Divided America on the World Stage: Broken Government and Foreign Policy

Indeed by the mids, Democrats were leading the opposition to the War in Iraq — which became a major campaign issue in both the and elections. Republicans seem more interested in opposing President Obama than in the intellectual consistency of their opposition. The point is that when a party is out of power, non-interventionist positions have been the norm rather than the exception — whether or not those positions continue to define the party once they regain power. Just as the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party has itself subdued since Obama has been in power, the isolationist wing of the Republican Party had very little chance of gaining traction until Bush was out of office.

The need to defend or attack an incumbent president drives the agenda. To some extent, this explains the apparent role reversal of the parties now underway. Given the persistence of public anxiety over the economy, international issues are not likely to top the list of voter concerns in For this reason, the subject cannot and must not be ignored.

Rand Paul decides to run, it is likely that Republicans will have this debate whether or not he wins. Party nominees often adopt major ideas advocated by the first runner-up to help consolidate the party and strengthen their own platform and messaging for the general election. With no plausible Democratic primary challenger, the problem for Hillary Clinton in the campaign is not that she is too hawkish in absolute terms or even in comparison to Barack Obama though by all accounts she appears to be. The real danger is that she could be forced to defend her hawkish views against an anti-interventionist Republican opponent.

At a time when most Americans have grown tired of military interventions and are focused on domestic issues, Republicans would have a distinct advantage if they took that position. In this scenario, the most obvious and expedient way to turn the tables will be for the Clinton campaign to reframe the major foreign policy debates in terms of her own experience. Senator, and Secretary of State. At first glace, the experience debate looks like a slam-dunk for the Clinton campaign. But in fact it begs the question: Voters will correctly perceive the pivot to experience as an evasion, not a satisfactory answer.

With any luck, Republicans will nominate another neoconservative, in which case Hillary will be able to argue for caution and multilateralism. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Economic Strain at Home The financial crisis and Great Recession reset the political agenda, in no small part because of the economic wreckage they left in their wake.

Veterans, Iraq, and Afghanistan In the wake of our wars in the Middle East, the health care system for veterans has been completely overwhelmed with requests for treatment and care. Brave New World Thanks to the rapid evolution of military, surveillance, and information technology over the past twenty years, a Brave New World in national security politics has finally arrived. Power, Party, and Politics In recent decades, the party out of power has displayed much greater skepticism toward foreign interventions — especially those supported by the president.

Looking Ahead to Given the persistence of public anxiety over the economy, international issues are not likely to top the list of voter concerns in Russia hoped mainly for French support in its colonial disputes with the British Empire and even went so far as to agree with Austria-Hungary in to hold the question of the Balkans in abeyance for 10 years, thereby freeing resources for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the penetration of northern China.

The German foreign office thus did not take alarm at the alliance Bismarck had struggled so long to prevent. The Sino-Japanese War of —95 signaled the arrival of Japan on the world stage. Having seen their nation forcibly opened to foreign influence by Commodore Matthew C.

Brexit Is Good News for Russia but a Headache for NATO

Once the Meiji Restoration established strong central government beginning in , Japan became the first non-Western state to launch a crash program of industrialization. By the s its modern army and navy permitted Japan to take its place beside the Europeans as an imperial power. European intervention scaled back these gains, but a scramble for concessions in China eventuated.

The loser in the scramble, besides China, was Britain, which had previously enjoyed a near monopoly in the China trade. British fortunes suffered elsewhere during this high tide of imperialism from to Germany abandoned her long apathy toward the Middle East and won a concession for Turkish railroads. The kaiser, influenced by his envy of Britain, his own fondness for seafaring, and the worldwide impact of The Influence of Sea Power upon History by the American naval scholar Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan , determined that Weltpolitik was impossible without a great High Seas Fleet.

The prospect of a large German navy—next to the growing fleets of France, Russia, Japan, and the United States—meant that Britain would no longer rule the waves alone. The dawn of the 20th century was thus a time of anxiety for the British Empire as well. Challenged for the first time by the commercial, naval, and colonial might of many other industrializing nations, the British reconsidered the wisdom of splendid isolation. To be sure, in the Fashoda Incident of Britain succeeded in forcing France to retreat from the upper reaches of the Nile. But how much longer could Britain defend her empire alone?

Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain began at once to sound out Berlin on the prospect of global collaboration. A British demarche was precisely what the Germans had been expecting, but three attempts to reach an Anglo-German understanding, between and , led to naught. In retrospect, it is hard to see how it could have been otherwise. What Britain sought was German help in reducing Franco-Russian pressure on the British Empire and defending the balance of power. What Germany sought was British neutrality or cooperation while Germany expanded its own power in the world.

The failure of the Anglo-German talks condemned both powers to dangerous competition. The German navy could never hope to equal the British and would only ensure British hostility. But equality was not necessary, said Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. In this way Germany could extract concessions from London without alliance or war. What the Germans failed to consider was that Britain might someday come to terms with its other antagonists.

This was precisely what Britain did. The new German navy menaced Britain in her home waters. Soon the Panama Canal would enable the United States to deploy a two-ocean navy. He then shocked the world by concluding a military alliance with Japan, thereby securing British interests in East Asia and allowing the empire to concentrate its regional forces on India. To prevent being dragged into the conflict, the French and British shucked off their ancient rivalry and concluded an Entente Cordiale whereby France gave up opposition to British rule in Egypt , and Britain recognized French rights in Morocco.

Though strictly a colonial arrangement, it marked another step away from isolation for both Britain and France and another step toward it for the restless and frustrated Germans. The Russo-Japanese War of —05 was an ominous turning point. Contrary to all expectations, Japan triumphed on land and sea, and Russia stumbled into the Revolution of President Theodore Roosevelt mediated the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the war, and the tsar quelled the revolutionary flames with promises of parliamentary government, but the war resonated in world diplomacy.

Japan established itself as the leading Asian power. The example of an Oriental nation rising up to defeat a European great power emboldened Chinese, Indians, and Arabs to look forward to a day when they might expel the imperialists from their midst. And tsarist Russia, its Asian adventure a shambles, looked once again to the Balkans as a field for expansion, setting the stage for World War I.

But at the Algeciras Conference in , called to settle the Morocco dispute, only Austria-Hungary supported the German position. Far from breaking the Entente Cordiale, the affair prompted the British to begin secret staff talks with the French military. For some years Italian ambitions in the Mediterranean had been thwarted, and the attempt to conquer Abyssinia in had failed. So in Italy concluded a secret agreement pledging support for France in Morocco in return for French support of Italy in Libya.

Finally, and most critically, the defeated Russians and worried British were now willing to put to rest their old rivalry in Central Asia. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey also hinted at the possibility of British support for Russian policy in the Balkans, reversing a century-old tradition. The heyday of European imperialism thus called into existence a second alliance system, the Triple Entente of France, Britain, and Russia.

It was not originally conceived as a balance to German power, but that was its effect, especially in light of the escalating naval race. In the Royal Navy under the reformer Sir John Fisher launched HMS Dreadnought , a battleship whose size, armour, speed, and gunnery rendered all existing warships obsolete.

The German government responded in kind, even enlarging the Kiel Canal at great expense to accommodate the larger ships. What were the British, dependent on imports by sea for seven-eighths of their raw materials and over half their foodstuffs, to make of German behaviour? For France the Triple Entente was primarily a continental security apparatus. For Russia it was a means of reducing points of conflict so that the antiquated tsarist system could buy time to catch up technologically with the West.

But to the Germans the Triple Entente looked suspiciously like encirclement designed to frustrate their rightful claims to world power and prestige. German attempts to break the encirclement, however, would only alarm the entente powers and cause them to draw the loose strings into a knot. That in turn tempted German leaders, fearful that time was against them, to cut the Gordian knot with the sword. For after the focus of diplomacy shifted back to the Balkans, with European cabinets unaware, until it was too late, that alliances made with the wide world in mind had dangerously limited their freedom of action in Europe.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Europe before succumbed to hubris. Whether from ambition or insecurity, the great powers armed as never before in peacetime, with military expenditures reaching 5 to 6 percent of national income. Military conscription and reserve systems made available a significant percentage of the adult male population, and the impulse to create large standing armies was strengthened by the widespread belief that firepower and financial limitations would make the next war short and violent.

Simple reaction also played a large role. Only Britain did without a large conscripted army, but her naval needs were proportionally more expensive. In an age of heavy, rapid-fire artillery, infantry rifles, and railroads, but not yet including motor transport, tanks, or airplanes, a premium was placed by military staffs on mass, supply, and prior planning.

1. History of the United States - Wikipedia.
2. Vermiculture Technology: Earthworms, Organic Wastes, and Environmental Management.
3. Capitalism Comes to Maos Mausoleum : An Indian Goes Around the World - I;

European commanders assumed that in a continental war the opening frontier battles would be decisive, hence the need to mobilize the maximum number of men and move them at maximum speed to the border. The meticulous and rigid advance planning that this strategy required placed inordinate pressure on the diplomats in a crisis.

Politicians might hold back their army in hopes of saving the peace only at the risk of losing the war should diplomacy fail. What was more, all the continental powers embraced offensive strategies. Troops could then be transported east to meet the slower-moving Russian army. Worked out down to the last railroad switch and passenger car, the Schlieffen Plan was an apotheosis of the industrial age: None of the general staffs anticipated what the war would actually be like. Had they glimpsed the horrific stalemate in the trenches, surely neither they nor the politicians would have run the risks they did in Above the mass infantry armies of the early 20th century stood the officer corps, the general staffs, and at the pinnacle the supreme war lords: The army was a natural refuge for the central and eastern European aristocracies , the chivalric code of arms sustaining almost the only public service to which they could still reasonably lay claim.

Even in republican France a nationalist revival after excited public morale, inspired the military buildup, and both fueled and cloaked a revanche aimed at recovery of the provinces lost 40 years before. Popular European literature poured forth best sellers depicting the next war, and mass-circulation newspapers incited even the working classes with news of imperial adventures or the latest slight by the adversary. Various peace movements sprang up to counter the spirit of militarism before Most numerous and disturbing to those responsible for national defense were the socialists.

The Second International took the Marxist view of imperialism and militarism as creatures of capitalist competition and loudly warned that if the bosses provoked a war, the working classes would refuse to take part. A liberal peace movement with a middle-class constituency flourished around the turn of the century. As many as peace organizations are estimated to have existed in , fully half of them in Scandinavia and most others in Germany, Britain, and the United States.

Their greatest achievements were the Hague conferences of and , at which the powers agreed to ban certain inhumane weapons but made no progress toward general disarmament. The liberal peace movement also foundered on internal contradictions. To outlaw war was to endorse the international status quo, yet liberals always stood ready to excuse wars that could claim progressive ends. They had tolerated the wars of Italian and German unification, and they would tolerate the Balkan Wars against the Ottoman Empire in —13 and the great war in Another solution for many peace advocates was to transcend the nation-state.

To Marxists this image of capitalism was ludicrous; to Weber or Joseph Schumpeter it was correct but beside the point. Blood was thicker than class, or money; politics dominated economics; and irrationality, reason. Citing the waste, social discord, and international tension caused by the naval arms race he made several overtures to Germany in hopes of ending it. When these failed, Britain had little choice but to race more quickly than the Germans. Even radical Liberals like David Lloyd George had to admit that however much they might deplore arms races in the abstract, all that was liberal and good in the world depended on the security of Britain and its control of its seas.

In the end, war did not come over the naval race or commercial competition or imperialism. Nor was it sparked by the institutional violence of the armed states, but by underground terrorism in the name of an oppressed people. Nor did it come over the ambitions of great powers to become greater, but over the fear of one great power that unless it took vigorous action it might cease to exist altogether. It began in the Balkans.

In Austria-Hungary and Russia had agreed to put their dispute over the Balkans on ice. But everything else had changed. Russia was looking again at the Balkans for foreign policy advantage and enjoying, for the first time, a measure of British tolerance. In Serbia , the state most threatening to Vienna because of its ethnic tie to the Serbs and Croats inside the Dual Monarchy, a fundamental political shift had occurred.

Finally, in , a cabal of officers known as the Young Turks staged the first modernizing revolution in the Muslim world and tried to force the sultan to adopt liberal reforms. In particular the Young Turks called for parliamentary elections, thereby placing in doubt the status of Bosnia and Hercegovina , provinces still under Ottoman sovereignty but administered by Austria-Hungary since The Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Aloys Aehrenthal , proposed to settle the Bosnian issue and to crush Serbian ambitions once and for all by annexing the provinces.

To this purpose he teased the Russian foreign minister, Aleksandr Petrovich Izvolsky , with talk of a quid pro quo: Their response was to increase aid and comfort to their client Serbia and to determine never again to back down in the Balkans.

German politics were also approaching a breaking point. Agrarian interests continued to demand protection against foreign foodstuffs, but the tariffs imposed to that end harmed German industrial exports. A large armaments program, especially naval, compensated heavy industry for lost foreign markets.

