[Ombrageux]

'The Gulf war was nothing more than a display of American imperialism.' Discuss.

I have to write 4,000 words on this. It's assessed

Umm.

At first I thought the question was ridiculous. Now I have a number of factors in mind, but it annoys me that a question like this will have to discuss more normative bullshit (what is a just war, what is imperialism etc.) than actually what happened (which isn't in dispute).

Please give me any of your thoughts.

[fixed]

[Thunderhawk]

The Gulf War than a display of American imperialism

I guess my English is bad, because that sentence doesnt make sense to me.



Military industrial complex?

The USA buys a lot of military equipment. If its not used, it just goes obsolete and either replaced (costing money) or kept (maintenance) which hinders arguments for new equipment - which means less demand and thus less R&D, which reduces the USA technology lead. If it is used it necessitates new equipment be bought to replace it or risk military weakness. By using the equipment for gun boat diplomacy (and economic imperialism) the USA gains an advantages - openning markets for their products.


Short wars that result in expending old equipment but not a large drain on newer equipment, the creation of friendly/puppet states, and markets (and military access) being openned up strikes me as rather profitable.

The first Gulf War was so, IMO.

[The American Lion]

I don't think you can call helping to liberate Kuwait a "display of American imperialism." It was nothing imperialistic about it. We never took control of Iraq nor Kuwait, but we gave harsh sanctions against Iraq with support of the UN.

[Thunderhawk]

Commodore Perry didnt have to conquer Japan to get Japan to open its markets. The East India Company and later Great Britain cooperated/assisted with various Indian princes against other Indian princes to gain various rights and privileges within India.

The USA's action in GW1 were for different reasons, but it did profit the USA politically and the Saudis have been pouring a lot of money into the USA since then. Considering the instability and regime change that can flare up in most places of the world, especially if the USA is willing to fund it (see South America), any country that has been "liberated" or invaded by the USA (or even bordering one) would be wise to be friendly with the USA for their own sake.

It applies to USA in the Middle East around the Gulf Wars, but such intimidation by great/super/ -powers is common historically, as is the prudence of those being intimidated.

[guzzipat]

Kuwait was created by Western Imperialism, by Britain specifically. It transfered from a Britsh client state to an American one, later.
Before Western interference it was a province of Iraq. Desert Storm was never a matter of restoring the territorial integrity of a real country, it was always about protecting a client state.

[Noelnada]

it was always about protecting a client state.

Which can be likened to imperialism.

[sploop!]

was nothing more than

Sounds pretty absolute. On the grounds that the situation is almost bound to be more complicated than that, whichever side you argue, I think there is space for discussion.

[dudekebm]

Er...didn't we enter the first Gulf War due to the Saudi's asking us to because of them getting nervous about the defense of their own Hama oil fields? It obviously wasn't because of Kuwait.

[QatzelOk]

Archenemy USSR collapses.

A few years later, American puppet Saddam invades American puppet Kuwait.

A few button-pushings and five trillion tons of bombs later, Americans are feeling pretty victorious in front of their TV sets with a full bag of nachos. Support for Bush-the-Elder skyrockets - until the next commercial break.

[Ombrageux]

I handed this in about a week ago. Not particularly happy with what I wrote. I toyed with notions of legitimacy (the Kuwaitis wanted independence), the UN's irrelevance (UN has no moral bearing, US largely ignored it), the issue of US 'overkill', and US imperialism/interests vs. global capitalist interests. I did not define the terms of the question particularly well, the whole literature on 'imperialism' is either stupidly obscurantist or inflammatory and analytically useless, so I couldn't answer the question. I ended up turning into a, was the war 'good/bad' 'legitimate/illegitimate', which is a silly normative problem which historians should not concern themselves with.

[Rokossovsky]

I think it also depends upon what you would define American 'imperialism' as. Too often people jump to the rather easy conclusions of oil and capitalism. But the United States could be seen as being just as guilty of imposing a particular political system onto a country.

Now I know this isnt particularly the case with the Gulf War, but the idea of the United States being on a civilising mission, or carrying the flag for democracy, is little different to how the British Empire perceived itself. And look at how people see these apparent good and worldly intentions now!

[QatzelOk]

actually what happened (which isn't in dispute).

Bombs got dropped, people got killed.

This part is not in dispute.

[Ombrageux]

Here is the essay I ended up handing in. I got a reasonable result, but I am not particularly proud of it. It is not terribly coherent or cohesive, lacks a narrative thread, and is not as tightly argued as I would like.. and the first couple of lines are really atrocious. But there, it explores many different dimensions of the question and I think is rather original. It is quite long, have a look if you wish.

The days of 1989-1991 were heady indeed. Europe underwent a great transformation that reverberated in the international system, replacing the order of Yalta, with its rival superpowers and the partition of Europe, with one seemingly less defined. In the process, the specter of nuclear apocalypse was exorcised and politicians spoke increasingly of cooperation, the United Nations and international law. But there remained a problem. There was the question of whether relations between nations could truly be balanced and lawful, when so much power was concentrated in so few: economically in the West and Japan, militarily in the United States. How, why, would these nations be prevented from using their power against poorer nations in their own selfish interest? In short, this is the problem of imperialism in the post-Cold War world.

As Edward Said warns, imperialism is ‘a word and an idea today so controversial, so fraught with all sorts of questions, doubts, polemics, and ideological premises as nearly to resist use altogether.’ Indeed, ‘imperialism’ has irredeemably negative connotations and has become monopolized as a term of abuse, primarily by Marxist and anti-colonial thinkers. There is perhaps no event in which the question of American imperialism is more ambiguous than the Gulf War. It is was a war backed by a vast a unlikely coalition of nations, a war made in the name of a ‘New World Order’, and yet also a war rhetorically justified (at first) in the starkest terms of national interest, as defined by oil and stability. The nature of this war, the first major crisis of the post-Cold War world, can help elucidate the nature the new international system as a whole.

I will attempt to define empire and imperialism, establish the Gulf War as primarily an international or American endeavor, and determine whether the aims and conduct of the U.S. in the war can be characterized as ‘imperialist’.

Many writers have identified what they call an American Empire. They do not necessarily mean to use this term pejoratively. Geir Lundestad describes the influence the U.S.A. exercised on Western Europe in the postwar years as an ‘empire by invitation’. This was desired by Europeans to counter the Soviet threat and so this empire was distinguished from others by its consensual character. John Ikenberry casts the net wider, including states like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan: ‘If empires are inclusive systems of order organized around a dominant state – and its laws, economy, military and political institutions – then the United States has indeed constructed a world democratic-capitalist empire.’ Former National Security Adviser Zbignew Brzezinksi’s definition gets to the heart of the matter:

I use the term ‘empire’ as morally neutral to describe a hierarchical system of political relationships, radiating from a center. Such an empire’s morality is defined by how its imperial power is wielded, with what degree of consent on the part of those within its scope, and to what ends. This is where the distinctions between the American and Soviet imperial systems are sharpest.

The key question, then, is one of morality. To identify pronounced and asymmetrical American power and influence over others – an empire – is not to say there is imperialism. There is imperialism when a hierarchical relationship is exploitative, coercive and domineering. The American Empire is not imperialist if its existence serves liberty, democracy and has the consent of its subjects. Whether the Gulf War is a display of imperialism depends on whether it served similarly laudable aims, or whether those were selfish, exploitative and dominating.

There is also a more technical definition of imperialism, although just a morally charged. ‘Imperialism’ came into use in English in the 19th Century to describe ‘the relationship between the advanced, imperial country and the colonial or semicolonial areas falling within its formal or informal empire.’ Imperialism is the domination by the advanced economies of the North of the underdeveloped South for its human and natural resources. Since then, colonialism has largely been morally discredited. Its image is perhaps best represented in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a hypocritically selfless endeavor that degenerates into a kind of irrational cult of violence:

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea— something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to….

The characteristics of this relationship have been well-described by the postcolonial revolutionary theorist Frantz Fanon. These include technological inequality, violence, dehumanization of the native, racial exclusion, native self-hatred, and the creation of an educated, rapacious, Westernized class of local collaborators. In the absence of formal colonialism, de facto imperialism can persist. I will test the Gulf War for these two aspects, from an ‘ethical’ perspective and in terms ‘imperialism’ as the continuation of conflict between First and Third Worlds.

The Gulf War, whatever the talk about United Nations niceties and the international community, was a manifestation of distinctly American power. This was apparent in the conditions under which others contributed to the war. Here, John Lewis Gaddis’s definition of empire is particularly apt:

[A] situation in which a single state shapes the behavior of others, whether directly or indirectly, partially or completely, by means that can range from the outright use of force through intimidation, dependency, inducements, and even inspiration.

This sentence encapsulates a major reason for the contributions of many countries to the coalition. Japan, despite its marked dependence on foreign oil, did not really feel its national interests were threatened by Iraq. Nonetheless, Japan eventually contributed $11.5 billion after pronounced U.S. pressure including a warning by the Ambassador to Tokyo that such a crisis ‘tends to define for all Americans who their friends are’ and a Congressional amendment to withdraw U.S. troops from Japan if its contribution was not greater. Egypt, already the recipient of $2 billion a year of American aid, was further promised the annulment of $7 billion of debt conditional on participation. The U.S. pressured other states to follow suit so that by May 1991 a total of $25 billion of Egypt’s debt had been forgiven. The United Kingdom’s strong response to the crisis was motivated in part by the desire to forestall Britain being overshadowed in American eyes by a new, reunified Germany. The Gulf War a spectacular display of the American Empire’s ability to mobilize military and financial resources from its allies and dependents across the world.

