United States of America

Country in North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, bounded north by Canada and south by Mexico, and including the outlying states of Alaska and Hawaii.

Government

The USA is a federal republic comprising 50 states and the District of Columbia. Under the 1787 constitution, which took effect 1789 and has had 27 amendments, the constituent states are reserved considerable powers of self-government. The federal government concentrated originally on military and foreign affairs and the coordination of interstate concerns, leaving legislation in other spheres to the states, each with its own constitution, elected legislature, governor, supreme court, and local taxation powers. Since the 1930s, however, the federal government has become increasingly active and has therefore impinged upon what were previously state affairs. It has become the principal revenue-raising and spending agency. This activism was criticized during the 1980s, and Republican administrations professed a desire to reverse the process.

The executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government are deliberately separate from each other, working in a system of checks and balances. At the head of the executive branch is a president elected every four years in a national contest by universal adult suffrage, but votes are counted at the state level on a winner-takes-all basis, with each state (and the District of Columbia) being assigned seats (equivalent to the number of its congressional representatives) in a national electoral college that formally elects the president. The president serves as head of state, of the armed forces, and of the federal civil service. He or she is restricted to a maximum of two terms and, once elected, cannot be removed except through impeachment and subsequent conviction by Congress. The president works with a personally selected (appointed) cabinet team, subject to the Senate's approval, whose members are prohibited from serving in the legislature.

The second branch of government, Congress, the federal legislature, comprises two houses, the 100-member Senate and the 435-member House of Representatives. Senators serve six-year terms, and there are two from each state regardless of its size and population. Every two years a third of the seats come up for election. Representatives are elected from state congressional districts of roughly equal demographic sizes and serve two-year terms.

Congress has sole powers of legislation and operates through a system of specialized standing, select, and investigative committees, which are composed of members drawn from parties in accordance with their relative strength in each chamber. The Senate is the more powerful chamber of Congress, since its approval is required for key federal appointments and for the ratification of foreign treaties. The president's policy programme needs the approval of Congress, and the president addresses Congress in January for an annual ‘State of the Union’ speech and sends periodic ‘messages’ and ‘recommendations’. The success of a president to carry out his or her platform depends on voting support in Congress, bargaining skills, and public support. Proposed legislation, to become law (an Act of Congress), requires the approval of both houses of Congress as well as the signature of the president. If differences arise, ‘joint congressional committees’ are convened to effect compromise agreements. The president can impose a veto, which can be overridden only by two-thirds majorities in both houses. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds majorities from both houses and the support of three-quarters of the nation's 50 state legislatures.

The third branch of government, the judiciary, headed by the Supreme Court, interprets the written US constitution; its function is to ensure that a correct balance is maintained between federal and state institutions and the executive and legislature and to uphold the constitution, especially the civil rights described in the first ten (the Bill of Rights) and later amendments. The Supreme Court comprises nine judges appointed by the president with the Senate's approval, who serve life terms and can only be removed by impeachment, trial, and conviction by Congress.

The USA administers a number of territories, including American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands, which have local legislatures and a governor. These territories, as well as the ‘self-governing territories’ of Puerto Rico and Guam, each send a non-voting delegate to the US House of Representatives.

The District of Columbia, centred around the city of Washington DC, is the site of the federal legislature, judiciary, and executive. Since 1971 it has sent one non-voting delegate to the House and since 1961 its citizens have been able to vote in presidential elections (the District having three votes in the national electoral college).

History
For the history of the American colonies through to independence see America: colonial history to 1783. For the period from independence to the Civil War see United States: history 1783–1861. For the Civil War itself, and the period of Reconstruction, see United States: history 1861–77. For the period 1877–1918 see United States: history 1877–1918, and for the period 1918–1945 see United States: history 1918–45.

The USA after World War II

The USA under the Democratic Party President Harry S Truman emerged from World War II as a superpower, and maintained its internationalist stance during the prosperity of the post-war era. However, adjusting to peace was not without its domestic problems.

With the end of hostilities, in US industry the struggle between management and labour was renewed. Trade-union membership had increased during the war, and attempts to reduce wartime wages or at least to resist any increase – although prices remained high – were met by a series of strikes during 1945 and 1946 in the coal, automobile, steel, and electrical industries. Wages were bound up with prices, and the country was divided on the question of price control. The Price Control Act lapsed in June 1946, and by the end of the year President Truman had reluctantly to give way to the public agitation for the removal of controls. All controls were swept away except for those on rent, rice, and sugar.

Attitudes towards the USSR

Against this domestic background of labour disputes, rapid demobilization, and sometimes violent readjustment to peacetime conditions, US foreign policy was conducted with the support of Republicans and Democrats alike. The secretary of state, James F Byrnes, represented the USA at a series of international conferences beginning with the General Assembly of the United Nations in January 1946, and ending with the Peace Conference in Paris from July to October.

US foreign policy was largely united by suspicion of the USSR's intentions. Reacting from the unfavourable reception given by the USSR to his plans for four-power control of Germany for 25 years, Byrnes in a speech at Stuttgart in September 1946 spoke in terms of German unity and cooperation with the West. Henry Wallace resigned as secretary of commerce, denouncing Byrnes's policy of resistance to the USSR, a policy that Wallace believed was merely in the interests of British imperialism. This controversy aggravated the difficulties that the Democratic Party had to face in the Congressional elections in November. The Republicans gained a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the first Republican majority in Congress since 1930.

The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Aid

In foreign affairs relations with the USSR continued to occupy the State Department. Early in 1947 Byrnes was succeeded as secretary of state by Gen George C Marshall. Events in Greece (where there was a civil war between communists and royalists) provided the occasion for an important speech by President Truman in March 1946, calling for US aid to Greece and Turkey (where the USA also feared Soviet interference), and laying down the policy, later known as the Truman Doctrine, of helping any country in danger of coming under communist rule.

In May $350 million authorized for relief work through the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association was taken over to be administered direct by the US government itself in Europe and China. The way was thus prepared for the most significant event of the year, the speech by Gen Marshall at Harvard University in June 1947 advocating US aid to enable Europe to recover its normal economy. The speech was recognized as an invitation to the countries of Europe to examine their needs and to jointly form a plan of development that US aid would make possible.

The foreign ministers of the UK, France, and the USSR met in Paris in June 1947 to discuss Marshall's offer. Soviet participation was later withdrawn. In spite of this a conference on European economic cooperation opened in Paris, and as a result of its recommendations the Economic Cooperation Bill was passed by Congress in April the following year. The Marshall Plan, which thus came into effect in 1947, was designed to strengthen the capitalist economies of the USA's allies, enabling them to resist any similar ideologically related aid offers from the USSR, which already dominated the countries of Eastern Europe that it had liberated at the end of World War II. The Cold War was underway.

Events in Europe, particularly the communist coup d'état in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, gave considerable impetus to the project for aid to Europe. In June the Senate adopted a resolution proposed by Arthur Vandenberg, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with the intention of giving aid to Europe in defence as well as in economic affairs, and thus admitting the possibility of regional defence pacts within the framework of the UN Charter. In the same year the USA helped to create the Organization of American States (OAS).

Domestic politics in the later 1940s

At home, the administration had been at odds with Congress over its budget proposals in 1947. Congress proposed a greater measure of tax reduction than President Truman considered safe in view of the possibility of inflation, but the congressional proposals were successfully vetoed. The president's veto was, however, unable to prevent the anti-labour legislation contained in the Taft-Hartley Labor Act of June 1947.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties supported Truman's foreign policy, which was not an issue in the presidential election due to take place in 1948. At the Democratic convention in July Truman was nominated, but with no general conviction of success on the part of his supporters. T E Dewey was nominated as Republican candidate (as he had been in 1944).

