The First Gulf War

The 1990—91 Gulf War was the first conflict of the post-Cold War environment. It was also the first challenge to the evolving unipolar world in which the United States, as the remaining superpower, set the international agenda of war and peace.

Eight years of war with Iran had left the Iraqi regime in a difficult position. The war had depleted the country's resources and had plunged it into consider­able debt, much of it owed to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In addition to debts totalling $80 billion and the war-related destruction, Iraq had incurred an economic loss from lower oil revenues and higher military expenditure of $208 billion. Iraq's dire economic conditions meant that it had difficulties repaying its debts, the servicing of which amounted to $8 billion a year alone. It also was not able to deliver on popular post-war expectations such as reconstruction and better living standards, turning the cease-fire, which had been hailed as a great victory, into a farce.

Moreover, economic stagnation in the year following the end of the war with Iran made it difficult to demobilize the 1.5 million soldiers, many of whom lacked education and employment skills.

Shi'a Islam

Muslim sect which emerged out of the struggle over the succession following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Derived from Shi'a Ali (the Party of Ali) or those who supported the Prophet's son­in-law Ali's accession to the Caliphate. An estimated 15 per cent of Muslims are Shi'a. They are concentrated in the areas of Iran, Iraq and southern Lebanon, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Muslim world.

Sunni Islam

The main body of Muslims, who follow the path (sunna) of the Prophet Mohammed and the Quran and the hadith.

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) The organization founded in I960 to represent the interests of the leading oil-producing states in the Third World.

pan-Arabism

Movement for Arab unity as manifested in the Fertile Crescent and Greater Syria schemes as well as attempted unification of Egypt, Syria and Libya.

The invasion of Kuwait promised a cure to both the economic and military legacy of the Iran-Iraq War. Kuwait's oil wealth would enable the Iraqi regime to reconstruct the state and to pay its non-Arab creditors. It would keep the army busy and far away from the capital. The claims of victory over Iran would be replaced with a real victory over Kuwait. The invasion was also seen as a way to project Iraqi hegemony not just over Kuwait but also over the Gulf as a whole. This would allow Iraq to dictate oil prices and quotas to serve its own interests, as it would control 21 per cent of OPEC's total production. And, ultimately, the extension of military and economic power would enable Iraq to claim the mantle of pan-Arab leadership as the region's most powerful country, especially as it was the only country which had never even signed so much as an armistice with Israel and the only Arab state left to embrace the PLO wholeheartedly.

The invasion itself was made easier by two underlying beliefs: first, that Kuwait had provoked this attack through its unreasonable behaviour, and, second, that both Arab and Western states would not intervene. With respect to the first, in May 1988 Iraq had approached Kuwait with the aim of leasing (or annexing) the two strategically important islands at the entrance of the Shatt al-Arab river, Iraq's sole access to the Gulf. Kuwait refused. In February 1989 Iraq tried to extort territorial concessions from Kuwait as a reward for fighting the war against Iran on behalf of the Arab world, but to no avail. Iraq believed not only that it was being cheated of rightful compensation — after all, more than 200,000 Iraqis had been killed, 400,000 wounded and 70,000 taken prisoner — but also that it was being cheated of oil revenues. According to Iraq, Kuwait had stolen $2.4 billion from the Iraqi Rumaila oilfield. By invading Kuwait, Iraq was only taking what Saddam Hussein believed to be rightfully his.

United Nations (UN)

An international organization established after the Second World War to replace the League of Nations.

With respect to the second, Saddam Hussein interpreted a meeting he had with the American ambassador, April Glaspie, on 25 July 1990 as signalling that the United States would not intervene should Iraq invade Kuwait, as Washington did not wish to get involved in inter-Arab disputes. Taking into consideration prior invasions and occupations by other Middle Eastern players and the lack of any Western or Arab reaction, Saddam calculated there would ultimately be acquies­cence as long as the oil flow was not disrupted. After all, no action had been taken to dislodge Israeli forces from the West Bank, Gaza and Golan since 1967 or to dislodge Syrian troops from Lebanon since 1976. Thus Saddam Hussein discounted the likelihood of military action against his forces, the possibility of an Arab front emerging against Iraq, and arguably even the implementation of economic sanctions by the United Nations (UN).

The extent of Iraq's miscalculation and its misreading of the positions not only of the United States and Britain but also of its former allies in Moscow and its Arab brothers became clear on 16 January 1991. After months of UN Security Council resolutions, diplomatic moves, the freezing of Iraq's and Kuwait's assets, and the imposition of sanctions aimed at compelling Iraq to withdraw voluntarily, an American-led multinational coalition launched Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait militarily. While the coalition relentlessly bombed Iraqi targets in Kuwait, Saddam attempted to split the coalition by creating a linkage with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and by firing Scud missiles at Israel in an attempt to provoke the latter's entry into the conflict. American assurances and the speedy delivery of Patriot missiles kept Israel from retaliating. Nevertheless, a linkage had been created, as became evident in the efforts to push for a comprehensive Middle East peace process to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict only a couple of months later.

On 27 February 1991, forty-three days after launching Desert Storm, a cease­fire was declared. By that point an estimated 120,000 sorties had been flown by coalition air forces and some 84,000 tons of ordnance had been dropped, including 7,400 tons of ‘smart' bombs. Iraq's adventure in Kuwait had been stopped by the use of overwhelming air power and this became a strategy emulated in attempts to resolve other post-Cold War conflicts such as Kosovo in 1999. However, while Iraqi forces had been pushed out of Kuwait and had even been pursued across the border by coalition ground forces, the Iraqi regime emerged relatively unscathed. Fears of body bags and the spectre of Vietnam weighed heavily in the American decision not to commit itself to a prolonged ground operation. This was further underlined by the belief that toppling Saddam Hussein would result in the territorial disintegration of Iraq with the possibility of a Shi'a fundamentalist state appearing in the south of the country. Moreover, the coalition did not have a mandate to move against the Iraqi regime and the Arab coalition partners, France and Russia would not have supported such action.

The restoration of Kuwait to the Sabah royal family was read as a victory for the West and as a defeat for Saddam Hussein in his bid for hegemony - an interpretation which in the long term proved illusory. In particular, the demon­stration of American power in support of collective security led to the idea that the Cold War had now been replaced by a fresh paradigm — the New World Order — in which Washington would impose its values, for good or for ill, on the rest of the world. As such, the disparity between the victorious United States and the now almost irrelevant former Soviet Union could not have been starker.

collective security

The principle of maintaining peace between states by mobilizing international opinion to condemn aggression. Commonly seen as one of the chief purposes of international organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations.