THE GULF WAR

Superpower involvement in the gulf war was

imperative, and Iraqi control of Kuwait,
wouldve had a disastrous outcome.
Paarshav Shah - 10.1
Date - 5/12/17
Word Count - 4469

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CONTENTS
1. TITLE
2. CONTENTS
3. ACTION PLAN
4. ACTION PLAN
5. OPVL
6. ESSAY
7. ESSAY
8. ESSAY
9. ESSAY
10. REFLECTING
11. REFLECTING AND
CITATIONS

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ACTION PLAN
Date Task What have I done Resource
14th-16th November To complete the In the first week of http://
introduction of the working on the essay I www.history.com/
Essay dedicated a lot of my topics/persian-gulf-war
time into working on
the introduction of the
essay. I actually began
with a different research
question and the
original essay was
based on that research
question.
21st-23rd November To work on the action By the 22nd of https://
plan and the OPVL November I spoke to www.theatlantic.com/
miss and then I realized past/docs/issues/91jul/
that the work that I had layne.htm
done was insufficient,
because my research https://
question was very www.khanacademy.org
open and had too /humanities/ap-us-
many aspects that history/period-9/
could be added to it. apush-1990s-america/
Therefore I had a a/the-gulf-war
discussion with miss
and then we decided
to change the research
question to the current
one that discusses that
the invasion of a foreign
superpower was
imperative.

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28th-30th November First submission of the This week I had to work http://
document and working on my essay all over foreignpolicy.com/
on the body of the again, because I had 2011/01/20/the-gulf-
essay changed my research war-in-retrospect/
question. This time I
worked on a research https://
question that discusses www.theatlantic.com/
the fact that the photo/2016/01/
invasion of a foreign operation-desert-
superpower was storm-25-years-since-
imperative. And my the-first-gulf-war/
whole new essay will 424191/
be abased on the new
information that I http://
receive. Because of www.dummies.com/
this minor setback I had education/history/
actually missed the american-history/
deadline for a bit but I american-participation-
worked in class to in-the-gulf-war/
catch up to the time
that was lost
5th December The final submission of I just had to work hard https://
the essay and make a few edits www.brookings.edu/
over the weekend to research/the-united-
make my essay as states-and-iraq-a-
good as possible and strategy-for-the-long-
also I ended up haul/
finishing the OPVL.
While I was working on
the completion of this
essay, I also realized
that I was generalizing a
lot upon the war itself
and therefore I actually
spent a lot of time on
Tuesday working on
answering how the
American involvement
was imperative.

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OPVL
Origins Purposes Values Limitations
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/91jul/layne.htm - Why The Gulf War Was Not In
National Interest
The origins of this There were a lot of There are a lot of valuable In this sort of
source come from purposes of this source. points that I have taken from source, the
an American based I got to know a lot of this source such as advantages are also
source. The author insights and also The Oil Argument the disadvantages.
of this source seems firsthand ides of the US The Peace-and-Stability Regardless of this
to have been military and the purpose Argument source being a
present when of that was to give me The "New World Order" firsthand source,
Operation Desert the American Argument there is an obvious
Storm, had taken perspective to how the Overlooked Lessons of bias towards the
place in Iraq and he war was fought the 1930s American
must have had a considering that I government
firsthand view into needed to keep in mind considering that this
the war to have such that the American source was written
a perspective. Intervention was in a post cold war
Imperative. scenario and also
the fact that it is an
American based
website.
http://www.history.com/topics/persian-gulf-war - Persian Gulf War - Facts and Summary
The origins of this There were a lot of There were many valuable Despite being an
source also come purposes of this source facts and points that I could unbiased site that
from an American that had helped me to gain from this source such gave me a look into
based organization, gain a better as the causes and
and the author of this understanding of what Background of the consequences, I
source has good the real causes and Persian gulf war must consider the
knowledge of the consequences of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait & fact that this source
events that took war. It could be allied response was very
place during considered that the Aftermath of the Persian generalized towards
Operation Desert purpose of this site was gulf war the outcome of the
Storm, However the to gain a very war and I wasnt
author of this source generalized able to answer the
may have not been understanding of what reasons for why the
able to physically or the cold war was. involvement was
mentally experience imperative Kuwait
the brutality of the would be in
war that had taken shambles otherwise
place.

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ESSAY
American involvement in the Gulf War has been a source of controversy for many years. Although the
Gulf War lasted less than a week, George Bush received criticism for the decision to have American
troops participate in the Gulf War.