In military terms, the war had an even more obviously American character. The U.S. sent over 450,000 troops, over two thirds of total coalition forces. The U.S. possessed the overwhelming majority of high tech equipment necessary for heavy fighting. This was glaring in terms of air sorties, over 95% of which were American or British. The conduct of the war was dominated by the Americans as a result. Even the top British commander, who had more influence than most given his country’s significant contribution, still noted after the war that ‘inevitably what the Americans did, everybody else really had to go along with; there was no choice if you wanted things to work, and work smoothly.’ All the major decisions in the run-up to the war – the initial decision to send 200,000 men to the Saudi in August, the doubling for offensive operations in November, the choice of long air campaign and short land war – were made by Americans. Other actors could only ratify, reject or shadow these moves. This was fundamentally an American war.

The American Empire was singularly manifest in the Gulf War. What can be said about the way its power was wielded? Was it moral, consensual and to what ends? The least that can be said is that that U.S.A. benefited in the Gulf War from a valid casus belli. Margaret Thatcher was probably right in arguing that the invasion and annexation of a member of the U.N., Kuwait, by Iraq was sufficient grounds for war under Article 51 of the U.N. charter which affirms ‘the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.’ Kuwaiti displeasure with their situation under Saddam Hussein was manifest in various ways. Saddam did not explore a French proposal to tie Iraqi withdrawal with a plebiscite in Kuwait on whether to join Iraq. While the Iraqi cause was popular in many parts of the Arab world, in Kuwait ‘Saddam’s propaganda did not find even minimal levels of public resonance.’ Even leaders of the Kuwait Baath Party refused to condone the invasion when Saddam summoned them to Baghdad. A war was legitimate insofar as it would fulfill the will of the Kuwaitis and reverse Iraqi aggression.

The motives of wars tend to be difficult to pin down. It is not uncommon for a casus belli to serve as a mere pretext for other, perhaps illegitimate, aims. The issue of U.S. war aims is, as Fred Halliday notes, ‘the issue which is the most difficult and raises the greatest questions’.

Much was made at the time of the fact that the war was supported by such a vast array of nations and mandated by the U.N. Security Council, an act unheard of since the Korean War. Said denounces as a fiction the notion that ‘the United States acted solely and principally in the interests of the United Nations.’ There is plenty of evidence that the Bush administration did not consider the U.N. to be a be-all-end-all, but primarily a tool. Bush argues in his memoirs that he already had the authority to go to war but ‘there were political advantages to having a resolution which spelled out our right to take action’. Administration officials argued then and since those advantages chiefly in terms of selling the war to a reluctant Congress and a public fearful of casualties.
All this is something of a false controversy. The Security Council’s permanent members dominate the body solely by virtue of being victors of the Second World War and they are almost wholly unrepresentative of the international community. A Security Council mandate represents little more than a degree of concord between the members at its table. That does not make a war non-imperialist or just. The invasion of China to put down the Boxer Rebellion in 1900-1 by the Eight-Nation Alliance most would agree was a nakedly imperialist enterprise, even though it included the participation of all the major powers of the day including the U.S.A., Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Russia. The Security Council is of little bearing to the question.

We will not know exactly what the administration’s aims were until more internal documents become available. Nonetheless, it is not necessarily unwise to take many of the stated aims of the Bush administration at face value given how frank these can be. Bush issued two National Security Directives, 45 and 54, dealing with the crisis and they are rather blunt in assessing the U.S.A.’s interests in the region. NSD 54 laconically states that ‘Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security.’ Internal discussions, as related in Bush’s memoirs, are also heavily centered on the problems of stability and oil. Scowcroft presented a memo immediately following the Iraqi invasion in which he said that accepting the status quo ‘would be setting a terrible precedent – one that would only accelerate violent centrifugal tendencies’. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney argued that ‘we should sort this out from our strategic interests in Saudi Arabia and oil.’ Said is right when he talks of motives like ‘oil’ and ‘geo-strategic and political advantage’, he could almost be quoting the administration’s own words and documents.

None of these motives were in a narrowly American interest. The defense of the principle that states should not be unilaterally annexed (unheard of since WW2) is a common good shared by all states not wishing to annex others. Oil is a global commodity and stable sources of it benefit all capitalist economies, not solely or even principally the U.S.A.

This is where lies the real meaning of the support of such a broad coalition, including of the U.N. Security Council. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt call ‘Empire’ the spread of international norms on trade, sovereignty, culture, law and politics… in a word, globalization. The Gulf War was an example of those norms being imposed by the means and methods of the U.S.A. but it was not Americanization insofar as these were the broader norms of the world capitalist interstate system. These were shared by Western Europe, Japan, the Asian Tigers and increasingly made universal by the decomposition of the Soviet Empire. Industrial capitalism and suburban life had grown to require cheap and stable sources of oil and, as a consequence, required certain norms and a certain order in the Middle East which, because of geological accident, holds so much of the world’s fossil fuels. In the Gulf War, the U.S.A. enforced those norms and that order.

