On August 18th, Clinton and his cabinet met and agreed that the 28-year policy towards Cubans, giving them asylum status, needed to end. No Cubans could enter illegally. They also agreed that the US could not appear tougher on Cubans than Haitians. This led to negotiations with Castro in September 1994 and calls from white Cubans for even tougher sanctions.

"If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers, and you can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire a young 25-year-old, let's assume you've been in business for a long time, you've got a mature workforce, pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no healthcare, that's the most expensive single element making a car, have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south. So, we, if, if the people send me to Washington, the first thing I'll do is study that 2,000-page agreement and make sure it's a two-way street." We'll be coming back to Ross Perot and the "gigantic sucking sound" in the next episode in this series, but let's look at NAFTA from Mexico's point of view.

In 1992, in the midst of protest and criticism, America, Canada, and Mexico agreed to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was implemented in 1994 with the premise of eliminating trade barriers between the three nations. The only country that didn't benefit was Mexico because its labor and exports would be frequently undervalued.

On the same day, January 1st, 1994, that NAFTA went into effect, the leftist Zapatista Army or EZLN declared war on the Mexican Government for its neoliberal policies, particularly highlighting how NAFTA would hurt indigenous Mexicans and peasants. They immediately seized six towns and set up their own society. Other events, including the assassination of a presidential candidate, led to steep risk premiums on Mexican assets. This damaged the Mexican economy, as the treasury had been wooing foreign investors with short-term debt investments. A series of events led to a sharp devaluation of the peso and a rise in interest rates on December 20th, 1994, which impacted related economies in Central America and Asia and created a crisis in Mexico that the US would consider providing aid for.

In 1992, the Salvadoran Civil War ended after the fighting first began in 1979, and the death count was over 75,000 people.

In April 1990, Nicaragua elected Violeta Chamorro to the presidency, ousting Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. The US government had announced in 1989 that it would continue an embargo against the country if Chamorro lost. She was expected to dismantle Sandinista programs and achievements, namely the labor reform, land redistribution, and agricultural reforms that benefited 60% of rural families and made 47% of the country's agricultural production in the hands of small producers and cooperatives. Under Sandinistas, women had been given paid maternity leave and equal access to divorce, despite the heavily religious and patriarchal culture of the country. After initial violence and restrictions, the Sandinista government also guaranteed the rights and autonomy of the indigenous, non-Hispanic community. But in addition to CIA meddling and an armed conflict with the Contras, the 1988 Hurricane Joan Miriam destroyed infrastructure and ruined the agricultural industry, exacerbating an already in progress recession.

So, in 1990, the right-wing fundamentalist party the Violeta Chamorro belonged to moved to privatize industries, take back land, and ramp up the structural adjustment program to be eligible for an IMF loan. By 1994, between 1990 and 1994, Nicaragua received the highest per capita foreign aid of any developing country, as the illiteracy rate rose, healthcare became increasingly privatized, and the state budget was cut in half. The US put a lot of money and resources into Nicaragua during the Chamorro period with the goal of sending Sandinistas into irreversible retreat, largely funding conservative trade unions, the Supreme Council of Private Enterprise, and conservative non-governmental organizations. Jesse Helms, the Senate Foreign Relations chair, led calls for Nicaragua to give back land to supporters of the dictatorship the Sandinistas had overthrown. Meanwhile, the Sandinista party was splintering, and Daniel Ortega was preparing his political comeback with a radically different ideology than before.

Of all the countries in South America, Colombia received the most US money in the early '90s, and most of it went to the police, who were both fighting and benefiting from the thriving drug trade. Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellín Cartel, and other drug lords were in the middle of terrorizing the government into blocking an extradition agreement with the US, and the violence seemed never-ending. Finally, Colombia's 1991 Constitution prohibited the US from extraditing Colombian citizens, and César Gaviria's government handled Escobar with kid gloves, promising he would get special treatment and a reduced sentence if he agreed to give up his narco-terrorism campaign. Escobar agreed and was incarcerated in his mansion, La Catedral, a fabulous private prison with amenities like a jacuzzi and a bar. Unsurprisingly, Escobar continued running the cartel from his prison, and when the government made plans to move him to a regular prison in 1992, when he caught wind of it, he fled.

