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Gulf War Strategic Planning

During the 1992 presidential campaign, bumper stickers could be seen bearing the sardonic message, "Saddam has a job--do you?" Four years later, as President George Bush's successor campaigns to keep the job he won from Bush, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein still has his job, and continues to bedevil the United States. We may thus ask a question which was first asked during the buildup to the Persian Gulf War, and has continued to be asked ever since then. How was the American policy response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait formulated?

One way of approaching this decision making process is through Bob Woodward's book, The Commanders. As a formal source for study of Gulf War strategic planning, it must be acknowledged that this book has significant disadvantages. It is a journalistic rather than analytical study; Woodward's concern is with the men who made the decisions and their interaction, not with the decisions themselves, or the strategic thought surrounding them.

On the other hand, Woodward is an acute and experienced observer of Washington and its "players." In the real world, decisions are not made in a world of abstract analysis, but in a world of policymakers interacting with one another and with their political environment. As Clausewitz said, war is an extension of politics by other methods. Woodward thus provides a unique window into the environment in which the key Gulf War decisions were made. In fact, what his account is revealed is that the most crucial policy decisions are often made in ways that wholly circumvent the elaborate staff organizations that modern states have constructed.

Initial planning for the Persian Gulf military buildup was defensive, intended not to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait but to prevent them from going on into Saudi Arabia. This in itself, as outlined in Plan 91-1002, called for an impressively large force of some 100,000 to 200,000 men. It was hoped that execution of ...

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Gulf War Strategic Planning. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:15, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1682445.html