Truman, himself confident, confounded the prophets by polling 24,105,812 votes in the popular ballot, against 21,970,005 for Dewey. The party position in both houses of Congress was reversed, the Democrats gaining a majority. The results put Truman in a position to launch his ‘Fair Deal’ programme, which included the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act (pressed for by organized labour, which had given strenuous political support to the Democrats), and the introduction of civil-rights legislation. He was, however, disappointed by the unwillingness of Congress to embark on either of these measures during 1949.

The economic situation was depressed in 1948–49, but improved after October 1949, and at the turn of the year there was a marked if short-lived boom, unemployment being appreciably reduced.

The formation of the Western alliance

In foreign affairs, the Vandenberg Resolution of June 1948 had provided the initiative for consultations between the USA and the Five Powers (the UK, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg), which in March 1948 had signed a treaty of mutual assistance (see Brussels, Treaty of). Other countries (Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland) were invited to participate, and these ten countries with the USA and Canada concluded the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed in Washington in April 1949, thus creating NATO as a Western military alliance against the perceived Soviet threat.

The passage of the second year's appropriations for the Marshall Plan, acceptance of the North Atlantic Treaty and the Mutual Assistance Act for European defence, and the renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act were features of a constructive foreign policy that afforded significant evidence of continued appreciation by both political parties of the new position of the USA in world affairs.

Then came the Korean crisis, and in July 1949 Truman, in his message to Congress, asked for $10,000 million for the US armed forces and said he would request further sums for military aid to the NATO powers and other nations vital to US security. He also reported to Congress that he had authorized the secretary of defence to call up as many men as might be needed, and he asked for the statutory limits of the strength of the armed forces to be removed.

The Korean War

In June 1949 the forces of communist North Korea crossed the 38th parallel and launched an attack against the republic of South Korea, Korean War). Truman announced that US forces would intervene, and immediately afterwards the Security Council of the UN decided to invoke military sanctions against the aggressors. British and Australian naval and air forces were placed at the disposal of the US commander, Gen Douglas MacArthur, who assumed command of all UN forces. At the same time the Seventh US Fleet was placed between Taiwan (which was in the hands of the Chinese Nationalists) and mainland (communist) China to prevent further acts of aggression against that island by organized communist troops.

During June–July 1950 the UN troops in Korea were driven farther south, eventually centring their defence on Taegu, in positions extending over a perimeter of 200 km/125 mi from Pohang to Pusan. In September, US troops were landed behind the communist lines at Inchon, in a major UN counteroffensive. Landings were made at several other points on the occupied coast, and other troops advanced north from the Pusan perimeter. Troops in the north had captured Seoul by the end of September, and the UN forces were on the Yalu River on the border of China by November, having crossed the 38th parallel a month before.

In January 1951, after repeated warnings to the UN forces to withdraw, the Chinese communists intervened and launched a large-scale offensive, sweeping deep into South Korea. But by April the UN forces had checked the advance and pushed the communists back beyond the 38th parallel again. In April 1951 MacArthur was replaced by Gen Ridgway, who in turn was replaced, in 1952, by Gen Mark Clark. Bitter fighting continued, while truce negotiations, begun in July 1951, took their slow course. An armistice was eventually signed in July 1953.

Truman's second term

The Korean War contributed to the wave of anti-communist hysteria that swept the USA from 1950, spearheaded by Senator Joe McCarthy. Truman and his secretary of state Dean Acheson (who had succeeded Marshall in 1949) were accused of being ‘soft on communism’, and Truman's second term as president ended somewhat stormily. In November 1950 an unsuccessful attempt on his life had been made by Puerto Rican nationalists. Through 1951 and 1952 inflationary pressures upset the domestic life of the nation, and there were several major strikes. There were also disturbing cases of criminal corruption on a large scale. The growing fear of communist infiltration into the USA showed itself in retrograde and restrictive legislation such as the McCarran–Walter Immigration Act, which was enacted despite Truman's veto.

Eisenhower comes to power

For the 1952 presidential election the Republicans chose Gen Dwight D Eisenhower as their candidate, with Richard Nixon as vice-presidential candidate. Eisenhower's nomination was the subject of bitter controversy within the Republican Party itself, the influential right wing preferring Robert Taft. Once nominated, however, Eisenhower swept into office on a wave of popularity, easily defeating his Democratic rival, Adlai Stevenson. The rightward shift in US public opinion, together with Eisenhower's image as the hero of World War II, contributed to his becoming the first Republican president since Hoover. The Republicans also gained control of Congress by a very narrow margin.

Eisenhower adhered to the Truman–Acheson doctrine of ‘containment of communism’, while at home he pursued a policy of ‘progressive conservatism’ designed to encourage business enterprise. The Eisenhower era was one of economic growth, involving the migration of southern blacks to the northern industrial cities, and rapid expansion in the educational sector.

Eisenhower's first term

Eisenhower's first term proved generally successful at home. The administration weathered a threatened economic recession in 1953–54, and a Korean ceasefire was signed in July 1953 (Eisenhower had visited Korea in December 1952 in fulfilment of his election promises). To the black population the decision of the Supreme Court in May 1954 that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional was very naturally associated with the prevailing Republican administration.

In 1954 the Democrats regained control of Congress, and after this date the influence of Senator Joe McCarthy declined rapidly, and his anti-communist witch hunt came to an end. Democratic critics of Eisenhower have suggested, with some justification, that the president found it easier to work with a Democratic Congress than with one controlled by his own party. By the end of the Eisenhower's first term the administration's most obvious domestic problem was the relatively weak position of the farming community in an otherwise flourishing economy.

In foreign affairs tension in eastern Asia eased after the Geneva Conference of 1954 had ended the Indochina War, even though the USA continued to refuse recognition to the communist government in Beijing. In European matters, the death of Stalin was interpreted as the beginning of an easing of the Cold War, an idea strengthened in the popular mind by the meeting of heads of government (including Eisenhower and Soviet premier Nikolai Bulganin) in Geneva in 1955.

Eisenhower's second term

In 1956, in spite of recent serious illness, Eisenhower ran for the presidency again, once more with Nixon as vice-presidential candidate, and with Stevenson again his Democratic opponent. The last days of the election campaign were overshadowed by the anti-communist rising in Hungary, and by the Suez Crisis (which Eisenhower did much to defuse). The ominous foreign news possibly made many Americans cling more than ever to a president who seemed to have transcended party ties and to have become a national idol. Eisenhower was elected by a landslide vote, but it was essentially a personal victory, and the Republicans failed to gain control of Congress.

In the southern states, where racial segregation and discrimination were openly practised, a new civil-rights movement developed under the leadership of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Further steps towards civil rights were made by the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which set up a Civil Rights Commission. In the same year Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce racial desegregation in schools.

During 1957–58 the Anglo-American alliance, which had been jeopardized by the Suez crisis, was largely rebuilt, and the USA showed increasing willingness to take the initiative in Middle East affairs, intervening militarily when stability in the Lebanon seemed threatened, July–October 1958. But to most Americans 1958–59 was dominated by the severe business recession, which caused a steep rise in unemployment. It further affected the Republicans' already declining popularity. In addition, Americans felt increasing insecurity from the Soviets' lead in the space race (they had launched the first artificial satellite into space in 1957), though a US 4-tonne missile was fired into orbit in December 1958.

