The Shattered Promise of the 1990s

A wind of change was blowing. One of the last gusts of the 1980s had brought down the Berlin Wall, epitomizing the collapse of Communist rule in Eastern Europe and clearing the way for a global move into a brighter and more unified future. Then, sure enough, in the first months of the 1990s, the Soviet republics untethered themselves from Moscow, one by one, and soared into democracy. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union officially dissolved, and the United States was left as the world’s lone superpower.

America and our allies were flying high. Freedom had prevailed against communism and dark dictatorship. What had long been a world balanced on a knife’s edge of nuclear war suddenly seemed destined for democracy, opportunity and perhaps even global peace. The West had won. Liberty had won. And hope was in the air.

Wind at America’s Back

“Today America is on the threshold of the greatest period of economic opportunity, technological development and entrepreneurial adventure in the history of the world,” said American statesman Jack Kemp. “A world of peace, a world of hope, that’s what America’s economic and cultural renewal means at home and around the globe. This is what our cause is all about. … We have before us tomorrows that are more thrilling than the most glorious of our yesterdays.”

U.S. President George H. W. Bush had similar optimism: “We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment,” he said in an address to Congress. “A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle.”

U.S. State Department official Francis Fukuyama shared these sentiments. He said America’s victory over the Soviet Union meant history, defined as the protracted struggle between freedom and oppression, was over. He wrote: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

As the 1990s continued, the promising breeze persisted. And it wasn’t just slap bracelets, Starbucks, Michael Jordan and “MMMBop” that it blew in.

The murder rate in the U.S. fell by a stunning 41 percent throughout the decade, alongside even steeper drops in robbery, rape and assault. At the same time, high school graduation rates soared to record highs. The number of Americans who participated in sports grew by millions. And the number who played an instrument grew by tens of millions, bringing the percent of households that included at least one musician from 27 at the start of the decade to 54 percent at the end.

There was also a little something called the Internet that made its way into tens of millions of U.S. homes throughout the decade, greatly expanding ordinary peoples’ access to information, and promising to knit the nation’s social and economic fabric more tightly.

All the while, a robust economic wind was at America’s back, driving an average of 4 percent growth throughout the decade. The nation added 1.7 million jobs each year, and unemployment fell to a rate that was effectively zero. Household incomes rose by 10 percent. And in 1998, the country caught a rare updraft, its first budget surplus in decades. Debt as a share of gross domestic product fell sharply, and it seemed that America had found its financial bearings. With the warm wind easing it forward and no rival in sight, America appeared poised to chart a course of lasting prosperity.

And the U.S. did more than simply accumulate wealth and stabilize and enrich the lives of its own people. Throughout the 1990s, America deployed much of its prosperity and economic strength overseas.

The Global Opportunity

America’s outreach came in the form of numerous trade deals made with other nations as well as great quantities of investment and aid pumped into them. Former Soviet states were prioritized, with America aiming to stabilize the newly independent, newly democratic governments and tie them into the global economy. America also won goodwill by stepping in as a stabilizer amid emergencies such as the Mexican peso crisis of 1995 and the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

At the same time, the U.S. expanded its already robust defense of freedom of navigation of the seas and open global markets. This enabled international trade to reach unprecedented levels. As a result, the world grew wealthier, healthier, better educated and freer.

More than 120 million people around the world were lifted from extreme poverty throughout the decade, and gross domestic product per person increased by an average of 25 percent. Infant mortality plummeted by more than 20 percent (thanks partly to the new recommendation to place babies on their backs for sleep), and several years were added to global lifespans. Literacy rates soared, bringing the miracle of reading to pretty much everyone save women in some Islamic nations. The number of “free” countries went from 61 at the start of the decade to 85 at the end, while the number of electoral democracies nearly doubled, soaring from 69 to 120.

These were remarkable gains. Most of the improvements were coming atop decades of previous advancements, but for many metrics during the 1990s, the positive change accelerated.

Even Russia, the longtime global bête noire, received billions in U.S. aid and investment throughout the 1990s. And it made drastic reforms, holding real elections and adopting aspects of the free market, tainted with instability and “gangster capitalism,” yet nonetheless a stark contrast to previous decades.

America and Russia also made major moves to reduce their nuclear stockpiles, including a revolutionary “swords to plowshares” program in which Moscow dismantled hundreds of warheads and sold its uranium for use as fuel in U.S. power plants. This was an astounding development! More than 2,000 other nuclear weapons were also dismantled by the decade’s end. There were even discussions among Russia’s leaders about possibly joining the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. There was a real sense that the winds had shifted.

Meanwhile, China, representing a fifth of mankind, also seemed to be feeling the wind of change. The 1980s had ended with the Tiananmen Square Massacre—a merciless attack on Chinese citizens’ aspirations for democracy and freedom. But throughout the decade that followed, China opened up to more and more trade, giving tens of millions of its people exposure to ideals of democracy and human rights. Its gdp tripled during the decade. And as the people’s standard of living soared, hope abounded that the Chinese Communist Party would grant its people greater political rights and that it would replace its oppression, theft and exploitation with fair governance and responsible international behavior. The hope was that China would become a boon to the whole world.

Wars still erupted during the 20th century’s final decade, but the mighty gales of global conflict had eased, and the great powers waged no open wars against one another. This was partly because historic aggressor Russia was reeling and unable to wage war. It was partly because major historic aggressors such as Japan and Germany remained tightly bound to the U.S. system, as treaty allies. And several other nations found that trade, supply chains and shared vulnerabilities made all-out war too costly for them to fight each other. America had too much economic and military strength for anyone to want to risk open confrontation with it. As a result, many countries focused on working to get richer.

Religion, too, stood exposed to the shifting winds. Central to the Cold War had been the notion of a “Christian America” standing righteously against a godless Soviet system. But as the 1990s rolled on, the Cold War faded into memory, and much of the world grew richer and more materialistic. At the same time, the information explosion enabled people to better investigate the claims of religious leaders and the seedy histories of their organizations.

This all worked together to weaken the pull of religion in the West. Shrinking numbers saw use for the belief systems that had fueled so much of the world’s bloodshed and corruption over the centuries. Instead, science, technology and economic development seemed poised to become the primary forces solving mankind’s problems and shaping human destiny.

As the promising wind was flipping the calendar page not just on the decade, but on the millennium, it seemed that the world would keep moving further toward freedom, democracy and progress. And surely if there was ever a moment when man was positioned to build a good and lasting world of opportunity, this period was high on the list.

But here we are a quarter of a century later, and, looking back, it is clear that it did not happen.

A World in the Crosswinds

Not even two years into the new millennium, a violent gust tore through the illusion of peace—the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They howled out a demonic message to the world: Not all religion is in retreat.

The U.S. responded with the “War on Terror,” which began with urgency and zeal but dragged into 20 years of confusion. In the end, it did not defeat Islamic terrorism but only fragmented and further radicalized it.

The war also sidelined Iran’s two main regional enemies: the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Hussein regime in Iraq. This cleared the way for the Islamic Republic to expand its proxy network, revive its once dormant nuclear weapons program, and rise from a relatively isolated state to a tremendously dangerous and capable regional power.

The war was also astronomically expensive, costing the U.S. trillions of dollars. And six years into it, an American housing bubble, fueled by risky subprime mortgages and reckless lending, burst. The contagion quickly spread worldwide, crashing economies, freezing credit markets, and causing a global recession. Together, these developments shattered any hopes of a return to U.S. fiscal responsibility. They set the U.S. on track to add more than $30 trillion to its debt by 2025.

The Arab Spring from 2010 to 2012 exploded into chaos in nations such as Syria, Libya and Yemen. The result was civil wars, intensifying Islamic extremism and a refugee crisis that flooded Europe with millions of Middle Easterners.

The flood of foreigners alarmed many Europeans. Right-leaning groups, promising to shield their ancient societies from cultural and demographic threats, began growing powerful. As they ascended, along with intensifying anti-Semitism and remilitarization, echoes of the 1930s resounded throughout Europe.

Meanwhile, Russia had returned to the world stage under the leadership of kgb henchman Vladimir Putin. In 2005, he called the wind of change that had blown the Soviet Union apart the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” He began fighting to reverse the “catastrophe” by asserting control over former Soviet nations like Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine—sometimes with underhanded statecraft, sometimes with brutal force. His belligerence, especially in the full-scale war on Ukraine, further alarmed and galvanized the Europeans. Their militarization quickened and spread. By 2025, war drums were pounding, from Tallinn to Copenhagen, from Warsaw to Berlin.

During these same years, the U.S. increasingly renounced its longtime role as global leader and stabilizer. It began unilaterally changing the terms of trade deals, abruptly suspending intelligence-sharing with allies, and even threatening their territorial integrity, including that of Denmark. The integrity of nato weakened and the nations of Europe injected greater urgency into their militarization.

Meanwhile, the abandonment of Christianity produced mixed results at best. Yes, there was less reverence and revenue given to men falsely claiming to speak for God. But with the people’s moral compasses ever more demagnetized and people adrift in materialism, they were easily misled by an increasingly radical left that branded itself the new moral authority.

Their high priests were professors, politicians and media pundits. Their missionaries were activists and rioters. Their churches were universities and nongovernmental organizations. The “original sin” was that the West had been built on slavery, patriarchy and colonialism that could never be forgiven. From this flowed a gospel of deconstruction: dismantle capitalism, deny biological reality, reframe deviance as virtue, and discredit traditional family while transferring its authority into the hands of these new “priests.” Salvation in this faith comes not through redemption but through destruction.

As millions of Americans bought into the new orthodoxy and tens of millions of others defiantly resisted it, the nation’s societal and political divisions dramatically deepened. The country’s leadership lurched violently back and forth between the two sides, with each growing more extreme in order to counter the other.

During these same years, China’s posture toward the U.S. changed dramatically. What had previously been quiet espionage and subtle trade schemes evolved into a stance of open hostility. The Chinese Communist Party stole all the American technology it could, then used slaves and government subsidies to reproduce and sell it at prices no one in the “free world” could begin to compete with. Foreign competitors were gutted and global markets upended.

China used its ill-gotten gains to build stunning military power, including a formidable nuclear triad. It also financed Russian and Iranian aggression with steady energy purchases, conducted ceaseless cyberattacks on foreign governments and firms, used its Belt and Road Initiative to assert control over indebted nations, and illegally built and militarized islands in the South China Sea. And bullying U.S. partner nations such as the Philippines and Taiwan became China’s new national pastime.

Then in late 2019, China unleashed covid-19 on the world, killing millions of people and triggering unprecedented global disruption. Business closures skyrocketed, poverty rates soared around the world, and trends of nationalism and isolationism accelerated. “Think of covid-19 as a once-in-a-century crisis that hit during a once-in-a-century moment of global polarization,” said International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

Back in the U.S., the science that had seemed so promising in the 1990s was increasingly hijacked by the radical left. As it became clear that elites were using their power to dismantle what remained of traditional family and to amass ever greater power for themselves, more right-leaning people grew resentful, mistrustful of authority, and quick to embrace fringe ideas. At the same time, the Internet technology that we thought would connect us caused a pandemic of pornography addiction, escapism and ever intensifying rage politics. It isolated us and poisoned us against each other. A crisis of loneliness resulted and led to the radicalization of many, especially the young.

From 2025, looking back on all that has transpired since the 1990s, it is clear that mankind did not usher in the golden age of civilization that many expected. We didn’t build a world of peace, but one of corruption, hate and despair that is now sliding rapidly toward global war.

A Good World Is Coming

A considerable amount of disillusionment and despondency exists in the world today, including among those who were optimists before the turn of the century. “Seeing what I imagined the promise of the 1990s to have been turn out to be illusory and fleeting did a lot to disappoint me in life,” wrote author Graig Calcaterra.

But the truth is, the optimism was always ill founded, and readers of the Bible should never have been taken in by it. Numerous passages of Scripture show that mankind is not equipped to build a good world. “The way of peace they know not,” Isaiah 59:8 states. “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man,” Jeremiah 17 says, because “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (verse 5, 9).

“[H]is eyes are too full of conceit to detect or hate his own sin,” King David warned, and as a result, “he fails to reject evil” (Psalm 36:2-4; Berean Standard Bible).

Mankind has never had the capacity to rule itself. We are literally incapable of solving our major problems, which are spiritual in nature. Even when ideal circumstances are handed to us, as in Eden some 6,000 years ago, our vanity and self-reliance and failure to reject evil eventually lead to ruin. Amid the far-from-ideal winds of change blowing in the 1990s, a quick return to global turbulence was inevitable. So we should not be blindsided by the state of the world today.

The Scriptures also show that from here, worldwide circumstances will get far worse and culminate in a third world war, a time of unprecedented suffering (Daniel 11:40-12:1; Matthew 24:21-22).

But the Bible also shows that there is a profound reason why God lets man suffer the horrendous results of trusting in ourselves, and why He will allow the intensified suffering from it ahead. The Bible makes clear that it is to teach mankind that only God can govern us and solve our problems.

“God is teaching men even as they rebel,” Gerald Flurry writes in his booklet Daniel Unlocks Revelation. “They are learning that man cannot rule himself—only God can bring men peace, prosperity, happiness and joy.”

God alone has the understanding and the power. He can bring real and permanent solutions to problems that men are incapable of solving. And the Bible shows that very soon, just on the other side of the coming war, He will. He will bring about the good world that men have sought but utterly failed to build. Mr. Flurry calls that lesson “the greatest lesson mankind could possibly learn.” And God is teaching us that lesson right now, as the skies darken and the cold winds strengthen.