While hundreds of soldiers and police intensified their manhunt, today, embarrassed authorities were still trying to figure out how Escobar could have escaped from a prison surrounded by the Colombian Army. Their best guess is that during a gun battle with soldiers who were trying to move him from the prison to a military base yesterday morning, Escobar and nine other traffickers slipped out with the help of sympathetic guards. Speculation is Escobar used a tunnel, but authorities cannot find one. The escape is a major setback for the Colombian government because when Escobar surrendered last year, the Colombians argued they could keep him safe in one of their prisons rather than extradite him to the United States. He spent the next year being hunted down by the US, Colombian governments, the cartel, and Los Pepes, a paramilitary group of his enemies. He was finally located on December 2nd, 1993, and killed in a shootout.

The Colombian government turned its attention away from the Medellín Cartel to the Cali Cartel, who grew to have control of 80% of the world's cocaine market at its peak. So, while Escobar was gone, the violence didn't end, and it wasn't all narco-terrorism either. By 1993, an average of 11 people were killed per day in the first half of the year in Colombia by a combination of state forces, guerrilla groups, and drug mafias. Between '92 and '99, Western Colombia was terrorized by a child rapist and murderer with approximately 200 victims, mostly boys, going missing and turning up in mass graves. The perpetrator, Luis Garavito, got away with it for so long because of the corrupt nature of the police and the widespread killings of street children, sex workers, and other undesirables that were linked to police.

In March 1993, there was international outrage from the news that a 10-year-old girl named Catalina Vásquez was raped and killed inside of a Bogotá police station while going to visit her father, a cop. There was an increased call for police reform, and the murderer was eventually revealed to be a cop.

So, at the dawn of the '90s in Peru, the country was in massive debt, and the population was suffering from malnutrition. It was estimated that over half of them were living in abject misery. Detailed Time magazine in 1990: "Overnight, the price of gasoline jumped from 10 cents per gallon to more than $2, and food prices rose 300%." The 1990 presidential elections were shaken up when dark horse candidate Alberto Fujimori challenged the white neoliberal candidate due to his Japanese ancestry. The public affectionately called him "El Chino" or "China Man." He campaigned on a somewhat left-leaning populist platform and netted 62.4% of the popular vote.

Upon entering office, he promptly accepted World Aid, began pressing Congress for more aggressive means to catch Abimael Guzmán, the Shining Path leader, who had evaded capture for 12 years as the terrorist group bombed infrastructure and slaughtered civilians. And Congress wasn't in total agreement with that. So, in 1992, Fujimori led a self-coup by shutting down Congress and suspending the Constitution and Judiciary. This act was denounced by the international community but allegedly supported by the Peruvian public. After all, they had to deal with The Shining Path. In May 1992 alone, there were reported 123 terrorist attacks, and 112 of them were alleged by the Fujimori government to be by The Shining Path, who were ramping up their violence in response to the coup.

Fujimori issued decrees with harsh penalties for terrorists and collaborators. Certain areas with heavy Shining Path activity were labeled emergency zones where constitutional rights were suspended to fight the terrorists. After July 16th, 1992, bombings killed 25 people and injured 155 more in Lima, Peruvian authorities increased surveillance, which led to the apprehension of Abimael Guzmán and the fall of Shining Path. While Fujimori was celebrated for stamping out The Shining Path, it didn't obscure his major flaws. In 1994, his own wife, Susana Higuchi, denounced him as a corrupt tyrant. Fujimori was eligible to run for president again in 1995, the same year Susana filed for divorce, and Fujimori's eligibility worked out for a bunch of parties, including the US and the head of Peru's National Intelligence Service, Vladimiro Montesinos. Under Montesinos' firm grip, to the point that he was the de facto leader of Peruvian affairs, Fujimori had abandoned

His campaign platform and enacted policies more aggressive than his neoliberal opponent had championed. This included the Fuji shock, or making state-owned enterprises private, and implementing structural adjustment for IMF loans, which, as you've noticed, has come up a lot in this episode.