The losers in the tariffs-plus-navy-legislation arrangement were consumers, who were taxed for the defense program after they had paid higher prices for bread. Popular resentment tended to increase the socialist vote, and the other parties could command a majority only by banding together.

Ten ways Trump has changed America - BBC News

When in Lord Haldane was dispatched to Berlin to discuss a suspension of the naval arms race, the kaiser spoiled chances for an accord by introducing a new naval bill two days before his arrival. The British then accelerated their own dreadnought construction. By now the failure of German policy was apparent. Clearly the British would not permit Germany to challenge their sea power , while the German army agreed in to tolerate further naval expansion only if the army were granted a sharp increase in funding as well. In the elections the Social Democrats won seats and became the largest party in the Reichstag.

A bold stroke, even at the risk of war, seemed the only way out of the double impasse. In Britain, Winston Churchill , then first lord of the Admiralty, withdrew his fleet from the Mediterranean to home waters, making mandatory even closer military coordination with France. The final prewar assault on the Ottoman empire also began in Italy cashed in her bargain with France over Libya by declaring war on Turkey and sending a naval squadron as far as the Dardanelles.

Simultaneously, Russian ministers in the Balkans brought about an alliance between the bitter rivals Serbia and Bulgaria in preparation for a final strike against Ottoman-controlled Europe. The Young Turks ended the conflict with Italy, ceding Libya, but failed to contain the Balkan armies. In May the great powers imposed a settlement; Macedonia was partitioned among the Balkan states, Crete was granted to Greece, and Albania was given its independence. Landlocked Serbia, however, bid for additional territory in Macedonia, and Bulgaria replied with an attack on Serbia and Greece, thus beginning the Second Balkan War in June In the peace that followed in August , Bulgaria lost most of her stake in the former Turkish lands plus much of the southern Dobruja region to Romania.

Serbia, however, doubled its territory and, flushed with victory, turned its sights on the Austro-Hungarian provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina. How might the Habsburg empire survive the rise of particularist nationalism in eastern Europe?

Navigation menu

Austrian statesmen had debated the question for 50 years, and the best answer seemed to be some form of federalism permitting political autonomy to the nationalities. Hence, the archduke was a marked man among the secret societies that sprang up to liberate Bosnia. Such is the logic of terrorism: The National Defense Narodna Odbrana was formed in Serbia in to carry on pro-Serbian and anti-Austrian agitation across the border. With his support, if not on his direct orders, a band of youthful romantics conspired to assassinate Franz Ferdinand during his state visit to Sarajevo.

On June 28, , which happened to be the Serbian national holiday, the archduke and his wife rode in an open car through the streets of the Bosnian capital. A bomb was thrown but missed.

But the lead driver in the procession took a wrong turn, the cars stopped momentarily, and at that moment the year-old Gavrilo Princip fired his revolver, killing both royal passengers. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy militarized and threatened conquests, while Britain and France attempted appeasement to avert another war in Europe. Roosevelt positioned the U. Japan tried to neutralize America's power in the Pacific by attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, , which catalyzed American support to enter the war.

The main contributions of the U. Much of the focus in Washington was maximizing the economic output of the nation. This was achieved by tens of millions of workers moving from low-productivity occupations to high efficiency jobs, improvements in productivity through better technology and management, and the move into the active labor force of students, retired people, housewives, and the unemployed, and an increase in hours worked.

• One Whisper Away: Ladies in Waiting;
• La Chasse au météore: deux versions différentes de ce manuscrit (édition intégrale) (Science-fiction française) (French Edition)!
• Ten ways Trump has changed America;
• Sun Care Decoded: Answers to Questions You Didnt Know to Ask.
• How to Appreciate an Aries: Real Life Guidance on How to Get Along and be Friends with the First Sign of the Zodiac.
• Vineta (German Edition)?
• Der Wiederbeginn an der Technischen Hochschule Dresden 1945: Die Karrieren von Kurt Beyer und Willy Gehler (German Edition).

It was exhausting; leisure activities declined sharply. People tolerated the extra work because of patriotism, the pay, and the confidence that it was only "for the duration", and life would return to normal as soon as the war was won. Most durable goods became unavailable, and meat, clothing, and gasoline were tightly rationed. In industrial areas housing was in short supply as people doubled up and lived in cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled, and Americans saved a high portion of their incomes, which led to renewed growth after the war instead of a return to depression.