This is perhaps the most vexing part of the ‘imperialism’ question. If the American Empire in Western Europe and Northeast Asia finds legitimacy by being, in the words a Max Boot, a ‘family of democratic, capitalist nations that eagerly seek shelter under Uncle Sam’s umbrella,’ the same cannot be said in the Middle East. The region has for decades suffered the worst dysfunctions of the North-South relationship. Here, America’s allies such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf States are authoritarian states propped up by the capitalist economies’ insatiable appetite for oil and/or directly by U.S. funds. Indeed, when thinking of the rulers of these states, it is difficult to avoid Fanon’s description of colonial collaborators:

[This ruling class is] literally, good for nothing… This bourgeoisie, expressing its mediocrity in its profits, its achievements, and in its thought, tries to hide this mediocrity by buildings which have a prestige value at the individual level, by chromium-painting on big American cars, by holidays on the Riviera and weekends in neon-lit nightclubs.

This state of affairs exists without the consent of the region’s people. Mustapha Hamarneh, a Jordanian historian, argued that ‘[Arab] people look at the Saudis as – yes – lackeys of the West. They even describe them as agents of the West, on their payroll.’ It was also apparent in the overwhelming opposition to the war and the ‘corrupt’ Gulf monarchies in the Maghreb, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and the ‘Arab street’ more generally. Division in the Arab World was such that one scholar has examined the Gulf War as an ‘Arab civil war’.
The Gulf War has legitimacy in restoring Kuwait’s independence – public opinion in other Arab countries cannot veto that – but that is not the crux of the issue. The will of the Kuwaitis was incidental, as seen by the fact that the coalition had no misgivings about restoring absolute power to the Al-Sabah monarchy. The fundamental motive was the preservation of an order in which the stability of the world’s richest oil region could be assured. This order is broadly opposed, in a somewhat inchoate fashion, by the region’s people and so the war finds legitimacy in this broader regional context only in that a Gulf dominated by Saddam could hardly have proven more promising than the status quo ante.

In this respect terming the war ‘imperialist’, with all its baggage, seems problematic. Suffice to say it was a very traditional North-South conflict insofar as it was about the advanced economies enforcing their will on a poor region to ensure access to raw materials. But it was not a conflict between North and South because Saddam’s Iraq could hardly be the champion of the Third World.

The war resembled a North-South conflict in another way as well. This was in the often cavalier attitude of Americans towards Iraqi life. In addition to forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, the Americans also used the war as an attempt to destroy Iraqi armed forces, destroy infrastructure with any potential military use and eliminate the regime. U.S. forces attempted envelope standing Iraqi forces and destroy retreating ones. Towards the end of the conflict tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers fled northwards in civilian vehicles seized from Kuwait. U.S. aircraft first mined both sides of the highway to trap those vehicles, and then proceeded to destroy them, creating the infamous ‘Highway of Death’.

During the air campaign, official Iraqi infrastructure was more-or-less systematically destroyed including electric, television and telephone services. The objectives in this, it seems, were not limited to damaging Iraq’s military capabilities but also to hurt the civilian population to encourage an uprising against Saddam. The top U.S. commander General Norman Schwarzkopf suggested the bombing could lead to a coup as ‘the entourage around’ Saddam might ‘crack when they see the devastation that’s being wrought on the country and on the armed forces.’ ‘Overkill’ against Iraq may also be explained by the fact Schwarzkopf hoped to fight all the way to Baghdad.
The aim of weakening a state as brutal and ‘un-progressive’ as Saddam’s Iraq cannot be considered imperialist (not least because the U.S. presence in the Middle East was largely tolerated by local regimes because of the Iraqi threat). Nonetheless, the willingness to gratuitously sacrifice Iraqis to pursue this aim is troubling. However, it is difficult to say if this violence is the ‘normal’ excess one finds in all wars, or symptomatic of a colonial mentality.

The Gulf War was an extremely paradoxical conflict. It was a spectacular manifestation of the American Empire in both its military and diplomatic facets yet the principal gains of the war – secure sources of oil and the inviolability of small states – were those of a global interstate capitalist system far broader than just the U.S.A. The war showed that only the U.S. really had the means to assert itself in the South. The North’s priorities in the South had not changed.

The war had many characteristics of a North-South conflict. The war was fought to preserve a certain order in the Middle East so that reliable exports of oil could be assured. This order meant American influence, stable authoritarian regimes, and the stifling of democratic and Islamic movements. This was at odds with the will of most people in the region, something which had expressed itself most viscerally in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In this light, the war seems distasteful, like a kind of American-led global imperialism of the same order as the capitalist world’s putting down the Boxers who had rebelled against Western economic penetration into China (although arguably far more people benefited from the functioning of the capitalist world economy in 1990-1 than in 1900-1). This is not to say the war was unjust or immoral. Kuwait’s independence means something. Still, there is no excess in nobility in opposing the world of Saddam Hussein or of the Imam Khomeini to preserve that of the Al-Sabahs and the House of Saud.

