Thus George McGovern ran for the presidency in 1968 on the slogan "Come home America" and the prevailing climate of disengagement and isolationism led Senator Mansfield to call for the removal of US troops from Europe. (3) With the end of the Vietnam war and the collapse of detente the liberals were largely re-absorbed into the foreign policy consensus. With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the demise of the Soviet Union, however, the American internationalist foreign policy coalition has once again come under challenge. This time, however, the criticism comes largely from the right, from those conservatives who opposed totalitarianism but who can not be relied upon to support an expansive foreign policy which is not motivated by anti communism. The full implications of this fracturing of the cold war foreign policy consensus were not immediately apparent since the pace of international events left the initiative with the administration. While there were occasions where Secretary of State James Baker felt the need to worry that Congress would initiate troop cuts from Europe, no momentum was generated for an alternative foreign policy vision. (4) Indeed, while still reacting cautiously to reforms in the Soviet Union and to the restructuring of the security relationship between the superpowers, particularly in Europe, the United States was forced to respond to an international crisis which at the time seemed to many to be a "defining moment for US foreign policy" in the post cold war security environment. (5) The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 was met by a determined and decisive act of American leadership of the international community in building a coalition of thirty countries in order to reverse this act of aggression. Soviet support both of the US leadership role in the United Nations Security Council and then, in the Persian Gulf war itself, was seen as an achievement of particular importance and as a herald of the new post cold war security environment. Bush saw the activities of the great powers acting in concert through the UN over the Gulf crisis as setting the pattern for what he termed a 'New World Order' (NWO) "where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the common aspirations of mankind - peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law." (6) The fact the Soviet Union had now stopped blocking the effective operation of the UN Security Council by the use of its veto powers was seen by the Bush administration as of enormous significance for the resolution of international disputes. Outlining his conception of the New World Order which these developments portended, Bush, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 1 October, 1990 explained that his was "a vision of a new partnership of nations that transcends the cold war; a partnership based on consultation, cooperation and collective action...whose goals are to increase democracy, increase prosperity, increase the peace and reduce arms." (7) It was a vision which drew heavily on the Wilsonian traditions in American foreign policy of moral idealism. This in turn had informed Franklin D. Roosevelt's call for a post war order that would provide "freedom from fear" - "everywhere in the world" and had inspired Kennedy in his Inaugural Address to call for "a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved." (8) No longer able to draw upon anti communism as a basis of American foreign policy, Bush exalted the liberal internationalist foundations of US international involvement. Bush hoped that this NWO could replace the cold war as the defining characteristic of the international system with an order in which a functioning collective security system could operate in the way that the founders of the United Nations Security Council had intended. In doing this the President also hoped to create a domestic consensus around his new foreign policy conception. In the immediate aftermath of the Persian Gulf War Bush's vision of an American foreign policy based on US leadership of an international community able and willing to share in the costs and responsibilities of establishing a NWO was embraced enthusiastically by many commentators and seemed to have widespread domestic support. A new role for American foreign policy seemed to be on the horizon in which the United States would take the lead in galvanising the international community into action for the purpose of maintaining the order of the pre-existing status quo. Although avowedly multilateral, Bush's vision was one which saw the United States as pivotal in the leadership role. Indeed newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote confidently that in the immediate post cold war world the distribution of power in the international system was not multipolar but in reality was more "unipolar". He argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union as a superpower and the Persian Gulf War had shown that "The centre of world power is the unchallenged superpower, the United States, attended by its Western allies...There is but one first-rate power and no prospect in the immediate future of any power to rival it." For Krauthammer "American preeminence is based on the fact that it is the only country with the military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in whatever part of the world it chooses to involve itself." And furthermore that without American leadership the international community would be incapable of establishing any sort of political order since "where the United States does not tread, the alliance does not follow." (9) Krauthammer's analysis, in language which left no room for ambiguity, demonstrated the centrality of America's role in Bush's conception of the New World Order.