In April 1959 John Foster Dulles resigned as secretary of state, and died a month later. Eisenhower had allowed him considerable scope in foreign affairs, and US foreign policy had been strongly tinged by his rigidly anti-communist views, which had led to the creation of two anti-communist military alliances: the Central Treaty Organization in the Middle East, and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. A future improvement in US–Soviet relations seemed possible early in 1960, but was nullified in May, when Eisenhower was faced, at the Summit Conference in Paris, with a demand from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for a US apology for the U-2 incident some days earlier, when a US reconnaissance plane was shot down over the USSR. The break-up of the conference inevitably followed.

Kennedy comes to power

Richard Nixon, the vice-president, was chosen as Republican candidate for the 1960 presidential elections. The Democrats nominated John F Kennedy, with Lyndon B Johnson, Kennedy's bitter rival for the presidential nomination, as vice-presidential candidate. Popular reaction after eight years of Republican administration swung the polls in Kennedy's favour, though in the event he won the presidency only by a very narrow margin. He was the USA's first Roman Catholic president.

At his inauguration Kennedy referred to a ‘new frontier’ challenging the American nation, and he initiated a vigorous programme of social reform, which included proposals for some state-aided medical care, and the establishment of full civil rights for all US citizens, regardless of religion or race. The end of the recession and a new period of economic boom gave impetus to Kennedy's programme; but opposition to his reforms was prolonged and powerful, and the actual enactment of his major domestic measures was not to be achieved by Kennedy, but by his successor.

Kennedy, the Cold War, and Cuba

Foreign affairs dominated Kennedy's presidency. The US space programme began to catch up with that of the USSR: the first American was rocketed into space in May 1961, and in February 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. In 1961 Kennedy made a triumphal progress of Western Europe, and met Khrushchev in Vienna; in September 1961 the USA and Russia agreed on the principles for disarmament negotiations.

In April 1961 there was an unsuccessful anti-Castro invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles based in Florida (see Bay of Pigs); this, a commitment that Kennedy had largely inherited from the previous administration, and whose ignominious failure showed up the weaknesses of American intelligence, had the effect of driving Cuba further to the left and into a closer relationship with the USSR.

Throughout 1962 there was a Soviet arms build-up in Cuba. In October Kennedy alleged that Soviet offensive missile sites were being erected in Cuba, and announced that a US naval blockade of the island would be maintained until the bases were dismantled. His firmness paid off. Khrushchev announced that the USSR would dismantle the rocket bases in Cuba and return them to the USSR (see Cuban missile crisis). The president's handling of this explosive situation brought him widespread acclaim, even though the confrontation had brought the two countries close to nuclear war, and extreme Republicans continued to press for even stronger action on Cuba.

In 1963 Kennedy was able to announce major tax reductions, and in August the USA signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in Moscow, ushering in a new era of ‘peaceful coexistence’. However, Kennedy also increased the US military commitment to Vietnam (see below). Then, in November, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His loss was mourned throughout the world.

Johnson succeeds to the presidency

Kennedy was automatically succeeded as president by the vice-president, Lyndon B Johnson, who, in 1964, was elected president in his own right. Johnson gained an overwhelming victory over the right-wing Republican, Barry Goldwater, whose nomination had caused many traditional Republicans to vote Democrat. The Republican Party had, in fact, reached a low ebb, and was threatening to become the preserve of the states' rights supporters, and, by implication, of the segregationists. Subsequently, however, the rise to power of men like John Lindsay, elected Republican mayor of New York in 1965, indicated that a revival of liberal Republicanism might be imminent (although Lindsay himself subsequently became a Democrat).

Johnson and the ‘Great Society’

Following Kennedy's death it was left to Johnson to oversee the passage of additional liberal reforms, called the ‘Great Society’ by Johnson. During 1965 Johnson managed to carry through Congress three liberalizing acts that owed their inspiration to Kennedy: the Medicare Act, the Immigration Act, and the Voting Rights Act. His success in handling the legislature was to make him one of the most effective of modern US presidents in domestic affairs. Other pieces of liberal legislation included the Equal Opportunities Act and the Housing Act. All these measures combined to guarantee blacks their civil rights and extended the reach and responsibilities of the federal government.

Increasing concern for the political status of blacks was shown by some impressive civil-rights demonstrations in many US cities. The 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, organized by Martin Luther King, had marked the beginning of a new dynamic phase in the fight against Southern segregation, involving greater use of direct-action tactics, including the ‘sit-in’ after 1960. The complexity of the racial problem in the USA was highlighted also by sporadic but serious racial riots – for example, in Rochester, New York State, in the summer of 1964, and in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1966. However, the black migration to the northern cities was to go into reverse from 1970, stimulated by new economic opportunities in US Sunbelt states, new black political influence, and a feeling of returning to earlier roots.

Escalation in Vietnam

By mid-1965 the civil-rights issue was being overshadowed by the Vietnam War. The USA had first sent military ‘advisers’ to South Vietnam in 1956, when Eisenhower was president. In 1960 Kennedy had increased the number of these advisers. By 1965 the communist threat to South Vietnam was regarded as so serious, and the South so clearly incapable of meeting it alone, that Johnson in May committed US troops to the Asian mainland in strength. By March 1966 nearly 250,000 Americans were fighting in Vietnam.

The US policy was queried by a number of its traditional allies, notably France, but was supported by Harold Wilson, the British premier, and by Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea, the three last-named of whom all sent token contingents to South Vietnam. The US policy was based on the American desire to ‘contain’ communism, and stemmed from memories of other areas in the world, such as Cuba, where US action had been too little and had come too late to prevent a communist takeover. (The controversial US military intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965 was also influenced by these factors.)

Nevertheless, as time passed, liberal elements in the USA itself challenged the government's policy on Vietnam, fortified by the recognition that the war was not being won. The war polarized public opinion and deeply divided the Democratic Party into ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’. The communist Tet offensive of February 1968 caused great alarm in government circles, and in March, as domestic opposition to the war intensified, Johnson simultaneously announced a new peace initiative and his decision not to stand for re-election in the autumn.

The 1968 presidential election

The 1968 election was fought on the issues of inflation and law and order, as well as the war in Vietnam. The violence that accompanied the Democratic convention in Chicago, when antiwar demonstrators clashed with police and troops, was a timely reminder of the relationship between America's foreign and domestic tensions.

The previous four years, moreover, had witnessed a progression of violent race riots in northern and western cities, the most serious being in Watts (Los Angeles) in 1965, and in Newark and Detroit in 1967. The summer of 1968 brought the assassination of two leading figures, the black civil-rights leader Martin Luther King in April, and in June Senator Robert Kennedy, a brother of the former president and a leading contender for the Democratic nomination.

In the event, the election proved very close, with the former Republican vice-president, Richard Nixon, narrowly triumphing over the Democrat Hubert Humphrey, who had been Johnson's vice-president.

Disengagement and détente

Foreign affairs and the continuing war in Vietnam dominated Nixon's first term. Working closely with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, the president pledged continued commitment to the USA's allies, but made it clear that US troops would no longer be readily available.

Nixon escalated the Vietnam conflict by invading neighbouring Cambodia – giving rise to increased antiwar demonstrations at home, some of which were dealt with violently – before he began a gradual disengagement. In Vietnam itself the US military presence was to be phased out, and Vietnamese nationals were to take over the American role. ‘Vietnamization’, as the new policy was called, was to prove a failure, however, and Nixon's search for a satisfactory peace formula in Southeast Asia was yielding few results. In the spring of 1972, after a new communist offensive, the president announced resumed intensive bombing of the North and the mining of North Vietnamese harbours.

At the same time, Nixon was reversing the USA's traditional hostility towards China and the Soviet Union. In February 1972 he undertook a massively publicized trip to Beijing, and quickly followed this with a visit to Moscow. Despite the continuing failure to find a peace settlement in Vietnam, therefore, the apparent dramatic thawing in the Cold War as indicated by the new détente with China and the Soviet Union made Nixon extremely popular. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks resulted in the SALT I accord in 1972.

Nixon's domestic policies

Although an economic conservative, Nixon accepted both budget deficits and economic controls when faced with the twin problems of unemployment and inflation. In August 1972 the president announced a 90-day freeze on prices, wages, and rents. Nixon later rejected mandatory controls in favour of a voluntary policy. In other areas of domestic affairs he was less successful. In 1969, for example, he proposed a Family Assistance Plan to replace the existing welfare system, but it failed to pass Congress. He suffered a further political setback when the Senate rejected two of his nominations for the Supreme Court.

The 1972 presidential election

During the summer of 1972 Nixon's popularity steadily increased. His opponent in the autumn election was Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, an antiwar liberal, whom the Republicans succeeded in labelling a ‘radical’. Through a combination of ill-fortune and ineptitude, McGovern never managed to establish his credibility with the American public. Moreover, his major weapon – the continuing war in Vietnam – was taken from him when a week before the election Henry Kissinger announced, prematurely as it turned out, an imminent ceasefire agreement with the North Vietnamese. Nixon won a shattering victory, gaining 61.3% of the vote and winning every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

The Watergate scandal

The period from 1972 to 1974 was dominated by the series of political scandals collectively known as the Watergate affair. Throughout the summer of 1973 Americans watched as a Senate committee conducted dramatic and revealing hearings into illegal government activities during and after the 1972 elections – in particular the break-in by some of Nixon's staff at the Democratic Party's headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. In October 1973, moreover, Vice-president Spiro Agnew was forced to resign after conviction on a tax-evasion charge and on the presentation of other evidence relating to political corruption.

Nixon's own position became increasingly precarious. As evidence accumulated that men close to the president had actively engaged in criminal concealment of evidence relating to the Watergate burglary, the House of Representatives initiated impeachment investigations. The focus of interest quickly became tape recordings that Nixon had made of his private conversations in the White House. In July 1974 the Supreme Court unanimously decreed that the remaining tapes must be surrendered, denying the president's claim of executive privilege. Finally, in August, when it became apparent that Nixon had lied in previous statements, the president resigned his office and was succeeded by Vice-president Gerald Ford.

Ford's presidency

With the last US forces having been withdrawn from Southeast Asia in 1973, and the end of the Watergate affair (the USA's most serious political crisis of the century), there began a period of relative calm in the United States. Ford pardoned Nixon, and kept the services of Kissinger and the policy of détente when he became president. Watergate had shaken the US public's confidence in the Washington establishment, and Ford faced a hostile, Democrat-dominated Congress that introduced legislation curbing the unauthorized power of the presidency, attempting to mend fences both at home and abroad. Ford also had to deal with the economic recession and increased OPEC oil prices that began under Nixon following the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, which Kissinger had played an important role in ending. Generally speaking, however, Ford's term of office proved uneventful.

The Carter presidency

Ford ran in the presidential election of November 1976, but was defeated by Washington outsider and Democrat Jimmy Carter, who promised open and honest government. Carter was a fiscal conservative but a social liberal, who sought to extend welfare provision through greater administrative efficiency. He substantially ended the fuel crisis through enforced conservation in the energy bills of 1978 and 1980.

In foreign relations President Carter emphasized human rights. In the Middle East, he moved close to a peace settlement in 1978–79 (the Camp David Agreements) and in January 1979 the USA's diplomatic relations with communist China were fully normalized.

The Carter presidency was, however, brought down by two foreign-policy crises in 1979–80: the fall of the shah of Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The president's leadership style, military economies, and moralistic foreign policy were blamed by the press for weakening US influence abroad. There was a swell of anticommunist feeling and mounting support for a new policy of rearmament and selective interventionism.

President Carter responded to this new mood by enunciating the hawkish Carter Doctrine in 1980 and supporting a new arms-development programme, but his popularity plunged during 1980 as economic recession gripped the country and US embassy staff were held hostage by Shiite Muslim fundamentalists in Tehran.

The Reagan administration

The Republican Ronald Reagan benefited from Carter's difficulties and was elected to the presidency in November 1980, when the Democrats also lost control of the Senate. The new president had risen to prominence as an effective, television-skilled campaigner. He purported to believe in a return to traditional Christian and family values and promoted a domestic policy of supply-side economics, decentralization, and deregulation.

The early years of the Reagan presidency witnessed substantial reductions in taxation, with cutbacks in federal welfare programmes that created serious hardships in many sectors as economic recession gripped the nation. Reagan rejected détente and spoke of the USSR as an ‘evil empire’ that needed to be checked by a military build-up and a readiness to employ force. This led to a sharp deterioration in Soviet–US relations, ushering in a new cold war during the Polish crisis of 1981. In 1983 US forces invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada to oust the left-wing regime that had seized power.

Reagan was re-elected on a wave of optimistic patriotism in November 1984, defeating the Democrat ticket of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro by a record margin.

A radical tax-cutting bill was passed in Congress, and in 1986 a large budget and trade deficit developed (as a spending economy was developed to control Congress). At home and overseas the president faced mounting public opposition to his interventions in Central America. The new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pressed unsuccessfully for arms reduction during superpower summits in Geneva (November 1985) and Reykjavik (October 1986), but a further summit in December 1987, with an agreement to scrap intermediate-range nuclear missiles, appeared to promise a new détente.

The Irangate scandal

In November 1986 the Republican Party lost control of the Senate in the midterm elections, just before the disclosure of a scandal concerning US arms sales to Iran in return for hostages held in Beirut, with the profits illegally diverted to help the Nicaraguan ‘Contra’ (anticommunist) guerrillas. The Irangate scandal briefly dented public confidence in the administration and forced the dismissal and resignation of key cabinet members.

During the last two years of his presidency, a more consensual Reagan was on view and, helped by his December 1987 arms-reduction deal, he left office with much of his popular affection restored.

Bush comes to power

Reagan's popularity transferred itself to Vice-president George Bush who, despite selecting the inexperienced Dan Quayle as his running-mate and despite opposition charges that he had been indirectly involved in the Irangate proceedings, defeated the Democrats' candidate Michael Dukakis in the presidential election of November 1988.

Bush came to power, after six years of economic growth, at a time of uncertainty. Reagan's tax-cutting policy had led to mounting federal trade and budget deficits, which had served to turn the USA into a debtor nation for the first time in its history and had precipitated a stock-market crash in October 1987. Retrenchment was concentrated during 1989–90 in the military sphere, helped by continuing Soviet moves towards reductions in both conventional and nuclear forces. Domestically, Bush spoke of the need to create a ‘kinder, gentler nation’, and unveiled minor initiatives in the areas of education, drug control, and the environment, where problems had surfaced during the Reagan years. (In 1990, almost 500,000 children were suffering from malnutrition and at least 100,000 people were homeless.)