The Gulf War marked the birth of a new American Empire in the Middle East, greater and more militarized than the intangible ‘influence’ of the past. The U.S. presence expanded massively with no-fly-zones, land operations in Kurdistan, sanctions, an arms control regime and almost routine lobbing of cruise missiles. To Americans, the Iraqis had been somewhat unreal from the beginning in a war that had the ‘image of a painless Nintendo exercise’. This worsened over the years. When in 1996, Madeleine Albright was asked on the television show 60 minutes what she thought of reports that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of sanctions, she replied that ‘I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.’ Whether or not these words were anything more than a verbal gaffe, the American media scarcely commented on the incident. The New York Times, Newsweek and Time had no mention at all. Abstraction allowed whatever legitimate fear of Iraq to entail a monstrously disproportionate response without question. One thinks of Fanon describing the cycle of violence in colonial Algeria:

[A]ll the piles of speeches on the equality of human beings do not hide the commonplace fact that the seven Frenchmen killed or wounded at the Col de Sakamody kindles the indignation of all civilized consciences, whereas the sack of the villages of Guergour and Djerah and the massacre of whole populations – which had merely called forth the Sakamody ambush as a reprisal – all this is not of the slightest importance.

Thus while the conflict remains ambiguous and Janus-faced, American in means and method yet global in cause, imperial but not really ignoble, the American Empire born of it was, in a real sense, colonial.

[redcarpet]

Well, the US didn't give peace a real chance. It was definitely used to demonstrate military might.

Here is a file from my hard drive on the subject(Warning, it's extensive!);

Iraq's pre-war diplomatic overtures, all summarily rejected by the U.S. government and essentially ignored by the U.S. media, included the following:

(1) On August 12, 1990, Saddam Hussein proposed a settlement linking Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait to withdrawal from other illegally occupied Arab lands: Syria from Lebanon, and Israel from the territories it conquered in 1967. An example is Editorial, "The issue is still Kuwait," Financial Times (London), August 13, 1990, p. 12 (Iraq's proposal "may yet serve some useful purpose" in offering "a path away from disaster . . . through negotiation"; the "immediate issue" is for "Iraq to get out of Kuwait," but however unsatisfactory Iraq's proposal may be as it stands, "The onus is now on everyone involved, including Middle Eastern and western powers, to seize the initiative and harness diplomacy to the show of political, military and economic force now on display in the Gulf"). In the United States, the Iraqi proposal was dismissed with utter derision: television news that day featured George Bush racing his power boat, jogging furiously, playing tennis and golf, and otherwise expending his formidable energies on important pursuits; the proposal merited only one dismissive sentence in a news story on the blockade of Iraq in the next day's New York Times, and excerpts from the proposal appeared without comment on an inside page. Michael Gordon wrote "Bush Orders Navy to Halt All Shipments of Iraq's Oil and Almost All Its Imports," New York Times, August 13, 1990, p. A1; A.P., "Confrontation in the Gulf -- Proposals by Iraqi President: Excerpts From His Address," New York Times, August 13, 1990, p. A8.

(2) On August 19, 1990, Saddam Hussein proposed that the matter of Kuwait be left an "Arab issue," to be dealt with by the Arab states alone, without external interference, in the manner of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and Morocco's attempt to take over Western Sahara. Source: John Kifners "Proposal by Iraq's President Demanding U.S. Withdrawal," New York Times, August 20, 1990, p. A6 (with accompanying text of the Iraqi proposal).

(3) On August 23, 1990, a former high-ranking U.S. official delivered another Iraqi proposal to National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft; this proposal, confirmed by the emissary who relayed it and by memoranda, finally was made public in an article by Knut Royce in the suburban New York newspaper Newsday on August 29, 1990. According to sources involved and documents, Iraq offered to withdraw from Kuwait and allow foreigners to leave in return for the lifting of sanctions, guaranteed access to the Persian Gulf, and full control of the Rumailah oilfield "that extends slightly into Kuwaiti territory from Iraq" (Royce), about two miles over a disputed border. Other terms of the proposal, according to memoranda that Royce quotes, were that Iraq and the U.S. negotiate an oil agreement "satisfactory to both nations' national security interests," "jointly work on the stability of the gulf," and develop a joint plan "to alleviate Iraq's economical and financial problems." There was no mention of U.S. withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, or other preconditions. A Bush administration official who specialises in Mid-East affairs described the proposal as "serious" and "negotiable." Check out Knut Royce, "Secret Offer: Iraq Sent Pullout Deal to U.S.," Newsday, August 29, 1990, p. 3.