The Allies saw Germany as the main threat and gave highest priority to Europe. American ground forces assisted in the North African Campaign that eventually concluded with the collapse of Mussolini's fascist government in , as Italy switched to the Allied side. On the home front , mobilization of the U. The wartime production boom led to full employment, wiping out this vestige of the Great Depression.

Indeed, labor shortages encouraged industry to look for new sources of workers, finding new roles for women and blacks. However, the fervor also inspired anti-Japanese sentiment , leading to internment of Japanese Americans. The terms of this executive order resulted in some , people of Japanese descent living in the US removed from their homes and placed in internment camps.

Two-thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children. United States Supreme Court case. Research and development took flight as well, best seen in the Manhattan Project , a secret effort to harness nuclear fission to produce highly destructive atomic bombs. Army Corps of Engineers. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb at the Trinity test , conducted at New Mexico's Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on 16 July The Allies pushed the Germans out of France but faced an unexpected counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge in December.

The final German effort failed, and, as Allied armies in East and West were converging on Berlin, the Nazis hurriedly tried to kill the last remaining Jews. The western front stopped short, leaving Berlin to the Soviets as the Nazi regime formally capitulated in May , ending the war in Europe. Though the nation lost more than , military personnel, [] the mainland prospered untouched by the devastation of war that inflicted a heavy toll on Europe and Asia. Participation in postwar foreign affairs marked the end of predominant American isolationism.

The awesome threat of nuclear weapons inspired both optimism and fear. Nuclear weapons were never used after , as both sides drew back from the brink and a "long peace" characterized the Cold War years, starting with the Truman Doctrine on May 22, There were, however, regional wars in Korea and Vietnam. Senate on a bipartisan vote approved U.

How America became a superpower

The primary American goal of —48 was to rescue Europe from the devastation of World War II and to contain the expansion of Communism, represented by the Soviet Union. In , the United States replaced piecemeal financial aid programs with a comprehensive Marshall Plan , which pumped money into the economy of Western Europe, and removed trade barriers, while modernizing the managerial practices of businesses and governments. Soviet head of state Joseph Stalin prevented his satellite states from participating, and from that point on, Eastern Europe, with inefficient centralized economies, fell further and further behind Western Europe in terms of economic development and prosperity.

In , the United States, rejecting the long-standing policy of no military alliances in peacetime, formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO alliance, which continues into the 21st century. In response the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact of communist states, leading to the " iron curtain ". In August the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon, thereby escalating the risk of warfare. The threat of mutually assured destruction however, prevented both powers from nuclear war, and resulted in proxy wars, especially in Korea and Vietnam , in which the two sides did not directly confront each other.

The unexpected leapfrogging of American technology by the Soviets in with Sputnik , the first Earth satellite, began the Space Race , won by the Americans as Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the moon in The angst about the weaknesses of American education led to large-scale federal support for science education and research. In the decades after World War II, the United States became a global influence in economic, political, military, cultural, and technological affairs. Beginning in the s, middle-class culture became obsessed with consumer goods.

In , the charismatic politician John F. The Kennedy family brought a new life and vigor to the atmosphere of the White House. Kennedy to his Cabinet as Attorney General. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas , Texas, on November 22, , leaving the nation in profound shock. The climax of liberalism came in the mids with the success of President Lyndon B.

Johnson —69 in securing congressional passage of his Great Society programs. Gradually, liberal intellectuals crafted a new vision for achieving economic and social justice. The liberalism of the early s contained no hint of radicalism, little disposition to revive new deal era crusades against concentrated economic power, and no intention to redistribute wealth or restructure existing institutions. Internationally it was strongly anti-Communist. It aimed to defend the free world, to encourage economic growth at home, and to ensure that the resulting plenty was fairly distributed.

Their agenda-much influenced by Keynesian economic theory-envisioned massive public expenditure that would speed economic growth, thus providing the public resources to fund larger welfare, housing, health, and educational programs. Johnson was rewarded with an electoral landslide in against conservative Barry Goldwater , which broke the decades-long control of Congress by the Conservative coalition. However, the Republicans bounced back in and elected Richard Nixon in Nixon largely continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited; conservative reaction would come with the election of Ronald Reagan in Starting in the late s, institutionalized racism across the United States , but especially in the South , was increasingly challenged by the growing Civil Rights Movement.

