Jul 16, 2015

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a quarter of a century ago transformed America’s role in the Middle East profoundly. We are still living with the legacy of the crisis of the summer of 1990.

The Kuwait crisis of 1990 came up like a summer storm with little or no warning. Twenty-five years ago, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein threatened Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) publicly, demanding that they reduce oil production to raise prices to $20 a barrel. Saddam warned that the two Gulf emirates were stealing money from Iraq by exceeding their OPEC quotas and that Baghdad would take “effective action to put things right.” Immediately the CIA reported Saddam was massing his elite Republican Guard at the border with Kuwait. By July 25, 1990, the Iraqis had mobilized over 100,000 troops on the border. Kuwait and the UAE agreed to cut production but Saddam was planning much more. On Aug. 1, 1990, his army invaded Kuwait, conquering it within hours. The CIA warned President George H.W. Bush that Saddam now “controlled the second- and third-largest proven oil reserves in the Gulf with the fourth-largest army in the world.” On Aug. 5, 1990, the CIA told Bush the Iraqis were massing to attack Saudi Arabia. When the CIA director was asked in the Cabinet Room at the White House what would be the earliest Iraq could attack, the answer was “now,” according to Bush and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft's 1998 book "A World Transformed."

Within weeks a quarter of a million American soldiers were in Saudi Arabia and within six months a half million. The war that followed destroyed Iraq’s dreams of regional domination. It may well prove in time to have destroyed any hope for a united Iraq ever.

What is clear 25 years later is that the crisis transformed US policy in the Middle East. Before 1990, the region was a secondary or even tertiary area of importance to Washington. The United States had rarely deployed military forces in the region. It had a handful of military bases during the early years of the Cold War in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Bahrain but only the latter was still open in 1990. It had sent combat troops ashore once in 1958 in Lebanon but they had withdrawn quickly. Small military operations in Iran (1980) and Beirut (1982) were complete disasters. In the last stages of the Iran-Iraq War, the US Navy had decimated the Iranian navy, but it was a brief affair.

In 1990 and 1991, the United States deployed a huge army to Saudi Arabia and then fought and destroyed much of Iraq’s army. After the war, US military forces stayed in the kingdom and in Kuwait in significant numbers. More bases came in Qatar and the UAE. In 2003, President George W. Bush launched another war with Iraq and US military forces, except for a brief interruption, have been in Iraq since. What had been a backwater for the US military has become since 1990 the principal arena of conflict. This shows no sign of ending anytime soon.