Montesinos remarked about Fujimori, "Once he is completely malleable, he does nothing at all without me knowing." The administration spent a lot of money bribing Peruvian media to not question Fujimori, in addition to producing more trash TV. Montesinos had been pocketing $1 million a year from the CIA since 1990 with the assurance that he would serve US business interests, like when he gave US company Newmont a majority ownership of a gold mine.

Montesinos and Fujimori were aligned with the plot to implement Plan Verde, a military opt by the Peruvian Armed Forces to control the country via media censorship and the genocide of indigenous and impoverished Peruvians. In 1991, the National Population Program was developed by the Peruvian National Population Council. Beginning in 1993, 200,000 women would be sterilized without their consent before the decade was over, which was facilitated in part by the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, and their justification was the 1974 Kissinger Report, which encouraged low populations in developing countries to serve US interests.

Speaking of US facilitation of oppression in South America, there were the revelations about the Archives of Terror found in 1992. Inside an old abandoned building in Paraguay were documents detailing the secret kidnappings, tortures, and killings of thousands of Latin Americans, mostly leftist, by security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, and the US's Operation Condor. "Remarked Castro on the hypocrisy of American benevolence in 1994. Those who block a US have had good relations with South Africa, excellent relations with Chile, where thousands of people have been killed, and in Argentina, where thousands of people are missing."

Okay, so let's take it to the East. India's New Economic Policy in 1991 saw the country shift from socialism to private enterprise. It began the decade not being able to pay foreign debts and was impacted by rising oil prices. So, under a new prime minister, Narim Har, it embarked on structural adjustment programs and welcomed a bunch of foreign investors, including big US brands, impacting the social trends and finances of the world's second most populous country. Middle-class urban Indians benefited more than the poor rural ones, and a caste system remained in place. But there were a lot of positive changes. Indian people had access to more news sources than ever before, and there was a Renaissance of Hindu culture among middle-class, English-speaking Indians. Bollywood turned out movies that bolstered the country's national film industry, and there was a noteworthy rise in representation of women in media.

In 1992, an event known as The Bombay Riots killed 900 people in what is now Mumbai. India's neighbor, Sri Lanka, was in the midst of an ongoing civil war that erupted in 1983. The government was fighting Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, whose support dropped after the 1991 bombing assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian prime minister and then Congress president. India was further rattled in March 1993 when 12 coordinated terrorist bombings in Mumbai killed 257 people and injured 1,400. Later, in September 1993, an earthquake in Latur killed roughly 10,000 people and injured another 30,000.

In 1991, in Thailand, a military coup by the National Peacekeeping Council overthrew the first elected prime minister since 1976. The NPKC abolished the constitution, imposed martial law, and banned political gatherings of more than five people. The military had been largely in control of Thailand since 1932, but the April 7th, 1992, election of a general to the prime minister position by the NPKC pissed the population off so badly that they began protesting. After nearly a month of protest, there were harsh crackdowns in Bangkok between May 17th and 20th that led to 52 people killed, 696 injured, and 175 disappearances. Thousands were arrested and detained. When asked to explain why unarmed civilians had been shot at, the interior minister said, "Who said they didn't have weapons? They had sticks smashing around. They also had hands, the most important weapon."

The government tried to spin the protest as being similar to 1970s protests by Thai leftists, but the narrative fell flat because so many of the protesters were middle class and students with capitalist interests. "Because they were middle class, they had access to the international market and ideas that put them at odds with the interests of the military and conservative bureaucrats," said a 26-year-old teacher. "This is Thailand. We are not Burma. The people want democracy. They want to be able to control their lives, but the soldiers, they just want power."