Through Iran and Iraq had a long running war between each other, it was bound to end in a brokered
ceasefire by the United Nations in 1988. The two states, by 1990 had to begin to negotiate a peace
treaty that would be permanent. That July, when Irani and Iraqi foreign ministers met In Geneva, it
appeared that Saddam Hussein was under preparation for the dissolving of that conflict and also
return the territory occupied by his forces. Prospects seemed bright for peace. However, two weeks
on, a speech was delivered by Saddam Hussein stating that Kuwait was siphoning off crude oil from
the Ar-Rumayla oil field along the common border. Saddam Hussein accused Saudi Arabian and
Kuwaiti governments of confidential agreements that would pander the western buying nations by
keeping the oil prices low and fluctuating. He also insisted $30Bn of Iraqi foreign debt to be cancelled
out by Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti governments. As an added consequence of the speech made by
Saddam Hussein, Iran had begun the process of mobilizing troops across the Kuwaiti border. As an
effect of these actions Hosni Mubarak began to initiate possible negotiations, which would not include
the USA and other western powers in these gulf concerns. Despite allowing the negotiations to go
fourth, Hussein broke them off. Hussein had ordered an invasion of Kuwait on the second of August
1990. Hussein had assumptions that he would be commended for the actions hed conducted upon
the Kuwaiti Government, however two thirds of the member states in the Arab League had
condemned the act of aggression that Hussein had initiated. The Saudi Arabian king Fahd, and
government in-exile of Kuwait had turned to the NATO for external support.

American, soviet and British governments had condemned the actions of Hussein immediately, and
the UNSC had called for Iraqi forced to withdraw from Kuwait on the third of August. A few days later
the Saudi and American governments came to an agreement which requested American assistance
in Kuwait. On the eight of August, Iraqi troops annexed Kuwaiti Territory, and called the annexed
territory, the 19th province of Iraq. Coincidentally that was the day when American Air Force jets began
arriving in Saudi Arabian soil. This was dubbed as Operation Desert Shield and all the planes were
lined up with NATO troops, and they were placed in locations that would safeguard Saudi Arabia from
possible invasion of Iraqi troops. Iraqi operation forces increased to almost 300.000 troops, and as an
effort to gain support in the Arab League, he declared a Jihad against the military coalition. Hussein
was failing at that point, so he hastily made peace with Iran so that he could bring his military strength
to full.

On November 29, 1990, the U.N. Security Council authorized the use of all necessary means of
force against Iraq if it did not withdraw from Kuwait by the following January 15. By January, the
coalition forces prepared to face off against Iraq numbered some 750,000, including 540,000 USA
personnel and smaller forces from Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, Egypt and
Saudi Arabia, among other nations. Iraq, for its part, had the support of Jordan (another vulnerable
neighbor), Algeria, the Sudan, Yemen, Tunisia and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

Early on the morning of January 17, 1991, a massive USA-led air offensive hit Iraqs air defenses,
moving swiftly on to its communications networks, weapons plants, oil refineries and more. The
coalition effort, known as Operation Desert Storm, benefited from the latest military technology,
including Stealth bombers, Cruise missiles, so-called Smart bombs with laser-guidance systems and
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infrared night-bombing equipment. The Iraqi air force was either destroyed early on or opted out of
combat under the relentless attack, the objective of which was to win the war in the air and minimize
combat on the ground as much as possible.

By mid-February, the coalition forces had shifted the focus of their air attacks toward Iraqi ground
forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq. A massive allied ground offensive, Operation Desert Saber, was
launched on February 24, with troops heading from northeastern Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and
southern Iraq. Over the next four days, coalition forces encircled and defeated the Iraqis and liberated
Kuwait. At the same time, USA forces stormed into Iraq some 120 miles west of Kuwait, attacking
Iraqs armored reserves from the rear. The elite Iraqi Republican Guard mounted a defense south of Al-
Basrah in southeastern Iraq, but most were defeated by February 27.

With Iraqi resistance nearing collapse, Bush declared a ceasefire on February 28, ending the Persian
Gulf War. According to the peace terms that Hussein subsequently accepted, Iraq would recognize
Kuwaits sovereignty and get rid of all its weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear, biological
and chemical weapons). In all, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Iraqi forces were killed, in comparison
with only 300 coalition troops.

Though the Gulf War was recognized as a decisive victory for the coalition, Kuwait and Iraq suffered
enormous damage, and Saddam Hussein was not forced from power. Intended by coalition leaders
to be a limited war fought at minimum cost, it would have lingering effects for years to come, both in
the Persian Gulf region and around the world. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Husseins forces
brutally suppressed uprisings by Kurds in the north of Iraq and Shiites in the south. The United States-
led coalition failed to support the uprisings, afraid that the Iraqi state would be dissolved if they
succeeded.In the years that followed, USA and British aircraft continued to patrol skies and mandate a
no-fly zone over Iraq, while Iraqi authorities made every effort to frustrate the carrying out of the peace
terms, especially United Nations weapons inspections. This resulted in a brief resumption of hostilities
in 1998, after which Iraq steadfastly refused to admit weapons inspectors. In addition, Iraqi force
regularly exchanged fire with USA and British aircraft over the no-fly zone.

There was a lot of speculated success that had required a lot of sustained commitments of the USA.
The first involves intelligence. Iraq and the Persian Gulf more broadly must remain a priority for the USA
intelligence community. Open sources cannot possibly carry the burden of collection or analysis. In
particular, the United States will need to develop more human intelligence if it is to have necessary
warning and insight into Iraqi behavior.

The second consideration is military. The United States must be able to deter and defeat conventional
aggression, mount preventive and preemptive attacks against weapons of mass destruction, conduct
punitive strikes against state supporters of terrorism, and sustain interdiction on behalf of sanctions.
USA diplomacy can only succeed against a backdrop of the availability of military forces and the will to
use them. What makes fulfilling this need especially difficult is the requirement that the USA presence
not become too large or visible lest it cause as many problems for our friends as it is designed to
manage. This argues for maintaining the current posture of presence without stationing, including
prepositioning of material, regular exercising of visiting USA forces, and maintaining an off-shore air and
naval presence. Accelerating consolidation of our military presence in less visible and accessible
places has the added benefit of reducing the exposure of USA forces to terrorist attacks.

Third, USA policy toward Iraq has a far better chance of succeeding if USA policy toward Iran is
effective. Iran is a repressive power at home with imperial ambitions and economic feet of clay. It
should be our aim to frustrate its reach and exacerbate its economic problems in order to stimulate
domestic opposition. An Iran that significantly threatened the region would fundamentally change Arab
attitudes and end any support for efforts to oust Saddam or contain Iraq. As a result, USA policy
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toward Iran must include concerted efforts to deny Iran an unconventional weapons capability; a
willingness to use force if clear evidence is found of Iranian support for terrorism; and a frank message
to Iran that future incursions into Iraq are unacceptable. Harsh rhetoric will not be enough, though. Nor
will the United States be able to achieve these goals alone. For this reason, America should have
approached its friends in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region and propose a structured dialogue with
Iran. Building consensus will be anything but easy. The Europeans and the Japanese tend to see Iran
as less threatening than the United States, and argue that the best way for making it even less of a
problem is to engage it politically and economically so that Irans moderates are strengthened. This
perspective is almost certainly flawed Iran is a major threat to the region and even beyond and its so-
called moderates are either unable or unwilling to alter the basics of Irans foreign policy.

Fourth, the risks and costs of unilateralism must be understood. A strategy against Saddam and Iraq
including maintaining sanctions and denying Iraq the ability to export even limited amounts of oilcan
only succeed if others in the region and in Europe support it. This means the United States must
engage in far more frequent and senior consultations with other countries. The sort of unilateralism
demonstrated recently by Mr. Clinton on Iraq and by both Congress and the administration toward Iran
is not so much the exercise of leadership as its abandonment.

Fifth, we need to encourage our friends in the region to undertake reforms that will leave them less
vulnerable to revolutionary change. This does not mean hectoring them publicly on human rights or
calling for elections in the absence of basic elements of civil society, but it does mean privately urging
them to carry out limited political and economic reforms that increase political participation and private
ownership, reduce the state role in political and economic life, and discourage corruption and
excessive state violence. States that are facing unrest at home will prove less able and willing to act
against Iraq.

A sixth reality is that USA policy toward Iraq will prove much more difficult to implement if the Arab-
Israeli peace process breaks down. Arab concerns with Iraq will be overshadowed, and the ability of
friendly governments to work closely and visibly with the United States against Saddam will diminish.
This translates into another argument for active USA efforts to rebuild a serious dialogue between Israel
and the Palestinians.