The New York Times noted the Newsday report briefly on the continuation page of an article on another topic, citing government spokespersons who dismissed it as "baloney." However, after framing the matter properly, the Times conceded that the story was accurate, quoting White House sources who said the proposal "had not been taken seriously because Mr. Bush demands the unconditional withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait." The Times also noted quietly that "a well-connected Middle Eastern diplomat told the New York Times a week ago [that is, on August 23rd] of a similar offer, but it, too, was dismissed by the Administration." Also covering this is R.W. Apple, Jr.’s "Confrontation in the Gulf: Opec to Increase Oil Output to Offset Losses From Iraq; No U.S. Hostages Released," New York Times, August 30, 1990, p. A1. Another is Knut Royce, "U.S.: Iraqi Proposal Not Worth a Response," Newsday, August 30, 1990, p. 6,:

The administration has acknowledged Newsday reports that possible peace feelers were received from Iraqi officials offering to withdraw from Kuwait in return for the lifting of economic sanctions and other concessions, but they were dismissed as not serious. Asked why they were not pursued to test whether they were serious, the senior official said, "I don't know."

(4) On December 4, 1990, the business pages of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported a "near-panic of stock buying late in the day," after a British television report of an Iraqi proposal to withdraw from Kuwait, apart from the disputed Rumailah oilfields which extend two miles into Kuwait, with no other conditions except Kuwaiti agreement to discuss a lease of the two Gulf islands after the withdrawal.

I recommend Howard Hoffman’s "Late Rumor of Iraqi Peace Offer Pulls Prices Higher in Buying Binge," Wall Street Journal, December 5, 1990, p. C2; A.P., "Price of Crude Oil Seesaws, Then Settles Higher at $29.15," New York Times, December 4, 1990, p. D2. The news-wires carried this story, but not the news sections of the major U.S. newspapers. Like in Lisa Genasci’s "Baghdad Offers to Free Soviets, Kuwait Deal Could Be in Works," A.P., December 4, 1990 (Westlaw database # 1990 WL 6034433). News reports in the U.S. did, however, express uneasiness that proposed discussions with Iraq "might encourage some European partners to launch unhelpful peace feelers." As in Gerald Seib, "Baker Mission Is a Risky Move for Bush; Aides Fear Gambit May Damage Coalition," Wall Street Journal, December 3, 1990, p. A16.

(5) In late December 1990, Iraq made another proposal, disclosed by U.S. officials on January 2, 1991: an offer "to withdraw from Kuwait if the United States pledges not to attack as soldiers are pulled out, if foreign troops leave the region, and if there is an agreement on the Palestinian problem and on the banning of all weapons of mass destruction in the region." Officials described the offer as "interesting," because it dropped the border issues and "signals Iraqi interest in a negotiated settlement."

A State Department Mid-East expert described the proposal as a "serious prenegotiation position." The Newsday report notes that the U.S. "immediately dismissed the proposal." Knut Royce goes over this in "Iraq Offers Deal to Quit Kuwait," Newsday, January 3, 1991, p. 5 (city edition, p. 4). This offer passed without mention in the press, and was barely noted elsewhere.

The New York Times did, however, report on the same day that P.L.O. leader Yasser Arafat, after consultations with Saddam Hussein, indicated that neither of them "insisted that the Palestinian problem be solved before Iraqi troops get out of Kuwait"; according to Arafat, "Mr. Hussein's statement Aug. 12, linking an Iraqi withdrawal to an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was no longer operative as a negotiating demand," all that was necessary was "a strong link to be guaranteed by the five permanent members of the Security Council that we have to solve all the problems in the Gulf, in the Middle East and especially the Palestinian cause." Read Patrick Tyler’s "Arafat Eases Stand on Kuwait-Palestine Link," New York Times, January 3, 1991, p. A8.

(6) On January 14, 1991, France also made a last-minute effort to avoid war by proposing that the U.N. Security Council call for "a rapid and massive withdrawal" from Kuwait along with a statement to Iraq that Council members would bring their "active contribution" to a settlement of other problems of the region, "in particular, of the Arab-Israeli conflict and in particular to the Palestinian problem by convening, at an appropriate moment, an international conference" to assure "the security, stability and development of this region of the world." The French proposal was supported by Belgium (at the moment one of the rotating Security Council members), and Germany, Spain, Italy, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and several non-aligned nations. The U.S. and Britain rejected it (along with the Soviet Union, irrelevantly).

The US U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering stated that the French proposal was unacceptable, because it went beyond previous U.N. Security Council resolutions on the Iraqi invasion. Try Paul Lewis in his "Confrontation in the Gulf: The U.N.; France and 3 Arab States Issue an Appeal to Hussein," New York Times, January 15, 1991, p. A12; Michael Kranish et al., "World waits on brink of war: Late effort at diplomacy in gulf fails," Boston Globe, January 16, 1991, p. 1; Ellen Nimmons, A.P., "Last-ditch pitches for peace; But U.S. claims Iraqis hold key," Houston Chronicle, January 15, 1991, p. 1.

For the New York Times correspondent's statement, consider Thomas Friedman in "Confrontation in the Gulf: Behind Bush's Hard Line," New York Times, August 22, 1990, p. A1 saying:

“The Administration's rapid rejection of the Iraqi proposal for opening a diplomatic track grows out of Washington's concern that should it become involved in negotiations about the terms of an Iraqi withdrawal, America's Arab allies might feel under pressure to give the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, a few token gains in Kuwait to roll back his invasion and defuse the crisis.”