And the fourth largest country in the world, Indonesia, which just so happened to be the US's largest export market, there was a lot brewing. The country is in a prime location connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and it held the interest of the US because of its large economy, which longtime president Suharto wanted to liberalize. But there was a growing population who disliked Suharto. In the Indonesian-occupied East Timor, in 1991, 200 pro-independence protesters were killed at the Santa Cruz Cemetery. In Dili, although it was part of an ongoing genocide since 1975, it didn't garner much attention until the Santa Cruz Massacre. Asked an editorial, "President Bush's vaunted New World Order spring to the rescue of Kuwait, but what has he done lately for Timor?" It brought international pressure to Indonesia and encouraged a US senator's support of East Timorese independence. In 1993, the State Department under Clinton joined the UN in criticizing Indonesia after initially supporting it, but business, not human rights, was America's primary priority, as the US was still selling weapons to Indonesia.

By 1994, as for others in Indonesia, manufacturing was booming, and infrastructure was better, and the poverty rate and unemployment were down. By the mid-90s, Suharto's family was corrupt, though, and wages were extremely low. Like in the case of Thailand, a rising middle class was rejecting aging Suharto, which made the secession question for Indonesia's future more pressing. Indonesia's wages would be made even lower because of its membership in the World Trade Organization. Additionally, native Indonesians resented the rise in Chinese business activity, as Chinese people were only 3% of the population but owned 75% of the private sector. In 1994, tens of thousands of people participated in a labor demonstration that ended with businesses being looted and a Chinese man being killed. The riots began because mostly Chinese factory workers refused to abide by the new nationwide rise in minimum wage.

In July 1990, in the Philippines, an earthquake ripped through the island of Luzon and killed approximately 1,621 people. And just a few months later, Typhoon Mike killed 816 people. And similarly devastating disasters followed, like a 1991 volcanic eruption and Tropical Storm Thelma during one of the worst typhoon seasons on record. These are just some of the problems President Corazon Aquino was dealing with in the final years of her six-year presidency, which since 1986 had marked the end of authoritarian rule in the Philippines. Under her, employment and inflation soared, as the economy was impacted by the loss of US military bases. The US attempted to extend its lease on the Subic Bay Naval Base, its only Filipino base remaining, but was denied because the two countries couldn't agree on a lease price. Aquino had managed to squash six coup attempts during her time as president, and she didn't seek re-election in 1992. And who can blame her?

As the country approached the 100-year mark of its imperial relationship with the United States, several women's groups attempted to draw attention to average Filipino women, sex workers, and imperialist exploitation in contrast with the coverage and prominence of Aquino and Imelda Marcos. With Aquino's blessing, the former first lady had returned to the Philippines in 1991 after being exiled with her late dictator husband in 1986. Imelda Marcos became a contender for president but was then arrested in January 1992 for keeping money illegally abroad in Swiss bank accounts. Though she withdrew from the election, she came in sixth place and was convicted on other corruption charges in 1993 before appealing it and turning her attention to being a congresswoman. The winner of the 1992 election was the Aquino-endorsed Fidel Ramos, whose main goals were aligned with economic growth in a plan dubbed "Philippines 2000." Ramos reformed banking, made peace with armed rebel groups, improved infrastructure to get rid of electricity blackouts that plagued the country during Aquino's presidency, turned former military bases into shipping centers, installed fiber optic cables, motivated tourism, and campaigned to bring back the death penalty.

In 1992, it was reported that the Japanese stock market value was half of its late 1989 peak, and that the country was on the verge of recession. Construction projects failed, land values plummeted, and GDP stalled. The economy impacted home life too. The divorce rate shot up from 1990 onward. It was reported that unemployed men were being referred to as "oversized garbage who stuck to their wives like wet fallen leaves because they had nothing else to do." The fertility rate, which had long been on a downward slide, continued to drop. The marriage rate dropped by 25%. As America's third largest market, US economists were worried about the impact of the Japanese bubble bursting, but some saw a silver lining: that the country they had feared in the 1980s wasn't invaluable.

