“This is a victory for democracy and freedom. This is a victory of the moral force of our values,” Mr. Bush said in a nationally televised address. It appeared democracy and free markets had triumphed, were on the march, and would become the foundation of a new and peaceful international order — or at least that was what the U.S. president envisioned. Just months earlier, Mr. Gorbachev had given his blessing to Mr. Bush’s decision to expel Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from Kuwait, a move that would have been unthinkable at the height of the Cold War because Iraq was an old Soviet ally.