Chapter Nine: The End of the Cold War and the Birth of the "Hyperpower"
As Edward Kennedy and Jesse Jackson began their second term in January 1989, the world had begun to shift in ways once thought unimaginable. Glasnost and Perestroika were having effects on Eastern Europe that few could have ever predicted, and communism was seemingly on the verge of collapse. The withdrawal of the Brezhnev Doctrine saw 1989 be a crazy year in the Warsaw Pact nations....and it ended with the dramatic fall in the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the subsequent domino-like collapse of nearly all of the Warsaw Pact's communist nations. The progress began in Poland, where Lech Walesa's Solidarity trade union movement successfully evolved into a political movement, and on June 4, 1989, Solidarity easily nearly entirely swept Poland's 1989 elections, with the first non-Communist Party government in the Eastern Bloc, led by Walesa and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, taking power in Warsaw on August 25, 1989, despite calls from parties within the USSR and from Romania's Nicolae Ceaucescu for the rest of the Warsaw Pact to get militarily involved. But at almost at the same time was a bigger story, and one which had bigger consequences than what was happening in Poland.
The death of popular former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 caused a mess in China. With an economy stagnating since the mid-1980s (and 1988 economic decisions causing a sharp recession in China that year) and Deng Xiaopeng's economic reforms moving slowly, combined with gross corruption (both real and perceived) within China's elite, a perception not helped by Yaobang's removal from leadership in 1987 (caused in large part by massive student protests in China in 1986 and 1987) and the serious problems with nepotism and corruption that were by 1989 rampant in China. Peaceful negotiations between CCP moderates and the student protesters were perpetually undermined by conservative groups, and on June 4, the People's Liberation Army was called in to clear the square. Approaching it from all sides, they hemmed in tens of thousands of protesters, including camera crews from several nations (including the United States) and began firing. With troops from all of the PLA units involved firing, students began fighting back with rocks, bottles, molotov cocktails, chunks of pavement and other tools. The PLA then stopped negotiating and simply spent all of June 4 and much of June 5 shooting their way into the square. CNN reporter James Wilson and his cameraman and sound crew were filming the situation just after eleven in the evening (local time) when a 81mm mortar round from the 38th Army landed within five meters of them, killing Wilson and the cameraman instantly. Any form of protest against the troops' advance through the night was met with gunfire, with reports of tanks shelling apartment buildings, the use of field artillery, snipers and troops spraying buildings and apartment blocks with machine gun fire quickly reverbrated around China and around the world, and were met in China with more troop response. The end result was a death toll estimated at a minimum of 15,000 and a number of wounded of over a quarter of a million.
The first nastiness outside of China as a result of this was in Hong Kong. Hong Kong had quite openly supported the protesters and their goals, and news of Tiananmen Square caused chaos in Hong Kong. June 6 and the days afterwards started a political crisis, as protests at Government House in Hong Kong on June 9, 1989, had crowds in the hundreds of thousands demanding that Hong Kong's planned return to China in 1997 be scrapped. When the massive protests swept through Guangdong province in June 1989 and Britain announced that it would not break the deal with China on June 25, 1989, over 250,000 people attempted to flee Hong Kong in just two weeks. Making matters worse was that many of China's now-powerful leaders were demanding that China rip up the 1984 Joint Declaration and take back Hong Kong by force, a statement by Li Peng on June 28, 1989, adding fuel to that fire. Left with accelerating chaos in the colony and staring its economic destruction in the face, the Governor of Hong Kong begged both London and Beijing to make a deal over the situation. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher came to Hong Kong on July 16, 1989, in an attempt to work with Deng on fixing the issues - but she was met at the airport with massive, unruly protests and faced Deng's senior leaders being belligerent, a fact made worse the day before Thatcher arrived when news of the 64th Army being stationed in Guangdong made it to Hong Kong. Thatcher left Hong Kong six days later disheartened, commenting to one of her advisors "We can either destroy Hong Kong or let it destroy itself." But in this case, she got a lifeline.