It was a vision of Marshall Bush leading an international posse of like-minded states in order to uphold the rule of international law in world politics. It was also a policy for which Bush had started to prepare America's armed forces even before the Persian Gulf War, declaring in his speech before the Aspin Institute in August 1990 that the US must prepare to meet regional threats "in whatever corner of the globe they may occur." (10) This conception of a New World Order, however, was short lived for both domestic and international reasons. Indeed Bush himself dropped the phrase from his vocabulary in the run up to the 1992 Presidential elections. Domestically, Bush had not built a consensus of support either behind the Gulf war itself or his more general New World Order idea. The concept was criticised variously for being dangerously open-ended, neo-imperialist, based on a misunderstanding of the implications of the Persian Gulf War and above all else as being of questionable value and relevance to the United States in the 1990s. The triumphalist language of Krauthammer and others awakened the concerns of liberal critics concerned at the hegemonic, even imperial implications of this new policy. Critics such as Tucker and Hendrickson warned of the "Imperial Temptation" which the new international circumstances presented to the US and cautioned that the NWO "if put into practice, would extend an American security guarantee to virtually the entire world. In pursuit of this vision of a new world order the nation is to exercise a police power which confers the right to prevent states of the developing world from acquiring certain weapons, and which imposes the duty to guarantee the territorial integrity of the members of the international community." For them, the NWO was "the functional equivalent of global containment" a policy which "led us into Vietnam". (11) For other critics, such as James Chase, however, the NWO was a posture which "closely resembles our role as a global gendarme". For Chase this foreign policy vision was also not very new, supporting as it did America's traditional role of preserving the international status quo. (12) A more widespread criticism of the NWO concept was the idea that the events of the Persian Gulf War represented a unique set of circumstances which could not be extrapolated into a set of guiding principals for the post cold war period. Most important of these exceptional factors was the commonality of interest of the international community in securing continued free access to cheap Middle Eastern oil. For no other purpose, it was argued, could such a high degree of consensus be achieved for such a costly and potentially risky collective action. (13) The clear cut nature of the act of aggression was also an unusual characteristic of the conflict. The naked attempt by one state to plunder and incorporate another sovereign member of the United Nations was as flagrant a challenge to the established principles of the international system as it was an exceptional political event. The Persian Gulf War also occurred at a uniquely opportune moment for the exercise of US leadership. Not only was the Soviet Union so distracted by its own internal difficulties that it could do nothing other than support the American action, but the major western allies were still sufficiently entrenched in their cold war habit of supporting US leadership that they accepted Washington's agenda of how the crisis should be handled. This was the case despite the fact that America opposed the efforts of France and other states to find a peaceful solution to the crisis; insisted that the embargo would expire on 15 January unless the UN resolutions were adhered to even though many other states preferred to give the sanctions more time; decided when and how the war should be fought; and at the same time insisting that other nations should pay for the costs of the operation in lieu of their inability to provide a military contribution. (14) As Robert Hunter wrote shortly after the war "it is unlikely that next time only costs and responsibilities will be shared and not also the power of decision" (15) It was not only the exceptional nature of the conflict and the international environment in which it occurred, however, which proved the Persian Gulf conflict an unsuitable template for future international action. This was the case because the war ended with Saddam Hussain, who Bush had described as "worse than Hitler" still in power and the United States still engaged with Iraq in protecting the rebellious Kurds in the North and the Shi'ites in the South from the retribution of the Iraqi army. This rather unsatisfactory end to the conflict demonstrated that even in clear cut cases of aggression with vital interests at stake the consequences do not always work out as intended. This was so much the case that much of the initial triumphalism which resulted from the war and which underpinned the hopes for a NWO dissipated over the following year. A violation of the international status quo which had seemed entirely clear cut had ended with the thorny question of self determination for the Kurds unresolved and an open ended commitment of the international community limiting the exercise of Iraqi sovereignty over areas of its own territory. What had seemed straight forward and easy had ended complicated and difficult to resolve. It was this aspect of the conflict, and thus the new world order, which seemed to dampen the initial optimism which had surrounded Bush's vision for the future. What at first had seemed like a victory for a new just and stable order was increasingly seen as no more than the reestablishment of the status quo ante, the restoration of the old order in the Gulf with Saddam Hussain still in control of a rogue state.

