Supply train in the Persian corridor en route to the Soviet Union,
loaded with armored vehicles
At least twelve of the new political entities that emerged on the Arabian Peninsula after World War I faced problems regarding acceptance of their borders by native inhabitants as well as neighbors. Many traditional tribal and ethnic areas, including regions crossed by nomads, were disrupted by the post-World War I borders. At least twenty-two boundary disputes developed in the region after the war, with armed conflict arising at least twenty-one times and some disputes being settled only to erupt anew. Overlapping claims to grazing land or water, interfamily rivalries, and assertions of historical rights by aggrieved groups all worked against peaceful negotiations. In Iraq's case, the border with Kuwait was one of a number of areas in dispute. Conflicts over the neutral zone between Iraq and Saudi Arabia lasted until 1975, as did border disputes with Iran. The Iraqi-Jordanian border remained in dispute until 1984.1
4
Map 1 Colonial Rule 1920
Great Britain was the most active of the European imperial powers in the establishment of nations and dynasties. On 18 December 1914, Britain declared Egypt a protectorate, making that country nominally independent. The British also set up monarchies for the offspring of their former ally, the Hashemite Sherif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca, who had been deposed during the consolidation of Saud family rule in Arabia. They established a protectorate called Iraq and enthroned one son, Feisal, there. They also split off Transjordan (later Jordan), the portion of Palestine that lay east of the Jordan River, from the western part between the river and the Mediterranean Sea, and installed Feisal's brother Abdullah on the throne. In the western portion the British committed themselves to establishment of a national home for Jews. The flurry of coronations ignored only the
5
Kurds, whose homeland included parts of the newly formed states of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Persia (later Iran). Kurdish independence had been on the wartime agenda of the allies, who now decided to postpone action.2
The British adopted a pragmatic approach to control of the region. Because of the immense oil potential and important pipeline and transportation routes, political stability was paramount. The best way to achieve that goal was through the establishment of indigenous constitutional monarchies, buttressed and dominated by Britain under the cloak of League of Nations mandates. That approach proved less costly than direct rule.3
The Great War had changed things, underlining the importance of oil for the continued power and prosperity of the industrial world. As early as 1914 the government of Great Britain, quicker than other industrial powers to see the potential importance of oil, had already become majority owner of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which controlled major oil fields in Persia. Postwar competition for oil, which pitted France against Britain and later drew in the United States, would go beyond mere commercial rivalries. At stake was the future of the West. The effort to reconstruct the Persian Gulf region represented the beginnings of a global power struggle to secure the oil resources of the Middle East.4
Initially the contest for Middle Eastern oil focused largely on Mesopotamia. The Great Power competition for concessions in neighboring Persia had spread westward, stimulated by favorable prewar reports of Mesopotamian oil potential. In fact, one of the major factors in defining Iraq's boundaries was the prospect of a secure pipeline as well as rail and air routes to Palestine and the Mediterranean. Together, Iraq and Transjordan formed a strategic corridor for Britain, linking the Persian Gulf and Anglo-Persian oil production to the British mandate of Palestine and the West. The route across northern Arabia seemed secure, with members of the Hashemite family on the Iraqi and Transjordanian thrones.5
In 1930 relations between Iraq and Great Britain underwent a basic change. A treaty widened Iraqi nominal independence considerably, although it left Britain with a major role in foreign policy and granted Britain base rights in Iraq. Still, in 1932 Iraq became the first former mandate to gain a seat in the League of Nations, and a British ambassador replaced the high commissioner.6
The first decade of nominal independence for Iraq coincided with a critical period in the development of the oil economies of the Persian Gulf region. In 1932 the Bahrain Petroleum Company struck oil on that rather obscure Gulf island. The modest discovery brought American oil interests in the form of Standard Oil of California (SOCAL) into the Gulf and, more significantly, turned the attention of surveyors to the Arabian mainland, only 20 miles away, where the geological structure was identical to that of Bahrain. The news was especially welcome in Kuwait, where the economy faced ruin as the Japanese success with artificially cultivated pearls destroyed the demand for natural pearls brought up by
6
divers in Kuwaiti coastal waters. Kuwait desperately needed new sources of income, and the oil discoveries held out hope for the future.7
The rest of the decade saw a succession of oil discoveries and agreements. In May 1933 Standard Oil and Saudi Arabia signed a concession for exploiting local petroleum deposits. In the next year, the Kuwait Oil Company, a joint company formed by Gulf Oil Corporation of the United States and the British Petroleum Company of Great Britain, made a similar deal with the emir of Kuwait. The first big strikes in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia came in 1938. The interdependence of the industrialized world with the oil economies of the Persian Gulf was just beginning.8
In much of the Persian Gulf the change to nationhood was preceded by a period of more explicit Western control. In Iraq, Britain put down a wartime attempt to sever its control and depose the monarchy. British occupation of Iraq for the duration of the war followed.
