In Europe, Yugoslavia splintered violently and from the horror in Bosnia Herzegovina a new term entered the lexicon of international relations: ‘ethnic cleansing’. In Central Africa the decades long animosity between Hutu and Tutsi escalated from massacres to genocide as up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered. In Algeria the democratic project was cut short when the Army realised that the Islamist FIS would win and a bloody, decade long civil war erupted. This short period of triumphalism was known as the ‘New World Order’. A brave new world beckoned in which the United States would act as global policeman under the auspices of the UN. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and posed a threat to Saudi Arabia the response was a brutally overwhelming demonstration of force from a United States led coalition that included Western and Arab states.
Conflict was wound down in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Mozambique and the United Nations brokered an accord that saw Vietnam withdraw from Cambodia. The end of the Cold War brought about a new era of optimism.
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