Washington was to say the least not pleased with what had happened in China, and the loud belligerence of many of China's post-Tiananmen Square leaders didn't make Washington any more pleased. China-US relations had been quite good for years before Tiananmen Square, but facing a situation which by then was getting traction in the United States, Kennedy and Jackson decided to act. On July 23, 1989, the United States stunned the world when VP Jackson said that he felt that Hong Kong's status needed to be clarified by Hong Kong, China and Britain. China's leaders were furious, Hong Kong took it as a sign that America would support changing the situation. Thatcher, hearing that upon arriving back in Britain, is known to have said aloud "Bless you, Reverend Jackson, for you have just saved Hong Kong." Three days after that, the United Kingdom tore up the Joint Declaration, resolving to keep Hong Kong under British leadership until such time as a new deal could be renegotiated between the People's Republic of China and the United Kingdom. China's anger was even more pronounced, and talk of an invasion of Hong Kong quickly spread. But this time, figuring that America would indeed after Tiananmen Square be willing to defend Hong Kong from an aggressive China, many of the Hong Kongers held their ground. True to form, brand-new American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, fellow carrier USS John F. Kennedy and battleship USS Missouri, along with their battle groups, were sent to the area to show that America was serious about making China talk out Hong Kong's status. Kennedy himself on August 25 spoke of the need for the parties involved to peacefully negotiate out the political problems. The Missouri docked in Hong Kong two days later to a very appreciative crowd of over 30,000, and by this point optimism about a new deal for Hong Kong was strong.
China wasn't willing to negotiate out a new timeline for Hong Kong, and the hardliners, many of whom had not approved of the terms of the takeover in the first place, fought it bitterly. By early 1990, the conversation was heading in the direction of an independent Hong Kong, but China scuttled that with its October 1990 declaration that any declaration of independence by Hong Kong or Taiwan would be seen as a declaration of war against China. Thatcher's resignation in November 1990 saw her replaced by John Major, and Major's appointment of Chris Patten to replace Sir David Wilson in May 1991 raised more than a few eyebrows in both Hong Kong and Britain....but Major bravely settled the debate on September 19, 1991, when he announced in Britain's House of Commons that he would make major modifications to the British Nationality Act to allow Hong Kongers to acquire British citizenship, and that Hong Kong would have its powers significantly expanded. Britain would retain responsibility for defense and foreign affairs, but a democratically-elected Legislative Council of Hong Kong would have the right to pass laws, with only those violating terms and conditions set out in a basic constitution for Hong Kong being invalid - and Patten's job was to oversee the process.
America loudly backed their ally, and the decision, hated as it was by China, held easily, and Hong Kong's economy, bloodied badly by the 1989-91 crisis, recovered substantially in the 1990s, while one of Hong Kong's first decision after the passing of the Basic Law in April 1992 was to throw the gates open to Chinese dissidents to come to Hong Kong in safety. That decision was opposed by Major, but under the terms of the Basic Law, he could not challenge it unless it made a foreign affairs or defense issue, and he didn't try. China's hard conservative turn in the 1990s caused tens of thousands of Chinese professionals, intellectuals and artists, as well as many prominent businessmen, to settle in Hong Kong, while the Royal Navy re-established a full naval base there in 1994. Hong Kong's relationship with China would remain rocky for many years to come, but America's stand with it improved its relations with other nations in Asia, particularly Taiwan and Korea.
Back in Europe, Hungary's decision to dismantle its border fence with Austria on May 2, 1989, opened the first crack in the Iron Curtain. It would be the first of many. The situation in East Germany came to a head on October 9, when East Germany's police and armed forces were ordered to put a halt to a massive protest in Liepzig, but upon reaching the scene - and finding an estimated 80,000 of their countrymen there - the soldiers and police refused to open fire. On November 9, East Berlin was suddenly swamped with people seeking to push their way through the wall, and as soon as that news ran through West Berlin, tens of thousands of West Berliners joined them in tearing down the wall. The TV images of the scene, of Germans from both sides of the Iron Curtain embracing one another, made headlines around the world. The collapse of communism in one nation after another after that moment was spectacular. Ceaucescu, who had openly advocated for military force to stop the new Polish government a few months earlier, was executed by a provisional government along with his wife on Christmas Day, 1989, with all but Romania seeing the Communist governments collapse with very little violence. The speed of it all overtook all but the most optimistic of predictions - few expected the Warsaw Pact to collapse in literally weeks - but it made sure that when Kennedy and Gorbachev met again, on the Soviet cruise ship Maxim Gorky in Malta on February 10, 1990, the focus was on making a new world. Gorbachev, who had not exactly gotten through the Revolutions of 1989 unscathed, was intent on trying to get American help to mitigate the aftermath, and he was surprised that Kennedy agreed with him on the need to try to keep the situations from getting violent. Gorbachev also threw in that the USSR did not approve of China's actions at Tiananmen Square that the Hong Kong problem needed to be solved without violence. With America being economically prosperous and Gorbachev well aware that he needed help to bring prosperity to the Soviet Union, Gorbachev and Kennedy agreed that the USSR and USA would attempt to solve issues of mutual interest together, and that the two leaders should keep a regular open dialogue to make sure there were no vast disagreements on issues.
