On 29th January 1991, President George H.W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress. America was at war with Iraq, having launched Operation Desert Storm to expel Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait. Bush’s tone was sombre, measured—a contrast to the triumphalism of his State of the Union a year earlier, when he had spoken of communism crumbling and a new era for the world. Now he spoke of something grander: a “new world order.”

“What is at stake is more than one small country. It’s a big idea: a new world order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind—peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.”

Drawing on Kristina Spohr’s excellent book Postwall Post Square, we explore the context of that speech. The first Gulf War was a remarkable moment: a coalition of 28 countries from six continents, including traditional allies like Britain and Australia, prickly partners like France, and even Arab nations like Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Most strikingly, the United States and the Soviet Union—despite Saddam being a long-time Moscow client—cooperated. Bush and Gorbachev had forged a personal accord, and the Cold War was over.

But behind the grand rhetoric, the picture was more complex. Moscow’s violent crackdown in Lithuania cast a shadow over the gleaming language of freedom. Bush struggled to balance his principled assertion of democratic values against his pragmatic need fo