For the Bush administration officials' statements that Iraqi proposals were "serious" and "negotiable," there’s Knut Royce, "Secret Offer: Iraq Sent Pullout Deal to U.S.," Newsday, August 29, 1990, p. 3; Knut Royce, "Iraq Offers Deal to Quit Kuwait," Newsday, January 3, 1991, p. 5 (city edition, p. 4).

For the New York Times's dismissal there's R.W. Apple, Jr., "Confrontation in the Gulf: Opec to Increase Oil Output to Offset Losses From Iraq; No U.S. Hostages Released," New York Times, August 30, 1990, p. A1. The reference to the Newsday story came near the end of the article (note that in the second paragraph quoted here, the Times acknowledges that it had information about a peace offer one week earlier):

Miss Tutwiler vigorously denied, and a ranking State Department official dismissed as "baloney," a report published in Newsday today that a former high-ranking United States official recently delivered a secret peace offer from Iraq to Brent Scowcroft, the President's national security adviser. The offer reportedly stipulated that Iraq would release all hostages and pull out of Kuwait if United Nations sanctions were lifted, Iraq were guaranteed access to the Persian Gulf and sole control of an oilfield that straddles the Iraq-Kuwaiti border was given to Baghdad.

Two White House officials said such a message, which they described as a feeler, had in fact been delivered. But both said it had not been taken seriously because Mr. Bush demands the unconditional withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait. A well-connected Middle Eastern diplomat told The New York Times a week ago of a similar offer, but it, too, was dismissed by the Administration. It involved a long-term Iraqi lease on a Kuwaiti island at the mouth of the Shatt al Arab waterway and sizable payments to Iraq by other Arab countries. "We're aware of many initiatives that are being undertaken by various bodies," said Roman Popadiuk, the deputy White House press secretary.

Also the US Public a wanted peaceful withdrawl from Kuwait;

On popular opposition to the war in the U.S. before the bombing began, see for example, Douglas Kellner, The Persian Gulf T.V. War, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992, pp. 250-263; Richard Morin, "Poll: Americans Expect War But Back Peace Conference," Washington Post, January 11, 1991, p. A1. An excerpt:

[A]ccording to a new Washington Post-A.B.C. News poll . . . two-thirds of those questioned said the administration should be more flexible on the question of an international peace conference on the Middle East and support a meeting on Arab-Israeli issues if Iraqi troops are withdrawn from Kuwait. . . .
Nearly nine of 10 Americans believe war is inevitable, but large majorities also favor continued diplomatic talks up to and even beyond the Tuesday deadline the United Nations Security Council has set for the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait, the Post-A.B.C. poll found. . . . According to the poll, eight out of 10 said the United States should hold additional talks with Iraq before Jan. 15, while 53 percent say the search for a diplomatic solution should continue after the deadline expires. Nearly nine of 10 said they support a meeting between U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and Iraqi leaders.

American Political Network Inc., "Poll Update -- A.B.C./Post: 66% O.K. Linking Arab-Israeli Talks For Pullout," The Hotline, January 11, 1991 (available on Nexis database). The highly loaded question in this A.B.C./Washington Post poll, which nonetheless resulted in 66 percent of the American population supporting the diplomatic option, asked:

The Bush administration opposes making any concessions to Iraq to get it to withdraw from Kuwait, including an international conference on Arab-Israeli problems. Some people say such a conference would be a concession that would reward Iraqi aggression by linking the Arab-Israeli dispute with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Other people say such an agreement would be worth it if it got Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait without a war. Do you think the U.S. should agree to an Arab-Israeli conference if Iraq agreed to withdraw from Kuwait, or not?

American Political Network Inc., "Poll Update -- C.B.S./N.Y.T.: Majority Would O.K. Deal On Arab-Israeli Talks," The Hotline, January 15, 1991 (available on Nexis database). The even more loaded question in this C.B.S./New York Times poll -- it only mentioned Bush's view, without suggesting any other position -- nevertheless revealed that 59 percent of Americans stated that there should be further talks between Bush and Saddam, 56 percent approved an international conference as a solution to the Gulf Crisis, and 47 versus 37 percent believed that it would be an "acceptable solution" if Kuwait offered a piece of territory to Iraq in exchange for withdrawal. Furthermore, support for a war shifted radically depending on projected numbers of U.S. casualties, with only 37 percent saying that war would be worth it if U.S. casualties climbed into the thousands.

The first Gulf war was a war of choice; Iraq repeatedly offered to withdraw.

[Texpat]

A sovereign ally of the world's sole superpower was invaded by a marauding madman with illusions of grandeur.
His entire army got bitch slapped within a couple of days. His air force defected.
I landed in Riyadh in the first few days of February (the war started mid-Jan).

Missed the whole damn thing.

