In terms of defence, assume the invasion already happened. You can defend the homeland rather than surrender. In my mind, at least one of the Arab states should have led the counterstrike on Iraq.
I honestly don’t know, and I’m not sure if there is a factual answer to that question.
Probably because they didn’t have to. The US generally steps in before anyone else can do anything in these types of situations. We are, after all, the world’s policeman.
And since the US was going to be supplying the bulk of the fighting forces, it makes sense for the US to lead the effort. We generally don’t do things any other way (except maybe where NATO is involved).
Correct. Wars don’t just happen. They are planned. The logistics that go into conducting a war are mind boggling. For an unprepared country to suddenly mobilize and defend against a suprise event just can’t happen. To my point, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait occurred in August. It wasn’t until the next year that the US was capable of mounting an invasion to kick them out. During that entire time the military was moving equipment, staging forces and planning. The counter invasion couldn’t be done in days or weeks, it took months.
I remember reading at the time that the Pentagon was caught short by the invasion of Kuwait. Apparantly, almost all of the war planning for the Mid East was centered on a war with Iran. The Pentagon had to suddently shift gears and start from scratch in planning Gulf War I.
Kill ratios were though to be 5:1 (five coalition forces to one Iraqi soldier) based on the fact that Iraq had time to dig in.
It was also ‘believed’ that Operation Imminent Thunder ( a beach landing in Kuwait of some serious-ass magnitude) was necessary.
Who would be able to pull this off, other than a US-led force? Diplomatically and militarily, only the US could pull it off. And, for the record, oil is a life blood. It is. Oil matters. It really does.
“No blood for oil” makes for some great half-assed rally signs, but you either invest several hundred pints of blood now or billions of pints later. Yes, it all helps turn the machine away from oil (a slow process), but some day I think we might see rally signs along the lines of "no blood for corn’’, or ‘‘no blood for sugar cane’’…“no blood for propane”
Whatever. I’m off topic.
In the Gulf War coalition, Saudi Arabia provided the second largest force, Egypt the 4th largest, Syria the 6th largest, Morocco the 7th largest, Kuwaiti troops in Saudi Arabia the 8th largest, and Oman, the 9th largest. So of the top 10 millitary forces in the Gulf war, 6 were Arab states.
How? None of them were capable.
Saudi Arabia was the only largish state geographically positioned to do so, but they lacked the manpower. They were much better situated to defend themselves than Kuwait, since they had some strategic depth and a decent-enough-for-the-region air force. But they just didn’t the have the men and resources to engage in a prolonged slugging match with Iraq.
The other Gulf states have tiny militaries and would have been nothing but the proverbial gnat in the storm against Iraq - Kuwait was actually about the toughest of them.
Syria? Much more capable, but geographically isolated - they are on the other side of Iraq from Kuwait and their border with Iraq is mostly empty desert. They’d have to fight across that to really threaten anything and try to put pressure on SH to disgorge his conquest. Most unlikely and it would take years, just like Iran-Iraq. Especially since Iraq was stronger in most respects.
Egypt? More capable still, but once again even farther away. They in no way had the capacity to project significant force into the Gulf on their own, let alone through Israel to get there.
Frankly, Egypt possibly excepted, Iraq was the greatest Arab military power at the time and the combined Arab League states, left to their own devices, were utterly incapable of doing anything militarily about the Kuwait situation. Other than engage in essentially pointless hostilities, as all advantages accrued to Iraq.
I’m not really sure what this means… Saudis did defend Saudi, they did not surrender.
By the time that any Arab military had time to mobilize, US troops were already on their way to Saudi Arabia to begin Operation Desert Shield. A coalition of countries was already well underway to being formed, lead by the US. What were all these Arab countries supposed to do, say, No, go away, America, we don’t want the help of the most powerful military in the world?
I think the other factor that has been alluded to is that Bush I was an internationalist who really seemed to have a vision of countries uniting to oppose aggression like that of Iraq in 1990. He called it the New World Order, academics call it collective security, but demonstrating to the world that the US would work in concert with friendly nations to protect our friends was, I believe, a very important reason that Bush acted as he did.
Finally, keep in mind that in addition to contributing hundreds of thousands of troops, Arab nations contributed huge amounts of money to the US for the cost of the war. US military operations cost around $60 billion. IIRC, contributions from Arab states, Japan and others amounted to $57 billion or so. So countries in the region were certainly on the front lines in terms of paying for the war.
Kuwait was not widely liked in the Arab world, perceived as a rich lazy nation with too much money and oil for its own good and not pulling its weight on the Palestinian thing. None of the Arab nations were really that sore about Kuwait, but Saddam’s ambition alarmed them. Historically the Arabs have not been good at assembling coalitions and winning wars with them. The 1967 war with Israel showed this.
Possession being nine points of the law, once Saddam had it, and set up some sort of puppet government as a fig leaf, he calculated that he could spin out argument in the UN forever until everyone got tired of hearing about it.
I saw an interesting BBC doc on the war, in the Battlefields series. Two interesting things:
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Kuwait has a lot of oil for its size. 10% of the world’s reserves.
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Like John Mace said, everyone was very worried that Saddam would just go a little further and get the poorly defended Saudi oil fields. They are mostly in that corner of the country that abuts Kuwait.
So add Iraq to Kuwait plus half of SA, and that’s way too much oil for one man.
Another interesting question that may require a separate thread, why would a resource rich and money rich country like SA not have the military resources to defend itself? In the game Civilization, if you have resources, you defend them or someone will take them away.
Because the real world is not a game of Civilization. You spend enough money to keep yourself secure – and if the US will do most of your fighting for you, then you don’t keep a standing army to do it instead.
(And, not that this is necessarily the case in Saudi Arabia, it’s also best to minimize your military establishment to lower the risk of a military coup. Costa Rica has no military, specifically thanks to its history of military coups.)
A number of articles here Rohrer, Bob Rohrer - USMC Marine Corps - Camel Tales by a former Advisor in Saudi touch on this point. Essentially, his thesis is that hierarchy and status preservation are more important to officers in the Saudi (and many other Arab) armed forces than military efficiency. If you come back from a course in the US knowing how to do something, you guard that knowledge jealously, not disseminate it, because it makes you indispensable. Technical literature gets locked away, not issued, for the same reason.