President George H.W. Bush mention the “New World Order” for the first time in a address to Congress. With the defeat of Iraq in Desert Storm, he outline a plan for maintaining a permanent U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf, for providing funds for Middle East development, and for instituting safeguards against the spread of WMD. He pledge an Arab-Israeli treaty based on the territory-for-peace principle and the fulfillment of Palestinian rights, saying he would reconvene the international peace conference in Madrid.
On April 13, President Bush spoke at the commencement of the Air University at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama. He praised the performance of the Air Force in Desert Storm and says a New World Order was now “within our reach.” It could emerge, he says, from the rubble that was the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact. He again stresses the need for a policy of “active engagement” in the Middle East and elsewhere to prevent the eventual worsening of relations that followed each of the two World Wars. He said the New World Order was a responsibility, created by the success of the U.S., to achieve stability, economic progress and peace around the world. The responsibility of the U.S., he says, was not to maintain perpetual global peace, but to contain aggression.