The United States too became directly involved in the Gulf as part of its effort to send supplies to the Soviet Union for the war against Germany.9 When the United States Army occupied much of Iran and set up the Persian Gulf command in 1942, ignorance of the region was widespread among Americans, policy makers as well as the public. The War Department had no maps of Persia when the decision was made to move into the country, and the State Department's Division of Near-Eastern Affairs had a staff of thirteen, only three of whom spoke some regional language. Initially there seemed little reason for concern. At the time, the United States produced over 60 percent of the world's oil, and the Gulf region, including Iran, Iraq, and Arabian Peninsula, pumped only 5 percent. Wartime demands for oil began the long-term shift of the industry's center of gravity from the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean to the Middle East, and Americans were quick to adjust.10
As U.S. interest in the region grew, European control began to wane. Both the winners and losers in the war were too weary to contest the Middle East's drive for complete independence. Syria gained freedom from France in 1945. Jordan kept the Hashemite monarchy but broke its tie with Britain in 1946. In the most dramatic and traumatic act of nation-building of the period, the Jewish state of Israel emerged from the shambles of the Palestine mandate in 1948. The British decline in the region, under way from about the start of World War II, was gathering momentum.11
7
Supply train in the Persian corridor en route to the Soviet Union,
loaded with armored vehicles
Britain withdrew from Egypt in 1954, and two years later President Gamal Abdul Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, triggering an ill-conceived effort in 1956 by Britain and France, along with Israel, to destabilize and overthrow the Egyptian government. The Suez crisis may have taught Western powers much about the volatility of the Middle East, but it also confirmed Middle Eastern suspicions of foreign imperialism.
Also in 1956 the youthful Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan dismissed the British commander of his army. In 1958 Egypt and Syria formed the short-lived United Arab Republic, a brief experiment in Pan-Arabism. The revolutionary tide reached Iraq in the same year. A bloody military uprising overthrew Hussein's relatives and revoked the alliance with Britain.13
8
The 1958 coup by elements of the Iraqi armed forces known as "the Free Officers" brought Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim to power. Qasim replaced a regime that had never built viable political institutions to sustain its rule and depended, much like the late Ottoman regime, on the army and bureaucracy as well as family and personal ties for support. Although the work of a small group, the coup reflected widespread discontent with the monarchy's foreign policy, particularly the strong ties to the West and the lack of domestic reform. The new regime's agenda became clear when it demanded major revisions in the nation's relationship with the Iraq Petroleum Company.14
In Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, oil became the focus of the Arab nationalist tide of the 1950s and 1960s. A 1957 conference of Arab oil experts broached the possibility of an organization of oil exporting states. Three years later, in September 1960, those states created the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) at a meeting in Baghdad, marking the start of a new period of growing assertiveness among oil producers in the Middle East.15 Nationalizations of oil industries in Libya and Algeria followed as producing countries everywhere took on dominant roles in their relations with oil companies, a transition that climaxed in the OPEC embargo of oil to the West during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
By the 1960s the political order established by Britain in the Middle East had fallen apart. The British had created an imposing institutional facade but had not put down many deep roots. Perhaps their most lasting legacy was an accelerated drive for modernization, financed by the revenues from the oil industry that they had helped nurture. With an overall colonial policy that envisioned gradual conversion of colonies to membership in the Commonwealth, the British had also encouraged indigenous involvement in public administration and created the context in which the nationalist movements could develop. However, this gradualist approach ultimately foundered in the face of Arab and Jewish nationalism. In 1969, already long preoccupied with its economic problems, Britain announced its intent to withdraw its remaining forces from the Middle East. Two years later, the last British troops left Aden at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, leaving the region devoid of the sometimes unwelcome stabilizing power that Great Britain had provided.16
9
Map 2 The Middle East 1990
organized in Syria just after World War II, combined in its program the two main threads of Arab political thought, Pan-Arabism and radical social change. The Ba'th's tight cellular organization made the party one of the most effective political groups in the region. Disturbed by the growing prominence of Communists in Qasim's government and the failure of a nationalist anti-Communist uprising in northern Iraq, Ba'th leaders concluded that Qasim had to go.17
The growing internal and external opposition to the Qasim government reached its climax in 1961. During that year, a revolt among the Kurds in northern Iraq gave the Ba'th allies in its struggle with the regime. But even more serious was Qasim's reaction to Kuwaiti independence. A 1913 treaty between Turkish and British officials had fixed the boundary
10
between Kuwait and the Ottoman Empire. However, the outbreak of the World War kept the Ottoman government from formally ratifying the agreement. Iraq accepted that demarcation upon its independence in 1932 but soon changed its mind and asserted its rights to parts of Kuwait. The claim reflected the nation's concern with its limited access to the sea, by way of its 48-mile coastline on the Persian Gulf.18
After the 1958 coup, Iraqi leaders actively promoted political instability in the oil-rich monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula. That policy had its roots in antimonarchical fervor and rivalry with Iran for influence in the Gulf. In Kuwait the long-standing border dispute exacerbated the conflict between the radical Iraqi regime and the traditional sheikhdom. Iraq based its maximum original claim to all of Kuwait on the sheikhdom's Ottoman past. The more recent minimum version focused on the islands of Warbah and Bubiyan, which dominated the approach to the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Iraq claimed those as former parts of the Ottoman province of Al Basrah.19
President Qasim revived the larger claim in 1961, asserting that all of Kuwait had once been part of Basrah Province. Kuwait, he declared, was an arbitrary creation of the British. Six days after Britain granted Kuwait independence on 19 June 1961, Iraq claimed the entire sheikhdom and prepared an invasion. The Arab League supported Kuwait, admitting the emirate to membership on 20 July, but Iraq backed off only after Britain responded to pleas from its former colony by sending troops. Forces from Arab League members also entered Kuwait in September, stayed into the following year, and departed only when the danger seemed to be past.20
The affair proved disastrous for Iraq. Qasim severed ties with the Arab League and broke relations with nations that recognized the former British protectorate, among them Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, and the United States. The result completed his isolation from the international community and immensely increased the vulnerability of his regime.21
By the time of the July 1968 coup, a clique of leaders from the town of Tikrit, among them Saddam Hussein, who was the assistant secretary gen-
11
eral, dominated the Iraqi Ba'th party. Although not alone in bringing about the coup, the Ba'th soon took full control and significantly changed the structure and orientation of the Iraqi government. A one-party state with an impressive institutional structure emerged, along with gradual consolidation of power in the hands of one man to a degree not seen since the last days of the monarchy. Buttressed after 1972 by arms provided under a treaty with the Soviet Union, the Ba'th created a strong central authority.23
Iraq revived the border dispute with Kuwait in 1973, hoping to gain sovereignty over Warbah and Bubiyan islands in an effort to protect its second largest port at Umm Qasr. Fighting broke out in March, when Iraqi troops attacked a Kuwaiti border post overlooking the port and naval base of Umm Qasr. Three soldiers, one Iraqi and two Kuwaitis, were killed. Iraq demanded a portion of the coast south of the port city and Warbah and Bubiyan, but retracted its demands under international pressure. The situation gradually improved as Iraq became preoccupied with its own development programs and made a general effort to improve relations with its neighbors during the second half of the 1970s.24
The episode revealed the fragility of Kuwait's position in the face of determined Iraqi aggression and even raised the possibility of an Iraqi menace to Saudi Arabian oil fields. In recognition of the danger to their own interests, the Saudis supported the Kuwaiti government and even sent 15,000 troops to help defend their small neighbor. They also exerted diplomatic pressure through the Arab League. Although Iraq backed down, it did not give up its claims. Tensions remained high for several years, and occasional reports of Iraqi incursions reminded all concerned that the dispute remained unresolved.25
The initial association of the United States in Arab minds with the principles of self-determination and anticolonialism helped establish American credibility in the Middle East. That early goodwill faded, however, as American support of Israel became evident. Arab states lost confidence in the evenhandedness of the United States and came to view it as an enemy.
American economic interests in Middle Eastern oil remained largely in private hands. The need for direct government involvement did not become clear until profound changes took place in the oil industry, including the final wave of nationalizations that followed the dramatic 1973 price increases. The United States needed assurance of regular supplies and
12
The Dharan civil air terminal
sought to channel the huge oil profits into areas that enhanced the American fiscal stability and prosperity. After Britain withdrew from the region, the United States adopted a "twin pillars" policy, encouraging the development of regional power centers in Saudi Arabia and Iran, which would be relied on to maintain stability and protect American interests.27 The new American policy also served another purpose-to block Soviet influence in the region.
The work of the United States Army Corps of Engineers was singularly important to the development of that military relationship. The association dated from the last year of the war, when the corps built a military
13
airfield at Dhahran, and gradually solidified with completion of massive construction programs that extended into the 1980s. Although mainly military, these efforts also included civil projects such as the facilities for the national television network and the Dhahran civil air terminal. The terminal project in particular, a striking piece of work that won the American Institute of Architects' first honors in 1963 for designer Minoru Yamasaki, established with the Saudi government the corps' reputation for quality engineering and construction. The Engineer Assistance Agreement of 24 May 1965 cemented that relationship and provided the basis for subsequent Corps of Engineers work in the kingdom.29
In the 1970s the relationship changed from that of client and patron to a complex interdependence. The Saudis needed American support for their security as well as help in development projects; the United States needed Saudi cooperation regarding the supply and price of oil and the recycling of Saudi oil profits. Early in the decade the Saudis, with one eye on the power vacuum created by the British withdrawal from the Gulf, asked for a special American military mission to study projects related to national security and make recommendations for future assistance. In response, the United States conducted several studies of Saudi defense requirements and began the sale of modern fighters to the Saudi air force. Other large military sales programs followed, as did modernization and training programs, their costs surging along with Saudi oil profits.30
As part of the vastly expanded program of assistance, the United States endorsed a Saudi military strategy that envisioned permanent deployment of large portions of Saudi forces in elaborate military cities near threatened frontiers. They consisted of command and control sites, airfields, hangars, depots, maintenance and repair shops, and elaborate cantonments for soldiers, their families, and supporting civilians. The sites included Khamis Mushayt, close to Yemen; Tabuk in the north near Jordan and Israel; and Hafar al Batin, next to Kuwait and Iraq.31
The last of those, initially called A1 Batin Military City but later renamed for King Khalid, began in 1972. Originally intended for three brigades and a tactical airfield and with an estimated price tag of $9 billion, it was the most costly construction project ever undertaken by the Corps of Engineers. In the 1980s declining oil profits forced reduction of the base to two-brigade size and postponed construction of the airfield. However, when the corps turned the city over to the Ministry of Defense and Aviation in 1986, the final cost was still $7 billion.32
The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia was based on mutual but not identical interests. Saudi survival depended in large measure on the kingdom's ties to the United States, but the government's specific concerns were complex. The Saudis wanted visible American help through the sale of sophisticated weapons and treatment that indicated that they were as important as America's other major regional allies, Israel and Egypt. The major menace to Saudi Arabia came from the Gulf, where both Iraq and Iran were potentially formidable foes.