The Bush presidency itself did little to change this perception of the new world order or to sustain either international or domestic political support for its vision. Bush failed to develop a coherent set of policies for realising the order which he had proposed. Indeed as one commentator observed at the time "The Bush administration has been far more adept at clearing up the debris of an old world than building the framework of the new." (16) This conservatism at the root of Bush's foreign policy was also evident in his approach to other developments in 1991. Rather than supporting the establishment of a new world order as some of his rhetoric seemed to imply, Bush seemed eager to preserve the existing establishment even if that meant opposing change promoted in the cause of self determination. Thus those forces in favour of the disintegration of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were opposed by the Bush administration even though this meant supporting the centralist institutions of these communist powers rather than the often more democratically inspired secessionists. This was a policy which contributed to a sense of confusion within the United States over both what America had been fighting for in the Persian Gulf and what America's role should be in the post-Cold War world. (17) Rather than building a new domestic consensus around his liberal internationalist foreign policy vision, Bush instead energised what had until that point been an incipient dabate about America's role in the world. The debate over participation in the Persian Gulf War itself was a good indication of the foreign policy debates which were to follow the conflict.Substantial sections of public and Congressional opinion were opposed to the war and remained sceptical about America's use of force in this crisis right up until the conflict itself. As Gergen points out, when Congress finally did vote on a resolution supporting Bush's actions at time when military action was imminent whatever their decision "the 52-47 favourable margin in the Senate was the smallest approval rating that body had given to a US military action since the War of 1812." (18) The Persian Gulf War accelerated the foreign policy debate which the end of the cold war had started. The liberation of Kuwait provided a military finale to the cold war struggle and provided a natural watershed for reevaluation. Now that the US had won both wars it was time to take stock both of America's cold war role and its New World Order role, the putative model which President Bush was presenting as exemplified by the recent conflict. A central component of that stock taking was an analysis within the US of the relationship between America and its allies, particularly as demonstrated in the recent conflict. Was it an indication of strength or weakness that the war had been fought primarily by American forces and yet had been paid for largely by others? Was the fact that the U.S could persuade its allies to fund the operation evidence of shrewd diplomacy or economic hardship? And furthermore, was the fact that the US alone could muster forces sufficient to mount such an operation evidence of prudent military preparedness or of an over lavish and wasteful misapplication of scarce resources? As part of the general debate over the nature of the victory which the United States had obtained in the Gulf there was also a great deal of analysis as to the relative costs and benefits for America and its allies of the defeat of Iraq. (19) As a debate it had much in common with many of the burden sharing debacles about allied contributions to the collective defence which had taken place in the 1980s with increased intensity. This time, however, there was an added edge to the discussion for two reasons. The first of these was that part of the burden in the Gulf war had been paid for in American lives while many other allies merely contributed to the war financially. The suggestion that this could be an acceptable pattern for future operations ran counter to the moral Wilsonian traditions of American foreign policy in which Americans see their world role as selfless and virtuous. Such a self image does not sit comfortably with the US military being seen as an international mercenary, the hired gun of Germany and Japan. The second difference was a feeling that international action such as that in the Gulf, even if led by the United States, did not benefit the United States proportionately to its role in the mission. As Michael Brenner explained at the time, "Divided as it was in the run up to war over the need for military action the country was united in its conviction that Americans were undertaking a sacrifice for the sake of partners who were unwilling to contribute to the common cause on a scale commensurate with their stake." (20) Thus the Persian Gulf experience not only failed to define a new role for American foreign policy in the wake of the cold war, it also highlighted the need both to redefine its relationship with its major allies and to reevaluate the utility of its instruments of foreign policy, such as the military, in light of this new environment. A part of this discussion, and in light of the collapse of the Soviet Union as a state as well as a superpower, was the questioning of the sources of American power and security. If American power was most obviously manifest in military terms while the political utility of this instrument was declining both absolutely and as a national asset then was this the most prudent way of providing for the security of the United States? Without the Soviet Union as a rival superpower to compare itself against, military power as an indices of strength seemed somewhat redundant. By contrast, America's economic competitors such as Germany and Japan were seen to be much stronger than the United States in some regards and these factors were viewed with increased saliency. The experience of the Gulf War, far from being a defining moment for US foreign policy, merely deepened the sense of confusion which the end of the Cold War had presented for American policy makers. Bush had appeared initially to offer leadership and direction for America's role in the world but then his vision was seen to lack substance and coherence, having nothing to say on the crisis in Bosnia, turning a blind eye to the coup against the democratically elected President in Haiti, and seeking to maintain a close relationship with China despite the massacre in Tiannanan Square. It was against this background that America in 1992 rejected both President Bush and the agenda of his administration which had been primarily focused on foreign affairs. Interestingly, however, in rejecting Bush the electors were not so much voting against Bush's foreign policy as such, for his approval ratings remaining high in this area; rather they rejected his foreign policy's priority within his administration. (21) In the first Presidential election since the end of the cold war foreign policy leadership was no longer the key issue for the electorate. (22) Bush lost not because of his foreign policy record but because of his failure to address the pressing domestic agenda facing America. The Presidential election was only about foreign policy in the sense that it rejected and reversed the traditional hierarchy of America politics, that matters of state should take precedence over domestic policy. The rejection of the centrality of foreign policy in national politics also meant that there was more tolerance of unorthodox ideas. This in part explains the support for eccentric billionaire Ross Perot.

As Deudney and Ikenberry argue "The plausibility of Ross Perot as a presidential candidate was made possible by the fact that the public did not assess him with the cold war standard - as a man who could calmly lead through crisis in the shadow of nuclear war." (23) This tolerance of unorthodox ideas also extended into the foreign policy realm, a transition which was made easy by the fact that many of these ideas were expressed in relation to the now dominant domestic policy agenda. Thus the 1992 Presidential race presented the first opportunity since the end of the cold war for a substantive debate about America's role in the world. It was a foreign policy debate, however, which was conducted very much in the context of the newly ascendent domestic agenda.