One of the last acts of the US presidency of Donald J. Military “contractors” flooded into Iraq, with complex consequences that are still playing out. Many commentators saw the conflict as a way to deal with the “ unfinished business” of the first Gulf War started by Bush’s father. Bush declared a new war against Iraq with the disputed justification of Iraq’s alleged development of weapons of mass destruction. Until in 2003, in the wake of 9/11 and of the invasion of Afghanistan, the then president George W. He added that, “the right conclusions have been drawn from the Gulf War.” But had they? In Iraq, Saddam remained in power, and bombing and sanctions against his regime continued into Bill Clinton’s presidency. Without a radical improvement and then a radical change in Soviet-US relations, we would never have witnessed the profound qualitative changes in the world that now make it possible to speak in terms of an entirely new age, an age of peace in world history. ![]() Yet speaking in October 1991, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev underlined that: Recently declassified sources show that US-Soviet cooperation back then was more difficult than the leaders’ statements led the world to assume at the time. ![]() Bush Presidential Library National Security Archives digital collection edited by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton, ‘Inside the Gorbachev-Bush Partnership on the First Gulf War 1990’. Indeed, at the time of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, US secretary of state James Baker and Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze were in a meeting together and rapidly issued a joint statement of condemnation of Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait.ĭeclassified telephone conversation reveals the true US-Soviet difficulties. Despite Iraq having been one of its main cold war clients in the region, the Soviet Union quickly endorsed the US-led military operation. One of them related to the cooperation – unseen up to that point – between Americans and Russians. Reasons to be cheerful?īack then, there were reasons to be optimistic. The rapid success of the international military campaign, whose legitimacy was reinforced by unequivocal UN authorisation, ushered an era of triumphalist confidence in the possibilities of such a “new world order” and in the US ability to mould it. Out of these troubled times … a new world order can emerge: a new era – freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. The crisis in the Persian Gulf offers a great opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Before the intervention, Bush had addressed the US Congress, stressing the importance of the “unique and extraordinary moment”. The rapid military campaign was a success – and its implications were potentially massive. PJF Military Collection / Alamy Stock Photo The ‘Highway of Death’ where thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers were killed. Military action included the systematic targeting of Iraqi infrastructure, including the sustained – and controversial – attack against retreating Iraqi military personnel along the road connecting Kuwait with Iraq, which was subsequently dubbed the “Highway of Death”. Once diplomatic and economic pressure to deter Saddam failed, the US – under then president George HW Bush, assembled the largest international coalition since the second world war and – with the authorisation of the UN Security Council – began a five-week military operation that pushed Saddam’s forces back into Iraq and reinstated the Kuwaiti royal family at the helm of the country. ![]() ![]() Not quite grasping what the waning of the cold war would mean for his own regional ambitions, Saddam ordered the invasion and annexation of Kuwait on August 2 1990. Saddam’s motives in fact related to his need to replenish an impoverished Iraqi economy that had been severely undercut by a protracted and costly war against Iran (1980-1988), which resulted in more than 1.5 million estimated Iraqi and Iranian deaths.
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