The Causes of the Persian Gulf War
“Two dozen U.S. and British aircrafts bombed five radar and other anti-aircraft sites around Baghdad with guided missiles yesterday in the first major military action of the Bush administration. It was the largest airstrike against Iraq in two years and hit sites near the Iraqi capital, a significant departure from the low-key enforcement of no-fly zones in the country’s south and north. The U.S.-led alliance declared the zones off-limits to Iraqi aircrafts after the Persian Gulf War. President Bush, speaking at a new conference in Mexico alongside the Mexican President, Vicente Fox, called the raid
‘routine.’ But it was widely interperted in Washington and other world capitals as presaging a get-tough attitude by the new administration toward a country that has vexed U.S. policymakers for more than a decade. ‘Saddam Hussein has got to understand we expect him to comform to the agreement that he signed after The Desert
Storm,’ Bush said...” (Ricks A1)
Saddam Hussein’s continuing failure to cooperate is one of many results of the
Persian Gulf War. Between January 17 and February 28, 1991, an international military coalition sanctioned by the United Nations and led by the United States defeated the large, well-equipped Iraqi army and forced it to withdraw from occupied Kuwait. The allied offense, whose military code name was Operation Desert Storm, involved ground troops from 19 countries joining together from virtually every region on the globe: North
America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa,
Asia, and Australia (Yant 18). In essence, from the Iraqi position, there were three, main, inter-state causes of the Persian Gulf War: 1) To aquire a major port on the
Persian Gulf, 2) To eliminate the $13 billion debt that Iraq owed Kuwait, 3) To gain vast oil reserves.
In order to better understand the Iraqi position, it is necessary to look at some of the historical factors. The discovery of oil by the the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
(APOC; later renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and still later British Petroleum) in
Iran in 1908 stimulated a great interest in potential Iraqi oil resources. Financial groups from several major nations engaged in protracted negotiations with ...
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Works Cited
Bennis, Phyllis and Moushabeck, Michel. Beyond the Storm. New York: Olive Branch
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Feb. 2001. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/crisis_in_the_gulf/decision_ makers _and_diplomacy/newsid_216000/216328.stm>.
Freedman, Lawrence and Karsh, Efraim. The Gulf Conflict: 1990 -1991. New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1993.
"Inside the Storm" Dallas Morning News (Dallas, TX). 12 Jan. 1992: 1A+.
Ricks, Thomas E. “Allied Jets Blast Iraq, Largest Strike in 2 Years, Seen as Signal of
Get-Tough U.S. Attitude.” San Francisco Chronicle. 17 Feb. 2001: A-1.
Schwartz, Richard Alan. Encyclopedia of the Persian Gulf War. North Carolina:
McFarland & Co, 1998.
Yant, Martin. Desert Mirage: The True Story of the Gulf War. New York: Prometheus
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The war in Syria has been going on for six years now, killing more than a quarter million people and forcing over 10 million people to leave their homes. It has started with a peaceful protest and is now a full on genocide of people dying. The protest was for the arrest and torturing of Syrian teens for the graffiti of their anti government on a wall. When people form other people that were tired of the government saw this, they wanted their president to make major reforms of their democracy. He didn't like that, so he responded with a violent reaction. He killed thousands of Syrians and more from starvation. As the war went on, more people came in to play a role in the war. These people were from many different places. It has gotten so bad that politicians don't know what to do to stop it.
Rumsfeld, D. (2004, September 10). Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaks about Iraq at the National Press Club in Washington. Retrieved September 11, 2009, from
(Stroilov)Now the Desert Storm was a go. American troops were now forced to get Saddam and his troops out of Kuwait’s Borders. (Stroilov)When this happened over 500,000 American troops were inside Kuwait’s border at the time. Also Iraq had about the same number of troops as the US did. (Stroilov)Although the first 37 days of the Desert storm was done by air bombings. (Stroilov)This meant that none of the American ground troops were in action for the first 37 days of the Storm.(Stroilov)
Iraq and Saddam Hussein were trying to take over Kuwait, which was a major oil supplier to the world. If Iraq got Kuwait than Saudi Arabia would be right next to them. So then Iraq would pose an Immediate threat to take over Saudi Arabia, which was also a major oil supplier.
Saddam Hussein’s main purpose of sending troops to take over Kuwait was to take control of their oil fields, which Hussein believed would be an easy task; however, he failed to understand that the United States and United Nations were keeping a very close watch on the Iraqi’s actions. Hussein also had other motives, such as freeing himself from the debt he was drowning in from the Iran-Iraq War just two years earlier. He set the pretense for war with Kuwait by defining their refusal to give land to Iraq as an act of military belligerence. President Bush ordered the United States to respond just five days after Iraq had invaded Kuwait. If the United States had not taken action, Hussein would have possibly continued to invade other oil producing countries and take control of the United States main sources of oil as well as threaten a number of innocent people’s lives.
In September 1980, a very destructive war with Iran was started by Saddam Hussein. This was a result of an invasion in Iran. This invasion spurred an eight year war. Saddam used c...