For years African Americans would struggle with violence against them but would achieve great steps toward equality with Supreme Court decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Martin Luther King, Jr. Following his death others led the movement, most notably King's widow, Coretta Scott King , who was also active, like her husband, in the Opposition to the Vietnam War , and in the Women's Liberation Movement. There were riots in American cities in the first nine months of Native Americans turned to the federal courts to fight for their land rights.

They held protests highlighting the federal government's failure to honor treaties. He led a five-year-long strike by grape pickers. A new consciousness of the inequality of American women began sweeping the nation, starting with the publication of Betty Friedan 's best-seller, The Feminine Mystique , which explained how many housewives felt trapped and unfulfilled, assaulted American culture for its creation of the notion that women could only find fulfillment through their roles as wives, mothers, and keepers of the home, and argued that women were just as able as men to do every type of job.

Protests began, and the new Women's Liberation Movement grew in size and power, gained much media attention, and, by , had replaced the Civil Rights Movement as the U. S's main social revolution. Marches, parades, rallies, boycotts, and pickets brought out thousands, sometimes millions. There were striking gains for women in medicine, law, and business, while only a few were elected to office. The proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in was defeated by a conservative coalition mobilized by Phyllis Schlafly.

They argued that it degraded the position of the housewife and made young women susceptible to the military draft. However, many federal laws i. The controversial issue of abortion, deemed by the Supreme Court as a fundamental right in Roe v. Wade , is still a point of debate today. Amid the Cold War, the United States entered the Vietnam War , whose growing unpopularity fed already existing social movements, including those among women, minorities, and young people. Johnson 's Great Society social programs and numerous rulings by the Warren Court added to the wide range of social reform during the s and s.

Feminism and the environmental movement became political forces, and progress continued toward civil rights for all Americans. The Counterculture Revolution swept through the nation and much of the western world in the late sixties and early seventies, further dividing Americans in a "culture war" but also bringing forth more liberated social views. Johnson was succeeded in by Republican Richard Nixon , who attempted to gradually turn the war over to the South Vietnamese forces.

He negotiated the peace treaty in which secured the release of POWs and led to the withdrawal of U. The war had cost the lives of 58, American troops. The Watergate scandal , involving Nixon's cover-up of his operatives' break-in into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex destroyed his political base, sent many aides to prison, and forced Nixon's resignation on August 9, He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford.

Communist victories in neighboring Cambodia and Laos occurred in the same year. The OPEC oil embargo marked a long-term economic transition since, for the first time, energy prices skyrocketed, and American factories faced serious competition from foreign automobiles, clothing, electronics, and consumer goods. By the late s the economy suffered an energy crisis , slow economic growth, high unemployment, and very high inflation coupled with high interest rates the term stagflation was coined.

Since economists agreed on the wisdom of deregulation , many of the New Deal era regulations were ended, such as in transportation, banking, and telecommunications. Jimmy Carter , running as someone who was not a part of the Washington political establishment, was elected president in In , Iranian students stormed the U. With the hostage crisis and continuing stagflation, Carter lost the election to the Republican Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan produced a major realignment with his and landslide elections.

Reagan ordered a buildup of the U. The Soviets reacted harshly because they thought it violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty , and would upset the balance of power by giving the U. However, by the late s he decided the system would never work and should not be used to block disarmament deals with the U. There is agreement that the Soviets realized they were well behind the Americans in military technology, that to try to catch up would be very expensive, and that the military expenses were already a very heavy burden slowing down their economy.

Reagan's Invasion of Grenada and bombing of Libya were popular in the U. S, though his backing of the Contras rebels was mired in the controversy over the Iran—Contra affair that revealed Reagan's poor management style. Reagan met four times with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who ascended to power in , and their summit conferences led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Gorbachev tried to save Communism in the Soviet Union first by ending the expensive arms race with America, [] then by shedding the East European empire in The United States emerged as the world's sole remaining superpower and continued to intervene in international affairs during the s, including the Gulf War against Iraq. Following his election in , President Bill Clinton oversaw one of the longest periods of economic expansion and unprecedented gains in securities values, a side effect of the digital revolution and new business opportunities created by the Internet.

He also worked with the Republican Congress to pass the first balanced federal budget in 30 years. In , Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of lying about a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted by the Senate.

