Violence, Scandal, and the End of the Cold War 303“kinder” and “gentler”America in place of the raucous, violent country
it had become in the past few years. But in one of his first actions in
foreign affairs, he dispatched troops by air to Panama in December 1989
to capture its dictator, Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the
United States for drug trafficking and money laundering. A demo cratic
government, chosen in free elections, replaced the Noriega regime.
In his inaugural address Bush also stated that “a new breeze is blow-
ing and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn.” Indeed, the inter-
nal weakness of the Soviet Union began to manifest itself in political
upheavals that erupted throughout eastern Europe. The Solidarity
Movement in Poland produced a noncommunist government in 1990 ;
in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia the populace demanded freedom
from the Soviet Union; Hungary declared itself a free republic, as did
Czech oslovakia, Romania, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan,
and Armenia. In East Germany thousands of people fled to West Ger-
many through the open borders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Po-
land. People danced on the Berlin Wall and on December 22 , 1989 , the
Brandenburg Gate was reopened and the wall itself was demolished,
symbolically ending the Cold War that had been going on for the last
forty-fi ve years.
Communism seemed in full decline. In Russia the policies of glas-
nost and perestroika helped bring about the downfall of Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev, who resigned in December 1991. Boris Yeltsin took
over as president of Russia. In Nicaragua free elections took place in
Februar y 1990 , driving the Sandinistas from power. Even in Commu-
nist China there were indications that the country was veering toward
a more democratic state. Thousands of students demonstrated in the
streets of Beijing and in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 , they
paraded a thirty-foot-high “Goddess of Freedom” modeled on the
Statute of Liberty. But the repressive communist leaders of China bru-
tally crushed this rebellion. Tanks and machine guns mowed down
hundreds of protesters, and many more were imprisoned or executed
after show trials were staged. Eastern Europe had been liberated but in
Asia, and the Middle East, the forces of repression still reigned.
A new threat to world peace arose on August 2 , 1990 , when the dic-
tator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, seized the border country of Kuwait,
which sits on a valuable oil pool. Anxious to protect this nation’s access