The start of his presidency was marred by the Senate's rejection of his nomination for Defense Secretary, John Tower, following criticisms of Tower's lifestyle and his links to military contractors. With his overthrowing of the corrupt Panamanian leader, Gen Manuel Noriega, in December 1989, Bush began to establish his presidency.

The Gulf War

The USA responded to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in August 1990 by coordinating, in the UN, the passage of a series of resolutions demanding Iraq's unconditional withdrawal and imposing comprehensive economic sanctions. By late November the USA had sent more than 230,000 troops and support personnel to Saudi Arabia to form the core of a 400,000-strong Western and Arab ‘desert shield’ with the object of defending the Saudi frontier and, if necessary, dislodging Iraq from Kuwait. A further 150,000 US troops were sent in early December and the Gulf War was fought in January–February 1991.

US reaction to the demise of the USSR

In July 1991 Bush and Gorbachev held the first superpower summit since the end of the Cold War and signed the long-awaited START treaty (see Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). The USA condemned the attempted Moscow coup in August 1991 which briefly removed Gorbachev, and backed Boris Yeltsin's efforts to restore the Soviet president. Bush's reaction to later developments – the resignation of Gorbachev, the demise of the USSR, and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States – was initially cautious. Having granted recognition to the independence of the Baltic States in September 1991, Bush announced that although he would acknowledge the independence of all remaining 12 republics, he would establish formal international relations with only six – the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. However, by January 1992 all the former Soviet republics had been granted admission to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, from 1994 the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE).

Bush followed US success in the Gulf War by convening a Middle East peace conference in Spain in November 1991. Domestically, the economic recession continued. Bush's approval rating slumped and he faced increased public criticism. In another foreign-policy move, in December 1992, he sent US Marines to intervene in Somalia, a country weakened by civil war and famine.

Clinton assumes the presidency

Bill Clinton won the November 1992 presidential election for the Democrats, having campaigned on a platform of improved health-care provision, cautious state intervention to boost the economy, increased protection for the environment, and defence of minority rights. Although he had only a 5% lead over Bush in the popular vote, he won 33 states, plus the District of Columbia, to Bush's 17 states, and 370 electoral-college votes to Bush's 168. The independent candidate, Ross Perot, won nearly 20% of the vote but no electoral-college votes.

Domestic reforms

Despite initial criticism of his uncertain style of leadership and apparent lack of principles, President Clinton's record of success in Congress during 1993, in terms of votes won, was the best of any president since 1953. His medium-term budget was passed in August, introducing spending cuts and tax increases intended to reduce the federal budget deficit by $496,000 million over a five-year period. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which had encountered fierce opposition from protectionist forces within the Democratic Party and labour movement, was ratified in November, and wide-ranging anti-crime measures passed. Plans for a radical reform of the health-care system, guaranteeing coverage for all US citizens and legal aliens under a ‘managed competition system’, were unveiled in September 1993.

Foreign policy shifts

Initial assertiveness in foreign policy in the form of a US-led offensive against forces of the Somali warlord Gen Aidid (June 1993) gave way to a period of uncertainty and introspection following international criticism of the Somali operation, which had resulted in mounting casualties. The majority of US troops had been withdrawn from Somalia by March 1994.

Midterm election losses

At the start of 1994, with an improving economy, President Clinton's popularity improved dramatically. However, a downward slide began when allegations of the Clintons' involvement in irregular financial dealings in the 1980s (the ‘Whitewater’ affair) led to a special inquiry being launched. As the year progressed, the Clinton team experienced mounting opposition to their health-care reform plan, which was eventually blocked by Congress. Tensions were high in the run-up to the November 1994 midterm elections, which in the event left both chambers of Congress in the hands of the Republicans, as well as 30 of the country's 50 governorships. Newt Gingrich, a radical-right Reaganite who had spearheaded the Republican campaign, became House Speaker and effective leader of the opposition.

Clinton versus the Republican Congress

From January 1995 the Republicans, led by Gingrich, fought to secure passage of their ten-point populist electoral manifesto, ‘Contract with America’, which recommended radical measures for reducing federal powers, cutting the budget deficit, and reducing crime. By mid-April, all but one of the ten points had cleared the lower chamber, although the Senate, led by Republican majority leader Bob Dole, had passed only two. Clinton exercised the first veto of his presidency, and in December 1995 presented his own proposals for balancing the budget by 2002. A compromise health-care reform package cleared Congress the same month, but was opposed by Clinton, who vowed again to use his veto.

In foreign policy, the Clinton administration achieved two considerable diplomatic successes in the autumn of 1995, overseeing the signing of the second phase of the agreement on Palestinian self-rule and the brokering the Dayton peace agreement for Bosnia–Herzegovina in September–December 1995.

By the end of 1995, Clinton appeared well placed to challenge Republican frontrunner, Bob Dole, in the forthcoming presidential elections. However, in January 1996, allegations of financial and sexual impropriety resurfaced to plague the president. The first lady, Hillary Clinton, was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury investigating the Whitewater affair, and a federal appeals court ruled that a sexual-harassment case against President Clinton, filed by Paula Jones, a former state employee in Arkansas, could proceed to trial. In March Bob Dole officially clinched the Republican Party nomination to run for the presidency; Clinton secured the Democrat nomination unopposed. In April Clinton signed into law an act giving future presidents a veto over individual spending items within bills, which looked likely to shift the balance of power in Washington. The ‘line-item’ veto was likely to face a Supreme Court challenge. Also in April commerce secretary Ron Brown, a close aide of Clinton's, was killed in an aircrash over Croatia.

A $160-billion budget deal for 1996 was agreed by the White House and Congressional Republicans in May, involving an overall $20-billion cut in money terms, but providing an extra $5 billion, shifted from other programmes, to fund increases in the areas of education, police, job training, and environment.

In May 1996 Bob Dole announced his resignation from the Senate in order to concentrate on the presidential campaign. At the end of the same month, the jury in Little Rock, Arkansas, returned verdicts of guilty of conspiracy and fraud against two defendants connected with the Whitewater affair, in spite of the president's testimony for the defence. The final report of the Senate Whitewater committee concluded that Hillary Clinton had probably played a role in limiting the investigation into the suicide of Vince Foster, a White House aide, at the beginning of the affair, and that Bill Clinton, when governor of Arkansas, had given ‘inappropriate assistance’ to an Arkansas bond dealer.

In June 1996, in an effort to win back control of Congress in the November 1996 elections, the Democrats published a moderate policy programme entitled ‘Families First’. In August 1996 Clinton signed into law a Republican bill that abolished automatic federal welfare entitlements to poor families. The bill devolved the job of designing welfare programmes to the individual states, who were instructed to limit welfare payments to a duration of two years and for a maximum of five years during the course of a person's lifetime. Clinton also introduced a new minimum wage of $4.75 per hour, and a small extension of health insurance coverage.

In September 1996 the USA launched a cruise missile attack on military targets in southern Iraq in retaliation for Saddam Hussein's earlier attacks on Kurdish safe havens within Iraq.

Clinton re-elected

In November 1996 Clinton emerged victorious in the presidential elections, taking a place in history as one of only 13 presidents to win two straight terms. In December 1996 the final composition of the House of Representatives, after the November elections, was confirmed as 227 Republicans, 207 Democrats, and one independent.

From December 1996 wide publicity was given to a scandal concerning the funding of the Democratic Party's election campaign and President Clinton's legal defence fund by Asian nationals, and possibly the Chinese government, which led to an FBI enquiry and on-going congressional investigations. Clinton responded by announcing tougher regulations on the sources of Democratic Party funding, including a ban on accepting donations from foreign citizens.

