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History As It Happens
The Day of the Dictator (Is Not Over)
00:55:33
In his inaugural address in Jan. 1989, President George Bush said, "For a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over." Indeed, with the Cold War winding...
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- [00:01]
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Host
Vote history as it happens February 7, 2025 the day of the dictator, or.
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Historian
In man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over.
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Host
Imagine a political leader anywhere in the world today saying what President Bush said in 1989 it was the end of history, the dawn of a new era of democracy and freedom. The day of the dictator was not over, it turned out, and today autocrats and authoritarianism are on the march in countries like Russia and China and within democracies. What happened to the spirit of 89? That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DiCaro.
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Historian
Astonishing news from East Germany where the East German authorities have said in essence that the Berlin Wall doesn't mean anything anymore.
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Jeffrey Engel
This weekend's massive military assault aimed at.
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News Reporter
Smashing China's pro democracy demonstration, General Noriega turned himself in to US authorities in pan with the full knowledge of the Panamanian government.
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Jeffrey Engel
The invasion by 100,000 Iraqi troops backed.
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News Reporter
By air cover and tanks was brutally efficient.
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Historian
Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait completely, immediately and without condition.
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Poet
Many of the dreams Americans and Russians hold for their children and for generations to come rest on the long term success of Russia's reforms in Russia.
- [02:29]
Historian
Today, the clear winner of the Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin, began to establish the Putin era.
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Jeffrey Engel
I think there really is something to the connection between prosperity and civil liberties. And if we look at a place like Russia, we see in the 1990s that life expectancy, standard of living, birth rate, child poverty rate, everything you could imagine. Alcoholism goes in the worst direction at the very moment that the country becomes, in theory, democratic.
- [02:58]
Host
When President George Bush delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 1989, solidarity sweeping electoral victory in Poland, the pro democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of Noriega in Panama, all were yet to come.
- [03:16]
Historian
I come before you and assume the presidency at a moment rich with promise. We live in a peaceful, prosperous time that we can make it better for. A new breeze is blowing and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn. For in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient lifeless tree. A new breeze is blowing and a nation refreshed by freedom stands ready to push on.
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Host
What a time you could be authentically optimistic about the wind of change. The German heavy metal band Scorpion was certainly inspired.
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Jeffrey Engel
Take me to the magic of the moment.
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Host
1989 was a remarkable year. The winding down of the Cold War meant the countries escaping Moscow's grip could enter the democratic camp. But President George Bush was no starry eyed idealist. He knew there'd still be dictators and authoritarians and that there would still be trouble.
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News Reporter
China is a nation at war with itself.
- [04:48]
Historian
The streets leading down to the main.
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Jeffrey Engel
Road to Tiananmen Square, furious people stared in disbelief.
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News Reporter
During the past few days, elements of the Chinese army have been brutally suppressing popular and peaceful demonstrations in China. There's been widespread and continuing violence, many casualties and many deaths. And we deplore the decision to use force. And I now call on the Chinese leadership publicly, as I have in private channels, to avoid violence and to return to their previous policy of restraint.
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Host
China never evolved into a free country, of course, but other countries did turn democratic all over the world. Writing for the Carnegie Corporation, Sergei Guryev and Daniel Treisman say By the early 21st century, global politics hit a major milestone. For the first time, the number of democracies surged past the number of authoritarian states. 98 countries with free government, they say, compared to 80 still controlled by dictators. The optimism was infectious, they say new information technologies, globalization and economic development seem to be calling time's up on strongman rule. As countries modernized, tyranny was becoming obsolete, they say. The day of the dictator was over, or so it seemed.
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Political Analyst
Today we can definitively say that the Qaddafi regime has come to an end.
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Host
Freedom House, in its most recent report, says global freedom has declined 18 consecutive years. The breadth and depth of the deterioration were extensive. The report concludes political rights. Civil liberties were diminished in 52 countries, while only 21 countries made improvements. Flawed elections and armed conflict contributed to the decline, endangering freedom and causing severe human suffering again, according to Freedom House's Freedom in the World report published in 2024. Other groups like the Bertelsmann foundation, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and World Population Review, to name three, reach a similar conclusion. Democracy is in retreat, even if they differ on the precise number of democracies versus autocracies or dictatorships. For instance, the Economist Intelligence unit says only 8% of the world's population actually lives in a full functioning democracy. Another 37% of people live in some type of flawed democracy. 55% of the world does not live in democracy at all. Whatever the numbers are, we are now 36 years after President Bush's optimistic speech heralding a new era of freedom. So we can ask, what happened? Why is there so much cynicism about democracy now? Where did things start to go wrong? How have dictators or strongmen adjusted in our modern age so they can hold on to power while hollowing out democratic institutions or further turning the screws of repression in authoritarian states? Maybe most troubling of all, we can ask have people the world over given up on democracy, or do they feel betrayed by unfulfilled promises where globalization failed to deliver prosperity? In elections across the democratic world, incumbents are losing most of the time. And in states without free elections, autocratic rulers deride democracy as a failed experiment. Historian Jeffrey Engel is the founding director of the center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and is the author of when the world seemed George H.W. bush and the End of the Cold War. Jeffrey Engel, welcome back.
- [08:29]
Jeffrey Engel
It is fabulous to talk to you.
- [08:31]
Host
You're in Vienna?
- [08:32]
Jeffrey Engel
I am.
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Host
Tell us what you're up to.
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Jeffrey Engel
So I am teaching this semester at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. I'm teaching here on a Fulbright scholarship, and it has been a fascinating, fascinating experience to teach international relations graduate students from all over the world. You know, I've taught in a policy school before, but most of my students back then were American. Now I only have one American among the 30 students I have. It's really been fascinating.
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Host
Are they asking you, Professor Engel, what's going on back in your home country these days?
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Jeffrey Engel
You know, the course I'm teaching right now is formally American Political history. And I walked in on the first day and said, I have been studying American political history for 30 years, and I have no idea what's going on. So this is going to be a ride we're going to take together. In fact, today I just got out of class, and the students really want to discuss the first couple of weeks of the Trump administration. And they are almost, to a person, very, very worried. And I think for a very important reason, not necessarily because they think things are going to go bad, but because they are studying an international system that is truly going to be in flux.
- [09:41]
Host
And that ties into our conversation today because, as you know, as a frequent guest on the show, I've been talking a lot, thinking a lot about the past 30 years. Matter of fact, one of the first times, the first time you were on this podcast in 2021 was to talk about the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War end of the Cold War. We're returning to that subject in a way today because when George H.W. bush delivered his inaugural address in 1989, he said, the day of the dictator is over.
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Historian
The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree. A new breeze is blowing, and a nation refreshed by freedom stands ready to push on. There's new ground to be broken and new action to be taken. There are times when the future seems thick as a fog. You sit and wait, hoping the mist will lift and reveal the right path. But this is a time when the future seems a door you can walk right through.
- [10:53]
Host
Fast forward to today, and there's serious concern in our country and across the world about the lurch toward authoritarianism, the resurgence of ferocious nationalism, a turning away from internationalism. What did George H.W. bush mean when he delivered this address, the day of the dictator is over?
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Jeffrey Engel
He was really talking about the broad advance, as he described it, of freedom around the world. We might think of that as having a synonym for democracy around the world, which was what people were seeing in the late 1980s as not only the Soviet Union, and therefore the Soviet bloc, appeared to be moving more in a democratic fashion, mostly because Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union allowed his client states to choose their own path, if you will. And there's just a real sense that the world had turned in a particular direction, which Bush actually doesn't get credit for the term, but what he's really describing there is the era of democratic peace. There were a couple of different political science ideas that came together at the end of the 1980s, the first being Francis Fukuyama's suggestion that we had reached the end of history. Of course, what he meant by that wasn't that history was going to stop, but that we had found its purpose using Kantian dialectics. If all of human history had been a struggle to figure out what kind of government and society we should have, well, we've won. Democracy has won. By extension, democracies tended not to fight with each other. Interestingly enough, democracies fight more and are more aggressive than other forms of government, but they don't fight each other, was the theory at the time. So if you put those two things together, George Bush saying the world is turning democratic, which it's turning more peaceful as well, and that we have turned maybe the last critical corner of societal advancement where we really will see a 21st century. He was arguing that was going to be much freer than anything that had happened before.
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Host
You said Kant. I think you may have meant Hegelian philosophy.
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Jeffrey Engel
Oh, yes, you mentioned I was a Vienna. I've been teaching all day. It's late here.
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Host
I'm not a philosophy guy either. But I do know that Fukuyama was applying Hegel. He's applying Hegel.
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Jeffrey Engel
I like to say. It's the. When his article turned into a book, it became the single best selling book on Hegelian dialectics ever. Even though I would argue most people who bought the book didn't read it.
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Host
Yeah, I actually was about to open two, page 75 of your book, when the World Seemed New, where you say Fukuyama's essay easily ranks among the best selling studies of Hegelian philosophy ever produced. Of all the statements in your book, that one stands most clear. But yeah, I mean, his idea. His idea was picked up by Thatcher. It was picked up by statesmen and political scientists and thinkers all over the world. Yeah, this is telling us what we want to hear.
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Jeffrey Engel
It's not only telling us what we want to hear. Just focusing on Fukuyama for a second. There's actually a lot of people in the political science realm, in politics in government, George Bush himself, who are talking about this idea. As the 80s come to a close, Fukuyama becomes world famous because he comes up with the critical phrasing. You know, this is actually a very good lesson. I try to teach my students that it's not always the person who has the best idea that gets remembered for it. It's the person who says it best. And Fukuyama by far said it better than anybody. But he was not the only one playing with this idea that we had turned with the end of communism, with the end of the Cold War, our system, the democratic system, had proven itself. To be the most superior in the world, and that that was the future.
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Host
You know, in the 20th century, fascism was defeated. Communism seemed to be on its way out, although there was still this country called China with the largest population in the world. It's one thing to point out dictatorships or authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian states are decreasing in number, and the number of democracies, at least on paper, are increasing. But what that means for the future of democracy in, say, places like Russia, where it didn't last very long at all, if at all, or what that means for the role of the United States to protect democracy in a Wilsonian sense, make the world safe for democracy. I have an article here from the Carnegie Corporation. Democracy spread in three great waves. The first peaked around 1920, new states splintering from the European empires destroyed by World War I. The second occurred between the late 40s and the early 60s as the winners of World War II imposed democracy on the losers and former colonies in Asia and Africa held elections. The third wave, a true tsunami, according to this article at the Carnegie Corporation, started with Portugal's carnation revolution in 1974, picked up speed as communism collapsed around 1990 and reached its apex by around 2015, when more than half of all countries containing about half of the world's population were electoral democracies. So let's just go back to then, the. The 1974, 1990 period, the third wave. What was happening there?