Really wasn't much of a war at all.

Imperialism? Meh... If the US had properly gone in and taken over the joint, maybe. We don't roll like that -- but we should have finished the regime change when on the way into Baghdad -- despite objections of passivists.

[Cookie Monster]

I would not deem the 1991 military intervention as a show of military imperialism. Surely many things were wrong and afoot before Saddam's invasion of Kuwait but the matter of the fact remained that Saddam had occupied a sovereign state and a member of the UN, and was seeking in effect nothing but annexation. That was the situation at hand and the international community, although carrying different views as to the solution, all agreed that the eventual outcome of the dispute could be nothing less than the liberation of Kuwait and that the matter required to be dealt quickly and that use of force would not be excluded as one of the solutions.

What I would deem as an aspect of imperialism, American or broader in support, would be the imposing of sanctions on Iraq after the Gulf War. These sanctions had some justification but nevertheless were wrong in scope and effect and they became an example of how sanctions should not be applied to later generations of diplomats and politicians.

[Texpat]

Yes, quite funny indeed that some might not ever consider that Iraq's annexation of Kuwait was the only thing imperialistic about that episode.
Agree that sanctions were what led to the invasion years later. UN demands that the tens of thousands of US, UK, and French enforce UN sanctions (while living in tents in Turkey and Saudi Arabia) for a fucking decade while the UN wringed its hands and gnashed its teeth got more than a bit old. Game over Saddam.

[Doomhammer]

I wrote on this subject for a class assignment recently. I was to provide a neoclassical realist explanation for the Persian Gulf War: why Iraq invaded Kuwait and why US intervened.


I argue that the favorable favorable increase in US' relative power (i.e. the unipolar moment after the Cold War) gave key figures in the Bush administration (and a particular elite group*) the necessary confidence to pursue an interventionist agenda. With regards to Saddam, no action could be taken until decision-making elites reached a consensus, i.e. Congress was swayed to believe that Iraq's presence in Kuwait was a threat that could undermine US power and credibility. I did not say anything about social cohesion in this particular analysis because there wasn't anything profound about it. The US has a cohesive society which it could easily extract concessions from; UN decisions and world public opinion made it even easier to "sell" the war to the American public. In short, changes in the system level, or international conjuncture, influenced and altered the domestic scene, which enabled the US to intervene.

*whose members were disappointed when Saddam was left in power.

So, in a way, I implied that there WAS a sort of imperialist agenda (economic interests, undermining of hegemony, an act of defiance against US etc.) behind the intervention but for the majority of US politicians, it was a matter saving a small country from an aggressor which belligerently defied world public opinion and the UN.

In the domestic front, the “unipolar moment” (Krauthammer 1991) invigorated a
new generation of neoconservatives who, unlike their predecessors, increasingly turned away
from domestic affairs and advanced notions of US exceptionalism and its global responsibility
in the international arena (Homolar-Riechmann 2009: 181; Dunn 2009: 532). However, while
pro-interventionists eventually came to prominence in the inner-circle of decision makers in
the Bush administration, many US politicians and military officials, haunted by the
experience of Vietnam, had trepidations about foreign interventions (Donaldson 1996: 158).
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait posed a serious challenge to the United State’s newly established
global hegemony because any serious instability in the oil-rich Gulf region could have terrible
economic consequences for the world economy. Additionally, threats to key US allies like
Kuwait would have undermined US power and credibility, which was unacceptable for
George Bush.
After the occupation of Kuwait, the Bush administration sought to
resolve the problem through diplomacy, and if necessary, economic sanctions.
The US Congress also preferred diplomatic action, but it became apparent that Saddam would not
back down and that the US had to adopt a firmer stance (Donaldson 1996: 162-163). Iraq’s
challenge to US wishes and world opinion invoked memories of Munich - that Saddam was
an Arab Führer that had to be dealt with, lest he grew more dangerous (Post 2004: 231;
Donaldson 1996: 142-143; Nye 2003: 177-178).
Yet, the administration could not act. As per Colin Powell’s dictum, the US should
intervene only if casualties could be minimized and the greatest possible domestic
(Congressional) consent is achieved (Donaldson 1996: 157). Throughout the rest of 1990,
General Schwarzkopf busied himself with reformulating Operation Desert Shield into an
invasion plan. In the meantime, the world public and US Congress became increasingly more
disillusioned with Iraq. As the still-born diplomatic efforts petered off, the US began to
assemble its forces and a UN coalition. The House of Representatives passed a resolution
which gave Bush permission to declare “war” on Iraq; although this was blocked by the
Senate until Saddam's final act of defiance in disregarding the deadline (January 15 1991) set by UNSC
Resolution 678, which demanded Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. On January 17 1991, the coalition
forces initiated Operation Desert Storm.
The US intervened in Iraq because the Bush administration thought Iraq was a
potential menace that could undermine US power in the future. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait
spurred Congress and the Executive to reach a consensus, enabling a US-led effort to subdue
Iraq.