foreign-affairs

__**Foreign Affairs**__

Communist dictators fell from power in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania
 * (1989)**

NATO seeks new role; begins expansion to east with membership for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic

End of Soviet Empire; fall of Berlin Wall; all East European satellites break away from Moscow; Germany is reunified

August 1990, Saddam Hussein and 120,000 Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait
 * (1990)**

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia declare independence in 1991
 * (1991)**

Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia form the Commonwealth of Independent States in December of 1991

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a treaty between the United States and Russian leaders agreed to reduce nuclear weapons; concluded July 1991

January 17 1991, Operation Desert Storm began when France, Italy, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the United States started bombing Baghdad and Iraqi bases

Yugoslavia implodes, sparking a genocidal conflict
 * (1992)**

178 nations met at an "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro to lessen the threat of global warming

Clinton and a bipartisan coalition passes the North American Free Trade Agreement, a free trade pact with Canada and Mexico; labor unions opposed it, but the chief impact was an increase in trading farm products
 * (1993)**

Apartheid (policy of discrimination/ segregation based on race) ends in South Africa
 * (1994)**

Vietnam; President Clinton lifts 18-year trade embargo created to force return of "missing" POWs

Al Qaeda terrorists launch 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon; President Bush declares a global war; "War on terrorism"
 * (2001)**

The U.S. and Britain lead an invasion of Iraq in attempts to secure U.N. Security Council support
 * (2003)**

Bombers assassinate former Lebanese Prime Minister, sparking the “Cedar Revolution” that ushers a pro-Western coalition to power
 * (2005)**

President Bush signs the Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act into a law
 * (2006)**

Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy sparks a global economic panic, sending the U.S. economy into its worse tailspin since the Great Depression
 * (2008)**