1990s+Foreign+Policy

90s FOREIGN POLICY By Ellie Heggerston BIG EVENTS: Persian Gulf War & Saddam Hussein  Libya and Gaddafi  Osama Bin Laden  Somalia  Serbia and Milosevic

The Persian Gulf War and Saddam Hussein At the beginning of the 1990s, Saddam Hussein came into light in the US foreign policies. He was the dictator of Iraq and we thought he was doing three very bad things: he was oppressing his people and violating human rights, he was doing nuclear weapon build up, and he was committing genocide of the Kurdish people. As these three problems started to escalade in the issues between the US and Iraq, Iraq suddenly invaded the neutral nation of Kuwait which was a big oil supplier for the US. George H.W. Bush, because of Hussein's invasion of Iraq, declared war on the nation of Iraq. The first major point of the war was Operation Desert Storm. It was the first and only major operation and victory of the war for the United States and lasted only 100 hours. This war was a unique war in many way and one of those ways was the technology. This was the first war that technology played a huge roll in and also women were very involved in this war. Bush's role in the war was keeping a set of eyes on Hussein 24/7. The war only lasted about a year or two, but Hussein still remained in the light. For years we tried to take him out of power for his people and he played a major role in the terrorism world. This war was the start of major foreign involvements with the Middle East.

Libya and Gaddafi Ever since the year 1969, when Libya's king fled the country, Gaddafi has been ruling the Libyan world for about 40 years. He started off his ways by abolishing monarchy, wrote a new constitution, and started a new republic with the motto "freedom, socialism, and unity". After a couple years, all of that went down hill and he started his relations in the terrorist world. In the 1990s, our involvement with Gaddafi took some height in our foreign relations. Previous to the 90s, we strained our relations with Libya because of Gaddafi's international terrorism starting in 1970 and other previous problems. Now in the 90s, Gaddafi was behind a terrorist takeover of one of U.S. flights and had bombed the U.S. embassy in Libya. We went into Libya trying to take down Gaddafi but we didn't want another Bay of Pigs so we pulled out. Now today, we are in Libya again trying to take Gaddafi out of control to help his people because he is committing genocide of his own people. Because the events that had happened with Gaddafi, terrorism was escalating and becoming more of an issue than ever. These events with Gaddafi still play a big role in today's war on terrorism in the U.S.

Osama Bin Laden Our relations with Osama Bin Laden go all the back when we supported his rebel group in Afghanistan to stop the spread of communism in the 1980s. In the 90s, Osama started to become involved in the terrorist world and was bombing embassies around the world and making a few small scale terrorist attempts, like the car bombing of the World Trade Center attempt, on the United States. Bin Laden started a terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda that routed illegal weapons to other places and countries. His major face in terrorism was brought to our attention on 9/11 when he bombed the twin towers and because of this, George W. Bush declared a war on terrorism. Osama Bin Laden is, I believe, is the main reason that our terrorism issues in the U.S. are now brought to so much attention and now we are so cautious and fully aware with everything like security in airports, government buildings, etc. Osama Bin Laden, I believe, is the real start to a scary realization of international and national terrorism.

Somalia In the 1990s, Somali hostilities were a big international issue. In the country of Somalia, The Somali Civil War and is still going on and it is the fight between two rebel groups fighting for the power in Somalia after the fall of its former regime, Siad Barre. The United Nations finally became involved in the problem in 1992 with the mission UNOSOM I that provided humanitarian relief like aid, water, and food to Somalia to help restore their central government. In 1993, the battle between U.S. soldiers and Somali soldiers started because some of the Somali people were cutting off relief from part of the famine country. These hostilities and wars in Somalia are still going on today and are still playing a big role in our foreign policies. These hostilities effected how the United Nations deal with these hostilities and effected our relations with parts of Somalia.

<span style="background-color: #0000ff; color: #ffff00; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Serbia and Milosevic <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">While there were so many hostilities and terrorist problems in the Middle East and Northeast Africa, there were problems going on in Eastern Europe of their own. After the breakup of Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, their were tensions between the republics because the country was broken up by ethnicity groups. A little after the country broke up, a big problem emerged. The communist leader of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, was committing genocide of the Muslim people in Albania, a bordering republic. The U.S. made an unsuccessful attempt to take down Milosevic in the 90s but later on were successful and he was tried, found guilty, and was hung. These Eastern Europe problems started adding so much more fire to the international problems and showed how much conflict that countries were facing.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Take a survey on what you think about terrorism specifically for teens! http://www2.ucdsb.on.ca/athens/surveys/terrorism/survey.htm

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Sources: http://www.wikipedia.org/ http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/2011/02/201122117565923629.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/so.html And information from listening to Mrs.Tschida in class!