US INVOLVEMENT IN THE PERSIAN GULF WAR (1990-1991)
This research paper summarizes and analyzes the United States foreign policy decisions and military events which led to, perpetuated and ended American involvement in the Persian Gulf War, including the military strategy employed by Iraq and the United States during that war.
The Persian Gulf War was precipitated by the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990 and the determination by the United States that its vital interests were thereby threatened. American foreign policy, because it sought to maintain a balance between Iraqi and Iranian power in the region, sent Iraq mixed signals which failed to deter the invasion, but many other factors lay behind Saddam Hussein's decision to invade. Thereafter, the United States effectively built up its forces in the Gulf. It developed and held together a coalition of European and Arab nations to fight the war and to secure international and domestic support for its objectives, which were to liberate Kuwait and destroy Iraq's military capacity to threaten Western access to the oil reserves of the region and moderate Arab regimes. Iraq's military strategy was defensive during this period, and largely ineffective. American military strategy, which ultimately prevailed decisively, was to apply overwhelming conventional force through the use of strategic and tactical air power, and an imaginative ground campaign which capitalized on Allied strengths and Iraqi military weaknesses. The war was terminated in a manner which left Hussein in power and a thorn in the Americans' side.
Background to the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990
During the 1960s and 1970s, relations, formally broken in 1967, between the United States and Iraq were poor. The Soviet Union became Iraq's chief arms supplier in 1972. Until the Khomeini revolution in 1979, the United States relied on the Shah of Iran as a bulwark of stability in the cent...