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Jeffrey Engel
Well, I think what's really critical, and this really picks up speed throughout the 1980s, is in previous iterations, if you will, of fundamental regime change around the world, of people adopting a new sense of style of government. Most of the time that happened after a conflict and a violent conflict at that, where the victors impose their rule upon others and impose their value system upon others. That didn't happen in the 1980s. The Cold War, never a hot war, came to a surprisingly peaceful end, a shockingly peaceful end. It's the perhaps only time in history that we've seen a great power collapse without an ensuing great power war. Let me put a pause on that to say, maybe we're seeing it in Ukraine and the beginnings of it now, but at the time, it appeared as though not just that democracy was victorious, but that people were actively choosing to go in this direction. So they weren't doing it out of spite. They weren't doing it because they were defeated. They were doing it because they recognize what Americans had been saying for several hundred years and certainly during the Cold War, that our system was universally applicable and universally Benevolent. If you just listened to us. Well, people in the 80s started listening to us. Was the way Americans perceived it.
- [17:11]
Host
The final collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet empire, was 1989, 90, 91. Mostly bloodless. There was some bloodshed, comparatively. Yeah. And Gorbachev did not send the tanks a la Brezhnev into Eastern Europe, which is what would have been necessary to keep the Eastern bloc in the Soviet orbit. However, if you look at the collapse of the Soviet Union as a process rather than just an event that took place in a year, the violence does come later, not in the periphery, but within. Within the old Russian Empire, starting with Chechnya in the early 1990s. Not to digress. We'll get back to Russia. What happens to Russia as the rise of the autocrats follows the triumph of democracy? That's what we're getting at here. What has happened over the past 30 years that makes us look back at George H.W. bush's inaugural address and say, man, this is corny stuff. What's he talking about there?
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Historian
But this is a time when the future seems a door you can walk right through into a room called tomorrow. Great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom. Men and women of the world move toward free markets through the door to prosperity. The people of the world agitate for free expression and free thought through the door to the moral and intellectual satisfactions that only liberty allows. We know what works. Freedom works. We know what's right. Freedom is right.
- [18:47]
Host
But, you know, at the time, though, at the time you could reasonably make that argument.
- [18:51]
Jeffrey Engel
We have to understand that the past is unfolding in real time for our subjects. We can look back now and say, boy, that enthusiasm, that optimism, that zeal for the democratic movement at the end of the Cold War was misguided, was premature. But other choices being made by policymakers during the 1990s and the early 2000s would have led to at least a more democratic world, or a world that, unlike what we're seeing today, where democracy appears in retreat now, this is a global counterfactual. But, for example, the Soviet Union has its revolution. That becomes Russia and the democracy of that country in 1991, and I would argue by 1993, the democratic experiment is basically already over. Why is that? Think that's because of what Americans did? Frankly, I think that's because of decisions that were made by Russian policymakers, Boris Yeltsin in particular, who had ridden the democratic wave to power, to ousting Gorbachev, for all intents and purposes. After the coup of August of 91. Then within a couple years, Yeltsin is pulling up tanks and firing on his own legislature.
- [20:04]
Historian
The people, the truth groups were trying to dislodge were a mixed group of hardline communists, right wing nationalists, and those who'd lost power to the new men brought in by President Yeltsin to force through his economic reform.
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Jeffrey Engel
So the experiment in democracy, transition to democracy, we know didn't work out, but that isn't to say it couldn't have. And as George Bush is talking in the late 1980s, this is the moment when the race is beginning, if you will. You never know how that game's gonna turn out.
- [20:32]
Host
Yeltsin's actions in September of 1993 were publicly applauded by the Clinton administration.
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Poet
We very much regret the loss of life in Moscow, but it is clear that the opposition forces started the conflict and that President Yeltsin had no other alternative than to try to restore order.
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Host
So what you alluded to, there was a constitutional crisis in Russia that really comes to a head in 92, 93. Long story short, I actually happen to be reading Serhiy Ploki's book on the origins of the Russo Ukrainian War. Yeltsin wants a new constitution that will protect his economic reforms, which were disastrous, by the way, and also give the office of the president in Russia a lot more power relative to the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, which were the two legislative bodies in Russia. The parliament doesn't want to go along with Yeltsin's directives. He actually signs a decree in September of 1993 dissolving both bodies. He had no authority to do this. The parliament doesn't want to go along with this. It gets violent. He sends in the military. The Minister of Defense, General Pavel Grachev, opened fire with tanks on the Russian White House, spilled blood, killed people.
- [21:48]
Jeffrey Engel
Location really matters. You can see A picture from 1991 of Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank in front of that White House as the champion of democracy. And then as you point out, by 1991, let's say in the best reading of it, he is using military force against the elected legislature of his own country because the legislators don't want to have greater centralized power. Now, there's all kinds of rationales that Yeltsin used, but I would not call storming the capitol, if you will, a democratic act.