In 1993, new leadership unseated the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party. Going forward, Japan was poised to increase its spending to fix the economy, create a two-party system, and be in a new era of relations with the rest of Asia, with whom it had been closed to since World War II. This was easier said than done, as Japan still had not atoned for its treatment of Korean women during the war. The issue of "comfort women" had been discussed openly since democratization in South Korea in the late '80s, and on October 17th, 1990, 37 women's organizations demanded the Japanese government acknowledge that it had sanctioned the confinement and rape of women by military soldiers. The issue gained greater visibility on August 14th, 1991, when a brave woman named Kim Hak-sun came forward because she heard news that the Japanese government denied having recruited "comfort women." No woman had attached her name to the issue before out of shame, until Kim. The next year, a university professor provided documents proving the Japanese military's involvement, leading to a full inquiry. While Japan officially apologized in 1992 and gave money to South Korea, several prominent Japanese politicians continued to deny that the government knew that as many as 200,000 Asian girls, as young as 12, were raped 10 to 100 times a day during World War II by Japanese soldiers.

Japan's gender issues came up again when wealthy commoner and career woman Masako Owada married into the royal family in 1993. She had gone to school in America, and people wondered if her time at Harvard had left her Americanized or loose. Her 32-year-old fiancé, Prince Naruhito, was the oldest unmarried heir in the 1500-year-old dynasty's history. Masako's pedigree made people wonder why a liberalized woman would marry into the repressive Japanese royal family in the midst of Japan's rapid economic downfall and its pivot to opening up. Others wondered if Masako's marriage would aid liberalization and make the royal family more open. "Masako left the palace. Many in the crowd now hope that she'll act as a catalyst for change in the deeply conservative Imperial household, bring new life to a centuries-old institution that has fallen behind the times."

Lastly, in Japan, a religious cult named Aum Shinrikyo was growing in number and influence, while also being responsible for 17 chemical and biological attacks between 1990 and 1995. The cult, which had a small following of approximately 200 in America, 35,000 supporters in Russia, and 50,000 in Japan, had turned to violence after 25 of its members unsuccessfully ran for office in 1990. The leader, Shoko Asahara, prophesied that a conflict between the US and Japan would end the world, and only followers of the cult would survive. One of Asahara's missions, in addition to acquiring and building weapons, was sending followers to Zaire in 1992 to acquire Ebola for a biological weapon. After the small attacks of the first half of the decade, they had their eyes on something big for 1995.

In 1991, North Korea and the United States became locked in crisis when Kim Il-sung announced it would withdraw from an anti-nuclear treaty. For 3 years, the US and North Korea squabbled, and Jimmy Carter helped negotiate a deal to end the crisis. In October 1994, North Korea also agreed to dismantle its nukes. In that same year, Kim Il-sung died and was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-il.

At the dawn of the '90s, China was licking its wounds in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square, and the media coverage. Economic growth from 1989 to 1991 was slow. Hardliner members of the Communist core were weakened by majority interests in the fall of the Soviet Union, and China pressed forward with its reform and opening policies. In 1990, the Shanghai Stock Exchange was opened. In 1992, China added Shanghai to the five Special Economic Zones, which Deng Xiaoping wished the country had done sooner. Though Deng had retired in 1989, he was still the de facto, though rarely seen, leader until 1992. That year, he embarked on his surprise and widely covered Southern tour. In his last public appearances, the 88-year-old visited all of the Special Economic Zones. He emphasized the importance and inevitability of China opening up to foreign investment and enterprise, saying that it was crucial for the country to modernize. He also encouraged China to reach the economic level of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea in the next two decades.

At the time of Deng's Southern tour, China was negotiating entry into the World Trade Organization and bidding for a chance to host the 2000 Olympics. In a setback that many Chinese people characterized as embarrassing, they lost the hosting rights to Sydney. After Deng's tour, foreign investment exploded, primarily from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, followed by the US and Europe. Shortly after, the 14th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party promoted several market-oriented reformers, including the new General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who was installed in 1993.

Life in Special Economic Zones had been rapidly changing since they were first introduced. For instance, Guangdong, at the time China's richest province and home to 63 million people, was thriving and complicated. By 1992, private and foreign investment accounted for nearly 30% of Guangdong's gross output. Hong Kong, which was set to revert to Chinese rule from British colonization in '97, wanted lots of low-cost production sites, so it financed a network of highways, railroads, and bridges to cut the commute from Guangdong to Hong Kong to 90 minutes flat, and the province's workers made more than the national average. New markets emerged around these work sites, from restaurants to cafes to shopping centers to more illicit industries.

