ABSTRACT
George H. W. Bush called for a New World Order during the buildup for the Gulf War in 1990, but the phrase was left undefined and barely survived Desert Storm. By 1989, the race between liberty and totalitarianism was over, with the next two years of the Bush administration presiding over the unraveling of the Soviet Empire, as Churchill originally put it, "from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic". Assertive multilateralism may have satisfied a sociological or ideological need and may even suffice in times of apathy and drift, but such ambiguities could never persevere through times of real crisis, much less war. As foreign policy drifted to the margins, and the attention shifted to social and economic issues, the party's fundamental lack of consensus was bound to emerge. Bush lost the 1992 presidential election against Governor Clinton, whose campaign slogan "it's the economy, stupid" overcame the Gulf War victory and Bush's near 90 percent approval rating.