- [22:19]
Host
And then he got his new constitution. 58% of voters in the referendum did back him. So they went along with this despite the bloodshed. And he did get more presidential power, laying the groundwork for the authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin about eight years later. You know, let's go back to Bush, though, because you make this point in your book. When he declared the day of the dictator was over, he wasn't just some dreamy hippie, right? He obviously understood there are still many, many authoritarian countries in the world, although the Soviet Union and the US Had a closer and friendlier relationship at that time, something that he wanted to continue. But we're still months away from the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're still two years away from the final collapse of the Soviet Union. I mean, there's still an iron curtain when he's making this speech in January of 1989. But you make the point in your book. He just didn't believe that the world would suddenly have no problems and that there would be no disruption to democratic progress. And this is where his idea of maintaining US Influence, especially in Europe and Asia, was necessary.
- [23:24]
Jeffrey Engel
Bush was one of those people who believed that to keep the peace, you have to keep heavily armed. To be honest, Tiananmen Square is about to blossom, and it's critical as Bush is dealing with the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he's dealing with Gorbachev, when he's dealing with the crisis in Eastern Europe. That's several months after the tanks rolled in Tiananmen. So he has a very real world example of how things can be reversed from a democratic movement. But I think it's important to couple Bush's inauguration speech with his New World Order speech, which was given, and this is because history loves ironies, given on September 11th of 1990, after Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait.
- [24:04]
Historian
And we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times. Our fifth objective, a new world order, can emerge, a new era.
- [24:27]
Jeffrey Engel
And this was Bush's speaking to the Congress, trying to rally American opinion and also rally the world to stand up Hussein. He said, we're on the brink of a new world, a new world that is freer than what came before, that is more just than what came before, that is more peaceful than what came before. And this is really critical to see the way in which Bush sort of hedges on, saying that we are not in a world that is free. We are not in a world that is just. We are not in a world that's peaceful. But the future can be better from his perspective. We are trending both speeches together suggest we are trending in the right direction. So let's keep moving along with the stream of history, a Bismarckian phrase, let's keep moving along with that stream and things will continue to get better. And we still have our responsibility to this generation to play our part to make sure that we keep paddling in the right direction. But don't for a moment think that means we're done. This is a civilization long process.
- [25:30]
Host
It's not just improving on its own. Because the invasion of Kuwait was a reminder that there are dictators who do things like what Saddam Hussein did there in the summer of 1990. So his new World order though was really the old World order, the liberal international order, rules based UN Charter, the sanctity of borders and universal human rights. This was Bush saying, okay, now this is our first post Cold War, if you will, test case. How is the world with the Soviet Union actually agreeing to what eventually happened there?
- [26:00]
Jeffrey Engel
Bush's new World order speech fals flat politically. I mean, he gets the political support he needs for Kuwait, but it falls flat in the bigger picture because people say, I'm sorry, there's nothing new here. This is a world that the United States has been advocating for generations. To which Bush's effective response was, yes, when I was 18, I joined the Navy and went to fight for the world that Franklin Roosevelt described. We won World War II and the Cold War kept us from making it universal. Now we get to make it universal. That didn't sell great politically when you said you had a new World Order. People sort of want like new Coke, they want a new recipe.
- [26:37]
Host
But the thing about Iraq and Kuwait, if this was during, say if this had happened during a really cold part of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, Gorbachev would never have said, okay, we're not going to stand in your way. At the UN Security Council, the Soviet Union actually abstained when the Security Council gave the okay for the US led coalition to expel Saddam from Kuwait. So that was I guess the new part of the new world Order. You know, moving forward. We have this new situation in the world today with the cold winding down. The Soviet Union is no longer enemy.
- [27:07]
Jeffrey Engel
Cold War plays two critical roles here on both ends of the equation. Saddam Hussein, and we know this because we actually have all of his records. We probably know more about what Saddam Hussein was thinking than we do American or Soviet policymakers at the time. Saddam Hussein thought that the Cold War ending meant that people wouldn't care if he got grabby, if you will, with another country because previously it would have been seen as a superpower conflict. Now the superpowers are friends. The Iraq invasion doesn't happen happen unless the Cold War ends. To your second point, international community under the guise of the United nations would never have come together if the Cold War hadn't ended to oppose Saddam Hussein because that was where the Soviets and the Americans really get together. In fact, James Baker, American Secretary of State under George Bush, remarks in his memoirs that this is the moment when he personally thought and realized and sort of was shocked by the realization that the Cold War was in fact over was when he stood next to the Soviet foreign minister and they jointly condemned a former Soviet ally, Iraq for its invasion. He said, this is a whole new universe that we're living in.
- [28:20]
Host
Let me say this about the rules based international order and the day of the dictator being over. The United States never applied these principles consistently. There was so much hypocrisy and double standards during the Cold War. The United States worked with and supported dictators and authoritarian regimes and, and still does today, a la Saudi Arabia and its authoritarian ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. I guess I'm jumping to the end of the story a little bit here, but this is important context. We're going to talk about the rise and fall and the rise of autocracy in our world today. The United States has never been consistent on this front.
- [28:55]
Jeffrey Engel
Well, and let's also remember that the United States in the Gulf War, that first example of a new world order, that first example of Soviet American cooperation, this is not an equal relationship and this is not a moment where the United States States is unwilling to use its power. Case in point, when this fighting actually begins, when the bombing actually begins in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev does a last minute plea, last minute speed round of diplomacy to try to avoid the fighting spreading and try to avoid the first bombing and try to, you know, maybe I can be a communicator with Saddam Hussein. That used to be our ally. George Bush has long conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev on the phone. And actually it's a very funny thing. One of the things from transcripts that we have is you can't really tell from a transcript, transcript usually what somebody's tone of voice is. But I know for a fact from this transcript of Bush and Gorbachev talking on the eve of the Gulf War that Bush was yelling because Gorbachev kept saying, George, calm down, George, don't yell. And what George was yelling because he was under a lot of pressure. What George was yelling was we're doing this whether you like it or not. And Mikhail Gorbachev even said at one point, are you informing us or are you asking us? And Bush says, essentially I'm telling you that this is what we're doing. So even though the day of the dictator may be over moving into a new world order, my point being power politics are still going to matter.
- [30:20]
Host
And that war had nothing to do with democracy. Iraq was not a democracy, but Kuwait wasn't a democracy. And it did nothing really to advance democracy. I mean, we've talked about the day of the dictator and Bush's vision in that inaugural address about where history was going. It's also about US power. It's not about always about democracy.
- [30:41]
Jeffrey Engel
I would argue that democracy was served by the American led rejection of Saddam Hussein's capture of Kuwait, even if it wasn't served in Iraq or Kuwait. Because what it did was establish the precedent that the United nations mattered even in a place like Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, not a democracy, is becoming more integrated in the international system by following United nations mandates, by allowing American troops in. So even in that sense, we're expanding the likelihood of democracy. That things do again seem to be trending in the right direction as problems.
- [31:21]
Host
Inevitably would come up. The question was, well then, what is the US role here? How do we steward this transition to a more democratic world? So January of 1989, we're still quite a ways from the fall of the Berlin Wall about eight, nine months. When that happens, Bush takes a light touch, right? He does not want to appear as if he is meddling in that situation and he's attacked by people in the United States, people who am I talking about? Conservative commentators say he's being a weakling. What are you doing? It's time to act. And he says, I'm not gonna dance on the rubble of the Berlin Wall. Paraphrasing.
- [31:55]
Historian
Secretary Baker commented earlier about how rapid the pace of change has been in Eastern Europe. Nobody is really expecting this to happen as quickly as it did. Is there a danger here that things are accelerating too quickly?
- [32:07]
News Reporter
Well, I wouldn't want to say this kind of development makes things be moving too quickly at all. It's the kind of development that we would, we have long encouraged by our strong support for the Helsinki Final act. So I'm not going to that it may anything goes too fast. But we are handling it in a way where we are not trying to give anybody a hard time. We are saluting those who can move forward with democracy. We are encouraging the concept of a European Whole and free.
- [32:53]
Host
That's one example. Panama.
- [32:55]
Jeffrey Engel
I was hoping we're gonna talk about that.
- [32:57]
Host
Bring up a timely subject. Panama and Noriega. And now, this is during the transition period when the canal is being transferred. It's completed in 1999, but 1989, we're already underway the transfer of the canal. Noriega, now, he had been an American client prior to what happens here, but he does become a military dictator. He did cancel an election in 1989, and the United States invaded. Well, invaded. Is that the right word? We had U.S. bases in the Canal Zone. 24,000 troops go into Panama to get rid of Noriega, who had been indicted by a grand jury for drug trafficking.
- [33:35]
Historian
Fighting is still going on in Panama City.
- [33:37]
Jeffrey Engel
The Americans say 19 of their soldiers are killed.
- [33:40]
Advertiser
There are also reports tonight that 61.
- [33:42]
Jeffrey Engel
Hostages are still being held by Noriega loyalists.
- [33:45]
News Reporter
On Wednesday, December 20, I ordered U.S. troops to Panama with four objectives. To safeguard the lives of American citizens, to help restore democracy, to protect the integrity of the Panama Canal treaties, and to bring General Manuel Noriega to justice. All of these objectives have now been achieved.
- [34:11]
Host
No one's going to defend. Defend Noriega. Manuel Noriega. The issue is the United States going into another country and basically arresting its leader and taking him out of there.
- [34:20]
Jeffrey Engel
Well, there's a couple things going on there. But you're absolutely right that Noriega, much like Saddam Hussein, not a nice guy, not a good guy. And more importantly, from the perspective of American policymakers, both Noriega and subsequently Saddam Hussein. But Noriega in particular, at this moment, was not doing what was best for the Panamanian people. People, if we remember when Theodore Roosevelt took the Panama Canal Zone, he said, I'm doing this because it's in the best interest of civilization. It's in the best interest of the United States. Yes, it's in the best interest of civilization, and it's in the best interest of the Panamanian people. They are not being served by their own leadership. Bush essentially makes the same rationale. And you can say it's haughty. You can say it's the stronger power is always going to do what it wants anyway. Bush makes the argument that the day of the dictator is over. This man is a dictator. This man is hurting his own people and hurting Americans and hurting and destabilizing the Panama Canal Zone, which is important. And therefore we have an obligation to go in and remove dictators. This is the Bush administration kind of learning on the fly because the Reagan administration had not done anything of this nature. So Bush is trying to figure out, okay, if I say the day of the dictator is over, what does that actually mean? And what power do we have to speed that process when necessary? And I think Panama's actually a brilliant test case for him because it's a small place and Noriega's forces are never going to defeat American forces. It's not like we're going in and saying, let's get rid of the Soviet Union, let's get rid of Deng Xiaoping in Beijing.
- [35:53]
Host
I mentioned Noriega being a client. He was a paid informant for the CIA for decades. He took power in 1981. But by the mid-1980s, allegations grew regarding his involvement in the brutal murder of one of his opponents, Hugo Spot a Ford. And then evidence surfaced regarding Noriega's laundering of drug money and sale of restricted US Technology and information. Conflict between the Panamanian strongman and the US Government appeared inevitable, especially given the imminent transfer that I alluded to before of control of the Panama Canal. Reagan offered Noriega a deal. Leave your country and we'll drop the charges against you because he had been indicted. Noriega had been indicted in 1988 on drug trafficking charges. So, 89. The U.S. as you say, had enough. Bush had enough, and we got rid of him.
- [36:41]
Jeffrey Engel
And there's another important element here. This all can be explained just by power politics. But I do think that it's sometimes useful, and this is one of those cases, to think about the logic that the policymakers are using beyond just power. Noriega also had falsified the results of an election. So not only was he a dictator in the American perspective, he was an illegitimate ruler. So he really was, in some senses, like a foreign power that was overruling the Panamanian people. And isn't that what America does? It goes in the 20th century, goes and rescues people around the world for the sake of democratic rule. There's one other really interesting element, by the way, to the Panamanian thing which I think doesn't get nearly enough attention. Tensions have been building for a while, as you point out, throughout the Reagan administration where Bush was vice president. But then in those first few months, the tensions get really bad. And there are some American service people who are killed by Panamanian police forces. The Panamanian police forces and the Americans basically are sort of eye to eyeball in an armed standoff frequently during this period. Period. But what ultimately trips the trigger for Bush is there was an American Navy lieutenant and his wife who were captured by The Panamanians. Bush is told that the guy was beat up and the girl was assaulted, presumably sexually assaulted. Turns out she probably wasn't, but he was told at the time that she was. And I think it's important to understand that from Bush's perspective, this really hits home because he had been a Navy lieutenant and he had had a young wife. And he thought a regime that would treat this officer and wife this way is a regime that clearly is going to do all kinds of terrible things. That this is granted a small straw, but it really is the straw that breaks the camel's back from Bush's perspective. And I think it's because he saw himself in many ways in that young couple.
- [38:32]
Host
Noriega, in December of 1989, persuaded the Panamanian national assembly to name him Maximum Leader. At his behest, the assembly declared a state of war existed between Panama and the United States. And within days of that, an unarmed U.S. marine officer dressed in civilian clothes was ambushed and killed by Panamanian soldiers. And that's when Bush responds more forcefully. December 17th of 1989, he orders 11,000 troops to be airlifted from the US to Panama to reinforce the contingent of troops already there in the Canal Zone. And eventually the number is 24,000 troops that invade Panama. That's not an insignificant number. So that's Panama. You mentioned Tiananmen. We're going to talk about that now. When that happens, the crushing of a pro democracy movement in China. How does Bush respond to that? He does not come down hard on China. I mean, there's rhetoric, right?
- [39:28]
Jeffrey Engel
Tiananmen is, I think, an absolutely fascinating case study for Americans. First of all, we've already done it, referred to Tiananmen Square as an event. It is actually a place. What we're talking about now for 1989 is what turns it into an event. There is a pro democracy movement already. I feel uncomfortable, comfortable having said that sentence, because it is not necessarily pro democracy in the way that Bush and those around him perceived. This was not Chinese students in particular who led the movement, asking to join the Western community or asking to get rid of communism. What they really wanted for Chinese leaders to be more democratic in how they doled out resources and how they actually would treat people in their own country. Essentially live up to your own constitution, Chinese government. In fact, this is why it's important that it's led by students. The real tipping point point for the students is that Deng Xiaoping had said everybody should get rich and jobs and do well based upon their merit. And the students turned around and said, okay, if that's true, then how come our grades don't matter and the kids with the best father connections are the ones who are getting the good job? Bush's response to Tiananmen is, I think he deserves a lot of credit, to be honest, because there is no good situation, no good outcome here for the United States. He is under the impression that China is about to devolve into a civil war. He is actually getting, we have all this information in the archive. He's getting a lot of it turns out, erroneous information, but from people who he trusted. His own ambassador saying, there are troops fighting each other. We don't know where the nuclear troops are. We don't know where Deng Xiaoping is. We think there's been a coup. There's the possibility for a civil war breaking out in the middle of a nuclear armed riot rival the most populous country in the world. Bush's response for most of this is, okay, let's not make things worse. So he ultimately, within the first few days, and then subsequently more and more and more yields to congressional pressure, especially from the democratic side. This, by the way, is where Nancy Pelosi first makes her mark on national politics to increase sanctions against the Chinese regime. But Bush's entire response to this is, yeah, I could increase sanctions, but don't we want the Chinese to come back to the world system? Don't we want Deng Xiaoping's reforms to continue and not be thwarted? So if I really want China to be part of the world system, excluding it from the world system is probably not going to help. On the other hand, they did something terrible, they did something wrong, they did something that needs to be called out.
- [42:01]
Host
I have an article here from the Texas National Security Review that makes this point about Bush's response to what the Chinese did to their own people. The administration's decision to try to sustain US Chinese ties because China was supposedly moving in the right direction rather than to adopt more punitive measures, was not based exclusively on either the strategic or the economic value of the Sino American relationship. Bush himself argued that continued engagement with China, including through trade trade would foster the values agenda as well. Bush said, as people of commercial incentives, whether it's in China or in other totalitarian countries, the move to democracy becomes inexorable. In other words, if we crush China with sanctions, we'll set back the development of democracy in a more open society there. As horrible as Tiananmen Square is, we have to take a lighter touch with him.
