In 1997, Dallas Morning News columnist Lee Cullum wrote the following for David L. Boren’s book Preparing America’s Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century, in a chapter called The Media and International Relations: Commentary and Discussion.
Of course, when I think about foreign news and foreign correspondents, I naturally think of coverage of wars. There is a great confusion among the American people about the uses of military power. There is nothing new in this. Think back to the nineteenth century and a man named Artemus Ward. (That was a pseudonym for a humorist of the day.) He had this to say about the military: “I have already given one cousin to the war, and I stand ready to sacrifice my wife’s brother.” The question is, will there be enough brothers-in-law to go around to protect this new world order that we used to talk about so much?
The New World Order was launched in earnest in a speech George Herbert Walker Bush gave to Congress on, ironically, September 11, 1990.
Our objectives in the Persian Gulf are clear, our goals defined and familiar:
Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait completely, immediately and without condition.
Kuwait’s legitimate government must be restored.
The security and stability of the Persian Gulf must be assured.
And American citizens abroad must be protected.
These goals are not ours alone. They’ve been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council five times in as many weeks. Most countries share our concern for principle, and many have a stake in the stability of the Persian Gulf. This is not, as Saddam Hussein would have it, the United States against Iraq. It is Iraq against the world.
As you know, I’ve just returned from a very productive meeting with Soviet President [Mikhail] Gorbachev, and I am pleased that we are working together to build a new relationship. In Helsinki, our joint statement affirmed to the world our shared resolve to counter Iraq’s threat to peace. Let me quote: “We are united in the belief that Iraq’s aggression must not be tolerated. No peaceful international order is possible if larger states can devour their smaller neighbors.”
Clearly, no longer can a dictator count on East-West confrontation to stymie concerted United Nations action against aggression.
A new partnership of nations has begun, and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: A new era—freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.
The distinguishing characteristic of the New World Order in this early stage was the cooperation and unified voice of the United States and Soviet Russia. But with the collapse of the USSR, the NWO morphed into a system in which the USA acted as the sole superpower and enforcer of international affairs. And there just aren’t enough brothers-in-law around to sustain such a system.
