American Empire: Page 411.

“Panama eased the way for the Bush Administration when it decided to launch a much larger military operation in reaction to Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait.

During President George H. W. Bush’s presidency, America has got into several conflicts with former allies and President Bush used this opportunity to further re-legitimize the use of force and maintain a massive military capacity. The defeat in Vietnam left the citizens of America having a very negative vibe towards war but President Bush took this opportunity to make the military strong and have some support from the public. They first went after Panama where they won versus a former American ally, Manual Noriega, and that made the public resistance towards war erode. Then after that, they went to war against Saddam Hussein for fear he would take over Saudi Arabia, which would mean Iraq would control a large amount of the world’s remaining oil. This view fits into Freeman’s argument about this era that war is sort of back and the Bush administration didn’t change anything about restoring stability after the Cold War.