- [42:57]
News Reporter
This is not the time for an emotional response, but for a reasoned, careful action that takes into account both our long term interest and recognition of a complex internal situation in China. There clearly is turmoil within the ranks of the political leadership as well as the political. The People's Liberation Army. And now is the time to look beyond the moment to important and enduring aspects of this vital relationship for the United States.
- [43:29]
Jeffrey Engel
Actually two things that happen on the night that Tiananmen Square massacre occurs, June 4th of 1989. There's obviously that in Beijing, but also around the world. On the other side of the world, on that very same day, because history has a sense of irony. On that very same day, Polish voters voted out, voted out their communist regime. So Bush is seeing on the one hand a communist regime that's spasming violently against a democratic movement. He sees in Poland a democratic regime that's trying to get its feet under it. And then he also sees in East Germany and the Soviet Union in subsequent months. How do I make sure that we don't get the Tianymen Square situation? We get more the Poland situation. So again, there is no easy and by the way, no obvious course. This is one of those moments where we have to say we want policymakers to be level headed and clear. Thinking about interests American and the world and not just emotional actors is really easy to say. The butchers of Tiananmen should have been cut off and sanctioned and we're never going to speak to them again. That makes you feel good for five minutes. But that doesn't necessarily increase the likelihood of peace and a democratic 21st century.
- [44:43]
Host
As it turns out, China never liberalized politically. It did liberalize economically, state managed capitalism. But yeah, there was more to this story too. China and the wto. Other milestones on this road where American leaders say this is going to help China become a democracy. I mean, I remember the 1990s. Let me just get this point in. In the 1990s, the idea that China would have a free press because it was going to have a stock market. So it would therefore need a transparent press. It never happened.
- [45:12]
Jeffrey Engel
Yeah, let's back up again to what we were saying about the world moving in a more democratic fashion. One of the logics was that countries that became more prosperous, their people demanded more civil liberties. That was just an axiom that was believed by people at the time. So therefore one way to promote democracy was to promote prosperity. So from Bush's perspective, if you really want China to become more democratic, you need to make sure that it becomes more prosperous, which it clearly has. This is Actually, really a fascinating thing about the Chinese decision in the aftermath of Tiananmen, the Chinese basically cut a deal with their own people. They say, we will give you economic liberalization, we will give you the opportunity of prosperity, but you don't get any civil liberties, you don't get any political freedoms. Nowhere else in the world has that ever happened. That we have an increase of prosperity and a decrease in civil liberties. It just is axiomatically wrong.
- [46:20]
Political Analyst
Wrong. Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength, but out of weakness. Ukraine has been a country in which Russia had enormous influence for decades, since the breakup of the Soviet Union. And we have considerable influence on our neighbors. We generally don't need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them.
- [46:55]
Host
Then how did dictators recover, adjust, survive, rise again in this new world? Let me just point out, we're talking about autocracy versus democracy. There's a lot of gray area. Look at countries like Hungary and Turkey. Are they liberal democracies? No, but they're both in nature. Hungary's also in the European Union. And I'll point to this study that I mentioned before, the Carnegie Corporation, you know, they said not all autocrats evolved into something that. Well, they were still tyrants. They just looked and acted differently. We still have old school dictators in the world today, like Kim Jong Un in North Korea, until recently Assad in Syria, who basically used massive violence to crush and kill opposition. The point of this article is that modern day dictators are taking a different tact. They're still able to control society without being sadistically brutal and violent to their own populations. But depending on which study, which think tank you're alluding to, the number of democracies versus dictatorships has really been about 50, 50 even during this period. We've been discussing the blossoming of democracy in the world. That's when the number of democracies surpassed the number of dictatorships or authoritarian forms of government. You know, 1990s into the early 2000s, it wasn't 150 democracies versus 45. If there are 195 countries in the world versus 45 dictatorships, it's been about half and half. But now the scale has tipped back towards authoritarianism. The organization Freedom House does their Freedom in the World survey every single year. They point out how even within democracies there's more authoritarianism than there even used to be, including in the United States. How have dictators adjusted?
- [48:41]
Jeffrey Engel
As a professional historian, I have to say it's different in every country. But as a general rule, I think there really is something to the connection between prosperity and civil liberties. And if we look at a place like Russia, we see in the 1990s that life expectancy, standard of living, birth rate, child poverty rate, everything you could imagine, alcoholism goes in the worst direction at the very moment that the country becomes, becomes, in theory, democratic. It's only in time that the economy starts to improve. And that is also the same time where Boris Yeltsin, but then, more importantly, Vladimir Putin, are essentially making the kind of the same deal that they offered the Chinese, the Chinese offered their own people. I will keep the prosperity going. I will keep the GDP rising. You don't get to mess with civil liberties. And why wouldn't people say yes, given that 1993, 1994 in Russia, when in theory they had democracy, things were terrible, absolutely terrible.
- [49:42]
Host
Putin had high oil prices too, when he became president, to help out with that. But go ahead.