The Gulf war was a conflict that took place from 2 August 1990 to 28 February 1991. The reason for the United States involvement in this conflict was to liberate Kuwait from the invasion of Iraq. (Henry) SHORAD had a large role to play in this event through the protection against Iraq’s air breathing and munitions threats.
On March 18, 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. (The Washington Post) The War with Iraq is a very divisive issue around the world. Turn on any news show and you will see a daily debate on the pros and cons of going to war. Because of the situations that have occurred between the United States and Iraq, very different views and perceptions have developed. Much debate on the justification of the United States for being in Iraq, let alone overthrowing its “government”, has been presented from both sides – the Hawks and the Doves.
The authors clearly differed in their analysis of the 2003 Iraq War. Chapter 15, page 283, details the UN inspection of Iraqi sites by the UNMOVIC program. The author details the lack of Iraqi cooperation in the late 1990s, and then skips to asking why Saddam did not give in at the last minute and allow full inspections. Chapter 19, page 359,
Bourque, S.A. (1997). Correcting the Myths about the last Persian Gulf War: The last stand
Although the United Sates and Saudi Arabia present the United States and Saudi Arabia’s relationship as excellent, there are actually two nations who have bitter disagreements but who allies through oil. The only thing that has held this alliance together is the US dependence on Saudi oil. The United States has felt and still fells that it is a necessity to have bases present in the Middle East to protect oil, and silently to protect Israel. The relationship began in 1933 when Standard Oil of California signed an agreement with the Saudi government. In 1943 FDR affirmed that the defense of Saudi Arabia was a vital interest to the United States and moved troops into the region. Future presidents would emulate this declaration and mobilization of troops to Saudi Arabia. Again in 1945 Abd al Aziz, the Saudi king, and FDR would cement this alliance, on a US warship in the Suez Canal. Soon after, airfields were constructed at Dhahran and other spots over Saudi Arabia; beginning a long tradition of US military facilities in Saudi Arabia. Abd al Aziz was the first of his line of successors to meet with US presidents. The relationship was only strengthened with the onset on the Cold war, as the US used the bases in Saudi Arabia as potential air force launch sites to the USSR and constructed more military facilities. In 1941 Harry S. Truman made another assertion of Americas protection and alliance with Saudi Arabia to Abd Al Aziz. Truman stated that “support for Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity and political independence was a primary objective of the United States.” (Countrystudies.com) Another stipulation of this pact was that the US established a permanent military training mission in the Saudi Arabia. That mission lasted until 1992. Soon after the pact between Truman and Aziz was agreed upon the US-Saudi relationship would endure its first major disagreement. On May 14th, 1948 Israel was declared an independent state in the former Arab dominated Palestine. Israel’s independence was backed the United States. Saudi Arabia refused to acknowledge the country of Israel and to engage in any relations with them. The Saudis concerns of the Israel-US relationship were reinforced in the 1970’s and 1980’s when the US sold arms to Israel, but refused to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. In some cases congressional leaders refused to sell arms to Saudi Arabia on the grounds that Saudi Arabia might use them against Israel.
Pre-invasion Iraq reflected the views and policies of its leader, Saddam Hussein, who made his first political appearance as a supporter of the Ba’ath Party. He was jailed in 1967 for this, and after his escape quickly rose to power within the faction. (Saddam Hussein Biography, 2008) Saddam became known for his political talent and progressiveness, and soon became a popular politician. After working on extensive unification and expansion efforts for the Ba’athists, the man rose to vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Faced with a tremendous amount of religious, racial, social and economic divisions, Saddam launched a campaign of total control to bring about stability.
Rivkin, David B., Jr., and Lee A. Casey. "The New Iraqi Constitution." The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, 16 Sept. 2005. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
Controversy over where the oil that spilled into the Persian Gulf in the early months of 1991 came from still exists, but the fact remains that about 10 million barrels of oil were eventually discharged into the Gulf. This amount is about forty times that spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster, and was beyond any previously imaginable scope. Both Saddam Hussein’s army and Coalition forces claimed that the other had done more to wreak havoc on the Gulf environment by releasing oil into the Gulf. In reality, both belligerents in the conflict did significant damage to the environment and mostly the damage was unnecessary. The US military accused Saddam Hussein’s forces of releasing large amounts of oil from the Sea Island Terminal in Kuwait by dynamiting the station at the beginning of the air war. In the end, about 6 million barrels flowed from Sea Island into the Gulf (Hawley, p 46). Iraqi sabotage of oil ports are also cited as sources of the spill. Significant amounts were also released into the Gulf by Coalition attacks on oil tankers stationed in the Gulf. One tanker...
The abrupt end of decade long dominating regime in three weeks had created a political vacuum, that is evident in shifting coalitions and divisions among religious groups, ethnic groups, regional groups and even classes (Barnett et al. 2003, 25). US did not realize, moreover, the depth of the hostility between Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites, and the members of different tribes and local religious groups. Furthermore, to deal with destruction in Iraq new plan was decided by the US. The plan was to pull out all troops and hand over the responsi...