14
VII Corps area, King Khalid Military City
The Saudis counted on Iran to check Iraq and the United States to curb Iran. The Soviet Union represented a more remote danger. When it came to the security of Saudi oil the interests of both the United States and Saudi Arabia were nearly identical.33
On 23 January 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced what became known as the Carter Doctrine. In the traditional State of the Union speech before Congress, Carter declared that "an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."35 Although such a position had long been implied by American support of Saudi Arabia, the speech marked a turning point.
15
President Carter acted quickly to secure bases that would enable the United States to move forces into the region. The United States gained access in 1980 to the island of Masira from the government of Oman, the only Gulf country to allow American forces on its territory in peacetime, and wartime use of supporting bases in Somalia (Berbera), Kenya (Mombasa), and Egypt (Ras Banas). A rapid deployment force, established in October 1979, was renamed the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force in March 1980. Although initially without any assigned troop units, the new organization provided the planning staff necessary for more ambitious contingency operations in the Persian Gulf.36 Exercise BRIGHT STAR 81 in November 1980 was a more concrete gesture. The United States sent a battalion of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) for two weeks of training with Egyptian forces in the desert west of Cairo. A squadron of eight A-7 aircraft and the rapid deployment force headquarters accompanied the battalion. The exercise symbolized the Carter administration's commitment to protect vital American interests in Southwest Asia.37
Most of those differences appeared to have been put to rest by the Algiers Treaty in 1975. This agreement settled the border dispute over the Shatt al Arab waterway in Iran's favor and ended the Shah's support of Kurdish insurgents in Iraq. At the same time, Iraq renounced a long-standing claim to the southwestern portion of Iran, an area called Arabistan by Iraq and Khuzestan by Iran, and recognized Iranian control of the disputed Gulf islands.
Saddam Hussein, already a dominant force in the Ba'th party, took over the presidency in 1979, the same year that the fundamentalist Shiite regime came to power in Iran. The Iranian revolutionaries revived past disputes and added a new one, Iranian incitement of Shiite discontent in Iraq. When the Iranian monarchy was overthrown, Iraq
16
denounced the Algiers Treaty and demanded restoration of the eastern bank of the Shatt al Arab as the border. After a period of mutual sporadic border violations and skirmishes, Iraq attacked its neighbor in earnest in the summer of 1980.39
The war, extremely ill conceived, resulted directly from President Saddam Hussein's poor political judgment. The situation could have been contained, as it had been in the past, and Iraqi interests could have been promoted short of war. But Iran appeared weak and disorganized, and the Iraqi president thought he could easily win. His miscalculation of his opponent and corresponding overestimate of his own ability to impose a solution proved disastrous. It was exactly the kind of error that a highly personalized leadership lacking institutional checks and balances was inclined to make.40
Reagan's military plans for Gulf security were more ambitious than those of his predecessor. The Reagan administration regarded the lack of an actual American military presence as a tacit invitation to Soviet intervention. The refusal of the Persian Gulf States to accept American military forces frustrated the Reagan government, so the new administration strengthened the rapid deployment concept with significant expenditures for military construction in the Middle East and nearby areas. In the first Reagan administration, the United States spent nearly $1 billion on construction and support facilities, in Morocco, at Lajes Field in the Azores, and on the Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia. Reagan also made the first official assignment of forces to the rapid deployment force on 24 April 1981 and gave it a prominent place in the defense establishment.42
While the Carter administration had buried the rapid deployment force within the U.S. Army Readiness Command, Reagan gave it visibility and prominence. In October 1981 the connection to the Readiness Command ended, and the task force became a separate command reporting directly to the secretary of defense through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One month later, Exercise BRIGHT STAR 82 showed the growth of plans and forces, testing a broad range of tactical and logistical capabilities. On 1 January 1983, the force became one of six U.S. multiservice commands. Renamed United States Central Command, its specified theater of
17
operations included Southwest Asia and northeast Africa. Its commander was given charge of nearly all American military activity in that part of the world, including planning for contingencies, coordinating joint exercises involving American and other forces, and administering security assistance. The command oversaw the airborne warning and control system (AWACS), the tanker aircraft at Riyadh, and the Navy's five-ship Middle East Force. Its total deployment potential stood at 300,000.43
Despite the increase in the size and capability of the deployable force, there were limits to the American ability to move its forces overseas. The United States still needed bases and facilities in the Persian Gulf, and, although it alone in the West could contribute significantly to the defense of the Gulf, it could not transfer a large combat force on short notice. Throughout the 1980s, Central Command planners emphasized helping friendly nations in the Middle East defend themselves through training, arms sales, and military liaison as well as joint maneuvers. The force reassured countries like Saudi Arabia, which rejected an overt American presence but needed to know that support was available in an emergency.44
The success of a rapid transfer of U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf depended on Saudi acceptance and support. Whether the threat came from the Soviet Union or an aggressive neighbor such as Iran or Iraq, access to Dhahran and King Khalid Military City were necessary for any major deployment. Bases at Diego Garcia and elsewhere provided peripheral facilities but were too remote to use as operational centers for the defense of the oil facilities of the upper and central Persian Gulf.45
The Arab states around the Gulf generally backed Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were particularly outspoken in their support. Both contributed substantially to the $40 to $50 billion that all the Gulf States provided Iraq. In addition, both allowed Iraq to use their ports for arms shipments and sold oil on behalf of Iraq. Saudi Arabia also allowed Iraq to build and use a pipeline through its territory.46
Although Kuwait was among the most generous contributors to the Iraqi cause, there were some things it would not do. Early in the war, Iraq renewed a proposal it had made in 1975 for 99-year leases on the islands of Bubiyan and Warbah. Kuwait refused. In 1984 Saddam Hussein scaled down his request to a 20-year lease in exchange for an agreement to a definitive border. Once more Kuwait declined.47
18
Despite their open support of Iraq during the early stages of the war, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia understood that in the long run Iraq threatened their security. With this threat in mind, they led the effort to create the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional defense alliance that was established in May 1981. In addition to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, members included Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, a confederation made up of the sheikhdoms of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujiera, Ra's al Khaymah, Sharjah, and Umm al Qaywayn. Iraq, which in 1974 had proclaimed itself "the most important and advanced Arab country in the area" and consequently protector of the Gulf "against dangers and encroachments," sought, but was denied, membership. The council tried to contain the war between its powerful neighbors and ultimately bring both sides to the bargaining table.48
Militarily, the Saudi armed forces formed the key to the council's limited defensive capabilities. The kingdom was by far the largest and most powerful of the six members. With oil reserves and revenues that dwarfed those of the others, it had the largest armed forces and good lines of communications. However, its military prowess was only imposing in contrast to that of the other members. A lack of manpower severely limited the capabilities of the Saudis, although the military infrastructure built under Corps of Engineers contracts compensated somewhat by enabling the Saudis to take advantage of the most technically advanced weapons.49
While Iran and Iraq slugged it out, the Gulf Cooperation Council progressed toward its goal of creating an effective regional security structure. Despite the pointed rejection of the Iraqi application, the members continued to view fundamentalist Iran as the more immediate threat. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait continued in the forefront as providers of material aid to Iraq.50
The council expressed interest in cooperation with the United States but still wanted to keep actual forces at arm's length. Member states did not agree with the United States regarding the nature of the threat to regional stability. The United States emphasized the Soviet peril, at least until the middle of the decade, when American policy makers began to put more stress on strengthening the Arab side of the Gulf against a potential Iranian threat to the flow of oil. The council always worried more about its powerful and quarrelsome neighbors and Israel than about the Soviet Union.51
19
F-16 fighters at a Saudi air base during DESERT SHIELD
the support of a Nicaraguan insurgency dear to the heart of President Reagan, casting considerable doubt on American purpose and reliability.52 The United States also sold AWACS to the Saudis and began joint planning for modernization of the Saudi air force, which had started shortly after the fall of the Shah of Iran.53
In 1988, when Kuwait responded to Iranian attacks on its shipping by asking the superpowers for protection, it found the United States eager to provide assistance and reassurance of its steadfast support. To restore its position in the Gulf, the United States agreed to reflag and convoy Kuwaiti ships. Protection of the flow of oil was in any case still a paramount American interest, and President Reagan affirmed his commitment to safeguard Gulf exports. Along with the reflagging went a major American naval deployment to protect the tankers.54
The United States and Saudi Arabia maintained their close military relationship throughout the Iran-lraq war. American diplomats continued to enjoy easy access to the ruling family, although they never convinced the Saudis to agree formally to American access to their bases or abandon their opposition to the stationing of American soldiers in the kingdom. The official Saudi position was that both superpowers should keep their forces out of the Persian Gulf. The Saudis, however, never objected to the American naval contingent in Bahrain and other period-
20
ic displays of American might in threatening situations. Limited American deployments, among them minesweepers, operational aircraft, and the AWACS, were acceptable.55
Reinforcement by U.S. forces in an emergency was always a basic component of Saudi defense planning, albeit only in event of a clear and immediate threat. In fact, to many observers, Saudi installations appeared plainly overbuilt, as if actually intended only for other forces. Saudi bases, with their modern infrastructure and service facilities, could accept an American deployment on very short notice. Those bases, combined with the large quantities of American supplies and equipment purchased ostensibly for Saudi use, ultimately constituted the virtual equivalent of American bases in Saudi Arabia, albeit without the American personnel needed to translate their potential into actual combat power.