From 1991 to 1996, the mutilated bodies of 13 sex workers were found around Guangzhou. The events were initially suppressed in media to maintain the image of prosperous Special Economic Zones that were not harbingers of doom like the capitalist societies of the West. But when one body washed ashore in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong press reported the story, leading to the moniker "The Guangzhou Ripper." The head of the Guangzhou police remarked, "I have never come across anything like this. Maybe he copied from the West." The killer was caught and sentenced to death.

So life in Special Economic Zones was different in a whole bunch of other ways too. Pawn shops came back in 1991. Gambling, which had been illegal since Mao's 1949 takeover, came back via horse racing. In April 1992, gone was an attempt at egalitarianism. There was a new service industry featuring fast food workers, maids, and cooks for the grown wealthy businessmen. After Deng's visit, Guangdong decontrolled grain prices, becoming the first province to do so. The opening of China continued long-running debates on whether or not their loosening economic policies would loosen its political and social authoritarianism. But the CCP would continuously take a more conservative view of liberalizing the market, insisting that the state be in control of some aspects of the economy to mitigate the harms of capitalism. China continued Marxist-Leninist policies by maintaining control and a central authority. Leaders were chosen by the CCP, ran a town, then a province, and then served in the Politburo, ensuring and preserving the hierarchy. Meanwhile, citizens themselves understood their relationship with the government as an exchange of political control and social privileges for services like free healthcare. But the CCP couldn't run everything. In 1992, a man named Li Hongzhi introduced the Falun Gong religion movement. It quickly swept China like other Qigong meditation groups, but the movement wouldn't stay in the good graces of the Chinese Communist Party for long.

The strain between America and China was shown in 1993 during the Yinhe incident, when the CIA alleged that a Chinese merchant ship was transporting chemical warfare ingredients from North Korea to Iran. The Chinese government denied this, and the US Navy followed the Yinhe all the way from the East China Sea to the Persian Gulf, but no contraband was found. The event embarrassed the Clinton administration, who again wasn't all that clear on when to intervene in foreign affairs, and pissed off China. That same year, China tested nuclear weapons, ending the worldwide de facto moratorium.

Reagan's eight years in office were marred by massive spending on foreign policy with a greatly reduced revenue. So by 1990, the recession was clear, and the deficit was large. The federal budget debt stood at $2.8 trillion, three times larger than it had been in 1980. When Bush was negotiating the 1991 budget, he found it hard to stick to his campaign promise of no new taxes because the government needed revenue. After hell-long negotiations, Bush caved and agreed to bump taxes. According to Bush, the plan was for the Republican and Democratic leaders, including House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, to walk out together and inform the press in a show of bipartisanship, so that both parties took equal blame and so that Republicans looked united. But instead, Gingrich abandoned the press conference and would lead the Republican opposition to the budget, which increased the maximum individual income tax rate from 28% to 31% and raised the individual alternative minimum tax rate from 21% to 24%, larger tax increases than originally planned. Hardline Republicans would never truly forgive Bush for this, and the reneging on his campaign promise made him look weak.

Further hurting Bush's reputation was the fact that he raised domestic spending, breaking with Reagan's supply-side economic policies. This includes the American with Disabilities Act, and when he authorized a federal bailout of the Savings and Loan industry. In 1992, 4.5 million Americans lost their jobs, and the unemployment rate sat at 7.8% in June 1992, the highest since 1982. This was due to huge company layoffs and collapses, conflated by the volatile nature of foreign investment, like by the Japanese. All of this would be of immense interest during the 1992 election.

Bush also signed the 1990 Immigration Act into law, which led to more immigrants in the decade than anyone prior, and the effects would be clear on the population and politics for years to come. Another thing with ripple effects: Bush's Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, increased the number of private contractors in the military, and in 1992, Halliburton beat out 36 other companies for a lucrative 5-year contract with the Pentagon to carry out US military operations for profit. Over it, Cheney just so happened to own stock in the company.