The failure of impeachment and the Democratic gains in the election forced House Speaker Newt Gingrich , a Republican, to resign from Congress. The Republican Party expanded its base throughout the South after excepting , largely due to its strength among socially conservative white Evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Roman Catholics, added to its traditional strength in the business community and suburbs.

As white Democrats in the South lost dominance of the Democratic Party in the s, the region took on the two-party apparatus which characterized most of the nation. The Republican Party's central leader by was Ronald Reagan , whose conservative policies called for reduced government spending and regulation, lower taxes, and a strong anti- Soviet foreign policy.

His iconic status in the party persists into the 21st century, as practically all Republican Party leaders acknowledge his stature. Social scientists Theodore Caplow et al. The presidential election in between George W. Bush and Al Gore was one of the closest in U. The vote in the decisive state of Florida was extremely close and produced a dramatic dispute over the counting of votes.

Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore ended the recount with a 5—4 vote. That meant Bush, then in the lead, carried Florida and the election. While they were not able to land the plane safely, they were able to re-take control of the aircraft and crash it into an empty field in Pennsylvania, killing all 44 people including the four terrorists on board, thereby saving whatever target the terrorists were aiming for. Within two hours, both Twin Towers of the World Trade Center completely collapsed causing massive damage to the surrounding area and blanketing Lower Manhattan in toxic dust clouds.

All in all, a total of 2, victims perished in the attacks. In response, President George W. Bush on September 20 announced a "War on Terror". The federal government established new domestic efforts to prevent future attacks. The controversial USA PATRIOT Act increased the government's power to monitor communications and removed legal restrictions on information sharing between federal law enforcement and intelligence services. A cabinet-level agency called the Department of Homeland Security was created to lead and coordinate federal counter-terrorism activities.

In , from March 19 to May 1, the United States launched an invasion of Iraq , which led to the collapse of the Iraq government and the eventual capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein , with whom the U. The reasons for the invasion cited by the Bush administration included the spreading of democracy, the elimination of weapons of mass destruction [] a key demand of the UN as well, though later investigations found parts of the intelligence reports to be inaccurate , [] and the liberation of the Iraqi people. Despite some initial successes early in the invasion, the continued Iraq War fueled international protests and gradually saw domestic support decline as many people began to question whether or not the invasion was worth the cost.

While the death toll decreased, the political stability of Iraq remained in doubt. In , the unpopularity of President Bush and the Iraq war, along with the financial crisis , led to the election of Barack Obama , the first African-American President of the United States. However, 50, American soldiers and military personnel were kept in Iraq to assist Iraqi forces, help protect withdrawing forces, and work on counter-terrorism until December 15, , when the war was declared formally over and the last troops left the country.

With regards to Guantanamo Bay, President Obama forbade torture but in general retained Bush's policy regarding the Guantanamo detainees, while also proposing that the prison eventually be closed. In May , after nearly a decade in hiding, the founder and leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden , was killed in Pakistan in a raid conducted by U. While Al Qaeda was near collapse in Afghanistan, affiliated organizations continued to operate in Yemen and other remote areas as the CIA used drones to hunt down and remove its leadership.

The Boston Marathon Bombing was a bombing incident, followed by subsequent related shootings, that occurred when two pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon on April 15, The bombs exploded about 12 seconds and yards m apart at 2: They killed 3 people and injured an estimated others. These events lead to a major military offensive by the United States and its allies in the region.

On December 28, , President Obama officially ended the combat mission in Afghanistan and promised a withdrawal of all remaining U. The financial crisis threatened the stability of the entire economy in September when Lehman Brothers failed and other giant banks were in grave danger. Obama, like Bush, took steps to rescue the auto industry and prevent future economic meltdowns. These included a bailout of General Motors and Chrysler , putting ownership temporarily in the hands of the government, and the " cash for clunkers " program which temporarily boosted new car sales.

The recession officially ended in June , and the economy slowly began to expand once again. However, overall economic growth has remained weaker in the s compared to expansions in previous decades. Following Obama's reelection in November , Congress passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of — which resulted in an increase in taxes primarily on those earning the most money.

Congressional gridlock continued as Congressional Republicans' call for the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — popularly known as "Obamacare" — along with other various demands, resulted in the first government shutdown since the Clinton administration and almost led to the first default on U. Other major events that have occurred during the s include the rise of new political movements, such as the conservative Tea Party movement and the liberal Occupy movement. There was also unusually severe weather during the early part of the decade.

