What if the U.S. had avoided the first Gulf War?

Great Debates
1

When Indonesia occupied East Timor in 1975, the U.S. and the international community generally accepted it, as a fait accompli and nobody’s business. What if we had had a similar reaction to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990? How would that have affected the subsequent development of political relations in the MENA and globally?

Points to consider:

  1. Hussein did not invade Kuwait to get its oil. Iraq already had more oil than he was allowed to pump under OPEC quotas. His real aim was to add Kuwait’s production quota to Iraq’s. Had he succeeded – could Iraq have supplanted Saudi Arabia as OPEC’s dominant member? What then?

  2. Would he have been satisfied with Kuwait? What were Hussein’s long-term goals? He was a Ba’athist – a secular, socialist, Arab nationalist – but did he really have any ideology other than his own ego? In either case, did he want to conquer SA? Ultimately become the ruler of a united “Arabia,” perhaps encompassing all Arab lands east of Egypt? (The Saudis certainly feared attack at the time, that’s why they asked for U.S. help.) Or did he just want more wealth and clout than he had already?

  3. The specific provocation al-Qaeda has often cited for its actions was the placement of non-Muslim troops and bases in SA, Mohammed’s homeland. If that had never happened, would al-Qaeda have come into existence? Would it perhaps have existed, but directed its wrath at Hussein’s secular regime, enemy of SA, instead of the U.S. and the West?

2

If that’s not invading to get Kuwait’s oil, then I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in near San Francisco.

ObL was active long before the first Gulf War, and I’m sure he would’ve formed his ideology around something else if he didn’t have the “infidel troops on Holy soil” excuse. But there’s no way we’d’ve allowed Saddam to invade Saudi Arabia. Not us, nor the rest of the world. No way.

3

That’s silly. It’s logically equivalent to saying “I don’t want 12, I want a dozen.”

It’s also largely false. Hussein’s overarching concern was the debt he owed Kuwait, as well as other Gulf states, that he’d racked up fighting a war with Iran. Iraq owed Kuwait tens of billions and the pre-war negotiations were largely around forgiveness of that debt, NOT oil quotas (and certainly not this silly “slant drilling” issue you sometimes hear about.)

No, he didn’t. “Ba’athism” is not really an ideology, despite the Bush administration’s hapless efforts to turn it into a bogeyman.

Hussein’s objective was to not be assassinated. Forget geopolitical concerns; he was in a personally dangerous and precarious position, having just been the subject of several assassination attempts. The financial crisis Iraq faces as a result of the Iran-Iraq War threatened his hold on power and therefore his life, and his only real concerns were 1. His hold on power, and 2. His life.

Taking Kuwait, had the world allowed it, would very likely have put both problems on the back burner. Iraq’s financial situation would have been immensely improved; Kuwait was THE main war debtor. Had he been alowed to keep Kuwait, an invasion of Saudi Arabia would have been wholly unnecessary to maintain his hold on power.

4

It depends on exactly how much we avoided the war. If the United States had simply accepted the Kuwaiti invasion as a fait accompli, we would have still been asked to establish ourselves as a defensive force in Saudi Arabia. So Al Qaida would still have found reason to hate us. Iraq wouldn’t have had its military smashed in 1991, would have gained the prestige and resources from annexing Kuwait, and wouldn’t have been limited by a decade of international sanctions, so it would have been a stronger regional power. So we would have ended up with all the bad things we’ve got now and gained none of the benefits.

If the United States stayed completely out of it, then Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states would have realized they were as vulnerable as Kuwait had been and would either become Iraqi puppets or been annexed directly into an Iraqi empire. Syria and Jordan probably also would have fallen under Iraqi influence by 2000. The Middle East would have essentially by divided by three powers: Egypt, Iraq, and Iran (and a really worried Israel). Iraq would have the bulk of oil in its control and would probably have emerged as the senior power in the region.

5

You’ll note that there were very few terrorists attempting to blow things up on US soil, or blow up US citizens on US soil, prior to Gulf War 1. You might also consider that turning Iraq from a regional menace to a paper tiger removed the threat to the borders of Saudi Arabia, and thus a lot of the reason for posturing that bored and militant Arab youths previously had.

Besides, Al Quaeda doesn’t hate us because we have troops stationed on Saudi soil. It’s a pretext, just like Ws of MD were for us. They hate the United States because of its blind support of Israel.

Anyway, Saddam was a) a decided secularist, and b) had nothing to with terrorists, and if anything was our best friend in the area in many ways. Beyond the anti-Israeli rhetoric and the whole invasion of Kuwait thing, he was doing a lot of good.

6

No, they mostly hate us because we’re in the Middle East. We were supporting Israel for decades and terrorists ignored us for the most part. But once we established a military presense in Saudi Arabia they made us a primary target.

7

I also disagree that Saddam was ever “our best friend” in the Middle East. Ignoring the obvious case of Israel (and our ally Turkey), we’ve had better relations with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and pre-revolutionary Iran than we ever had with Iraq. Historically Iraq was a pro-Soviet state for most of Saddam’s early regime. The closest we ever got to Iraq was when our hostility with Iran was at its height and Iraq was an enemy of an enemy.

8

I have long thought that Saddam was a potential ally of the USA

However, I take a strong view on one State invading another and believe that there should be an automatic mutual defence pact between all States.

East Timor was a problem, one could say that it was a hangover from WWII or rather a long time before :

|East Timor remained under Portuguese control until 1975, when the Portuguese abruptly pulled out after 455 years of colonization. The sudden Portuguese withdrawal left the island vulnerable. On July 16, 1976, 9 days after the Democratic Republic of East Timor was declared an independent nation, Indonesia invaded and annexed it. Although no country except Australia officially recognized the annexation, Indonesia’s invasion was sanctioned by the United States and other western countries, who had cultivated Indonesia as a trading partner and cold-war ally (Fretilin, the East Timorese political party spearheading independence, was Marxist at the time). |

Like Hong Kong and Macau ‘belonging’ to China, the exact status of East Timor was a bit ambivalent.

One could not say the same about Kuwait.

I reckon that the USA and others should have politely told the Argentinians to get out of the Falklands. The UK fought that war on principle - and did not like it.

The de facto rulers of Afghanistan were in league with a bunch that committed hostile acts on a fair few other states, also the ‘invasion’ was spearheaded by the Northern Alliance.

The second invasion of Iraq breaks what I see as a necessary principle, if they had attacked anyone, even Iran, then they were down for a pasting, but as it is, they did not.

My view is that the best way of ensuring peace is to have a very simple rulebook, and to follow it blindly regardless of pragmatic considerations.

Therefore not attacking Iraq in 1991 would, I believe, have set a dangerous precedent.

9

I’m sorry, but that has to be close to the dumbest thing I’ve ever read in GD - and that’s saying a lot.

[ol]
[li]Production quotas are not a tangible, nor automatically transferrable asset. OPEC, after an invasion, could simply have told Hussein “no, you don’t get Kuwait’s quotas.”[/li][li]Hussein didn’t need OPEC’s permission to pump more - it ain’t a police or military organization, and almost all OPEC countries have significantly overproduced at one time or another. He could have just turned up Iraq’s spigots, and there would have been nothing OPEC could have done about it.[/li][/ol]
I mean, just think about what you are claiming - in order to get around unenforceable and nonbinding production quotas agreed to by Iraq, as part of its membership in an organization Iraq voluntarily joined and could leave at any time, he invaded a foreign country just so he could get that country’s unenforceable and nonbinding production quotas - even though the same voluntary organization could have simply responded by rescinding the invaded country’s quotas - and, of course, those quotas had little meaning or value in the first place???

There aren’t enough :rolleyes: in the world.

Sua

10

The whole production quota idea is perfectly analogous to mugging someone else for their frequent flyer miles.

Sua

11

He pretty obviously did, and may even have been sincere to some degree about it being a “lost province” of Iraq that had to be recovered. Simply controlling more land and more people is enough of a motive for a megalomaniac, anyway.

Sure, if he then went on to take the oil fields in northeastern SA (and he actually did make some military advances into SA during the war). It would have meant he had much more control over world oil prices, and we’d likely be paying him handsomely for it.

Doubt it, too much trouble and risk of defeat given his own troops’ tenuous loyalty and lack of leadership and organization.

That’s an interesting one. I’d suspect that the anti-Western, anti-oppressor sentiment upon which AQ was built would have been directed more towards more-secular, regional Hamas/Hezbollah type activity.

12

Please remind me: The debt-removing motives cited above all jibe with what I remember, but I also recall the issue of “slant drilling”. If memory serves, Saddam at least carried on like this was a big affront, and even consulted with members of the Bush I admin. about it. He sought some kind of approval to do something about it, and got it. Of course, by something, they didn’t mean invade the bloody country. It’s possible (though how likely I don’t know) Saddam wasn’t pretending to be mistaken, and really thought he had our go-ahead to “retake” Kuwait.

13

We would have been asked, but we would not have had to grant the request.

But would it have been a bad thing for Iraq to become a stronger regional power? It would have provided a definite counterweight to Iran. And if Hussein had dominated or even conquered Saudi Arabia, would that not have mean an improvement in the lives of its people, in some respects? At least under Hussein’s rule, women could work outside the home, dispense with the veil, drive cars, etc. And the people at least had no less a voice in the government than they had (and still have) in SA. (You can’t get less than zero.)

14

True, they could have, but SA was scared of Iraq, at that point, for military reasons. They might have acceded to Hussein’s position to appease him, and the rest would have followed suit – SA being the dominant voice in OPEC. Furthermore, refusing to acknowledge the merger of Kuwait’s production quota with Iraq’s would have reduced the total amount of petroleum available on the world market, raising the price. The international oil companies would have rejoiced in that, but many important political factions in the U.S. and Europe and China would have had a serious problem with it.

Not quite that simple. The American neocons thought they could ignore OPEC production quotas (and break the back of OPEC in the process) after taking over Iraq. In the event, Iraq’s oil production infrastructure has been so thoroughly shattered by the invasion and subsequent insurgency that it might be another decade before production there even reaches the OPEC quota; but, even if that had not been so, the neocons would have failed. As Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi-born economist, think-tanker and member of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, explained it to journalist Greg Palast (as recounted in his book Armed Madhouse, Chapter 2, “The Flow”):

15

I discussed that possibility in my second paragraph.

Even the most vocal opponents of the Iraqi invasion have to concede that Saddam was not a person you’d want to choose to run your country. The man was a psychopath - one of the few people that can be compared to Hitler without hyperbole. So bad as things are under the current regimes in the Middle East, they would have worsened if Saddam took over.

16

Actually, didn’t Kuwait even seize some Iraqi territory shortly after the Iran-Iraq war? And didn’t that give them the access to Iraqi oil fields that they needed for the slant-drilling? It’s coming back. I believe prior to, Saddam was making it clear he wanted to retaliate militarily, and we pretty much said we were neutral on the matter of ME conflicts btw. Arab states. I think that’s why Saddam felt he had the go-ahead.

In retrospect, it almost looks like we set them up.

17

Not really, although it could be interpreted that way.

Kuwait and Iraq were formed out of territroy that used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. When the region that is now Kuwait was part of the Empire it was part of a provinve that was incorporated into Iraq. So Iraq claimed for a long time that all of Kuwait should be part of this province and therefore part of Iraq. Iraq finally formally recognized Kuwaiti independance in 1963.

When the two countries were formed the border was not rigidly defined. There is a section of land on the frontier of the two countries that could be claimed by either territory based on how you interpret the border demarkation. There are also two islands in the Persian Gulf that could be claimed by either country. The disputed territory was generally under de facto Kuwaiti control. The main sticking point had been port access to the Persian Gulf; with its existing borders Iraq had virtually no sea access. The discover of oil fields in the area added to the dispute.

As far as I can tell, nobody is claiming Kuwait had made any recent claims to Iraqi territory in 1990. Kuwait was occupying territory Iraq was claiming, but it had been doing so since 1932. There were recent Iraqi claims that Kuwaiti were drilling wells from Kuwaiti territory underground into Iraqi territory but these don’t appear to have been true. There was also the then current issues of Iraq’s debt to Kuwait and OPEC oil production quotas - both issues in which the two countries were in disagreement.

In July 1990, Saddam Hussein met with American Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie. He told discussed with her the ongoing border dispute. Ambassador Glaspie explained the American position which essentially was that the United States didn’t have a position on this issue. Depending on which transcript is correct Ambassador Glaspie either said, “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.” or “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late '60s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly.” But neither statement can be regarded as an American approval for invasion; the Ambassador was talking about the border dispute not the issue of Kuwait independance and was also discussing the outcome of negotiations not military action.

Following the Gulf War and liberation of Kuwait, the United Nations defined the land border between the two countries. Obviously under those circumstances, it was set in Kuwait’s favor. There are still disputes however about where the maritime border between the two countries is.

18

Thanks LM!

19

Ya think? The Sauds are much more deserving of the label “Islamo-Fascist” than Hussein ever was – for that matter, more so than Iran is today. See this article.

20

Sorry, Brain, not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me.

If you’re disagreeing, then I’ll say I’m standing by my previous post. Saddam was definitely worse than the Sauds or the Ayatollahs. He was even worse than the Assads and that took some effort.

And I feel “Islamo-fascism” is exactly what Saddam was. Many of the trappings of fascism - the cult of the leader, the ethnic elitism, the militarism - were present in Iraq much more than they are in Iran or Saudi Arabia.