Gorbachev's attempts at reform had opened a Pandora's box, though.
Glasnost had done something that few - Gorbachev included - had anticipated. The Revolutions of 1989 directly led to calls for secession by a number of Soviet Republics, particularly the Baltic states forcibly taken over by Stalin in 1940 and the long-restless Caucasus regions. Promises of greater decentralization had an effect in several of the Soviet Republics, but for the Baltic states and Armenia it had little hope of success. Soviet hardliners, seeing the success through force that their Chinese counterparts had achieved the year before, orchestrated a massive coup against Gorbachev on September 25, 1990. The coup's first act was the murders of Gorbachev and rebellious Russian Republic leader Boris Yeltsin, an act that would come back to haunt them in a big way. They were too late to stop the Baltics, Armenia and Georgia from breaking away, and Azerbaijan, the people there furious after the events of Black January earlier in the year, also walked out on the USSR. Popular support for the coup was minimal, but the army and the security services backed it in a big way, and the Soviet Army was sent out to attempt to restore Moscow's control over its republics. This resulted in one bout of violence after another, and it came to a head in Azerbaijan, when the newly-formed Azerbaijani People's Defense Council fought back against the Red Army with the weapons of locally-stationed Red Army units. The Red Army was singularly unsuccessful in stopping the momentum the reformers had, and while a sizable portion of the establishment supported the Soviet Union, the situation devolved into armed conflict in numerous places, starting with Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan. By January 1991, the situation in the Soviet Union had devolved into a bitter civil war.
America was called by many in the West and some Americans to get involved in the ugly civil war, but fearing such a war going nuclear, the American armed forces stayed clear except in a handful of critical cases. America did, however, provide billions in humanitarian aid, and with the civil war turning into a stalemate by the Spring of 1991 began authorizing units to search out and locate Russia's vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, fearing them in the hands of terrorists or being used by the opposing sides in the war. The latter fear turned out to be unfounded largely due to the fact that both sides had such weapons and feared the use of them by the other side. Rutskoy's massive victory over a rebel column in western Russia personally led by Vladimir Kryuchkov, which resulted in Kryuchkov being seriously wounded in the battle, in November 1991 broke the stalemate and began the destruction of the hardline forces. (Kryuchkov would later die of his injuries.) The civil war lasted into 1992, but 18 months of war had by that time killed over 350,000 people and massively reduced everyone's supplies, a situation not improved by the unwillingness of anyone else to supply them. By the fall of 1991, former SSRs where the hardliners had lost the battle - including all of the Caucasus regions, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - had become independent nations. The world'd attention got drawn back onto the mess on January 8, 1992, when a government unit fired a number of badly-aimed Scud-B missiles at Ukrainian forces and instead had three of them land within the Chernobyl reactor complex, causing a partial failure of the containment structure over the destroyed Number Four reactor. Chernobyl was hit again by missile fire six days later and a third time two days after that, but the plant, which had been closed in December 1990, was not operating. One waste-storage complex was hit, however, adding to the existing serious problems with radioactivity in the complex.
On April 20, 1992, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church went on television in Kyiv, Ukraine, and loudly called for the violence to stop. The government forces loudly refused this, saying that "we will stop when the traitors have been defeated, the bastards are all dead." Rutskoy, by contrast, spoke approvingly of negotiating a ceasefire, but the continued unwillingness by the hardliners to listen made sure it came to nothing. But a series of huge wins in European Russia in the summer of 1992 allowed Rutskoy's forces to gain a huge military advantage, and Moscow fell to the rebels on October 19, 1992. Of the "Gang of Ten" leaders of the 1990 coup, only two were alive after the assault, both arrested by Russian Republic military forces. These two, Gennady Yanayev and Dmitry Yazov, were both sentenced to life imprisonment, avoiding the death penalty mainly because after nearly half a million dead, in the words of Alexander Yakolev, "There has been quite enough killing." It was in many ways a hollow victory, but it meant huge changes for the psyche of most of the nations most effected.