- [49:47]
Jeffrey Engel
It's interesting that from Bush's perspective, where we began the Conversation in 1989, the world is moving towards democracy. I think you can actually make a slightly better argument, certainly for the Soviet bloc, that they weren't actually moving towards democracy. They were moving away from communism and trying to figure out, okay, that didn't work. What else can we do that's better? I think today what we're seeing, and we're seeing this all over the world, is a rejection of capitalism as it's developed and rejection of democracy as it's developed. I think our good buddy Jeremy Surrey from the University of Texas makes this point frequently. I think the last time I talked to him, he said of the last 63 national elections around the world, 60 of them, the incumbents have been thrown out. There's just a general sense that the system is not working. So I don't think that autocracy is what people are choosing so much as saying, this democracy thing ain't working. What else you got?
- [50:40]
Host
You know, dictators, though, are authoritarian forms of government. One survey or study I looked at said there are 59 authoritarian governments in the world today. Technology, the use of technology to be able to control the population so the dictators can maintain power while placing a patina, if you will, of democratic legitimacy over their regimes. I mean, there's still elections in Russia today. Didn't Putin just win, quote, unquote, win in election? Wasn't a real election. Authoritarians, and you're right, it's different everywhere, but they've taken less brutal terroristic approaches to maintaining their power and giving their people just enough. I mean, we're seeing this in Saudi Arabia, right? Mohammed bin Salman is a modernizer and a state builder.
- [51:25]
Jeffrey Engel
Forget democratic peace theory for a moment. An even more powerful idea from the 1990s, which was basically universally held. You can find one or two people who thought otherwise, but they're really the outlier. This Internet thing was supposed to democratize the world because it was going to democratize information. The overwhelming expectation was that when you gave people more information, they would make better choices and they would make more democratic choices. They would demand more liberties. What we've seen happened, by the way everybody was wrong, is when you give people more information, you can control what information they get if you silo them off. So even in our own country, we are not living in a country where there is a universal acceptance of facts.
- [52:11]
Host
Hold on a second here. Are you trying to say, Jeffrey Engel, that the Internet did not end disagreements over basic facts? I mean, we could be standing on a street corner talking about something and you'll say, no, it's this way. And I'll say, wait, hold on a second. I'll pull the encyclopedia, my smartphone out of my pocket and I'll show you. No, no, these are the facts. See, you were wrong. And you'll say, oh, you know, you're right. Right about that. I mean, that's not the reality across the country.
- [52:36]
Jeffrey Engel
No, that's not the reality. That's absolutely not the reality.
- [52:38]
Host
You can sense the sarcasm in my voice.
- [52:40]
Jeffrey Engel
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and it's gone the opposite direction. You and I can be standing on the same street corner and you can say it's raining. And I can, within five minutes find a whole bunch of people on Twitter that will say that you're an idiot for saying it's raining. Everyone, myself included, everyone, was surprised that the Internet has proven just as terrible, frankly, as it.
- [52:58]
Host
So final question here, Jeffrey Engel. Why does this all matter? As I mentioned earlier, the United States has done business with dictatorships, needed dictatorships, strategic partnerships to advance U.S. interests, perceived U.S. interests in different parts of the world, not just during the Cold War. Even today, Saudi Arabia is one. I don't think Israel can be called a liberal democracy anymore. Israel is the most important client state for the United States States in the Middle East. So why does this matter if the world is becoming more authoritarian?
- [53:29]
Jeffrey Engel
What is the argument that was most effective for Donald Trump in his last campaign? Axiomatically, it was, prices are too high, eggs are too expensive, things cost Too much. What that tells us is for the average citizen of the average country, their immediate circumstance matters more than the esoteric question of their political political liberties. Political liberties are, in effect, only used by a small number of people. Everybody eats eggs. So it matters because the authoritarian movement is predicated upon eliminating the rights for a few people who would use them in order to make sure that everyone gets something better. That's the deal. And so I am genuinely concerned that we are in a moment in American history, history where we have, in addition to a president who seems to be acting in unusual manners and perhaps in contravention of the Constitution daily, he has also done something really interesting and go back to Panama for a second. When Theodore Roosevelt took the Panama Canal Zone, he said at least he was doing it on behalf of the Panamanian people and the world. When George Bush took New Oriega out in Panama, he said, I'm doing this for the sake of the Panamanian people. Donald Trump is not saying, I'm doing this for anyone's good except for the American people. So the era from John Quincy Adams forward, perhaps Woodrow Wilson forward, when America could say, we are the champion of liberal democracy, follow our banner, maybe actually quite over because our leader is democratically elected, is no longer saying, follow our banner. He is saying, saying, I'm doing what's best for us. That's what got him elected. But that's not great for the future of global democracy. If you think the United States global leadership matters.
- [55:24]
Poet
I think of the words of one of the great poets of democracy within our own country, Walt Whitman. In a poem about crossing the east river in New York, where the Brooklyn Bridge now stands, he commands, flow on, river, flow on. Of course, the river harted hardly required his permission. It has flowed on for centuries and will continue to, whether old Walt Whitman decreed it or not. Yet he bellowed his enthusiastic support for the river's timeless journey. Russia's struggle for democracy and America's support are much the same.
- [56:03]
Host
On the next episode of History as It Happened, Donald Trump and the Palestinians. The president is musing about forcing Palestinians out of Gaza, where their homes have been destroyed, and into neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan. We'll investigate the history of Palestinian displacement as well as the disastrous legacy of the Abraham Accords. That's next, as we report History as it happens. New episodes every Tuesday, Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign up@historyasithappens.com.