Clinton's inauguration address in January 1997 was centrist in tone, emphasizing the limitations of presidential power and the need for a ‘new kind of government’ that works through empowerment rather than through bureaucracy and ‘lives within its means and does more with less’. In his State of the Union address a month later, he announced that higher educational standards would be the top priority of his second term.

Madeleine Albright, the former US representative at the UN, became the country's first female secretary of state, replacing Warren Christopher, while former Republican senator William Cohen became secretary of defence. The former national security adviser, Anthony Lake, was initially nominated as director of the CIA, but withdrew after facing ‘nasty and brutish’ confirmation hearings before the Senate. The CIA's acting director, George Tenet, was nominated instead. Janet Reno and Robert Rubin were retained as attorney general and treasury secretary respectively. The congressional leaders were, in the Senate, the Republican Trent Lott (majority leader), and in the House of Representatives, the Republican Newt Gingrich (speaker).

Gingrich was narrowly re-elected as speaker after admitting that he had improperly used tax-exempt charitable donations to fund a politically partisan college course. He was reprimanded and fined $300,000 dollars by the House's ethics committee. Bob Dole, the Republicans' unsuccessful presidential challenger in 1996, provided Gingrich with the $300,000 to pay off the fine in the form of an eight-year interest-bearing loan. In April 1997 James McDougal, a former business partner of President Clinton, was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for fraud and conspiracy in the ‘Whitewater’ affair.

In October 1997 President Clinton made the first concerted use of his new line-item veto powers to delete 38 projects worth $287 million from a military construction bill. In the same month the attorney-general, Janet Reno, ordered an expanded investigation into President Clinton's and Vice-president Gore's fund-raising for the 1996 election campaign, concentrating on the issue of telephone calls from the White House. However, in December 1997 Reno announced, to Republican outrage, that she had decided not to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the alleged campaign-finance abuses by Clinton and his vice-president.

Republican re-elected mayor of New York

In ‘off-year’ state governorship elections held in November 1997 in Virginia and New Jersey, the Republicans scored victories. Meanwhile, in New York, the Republican mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, fighting on a record of sharply reduced crime, was comfortably re-elected, the first Republican to do so since Florio La Guardia in 1937.

Clinton accused of sexual impropriety

President Clinton faced damaging accusations, in January 1998, that he had had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, had lied under oath by denying the affair, and had encouraged Miss Lewinsky to perjure herself. The president firmly denied the allegations and, receiving strong support from the first lady, retained high public-approval ratings (around 60%). In February, Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater affair special prosecutor, subpoenaed witnesses (including White house aides) to appear before a Washington grand jury. In January, Clinton became the first serving president to be interrogated as a defendant in a court case, when he testified in his lawyer's office in his defence against allegations of sexual harassment made by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee. However, in April 1998 this case was brought to an end when a district judge dismissed the case as, it was ruled, Miss Jones suffered nothing worthy of redress. This ruling did not affect the continuing investigations by Starr. In August 1998 President Clinton testified under oath for four hours to a grand jury, and later admitted in a television broadcast that his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, who had testified in July, had not been ‘appropriate’ and that he had ‘misled people’ about it publicly for seven months. Nevertheless, Clinton's job approval ratings remained above 60%.

In September 1998 Kenneth Starr delivered to Congress his report on the ‘Whitewater’ and ‘Monicagate’ scandals, stating that it contained ‘substantial and credible information’ that might support impeachment. Two dozen of the country's newspapers called for Clinton's resignation. However, a New York Times/CBS poll showed that 62% of the public still approved of his work as president and believed that, for the sake of the country, he should remain in office. A videotape of the President's private testimony to the grand jury about Monica Lewinsky was controversially shown on national television. In October 1998 the House of Representatives voted to proceed with an impeachment inquiry against President Clinton. In November 1998 the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony from special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who conceded that he had found no significant evidence against Clinton in the original focus of his investigation, the Whitewater affair. However, in the Lewinsky case, Starr stated that the President had been guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury and had ‘repeatedly used the machinery of government and the powers of his office to conceal his relationship with Monica Lewinsky from the American people ... and from the grand jury.’ On 13 November 1998, Paula Jones agreed to drop her long-running sexual harassment suit against President Clinton in return for $850,000, but no apology or admission from the President that her allegations were well founded.

Clinton's impeachment trial

On 19 December 1998 the US Congress voted to impeach President Bill Clinton on two charges – of perjury and obstruction of justice – over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. The impeachment trial, the first since that of Andrew Johnson in 1868, opened in the Senate on 7 January 1999. Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside amid much confusion. The impeachment trial proceedings in the Senate began on 14 January. In the meantime, two separate opinion polls showed that Clinton's job-approval rating was at a record 73%, and the President announced a projected 1999 federal budget surplus of $76 billion – $22 billion more than estimated earlier. On 12 February 1999 Clinton was acquitted of impeachment charges, with a 55–45 vote against the conviction on the charges of perjury and a 50–50 vote on the obstruction of justice charge. In October 1999 Kenneth Starr resigned as independent counsel and was replaced by Robert Ray, and although President Clinton had been acquitted over the Lewinsky affair, the Whitewater affair remained to be completed by the presentation of a formal report into the matter. The statute which established independent counsels expired in June 1999, but already authorised investigations such as Whitewater were required to run their course.

First balanced budget since 1969

In his January 1998 annual State of the Union address, President Clinton proposed that future projected federal budget surpluses – commencing with a $39-billion surplus for fiscal 1998, the first surplus since 1969 – should be used to strengthen the social security (state pensions) system rather than to reduce taxes, as the Republican opposition proposed. In February the president presented to Congress a proposed budget which, with lower spending on defence and transport and increases for childcare, reduced class sizes, and the Medicare health programme, would establish a balanced budget for 1999. This was three years ahead of the 2002 target date set in August 1997 bipartisan budget agreement, and was the first balanced budget plan in the USA for nearly 30 years. There were three chief reasons for the improved state of the federal finances: reduced defence spending with the end of the Cold War (16% of federal spending went on defence in 1998 compared with 27% in 1989); rising tax receipts from continuing economic growth; and a slowing in health-care costs.

In February 1998 a federal judge ruled that the line-item veto powers extended to the president in 1996 were unconstitutional since they excessively delegated part of Congress's legislative role to the executive. In July of the same year, the Supreme Court ruled that the line-item veto, which had enabled the president to strike out particular tax and spending items within legislation, was unconstitutional since it violated the constitutional principle of the separation of executive and presidential powers. President Clinton had used the line-item veto 82 times since August 1997 to veto $355 million in public spending.

In May 1998, the Senate restored food stamps to a quarter of a million legal immigrants and refugees; they had been withdrawn in 1996 as part of welfare reform.

In August 1998, the House of Representatives voted to outlaw unregulated ‘soft money’ donations to political parties during election campaigns.

In October 1998 Congress agreed a budget for fiscal 1999, which included of tax cuts of $80 billion and $18 billion in new funding for the IMF.

Two bombs exploded at the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya on 7 August 1998. Six people were killed in the Tanzania explosion, none of them Americans, and 60 injured. In Kenya the death toll was expected to exceed 230, including 12 US nationals, and 5,000 people were injured. In both cases, the massive explosions were caused by car bombs. The USA retaliated, bombing alleged terrorist sites in Sudan and Afghanistan.

Mid-term Congressional elections

The Republican Party's attempts to profit from the Lewinsky scandal, including a $10 million advertising blitz, backfired in the Congressional elections of November 1998. With President Clinton's public approval rating remaining high, and with turnout among blacks and Latinos unusually high, the Democrats reduced the Republicans' majority in the House of Representatives by five seats: the final outcome was Republicans 223 seats, Democrats 211, and independent, one seat. The Democrats' performance in the House mid-term elections was the strongest of any party of a sitting president since 1934. There was no net change in the Senate where, with 34 seats being contested, the Republicans finished with 55 seats to the Democrats' 45. This left the Republicans 12 votes short of the 67 needed to secure impeachment in the upper chamber. Overall, turnout, at 36%, was at its lowest level since 1942, and there was evidence of a reaction against Republicans who had sought to exploit the Lewinsky issue. The outcome was seen as a triumph for Vice-president Al Gore and First Lady Hillary Clinton, who both campaigned vigorously on the President's behalf. It was also interpreted as an indication that voters, content with Clinton's handling of the still booming economy, did not wish to see the President impeached. Accepting responsibility for his party's poor performance, the Republicans' partisan House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, resigned on 6 November 1998 and announced he would leave politics. The speaker-elect also withdrew after admitting to a series of adulterous affairs.

Renewed attacks on Iraq

In December 1998 the USA and the UK launched an artillery attack on Iraq, named Operation Desert Fox, which lasted four days and ended with President Clinton's and UK prime minister Tony Blair's declaration of policy of confinement in relation to Saddam Hussein. Following further escalation of tensions in the region (mostly over the no-fly zone over northern and southern Iraq), US forces renewed their attacks in January 1999. Also in January, President Clinton announced an overall $110 billion increase in defence budget by 2005, including the biggest rise in military pay since 1984.

In February 1999, President Clinton's proposed budget for 2000 predicted a surplus of $117 billion, much of it to be reserved for the Social Security (pensions) system.

Natural disasters

As Hurricane Floyd hit the east coast of America in September 1999, some three million people fled inland. It was the largest evacuation in US history. President Clinton pre-emptively declared the states of Florida and Georgia disaster areas. States of emergency were also declared in the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. During August 2000, the wildfires, the worst in 30 years, struck the west of the USA, and consumed 4.4 million acres/6,875 sq mi of land.

Foreign trade relations

In July 2000, a trade agreement between the USA and Vietnam was signed, clearing the way for normal relations for the first time since the Vietnam War. The agreement would reduce tariffs on goods and services, protect intellectual property, and improve investment relations. Sanctions on exporting food and medicine to Cuba were lifted, although they remained in place on other goods.

Record trade deficit

The US trade deficit hit a record US$34.26 billion in October 2000. The increase of 15% over the previous month was partly due to the US economy being stronger than those of its trading partners.

2000 presidential elections

By March 2000, the two remaining candidates in the presidential race were George W Bush, son of former President George Bush, for the Republicans, and for the Democrats, the current vice-president, Al Gore. Both gained their parties' nominations in March after winning primary elections in six southern states. In July, the two candidates' vice-presidential running-mates were announced. George W Bush chose Dick Cheney, a former chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, and secretary of defence for Bush's father during the Gulf War. Al Gore chose Joseph Lieberman, a senator and outspoken critic of Bill Clinton. Lieberman, a political moderate, became the first Jew in US history to compete for the vice-presidency.

The presidential elections were the closest ever, Gore winning 49% of the vote to Bush's 48.7%, but losing on the electoral college system. The result hung on the outcome in Florida. The vote there separated Bush and Gore by only a few hundred votes and a recount was ordered. In the elections for Congress, the Republicans retained a majority in the House of Representatives, but lost it in the Senate, where both Republicans and Democrats won 50 seats. Democrat Hillary Clinton, wife of outgoing President Clinton, won a Senate seat for New York.

After disputes of hand recounting, Florida's Supreme Court ruled that hand recounts should continue in three heavily Democratic counties, but imposed a deadline. One county stopped the recount when officials realized they could not count all the votes by the deadline. On 26 November, Florida's secretary of state certified that Bush had won, but Gore appealed against the result, and the court extended the deadline. The debate continued in the US Supreme Court, which declared, on 12 December, that there could be no further recounts in Florida. The following day Gore conceded defeat, putting Bush in the White House and ending the most bitterly disputed election for more than a century. In April 2001, a study revealed that Bush would in fact have won by a greater majority if the hand count had been completed.

A new government

Bush announced his cabinet appointments over December 2000–January 2001. All but one of the posts was given to a Republican, despite Bush's post-election pledge of bipartisanship, and a high proportion to people from ethnic minorities. Colin Powell became the first African American to be appointed secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice the first woman and first African American to become national security adviser. The staunchly Christian conservative senator John Ashcroft was controversially appointed attorney general. After being sworn in as the USA's 43rd president in late January 2001, Bush proposed sweeping changes to US schools, ended federal aid to international agencies that performed or advocated abortion, and unveiled the core project of his ‘compassionate conservatism’, the creation of a White House Office for Faith-Based Action that would distribute billions of dollars over ten years to religious groups for charitable and social work.

The Fed takes emergency action

The US Federal Reserve Board (the Fed) made a surprise cut in interest rates in January 2001. The cut amounted to emergency action by the Fed to avert an excessive slowdown after markets fell sharply in December 2000 and consumer confidence reached a two-year low. The Fed said it would cut rates again if that were necessary to ward off recession.

California blacks out

US federal and state officials met with representatives of the power industry in Washington, DC, as California's electricity crisis deepened in January 2001. Two of the largest power utility companies in California were on the brink of bankruptcy due to the 10-fold increase over the last year in the price electricity distributors pay generators, a cost the law forbids the companies to pass on to customers. Electricity was deregulated in California in 1996, and the federal government expressed concern that the crisis could derail plans for deregulation in other states. Inability of companies to meet demand and difficulties in finding supplies outside the state led to the first mandatory blackouts on 18 January. Further electricity blackouts were imposed in mid-March, as demand exceeded supply. In response, regulators raised the upper limit on the retail price of electricity to help the struggling power companies. Demand was expected to increase as summer approached and air-conditioners started to be turned on.

Diplomatic expulsions

Following the arrest in February 2001 of a US FBI agent for spying for Russia, 6 Russian diplomats were expelled in March, and another 51 given notice to leave. Russia responded by expelling 4 diplomats and giving another 46 notice to leave. Differences between the two countries had mounted over the preceding year as Russian President Vladimir Putin had tried to rebuild Russian state power.

Bush's early policies

In February, Bush presented his budget plan to Congress. It included US$1.6 billion tax cuts over ten years (approved by the Senate in May), and increased spending on defence and education. In mid-March, President Bush abandoned a campaign promise to regulate American power plants' carbon-dioxide emissions, saying he wanted to increase domestic energy production. In May he unveiled a national energy strategy that called for more coal mines, oil refineries, and nuclear reactors. Carbon dioxide is implicated in global warming, and the decision was criticized by environmentalists across the world, who accused Bush of selling out to the energy industry. The policy was in contradiction of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Bush also expressed support for the early deployment of the National Missile Defense (NMD) system, wanting to develop the project with new technologies. He revealed plans for the system in May, while also promising to cut the USA's nuclear arsenal.

2000 census

The census for 2000 showed that, since 1990, the Latino population of the USA had increased by 60% to 12% of the total population. Blacks also made up 12% of the population, while Asians increased by 50% to 3.7%. Whites made up 69%, down from 74% in 1990.

Crisis in China

A US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet collided in mid-air on 1 April 2001. The fighter crashed and the pilot was killed, while the US EP-3 surveillance plane was forced to make an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island. Who was at fault was not resolved, and the Chinese demanded an apology and an explanation, while the USA demanded the return of the plane and its 24 crew members. The apology and release of the crew occurred on 11 April, but China did not return the plane. The crisis was resolved on 24 May, when China accepted US proposals to dismantle the plane and fly it out of the country in crates. China had insisted that allowing the plane to be flown out of the country would be regarded as a national humiliation.

President Bush strained relations with China further by selling Taiwan military equipment and stating that the USA had an obligation to help Taiwan defend itself against Chinese attack. Visits by the Dalai Lama and Chen Shui-bian, the president of Taiwan, to the White House in late May 2001 prompted China to protest that the USA was interfering in its domestic affairs.

Republicans lose control of the Senate

In May 2001, Senator James Jeffords of Vermont announced that he was leaving the Republican Party to serve as an Independent. His departure overturned Republican control of the Senate, and Democrats took control for the first time in six years. The move threatened to jeopardize President Bush's conservative political programme, but the Democrat leader, Tom Daschle, promised to adopt a cooperative approach towards the Republican agenda.

Bush in Europe

In June 2001, on his first official visit to Europe, President Bush faced diplomatic criticism and public demonstrations over his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and his plans for the US missile shield. Meeting with the European Union (EU) and NATO, he portrayed himself as an ally and friend, but stood firm on the controversial issues, winning implicit support for NMD from Britain, Spain, and Italy. His first meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin was unexpectedly amicable. Bush spoke of Russia as an ally, and insisted it had nothing to fear from the future expansion of NATO. At a summit in Göteborg, Sweden, the EU attempted to persuade the USA to accept the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. However, five hours of talks between Bush and EU leaders yielded no movement from the USA, and the EU member states declared that they would ratify the protocol without US involvement.

Diplomatic tensions with Japan

Relations between the USA and Japan were strained in July 2001 by a delay in handing over to the Japanese authorities a US pilot suspected of raping a Japanese woman in Chatan, Okinawa. The attack had threatened to overshadow a meeting at Camp David, Maryland, between President Bush and the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, and prompted renewed calls for a reduction in the numbers of US troops on the island of Okinawa.

Political party finance restrictions

On 25 June 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that the US government could restrict the amount of money that political parties spend in coordination with individual congressional candidates. In a 5–4 split decision, the court emphasized that large contributions of money tend to corrupt. Contributors will be allowed to give up to US$20,000 annually to a political party, but only US$2,000 to a candidate for a primary or general election. The court's ruling therefore prevents up to US$22,000 going to a single candidate.

Illegal immigrant concessions

A committee led by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft recommended in July that some of the 3 million Mexicans living illegally in the USA should be allowed to gain permanent residence through a guest-worker programme.

Ban on human cloning

In July, the US House of Representatives approved a comprehensive ban on human cloning, even for scientific research, and promised severe penalties for those caught flouting it. Although President Bush announced in August that he would allow federal funds to be used for research on existing lines of embryonic stem cells, he said he would not allow any cloning to create new embryos.

Military base closures proposed

In August, the Pentagon asked Congress to approve an independent commission that would close and consolidate military bases in the USA. It said that the military had 20–25% more base capacity than was needed, and that the closures would eventually save around US$3.5 billion.

Controversial energy plan approved

The House of Representatives approved President Bush's energy plan in August, including controversial proposals to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. The plan, passed by only 17 votes, was seen as a devastating blow to the environmental movement.

Bush accepts electoral reform proposals

President Bush broadly accepted recommendations for electoral reform put forward in August by former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. The proposals were designed to avoid a repeat of the confusion in the 2000 presidential election over the Florida ballot count.

Terrorist attacks

The USA suffered the worst terrorist attack ever on 11 September 2001. Suicide hijackers crashed two fuel-laden passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, both of which caught fire and collapsed, killing office workers and rescue workers alike. The entire southern end of Manhattan was evacuated. Another hijacked aircraft was flown into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a fourth plane crashed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The total death toll was estimated to be around 3,000. Airports, borders, and stock markets in the USA were closed, and flights to, from, and within the USA were grounded. On 13 September Congress and President Bush agreed on an initial emergency spending package of US$20 billion to help reconstruct New York and strengthen security. Politicians around the world had immediately condemned the attacks and promised help in finding the terrorists. President Bush promised to hunt down the perpetrators of what he called ‘an act of war’ and put US armed forces on high alert. No terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attacks but Western intelligence agencies blamed Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, based in Afghanistan. The Bush administration set out to build an international coalition of forces against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the al-Qaeda organization. Bush declared a War on Terrorism on 16 September against both al-Qaeda and any state that sponsored or harboured terrorists. After Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime refused to hand over bin Laden, US and British forces launched military strikes on the country on 7 October.

As the USA's exchanges stayed closed in the wake of the terrorist action, financial markets across the world slumped as the fear of a deep recession grew. The New York Stock Exchange reopened on 17 September, after its longest shutdown since World War I. The US Federal Reserve injected US$38.25 billion of cash into the banking system, about ten times the daily average and, on 17 September, announced a half-point cut in the base interest rate.

On 26 September, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said a recession in the USA was a foregone conclusion since the terrorist attacks. US airlines resumed business, but cut some 20% of flights anticipating a severe drop in business, and announced thousands of job losses. The federal government agreed an aid package of grants and loans totalling US$15 billion for US airlines. President Bush also unveiled plans for greater safety in the air, including armed marshals on planes and increased airport security, to increase public confidence in air travel.

Meanwhile, fear of biological attack increased in the USA as eight anthrax cases were confirmed in Florida on 14 October, resulting in the death of one man. There were also anthrax cases in New York and Nevada, with powder containing manufactured anthrax spores sent in letters to media organizations. However, there was no specific evidence linking the cases to either bin Laden or the al-Qaeda network by the end of October. Following the death of an elderly woman in Connecticut in late November from the inhalation form of anthrax, suspicions deepened that the source of the anthrax threat was US-based, rather than the work of foreign terrorists. In the same month a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont tested positive for the disease, as did the offices of two other senators.

Despite objections voiced by civil libertarians, President Bush signed a military order in November allowing non-US citizens suspected of terrorism to be tried before a military commission instead of in civilian courts. The Justice Department also requested police across the USA to question 5,000 men, mostly from the Middle East, who had entered the country legally in the past two years. Bush submitted a US$2.13 trillion budget to Congress in February 2002. It included a 12% increase in military spending (the biggest rise in military spending since 1982), and allocated US$11 billion dollars to protect the USA from biological terrorism. However, there was widespread criticism that the government would post deficits of US$106 billion in 2002, US$80 billion in 2003, and US$14 billion in 2004.

In March 2002, the USA imposed tariffs of up to 30% for three years on most steel imports from many of the world's biggest producers, who greeted the move with outrage. In its bid to revive its ailing steel industry, the USA was accused of setting back the cause of free trade. The EU responded by promising an immediate complaint to the WTO and imposing tariffs of its own of up to 26% on some steel products. It also drew up a list of US goods on which it would impose sanctions worth US$2 billion if the USA refused to provide compensation. The government reacted by threatening action through the WTO.

In May, during a European tour taking in Germany, Russia, France, and Italy, President Bush visited Moscow, Russia, and signed a strategic arms-control agreement with Russian president Vladimir Putin pledging to reduce long-range nuclear warheads by two-thirds over ten years.