Decades of Soviet oppression and the brutality of the two years of civil war made very sure that the people of the devastated nations were not keen on authoritarian government, and the new governments of the nations involved made this point clear. This didn't always work out too well, as the problems between Georgia and Abkhazia and the battles between Armenia and Azerbaijan would frequently show, but the governments in the nations that had risen from the burnt ashes of the Soviet Union were absolutely committed to democracy and civil rights, with a population willing and able to go out and loudly protest when they felt that their rights were not adequately protected. The "tryanny of the majority" did at times cause serious issues, but the new nations wouldn't soon give up their hard-won freedoms - part of this being that, frankly, the post-war USSR had little else. The country gave up nearly the entirety of its nuclear arsenal and demobilized its armed forces to a massive degree at the end of the Civil War, as well as going looking for partnerships and technology absolutely everywhere they could, abandoning many of the previous Soviet-era industrial organizations and planning techniques in favor of market chasing and looking for export potential absolutely everywhere possible with the intent of funding the rebuilding process of the war-torn areas. This would be a very long process, but it would start bearing fruits by the early 2000s.
As if the Revolutions of Eastern Europe and the nastiness in China wasn't enough, problems brewed in a third spot, in this case the Middle East. Iraq, run since 1979 by the thuggish Saddam Hussein, had sought in the early 1980s to get back a chunk of land he had sought after by trying to destabilize Iran, but his attempts had gotten nowhere except for sporadic military offenses in 1980-82. Saddam had, however, long been able to get money from the selling of oil abroad, and as with Argentina in the 1970s, money from oil allowed Saddam to purchase weapons in big quantities from the Soviets and from some European nations. By 1990, Saddam had given up trying to push Iran around - he feared a retaliation by the Iranians, who had by 1990 built a strong army and one of the world's best air forces - and had instead turned his attention to the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula. Making matters worse was that the OPEC cartel consistently found that Kuwait was overproducing oil and causing the cartel to get a depressed price. Iraq's use of chemical weapons on its restless Kurdish population in 1988 had caused a complete break in relations between the United States (and Iran) and Iraq, and Iraq's social problems, particularly attacks on expatriates within Iraq, contributed to serious problems with its neighbors. At the same time, Iraq had built a massive army, with Saddam claiming that it was to protect Arabs from Iran, despite the fact that by 1990 Iran was trying to improve relations with its Arab neighbors. Saddam was not to be deterred easily, and on August 2, 1990, the Iraqis invaded Kuwait. The Kuwaitis in a handful of places put up a stiff fight, but they were unprepared for the invasion and were outnumbered at least twenty to one by the Iraqis. Resistance in Kuwait collapsed within twelve hours, leaving Saddam in control of Kuwait.
Iran and all of the Arab states went to high alert. Saddam, who had long opposed the Ottawa Treaty, attempted to frame the war as the beginning of an attempt by Iraq to unify Arabs against outside forces, specifically naming Iran, Israel and America as three enemies to be kicked out of the Middle East. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, at a meeting of the Arab League on August 11, called that comment "absolute nonsense" and said that "Saddam wants to control the Arab world, pure and simple". The Saudis were especially concerned, as were the Gulf states. Shah Reza Pahlavi II commented of Saddam "He's a thug and a fool" and if he was to attack Iran "He will regret such an action in very short order". The main Western concern in this case was the proximity of Saddam's forces to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. The invasion also caused a sudden and quite substantial rise in oil prices, which came down rapidly once increasing production by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Angola and Canada made up much of the difference of the lost Kuwaiti production. But the fear of Saddam's actions resulted in a huge military deployment by the United States and allied nations.
Operation Desert Shield began with the deployments of the forces of dozens of nations, with American efforts backed up by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, India, Argentina and Brazil. Israel offered to support, but aware of Saddam's rhetoric, was asked to keep their powder dry, which they did. Most of the Arabs attacked by Saddam also lined up to back up the coalition effort, while Japan and Germany provided logistical support. Iran also offered to get involved but ultimately stayed out. With the Soviet Union descending into civil war, Saddam had only one source for resupply, that being China, who was happy to help....for a while, which ended on December 21, 1990, when one of their IL-76 transport jets, flying to Mosul, Iraq, from China was accidentally shot down by a Soviet anti-aircraft missile over Azerbaijan. Fast sealift ships and container vessels allowed for a fast logistical buildup, and the navies of the Coalition nations moved in in force. American carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS Independence and USS Enterprise were sent out to the region, as well as battleships USS Missouri and USS Wisconsin. They were joined by both of the UK's big flat-deck carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth II and HMS Prince of Wales, Canada's HMCS Eagle and France's FS Clemenceau. Iraq's destruction for the sake of destruction in Kuwait was instrumental in making sure the invasion went ahead.
