Unlike the situation at the end of the Second World War, when the United States found itself a victorious creditor nation with little foreign economic competition, at the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s the country faced serious debt problems at home and abroad. These problems came about in part because of the burden garnered from over forty years of almost single-handedly protecting the “free” world from Communism, and also because of revitalized regional trade and technological competition from Asia and the European Community.

Despite (or because of) these negative economic circumstances, in less than a couple of years after the end of the Cold War a short, “hot” military conflict ensued instead of a “cold” peaceful transition to what George H. W. Bush called a New World Order. This was something that America had theoretically been pursuing since its inception, and particularly since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, even though the president who led the United States into the First World War did not use the phrase. Bush defined it in his “Toward a New World Order” address to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 1990, when he said: “Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we've known.