In , over half the country experienced record drought and Hurricane Sandy caused massive damage to coastal areas of New York and New Jersey. The debate over the issue of rights for the LGBT community , most notably that of same-sex marriage , began to shift in favor of same-sex couples, and has been reflected in dozens of polls released in the early part of the decade. Windsor provided for federal recognition of same-sex unions. In June , the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationally in the case of Obergefell v.

Political debate has continued over issues such as tax reform , immigration reform , income inequality and U. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the history of the continents, see History of the Americas. Part of a series on the. Prehistory Pre-colonial Colonial period — — — — — — — — — — present. Native Americans in the United States. History of Native Americans in the United States. The concrete staircase follows the approximate course of the ancient wooden stairs. An artistic recreation of The Kincaid Site from the prehistoric Mississippian culture as it may have looked at its peak — CE.

Engraved stone palette from Moundville, illustrating two horned rattlesnakes , perhaps referring to The Great Serpent of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Colonial history of the United States. Spanish colonization of the Americas , Dutch colonization of the Americas , and French colonization of the Americas. British colonization of the Americas. American Revolution and History of the United States — Commemoration of the American Revolution. That these United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a Confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together.

Independence amounted to a new status of interdependence: America thus became a member of the international community, which meant becoming a maker of treaties and alliances, a military ally in diplomacy, and a partner in foreign trade on a more equal basis. History of the United States — Slavery in the United States. Era of Good Feelings. Abolitionism in the United States. Union territories not permitting slavery. Border Union states, permitting slavery. Union territories permitting slavery claimed by Confederacy.

Women's suffrage in the United States. Roaring 20s and Causes of the Great Depression. September 11 attacks and War on Terror. One World Trade Center , built in its place. History of the United States —present. Gullah portal African American portal United States portal. Retrieved March 12, Willey and Philip Phillips Method and Theory in American Archaeology. University of Chicago Press. Interior Tlingit Noun Dictionary: Yukon Native Language Centre. Feathers, Stephen Williams, Kristen J. Gremillion , Malcolm F. The Archaeology of a Continent.

Price, and Gary M. Images of the Past, 5th edition. Retrieved June 4, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. A Prehistoric Cultural and Religious Center". Archived from the original on September 14, Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand. Archived from the original on June 3, Retrieved July 19, Cultural Fictions and Government Policies. Retrieved November 24, Oklahoma Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Archived from the original on January 2, Retrieved November 29, Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues. How the Canyon Became Grand. Grove Day, Coronado's Quest: Acadia before the Conquest of Canada.

Archon Books Hamden, Conn. Archived from the original on December 30, Retrieved February 15, Archived from the original on October 24, Archived from the original on October 31, University of Nebraska Press. A History to 4th ed. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Genesis of the American Mind. The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. Random House Digital, Inc. The Birth of the Republic, —89 4th ed. The Boston Tea Party. The Revolution of the People by T.

Breen, in The Journal of Military History 76 1 p. The American Story 3rd ed. Wood, The American Revolution: Miller, The Federalist Era: Retrieved June 7, Hill and Wang, , pp. Wood, Empire of Liberty: Heidler, The War of , p. Stagg, The War of The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development , 56— Gilderhus, "The Monroe Doctrine: From Jefferson to Clinton U.

Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: The Radical and the Republican: Hine and John Mack Faragher, Frontiers: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, — Retrieved June 3, Review of McKivigan, John R. Bordewich, America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Woodworth, Decision in the Heartland: McPherson, "To Conquer a Peace? For more details see J. David Hacker, "A census-based count of the Civil War dead. Retrieved August 2, Lincoln met with his cabinet on July 22, , for the first reading of a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Beard and Mary R. The Story of American Public Life from to Historical dictionary of the Gilded Age. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Archived from the original on May 16, Retrieved June 5, The Dark Side of the Gilded Age. Retrieved March 24, A People's History of the United States.

Harper Perennial Modern Classics , An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, —" ". From the Front Porch to the Front Page: McKinley and Bryan in the Presidential Campaign. Archived from the original on October 12, Retrieved February 6, Stanley, A Nation in the Making: African American women and the vote, — University of Massachusetts Press. Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Adams and Michael L. Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of World War I and isolationism, —33". Archived from the original on July 17, Handbook to Life in America.

Archived from the original on July 21, Retrieved November 8, Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, At Dawn We Slept: