Still, the period had expectations of something better ahead. The mainstream, at least, assumed a breathing spell from international conflict--not an end to conflict, but at least a lot less danger of great power war, and perhaps, more effective international management of such conflict as broke out, with the United Nations becoming a vehicle for a revived effort at collective security through which East and West together could conduct such humanitarian intervention as was needed. (Such thinking is even evident when one looks back at the pop culture of the time. Remember the plot of the first Street Fighter movie, where Guile commanded a peacekeeping force? Remember the UN special forces team in Clive Cussler's Sahara? Probably not. But I do.)
Such arrangements were not regarded as precluding a "peace dividend," which it was thought might help the country get its house in order. Even if much of the rhetoric could be read as nationalist rather than social democratic, preoccupied with competitiveness rather than equity, even conservatives thought neoliberalism had gone too far, and something had to be done (as one recalls reading, for instance, Mr. Southern Strategy himself, Kevin Phillips). The financialization and deindustrialization of the economy; the country's dilapidated physical infrastructure and the flaws of the educational system; the high-priced and underperforming health care system--there was expectation that all this would be redressed.
There was, too, some thought for the amelioration of the pressure on the natural environment. One heard much of deforestation, and pesticides, and the hole in the ozone layer, while the danger of climate change was already widely known, well understood. These were, after all, the years when, in what was then an exceptional investment for a basic cable channel, TBS produced Captain Planet, and the revival of G.I Joe sent Flint off to lead the Eco-Warriors (because a Joe has "got to care about the environment"), and on the big screen Steven Seagal battled eco-criminals in movies like On Deadly Ground. These were the years of the Rio Declaration, and of even Texas oil man and Middle East oil war-wager George H.W. Bush claiming that if reelected he would be "the environmental President" (and if far from perfect on that score, in light of the legislation he did sign in his four years, not necessarily insincere in making the claim, certainly in comparison with many of his successors).
Of course, the decade, and the generation since, proved a colossal disappointment. War with Iraq became permanent, with grave consequences for all concerned ("We think the price is worth it"), while in just a few years Cold War-style crises were becoming routine again (the Norwegian rocket incident, the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, the confrontation at the Pristina airport where, legend has it, James Blunt "saved the world"). Even before that the vision of collective security and humanitarian intervention via the UN broke down as Russia opposed NATO action in the Balkans (a far from trivial factor in reviving tension between Washington and Moscow), and a genocide in Rwanda unopposed by the world community revealed the gap between rhetoric and reality.
Peace dividend? By and large little changed from the Cold War. The force was cut by a couple of battle carriers, a few divisions, some wings; a few acquisitions programs were cut but replaced with others that, to the surprise of no one, proved equally expensive (the Seawolf subs replaced by the not-so-budget Viriginia class); and American forces remained massively present in Europe, East Asia, and more than ever before, the Middle East (with the Navy newly forming a Fifth Fleet, and headquartering it in Bahrain).
Reversing financialization and deindustrialization? Forget it. Financialization, certainly, went into overdrive. The infrastructure? Well, that bill that Bill promised during the campaign as stimulus fell by the wayside, as did any really active role for government in industrial or uban development, the President preferring Third World-ish "enterprise zones" for bringing investment to poor areas. Education? The administration certainly proclaimed ambitious goals--and then mostly backed the private sector again, by way of support for charter schools. Health care reform? Sorry, Bill said to the supporters who had expected it, "I used up all my political capital on those free trade agreements you guys didn't want," treatment of the issue limited to Medicaid cuts and a feeble, market-centered attempt to hold down costs through Health Management Organizations.
The treatment of the environment? Entirely consistent with all that . . .
Of course, there was less backlash than there might have been, for various reasons. Where international relations was concerned, it mattered that Americans tuned out the rest of the world amid end-of-the-Cold War triumphalism, and that criticism of the country's military posture had become far less allowable since the '70s (a story David Sirota, among others, has told memorably), and that with the "culture wars" and upper-class identity politics swallowing up defense policy along with everything else, the debates over gays and women in the military were treated far more lengthily and seriously than the issue of what a military was for in the first place. (It mattered, too, that collective security, humanitarian intervention and the rest never had much of a popular base of support.)
Where the country's economic life was concerned, the initial confusion and surprise entailed a certain disenchantment, but this was muted by the fact that those who desired alternative policies had nowhere else to go (this was the behavior of the Democrat, after all!), and by the fact that, in the latter half of the decade, a Silicon Valley-cum-Wall Street bubble meant the kind of growth the country had not seen in a generation as people got new toys to play with ("What are these Internets I keep hearing so much about?"), convincing them there was fire as well as smoke here, while neoliberal hucksters like Tom Friedman talked up the moment for all it was worth. That Dow Jones average would go up and up for ever, they said, and through your pension fund, or even if you just quit your day job to become a day trader, you too would get a piece of the action, with the hugeness of the rapidly, eternally growing pie meaning that even a very little slice could have you retiring at forty. And all this would somehow take care of everything else, even the environment, as growing wealth and ever-more efficient technology effortlessly solved these problems that seemed to loom so large . . .
The illusions died, of course, war and even great power war resurging (Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Libya, Syria, Ukraine), neoliberalism rolling on and on from catastrophe to catastrophe (tech crash, global fuel and food crisis, the Great Recession and the decade of austerity which followed) as the talking about those same old economic and associated social problems (deindustrialization and infrastructure and health care) just went on and on and on without action, and the environmental calamity worsening well beyond the fears of most at the time (as climate change-driven apocalypse increasingly appeared in even the most mainstream discussion a threat not only within the life of the living, but the present generation). In the process the 'nineties has actually come to seem even to someone who thought they were fairly awful as, in at least some respects, less bleak than the vista before us now.
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