Next to conservatives, Bush [ __ ] up with his first Supreme Court nomination on the advisement of his Chief of Staff, John Sununu. Bush chose Judge David Souter to be the conservative replacement for champion of civil liberties Justice William Brennan, who stepped down in 1990. Souter was easily confirmed that year, despite the National Organization of Women protesting against him outside of chambers. Then-president Molly Yard said, "He would end freedom for women in this country." Instead, Souter would uphold abortion in 1992's landmark case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Other opinions tended to be liberal and/or moderate. Ten years after he was confirmed, a bitter op-ed called the moderate judge "a liberal jurist sold to a gullible Chief of Staff."

So, of course, Bush's second nomination in 1992 for Clarence Thomas would be of the utmost importance to restore his conservative reputation and conservative control of the Supreme Court, and we'll be back to Clarence Thomas multiple times in this series.

In January 1992, while at a banquet in Japan, Bush threw up in the prime minister's lap. This extremely embarrassing moment was made worse by the fact that it was captured on camera and shown around the world. CNN falsely reported that Bush was dead when a man impersonated a member of Bush's cabinet, and it was a major [ __ ] for the 24-hour news channel, who regularly reported false or misleading information that wasn't as verifiable as, like, a president being dead.

As Bush continued fighting for his life on the campaign main trail, in August 1992, Hurricane Andrew ripped through the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana. Federal help was slow to arrive, pissing off residents, reported the Christian Science Monitor. Bush's campaign advisers, panicky about losing Florida's 25 electoral votes, hoped to turn the despair and skepticism of the battered storm victims to gratitude for belated assistance. Under Bush, Congress passed the most expensive disaster aid package in history at that time: $1.1 billion. $9 billion of that money went to Florida, which had been the hardest hit, and Bush would carry the state by a slim margin. The main thing that Bush had going for him going into the 1992 elections were his foreign policy records, like his decision to quickly mobilize the relatively cheap Gulf War and his successful invasion of Panama. But would that be enough?

So, that was a lot, right? And it's only the first episode. The end of the Cold War meant more countries undergoing structural adjustment and shock therapy, and former socialist states becoming capitalists. But it also meant renewed ethnic tensions and cultural divides that had been stymied by the Cold War. It also meant the migration of millions of humans fleeing war and environmental disasters. The "new world order" was just politispeak for American dominance in a global society that pretended to prioritize human rights. All of this will be relevant throughout the series, but especially in episode 7, when we come back to world events in the second half of the decade.

As for Americans, when people voted in 1988, the majority of them wanted four more years of the Reagan Revolution by choosing his vice president. But 4 years later, 62% of voters sided with critics of the Reagan Revolution and voted for a southern flyover state governor with little foreign experience. How did voters get here? While all of these world events brewed in the background and even sometimes made headline news, Americans were juggling their own recession, politics, and problems. They were being drenched in celebrity culture and splintering further into alternative views, lifestyles, and media, thanks to new technology and ideas. The new kid on the block seems suited to the audaciousness of the '90s.

In the next episode of "Lexual Does the '90s," we'll be discussing the rise of Clinton, the continued dominance of celebrity culture, and the lives of the rich and poor. If you're enjoying this series, make sure you become a patron for early access, sources, and extra content. Watch out for an upcoming episode of the companion series, "I Love the '90s," featuring deep dives on 1990s culture via food, true crime, and more. If you're a patron on my channel for $25 and up, you get listed in the credits of every '90s-related video. For $10 and up a month, you get listed in the credits of "I Love the '90s." For $5 a month, you get access to the exclusive companion series "Deep Cuts," which focuses on regional history that'll take you even further into the '90s. In the very first deep cut, we'll talk about the changing demographics of the UK, Posh and Becks, the royal family, and the Spice Girls. For $3 a month, you can get a glossary that gives you details on people, places, and things in this episode. Check it out at the link in my description box. Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you like and subscribe, and I hope you're excited for the rest of "Lexual Does the [Music] '90s."

The US was joined by the British Royal Air Force, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt. Egypt? Who the [ __ ] is Egypt? [Music]