The Saudi military buildup was principally oriented on aviation facilities. The Saudis had the largest and some of the most modern air bases in the region, with American contractor employees servicing their equipment and American-trained technicians among their own ground crews. Although rejecting any combined maneuvers, they recognized the need for cooperation with a Central Command deployment when necessary. Short of that necessity, however, they insisted that cooperation remain based on Saudi military buildups with American arms and technical assistance. 56
Saudi purchases from the United States did facilitate a possible deployment of Central Command forces to Southwest Asia. Any expeditionary force would gain an advantage if its weapons, ammunition, and parts were compatible to the equipment used by a potential host nation. The United States achieved a large measure of interchangeability through military assistance to the Gulf States, despite occasional frustration at the hands of American supporters of Israel, who saw the provision of any arms and equipment to an Arab nation in a different light.57
In spite of the continued support of Iraq, there was a growing perception in the United States that the major near-term threats to the states of the southern Persian Gulf and to Western oil supplies came not from the Soviet Union but from the Gulf region itself. The Iran-lraq war had
21
shown that both combatants had the resources to sustain massive forces, even in the face of sizable losses. Both now had the experience of a decade of war to go with traditions of political instability. Meanwhile, the Iranian revolution represented a constant danger not only to Iraq, but the southern Gulf States and the industrial West as well.59
The end of the war left Iraq both remarkably strong and desperatelyweak. By regional standards, the Iraqi armed forces appeared formidable, and the war seemed to have forged a strong feeling of national cohesion. Iraq believed that it had won the war and defended Arab interests against the traditional Persian threat. Iraq also saw itself as a major oil power with a dominant role in the region. At the same time, it had piled up a debt estimated as high as $70 billion. The $5 to $6 billion in interest that the government paid annually consumed nearly one-third of its oil revenues.60
The war crippled Iraq's economic development program and stifled the social mobility that had attended it. The years of fighting left much of the nation's industrial capacity weakened and its ability to export oil severely impaired. Economically, the war also diminished Iraq's international position and forced the regime into a position of dependence on its wealthy neighbors. That reliance actually represented a continuation of the relationship that had sustained Iraq through the war, although Iraq was convinced that it had not received adequate support. Iraqi resentment focused largely on wealthy Kuwait, which held territory that Iraq coveted and considered its own.61
Although the states of the southern Gulf did not appreciate the depth of Iraqi bitterness at their supposedly inadequate support, they were not blind to the threat implicit in Iraq's postwar military strength and confidence. The Saudis knew that the border with Iraq was ideal for armor operations and that the entire Arabian Peninsula was vulnerable to attack from the northeast. Major Saudi oil facilities were only 200 miles away. King Khalid Military City, with its two armored brigades, provided only limited security, and other Gulf Cooperation Council members had no military forces of consequence. Any assault on Kuwait might easily become the first stage of a two-phase attack on the rest of the peninsula.62
The United States shared Saudi Arabia's concerns. Kuwait, the door to the entire oil-producing region, was very vulnerable. Threats to its stability, either from external or internal pressures, would have wide ramifications, endangering the flow of oil and the economic health of the industrial West.63
In the two years after the fighting between Iran and Iraq ended, Iraq increased its pressure on Kuwait. The war had left the Shatt al Arab approach to Al Basrah and the city itself a shambles. The opening of the waterway to shipping remained in the distant future. Iraq again turned its attention to the border that it shared with Kuwait. In addition to demands for compensation for revenues allegedly lost due to Kuwaiti oil sales in excess of OPEC quotas and for oil pumped from oil
22
Map 3 Iraq's Access to the Gulf 1990
23
fields claimed by Iraq, Saddam Hussein's government renewed its interest in Bubiyan and Warbah islands. He cleared the way for action by beginning negotiations for a final settlement with Iran, massing troops on the Kuwaiti border, and sounding out the American reaction to a possible military move into Kuwait. Saddam appeared to ignore the restatement of the Carter Doctrine by the administration of President George H. Bush in National Security Directive 26 of October 1989, warning that the United States would defend its vital interests by force if necessary.64
Meanwhile, Kuwait struggled to find a counterbalance to the increasing Iraqi threat. It had a military agreement with Egypt that dated from the last phase of the Iran-Iraq war and even made an overture toward Iran, which might again serve as a potential counter to Iraq. But neither those connections nor the Gulf Cooperation Council had the potential strength to ward off a determined Iraqi attack. Kuwait needed protection, like that provided by Great Britain at the turn of the century and by the United States in 1987. Yet, like Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, Kuwait accepted American construction support and air defense missiles but stopped short of inviting an American presence in support of its own defense. That refusal, grounded in strong feelings of national pride, race, and religion, reflected an unrealistic assessment of its situation. As historian Theodore Draper wrote during the year of the tanker war, in which Kuwaiti oil tankers began to fly American flags, "Kuwait was too rich to be left alone and too weak to defend itself."65
During the first seven months of 1990, Iraqi troop movements and presidential bombast foreshadowed the impending crisis. But, like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the United States did not recognize the imminence of the Iraqi threat until it was too late.66 On 2 August 1990, when Iraqi tanks rolled through Kuwait to the Saudi border and Saddam Hussein's government declared that Kuwait no longer existed as an independent country, perceptions quickly changed. President Bush quickly decided to uphold the Carter Doctrine and commit the United States to direct military action.
With a large majority of the nations of the world opposed to the invasion of Kuwait, President Bush built a broad-based coalition in support of intervention. The United States, which took the lead in developing and coordinating opposition to Iraq, achieved a diplomatic triumph of great magnitude and far-reaching consequence. Urged forward by the United States, the United Nations General Assembly imposed an embargo on Iraq, and the Security Council voted to condemn the invasion. Almost immediately coalition forces moved toward Southwest Asia. By far the largest contributor to the force, the United States honored commitments to Saudi Arabia first made by President Truman.67 The result was Operation DESERT SHIELD, which before it was over became the DESERT STORM.
Notes
1 Christine Moss Helms, Iraq: Eastern Flank of the Arab World (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1984), pp. 42, 44-45; Paul D. Wolfowitz, "Remarks on the Conclusion of the Gulf War," American-Arab Affairs, no. 35 (Winter 1990-91): 6; Phebe Mart, The Modem History of Iraq (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985), p. 1.
2 David Fromkin, A Peace To End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East 1914-1922 (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1989), p. 560.
3 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Questfor Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), p. 201.
4 Ibid., pp. 160-64, 184-85.
5 Helms, Iraq, pp. 40-41; Yergin, The Prize, p. 185.
6 Marr, Modem History of Iraq, p. 5 1.
7 Yergin, The Prize, pp. 283, 292-94.
8 Ibid., pp. 291, 297, 300.
9 Francis Robinson, Atlas of the Islamic World Since 1500 (New York: Facts on File, 1982), p. 158, Mart, Modern History of Iraq, pp. 86-87,
10 Robert Lacey, The Kingdom: Arabia & the House of Saud (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 198 1), p. 261; William B. Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s: Foreign Policy, Security, and Oil (Washington, D.C.Brookings Institution, 1981), p. 47; Yergin, The Prize, p. 393.
11 Robinson, Atlas of the Islamic World, p. 158; John E. Peterson, Defending Arabia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), p. 4.
12 Yergin, The Prize, pp. 463-64, 475, 477,783.
13 Ibid., pp. 498, 508; Robinson, Atlas of the Islamic World, p. 159; Marr, Modem History of Iraq, p. 195; Helms, Iraq, p. 1.
14 Marr, Modern History of Iraq, pp123, 125, 153~ Yergin, The Prize, p. 509.
15 Yergin, The Prize, p. 523.
16 Mart, Modern History of Iraq, p. 29; William Jackson, Withdrawal from Empire, A Military View (London: Batsford, Ltd., 1986), p. 125, Yergin, The Prize, pp. 565-66, Fromkin, A Peace To End All Peace, pp. 562-63.
17 Marr, Modern History of Iraq, pp. 123,162-64,175,180.
18 Richard F. Nyrop, ed., Iraq: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), p. 68; Yergin, The Prize, pp. 236-37.
19 Nyrop, ed., Iraq: A Country Study, p. 236.
20 Yergin, The Prize, p. 524; Trevor N. Dupuy, How To Defeat Saddam Hussein (New York: Warner Books, 1991), p. 9; Marr, Modern History of Iraq, pp. 180-81; Thomas L. McNaugher, "Arms and Allies on the Arabian Peninsula," Orbis (Fall 1984): 519.
21 Marr, Modern History of Iraq, pp. 178-81.
22 ibid., pp. 183, 191, 205, 207-08, Helms, Iraq, pp. 138-39.
23 Mart, Modern History of Iraq, pp. 207-08, 211, 214-15, Frederick W. Axelgard, A New Iraq? The Gulf War and Implicationsfor U.S. Policy, The Washington Papers, no. 133 (New York: Praeger, 1988), p. 11.
24 David L. Price, Oil and Middle East Security, The Washington Papers, vol. 4, no. 41 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, 1976), p. 60; Nyrop, ed., Iraq: A Country Study, p. 237.
25 Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 138.
26 David Holden and Richard Johns, The House of Saud: The Rise and Rule of the Most Powerful Dynasty in the Arab World (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), p. 149; Robert W. Stookey, America & the Arab States: An Uneasy Encounter (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975), pp. xiii, 54-55.
27 Stookey, America & the Arab States, pp. 54-55, 263~ Michael Sterner, "The Gulf Cooperation Council and Persian Gulf Security," in Thomas Nall, ed., Gulf Security and the IranIraq War (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press and Middle East Research Institute, 1985), pp. 5-6; Yergin, The Prize, p. 646.
28 Peterson, Defending Arabia, p. 56; Stookey, America & the Arab States, p. 88; Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, pp. 48-49, 52; Holden and Johns, The House of Saud, pp. 157-58; Anthony H. Cordesman, The Gulf and the West: Strategic Relations and Military Realities (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), p. 206; Yergin, The Prize, pp. 427-28.
29 Stookey, America & the Arab States, p. 88, MS, John T. Greenwood, Diplomacy Through Construction: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Saudi Arabia, Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [19881, pp. 2-4, 6. All other unpublished documents are in U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH), Washington, D.C., files unless otherwise stated.
30 Safran, Saudi Arabia, pp. 172-73, 204; Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, pp. 51-52' Holden and Johns, The House of Saud, p. 359.
31 Safran, Saudi Arabia, pp. 208-09 McNaugher, "Arms and Allies on the Arabian Peninsula," p. 507.
32 MS, Greenwood, Diplomacy Through Construction, pp. 9-10.
33 Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, pp. 142, 156; Safran, Saudi Arabia, pp. 151, 214; Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, p. 240, Peterson, Defending Arabia, pp. 7, 118, 145.
34 Peterson, Defending Arabia, pp. 7, 146-47; Maxwell Orme Johnson, The Military as an Instrument of U.S. Policy in Southwest Asia: The Rapid Deploymentjoint Task Force, 1979-1982 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), pp. 9-10.
35 Quote from Yergin, The Prize, p, 702; Johnson, The Military as an Instrument of U.S. Policy, p. 1.
36 Yergin, The Prize, p. 702; Johnson, The Military as an Instrument of U.S. Policy, pp. 1, 8, 34; Peterson, Defending Arabia, p. 6; Majid Khadduri, The Gulf War: The Origins & Implications of the Iran-Iraq Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 143-44.
37 Johnson, The Military as an Instrument of U.S. Policy, pp. 98-99.
38 Khadduri, The Gulf War, p. 17; Mart, Modern History of Iraq, pp. 211,229.
39 Marr, Modern History of Iraq, pp. 234, 245; Khadduri, The Gulf War, pp. 83-85.
40 Marr, Modern History of Iraq, pp. 292, 295; Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), p. 7.
41 Peterson, Defending Arabia, p. 7; Quote from Johnson, The Military as an Instrument of U.S. Policy, p. 40; Harold H. Saunders, "The Iran-Iraq War: Implications for US Policy," in Nall, ed., Gulf Security and the Iran-Iraq War, p. 65.
42 Khadduri, The Gulf War, p. 144; Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, p. 137; Johnson, The Military as an Instrument of U.S. Policy, p. 95.
43 Peterson, Defending Arabia, p. 153; Johnson, The Military as an Instrument of U.S. Policy, p. 99.
44 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, pp. 2, 11, 137; Peterson, Defending Arabia, pp. 238-39; Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, p. 56; Khadduri, The Gulf War, p. 144.
45 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, p. 141.
46 Johnson, The Military as an Instrument of U.S. Policy, p. 114; Khadduri, The Gulf War, pp. 126-27; Axelgard, A New Iraq?, pp. 73-74, Chubin and Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War, p. 154.
47 Igard, A New Iraq?, p. 75.
48 Ibid., p. 73; Khadduri, The Gulf War, p. 151; Quote from Ba'th Party, The 1968 Revolution in Iraq, Experience and Prospects, the Political Report of the Arab Ba'th Socialist Party in Iraq, January 1974, as cited in Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein, A Political Biography (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 63.
49 Peterson, Defending Arabia, p. 200; Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, pp.149,151,194,196; McNaugher, "Arms and Allies," pp. 513-18.
50 Axelgard, A New Iraq?, p. 74.
51 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, p. 41 Peterson, Defending Arabia, pp. 8-9, 242-43; Saunders, "The Iran-Iraq War," p. 70.
52 Axelgard, A New Iraq?, pp. 14-16; Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, p. 313.
53 Sterner, "The Gulf Cooperation Council," p. 16; Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, p. 53; Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, p. 240.
54 Cordesman, The Gu1f and the West, pp. 2, 310, 327, Yergin, The Prize, p. 765; Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, vol. II, The Iran-Iraq War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 289-90, 391-92.
55 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, pp. 141-42; Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, pp. 2, 55.
56 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, pp. 142-43; Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, p. 156, Peterson, Defending Arabia, pp. 148, 203; Khadduri, The Gulf War, p. 143.
57 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, pp. 7, 13.
58 Helms, Iraq, pp. 163-64; Stephen C. Pelletiere, Douglas V. Johnson II, and Leif R. Rosenberger, Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: Strategic Studies institute, Army War College, 1990), pp. 42, 53; Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddarn Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (New York: Times Books, 1990), pp. 148-49, 189-90; New York Times, 10 Apr 91; Don Oberdorfer, "Mixed Signals in the Middle East," Washington Post Magazine (17 March 1991): 20-21.
59 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, p. 81.
60 Yergin, The Prize, p. 767; Pelletiere, Johnson, and Rosenberger, Iraqi Power and U.S. Security, p. 53; Tom (Tsutomu) Kono, "Road to the Invasion," American-Arab Affairs, no. 34 (Fall 1990): 29-30.
61 Marr, Modern History of Iraq, p. 245; Miller and Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, pp. 8-9, 193-94; Kono, "Road to the Invasion," p. 41.
62 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, pp. 4, 93-94; Saftan, Saudi Arabia, p 206; McNaugher, "Arms and Allies," p. 496; Karsh and Rautsi, Saddam Hussein, A Political Biography, p. 63.
63 Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, pp. 4, 309; Peterson, Defending Arabia, p. 246.
64 National Security Directive 26, U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf, 2 Oct 89; Kono, "Road to the Invasion," pp. 41-43; New York Times, 21 Mar 91; Oberdorfer, "Mixed Signals," pp. 21,36.
65 Kono, "Road to the Invasion," p. 41; Cordesman, The Gulf and the West, p. 108; Quote from Miller and Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, p. 215.
66 Oberdorfer, "Mixed Signals," pp. 22-23,36-41.
67 Yergin, The Prize, p. 772, Dupuy, How To Defeat Saddam Hussein, p. 19; Miller and Mylroie, Saddam, Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, pp. 227-28.
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