Operation Desert Storm began on January 15, 1991, when Missouri and Wisconsin fired the first shots of the war on Iraqi targets near the coasts of Iraq. They were followed by massive waves of airstrikes from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the various carriers. Somewhat to the Americans' chargin, the Commonwealth battle group based around Queen Elizabeth II, Prince of Wales and Eagle were better than most, in large part due to Canadian CF-18 Hornets painting targets for the British carriers and their Blackburn Buccaneer strike aircraft, which proved to be remarkably capable. The air war started with destroying the Iraqi air force on the ground, then taking out command and control facilities and then hunting Scud missiles and their launchers. Saddam attempted to attack Israel, but Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian air defenses handled that problem rather handily, and an attempt by Saddam to attack Jerusalem infuriated many on the Arab Street as much as it did the Israelis. Saddam fired over 200 Scuds at other nations, doing damage in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. But on January 24, Iraq got a shock it hadn't expected.
Intensive negotiating sessions in Amman between the Israelis, Iranians and Arab leaders had come to the conclusion that since Saddam was attacking the Israelis, they had the right to respond. On the night of January 24, the Israeli Air Force did just that, with a massive strike on Iraqi Air Bases in central Iraq backed up by their own tankers....but the Israelis were surprised when the Jordanians and Palestinians took off behind them and blasted targets of their own, striking notably at the al-Taqqadum Airbase in west-central Iraq. Six Iraqi MiG-21s got airborne to engage as that airbase was attacked, with four Israeli F-15Cs moving north to take them out. Palestinian F-4E Phantom IIs got two of the Iraqi jets (though lost one of their own to a ground-based SAM), a Jordanian Dassault Mirage F1 picked off a third and the Israelis wiped out the other three before all their air forces headed back as one unit. It was not the only strike of the night, but the news of the three nations fighting together was reported in Ha'aretz in Israel on January 26 and caused a sensation in all three nations.
The first ground battle for the Saudi city of Khafji broke out on January 29. Saddam's forces attacked the lightly-defended town but soon came under intense air attacks, followed by battleship Wisconsin and other naval warships, as well as the US Marines and the Saudi National Guard. The Americans lost an AC-130 gunship in this fight to an Iraqi SAM, but the attack was an overwhelming win for the Allies. The ground phase of Operation Desert Storm began on February 24, 1991, and involved a huge ground assault into Western Kuwait, with the goal of encircling the Iraqis. This was only partially successful, but it did result in a massive number of Iraqi casualties. The effect of anti-tank missiles was shown blankly when an Iraqi tank battalion blundered into a Canadian anti-tank company on the right flank of a British armored division during the second day of the ground war. The Canadians called for air support and got it, but their TOW missiles themselves took down over half the battalion with only four vehicles lost on their side. The Iraqis were able to inflict some casualties against the Allies, but the losses were enormous, and Saddam ordered them out on February 27, 1991. They took just 36 Hours to get out, but the losses were massive in the process. Allied forces chased the Iraqis as far north as as Kerbala before withdrawing back to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Operation Desert Storm was a massive display of American power at a time when the Soviet Union was collapsing and China had turned inward, and had a major psychological effect for many of the nations involved. The Iranians had long held the view that America and the West were good partners to have and Desert Storm gave them plenty of graphic evidence of how true this was. The allies involved performed as well as could be expected and in many cases better, and the Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian 'West Front' attacks on Iraq in the final month of the war had a major effect on the Israelis and many Arabs as well. The Palestinians, equipped after the Ottawa Treaty with older F-4E and A-7E fighters, managed nonetheless to do substantial damage to the Iraqis and their pilots claimed four Iraqi air-to-air kills. The commander of the Israeli Air Force, General Avihu Ben-Nun, commented of the Arabs "They came to fly against Iraq with us and did as well as any force could under the conditions they had....they attacked Iraqi bases, shot down Iraqi planes and fired on Iraqi missile launchers that could have otherwise threatened us. They said that they could do this, and they did it. They should be proud of themselves. They have earned it." Operation Desert Storm was also noticed very clearly in China, which it was said at that point was still considering a military solution to the problems with Hong Kong and their difficulties with Taiwan, but they decided against it after the massive war in the Middle East.
The world may have had to learn what American power looked like in Operation Desert Storm, but in other ways there was little to be learned. A decision by then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker in 1985 to attempt to slowly reduce the value of the US Dollar against the Japanese Yen and West German Deutschemark resulted in both a major growth in America's exports, but both nations responded to the growth in the value of their currencies with massive expansions, in the case of Japan to the point that the Bank of Japan had to begin trying to tamp down the asset price bubble in Japan by late 1987. This was only partially successful, but Japan's asset price bubble grew to such a degree that Japanese firms and individuals spent the second half of the 1980s buying massive amounts of pretty much everything around the world, with one joke being that by 1989 that the Mayor of Los Angeles might as well raise the Japanese flag over City Hall, people from Tokyo and Osaka had bought so much of Los Angeles. But as the asset price bubble collapsed in 1989, Japanese companies and corporations were so in deep with properties and operations abroad that selling them off was not really much of an option. The result is that many Japanese conglomerates expanded their international operations by vast amounts in the 1990s, attempting to allow what would otherwise be considerable losses to be turned into assets for the company. In prospering America, this turned into a major boom for some of them. Sony's work with Atari and Toshiba partnering with RCA on manufacturing of the latter's revolutionary plasma display televisions in 1990 was just the tip of the iceberg. Kawasaki Heavy Industries scored three massive coups in 1991 by selling 16 massive EF600AR two-unit diesel locomotives to the Denver and Rio Grande Western railroad, followed by a partnership with Chrysler-Alco to make trainsets for the Acela Express in the Northeastern United States and then by offering its newly-completed Kawasaki C-2 military plane design for partnerships (Japan was still prohibited from selling military equipment at the time), and promptly having a deal signed between KHI and Canada's Bombardier, which saw twenty-two C-2s ordered by the Royal Canadian Air Force to manufacturer by Bombardier under license. Japan's investments in America quickly became less prestige items and more business investments, as Japan spent the 1990s fighting to recover its lost economic momentum after the asset bubble burst.
Germany was faced with much less of an asset price bubble, but in 1990 it had the massive problem of paying the bills for German reunification, and it faced a significant problem in that many of Germany's neighbors, including Britain, France and Italy, were less than keen of a rapid German unification, fearing a rise in the nationalism that had been the cause of two World Wars, the former two being a significant barrier. The Soviet Union agreed to allow the unification with few conditions, but Germany regardless of this renounced weapons of mass destruction and accept the Oder-Neisse line as Germany's eastern border. Kennedy's only condition of note was that Germany remain part of NATO, a point that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed to, even though he was well aware of the fact that German support of NATO was barely 25% (though that number grew substantially after Operation Desert Storm). All of the victorious WWII powers ratified the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in the summer and fall of 1990, paving the way for the reunification to become law on October 3, 1990. The unified Germany substantially reduced the size of its armed forces. Aware of Kohl's support of Solidarity in the 1980s, one of the first nations to recognize Germany's unification was Poland, and one of Germany's first actions as a unified nation was to propose that Israel and Palestine be made members of NATO, much to the surprise of Yitzhak Shamir, the Israeli Prime Minister, and saying "Germany's past is not exactly an example of peace and kindness, and we accept that. No man on this Earth should fear us, and we invite any man who does fear us to speak to us, to let us know his concerns, so that we can make sure that all of the men of our home planet can be clear on our position. Germany will never again make war on another, and we seek to make it so that the divided world that was a fact of all of our lives never rises again."
The cost of reunification was not small, but was paid by Germany in any case, and the withdrawal of all troops from all sides from Germany, completed by Britain and France in 1992 and the USA, Russia and Canada in 1993, was a major cost reduction for many nations and the reduction of Germany's armed forces caused something of a high-tech economic boom in the 1990s as many Germans engaged in military fields instead went into higher-tech industrial fields. Indeed the largest place that changed in Germany was Berlin itself, which was transformed into a very modern western metropolis in the 1990s and 2000s with vast construction projects and the connection of the city to the rail networks of West and East Germany.
It was a new world, and the collapse of the USSR into first civil war and then nearly twenty individual nations, ranging from massive Russia to tiny ones like Abkhazia and Armenia, made sure that the symmetry that had once existed between the West and East fell apart. America, standing proud with a booming economy, a stable political system, improving social conditions and the ability to direct vast diplomatic, cultural, economic, financial and military power to nearly anywhere on Earth, and possessing of alliances that spread to virtually all corners of the globe, was very much seen as the world's "Hyperpower", able to largely shape the world to its liking. As true as this was, most of America's senior government officials made it clear that they had little interest in trying to reshape the world in their image, just improve it for America, its people and its allies.....
OOC: I removed the part about Rutskoy asking for American help. It was a bit of an unrealistic point upon further review.