Last, the United States needs to do more in the realm of energy. We now import approximately half
the oil we consume. Although only a modest percentage of USA oil comes from the Persian Gulf, the
United States is and will be affected directly and indirectly by any supply disruption. This argues for
continued diversification of supply and reduction in USA demand, something that makes sense not
only for foreign policy but also in regard to the trade deficit and the environment.

All of these measures are well worth doing. Still, they will not solve Americas predicament in the
Persian Gulf. The problem facing the United States is that no combination of friendly local states can
offset either Iraq or Iran. As a result, continued USA involvement in the region will be necessary for the
foreseeable future to square the circle of strong enemies, weak friends, and vital interests.

Without a 1991 invasion of Iraq, the USA would not have stationed troops in Saudi Arabia meaning
that Osama bin Laden, a few years later, would not have been able to issue his declaration of war
against the Americans occupying the land of the Two Holy Places.

Without that, Al Qaeda would not have vanished, but they might instead have focused their war
against apostate Arab regimes. Without a focus on the US, the September 11 plot would not have
taken place, meaning that the wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 would never have
happened. America today would be a richer, safer country. If that sounds like a positive outcome,
imagine how the Middle East would look.
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Had Saddam Hussein succeeded in claiming Kuwait as Iraqs 19th province, he would then be sitting
on an enormous financial windfall. Today, Iraq has about 12 per cent of global oil reserves, and Kuwait
nearly 9 per cent. Iraq, then, would have controlled almost as much of the worlds crude oil reserves
as Saudi Arabia.

Without being forced out, there would be no reason for Iraq to withdraw voluntarily. (Saddam Hussein
said as much in an interview with USA interrogators after his arrest.)
With so much money, Saddams repression of Iraq would have intensified. Shia communities, the
Marsh Arabs and the Kurds would all have felt the brunt of this repression.

Without the 1991 invasion, there would have been no sanctions on Iraq and no enforcement of a no-
fly zone over northern Iraq. Iraq would have had a free hand in repressing Iraqi Kurds and in settling
Kurdish areas with Iraqi Arabs. Iraqi Kurdistan, as it exists today, would be unimaginable and therefore
the wider Kurdish vision of Kurdistan would have remained a dream.

What about the GCC? The shock of the invasion of Kuwait was visceral remember that, in 1991,
GCC states considered Iran to be the greater threat and Iraq to be a brotherly neighbor.
But Iraq was also a prosperous, well-educated country. Could the GCC have looked across the Gulf
at Iran and decided that Saddam, even if he occupied Kuwait, was the lesser of two evils? Or might,
instead, the GCC have redoubled spending on defense, pouring money into weapons instead of
education and infrastructure?

What would not have changed? Even an event as far reaching as the first Gulf War is only a part of a
bigger story. In 1991, the Middle East was in the midst of a much-longer debate about the role of
religion in public life and who had the right to speak for the faith.
Even without Saddams war, those questions would not have gone away. Saddams faith campaign of
the 1990s was partly a reaction to the war, but it was also based on the reality of Islamism gaining
momentum inside Iraq.

Even in an alternative timeline, that would have existed, and, indeed, with more money at his disposal,
Saddam might well have sought to spread Salafi thought around the region.
Nor would the expansionism of post-revolutionary Iran have been different. Irans exporting of its
revolution; its courting of Shia communities in Arab countries; its rivalry with Saudi Arabia and its
tensions with Israel all of those would have remained.

How those tectonic shifts would have played out is impossible to guess. Would the Arab Spring have
reached Iraq in 2011? Would Al Qaeda have sought an audacious attack on an Arab country?
Whenever television shows run an alternative history episode, the characters always end up where
they already were: they still fall in love, even if they take a different path to get there.

In politics, too, there are deeper currents at work the Arab Spring was merely a manifestation of a
much more deep-rooted malaise. The Syrian revolution could have taken very different turns.
In imagining what might have been different 25 years ago, we must not forget that even pivotal political
events dont come as a bolt from the blue. More often, they grow out of the existing soil. It may be
comforting to imagine that, but for a vote in Washington in 1991, there would still be a functioning Iraq
today. But what Saddam Hussein sowed in power was never likely to bear beautiful fruit.

The victory, however, was not all that victorious. Kuwait was free, but the Iraqi dictator Saddam
remained in power. Nine years after the war, the United States was still spending $2 billion a year to
enforce a no-fly zone over Northern Iraq, kept an armada of Navy ships in the area, and maintained a
force of 25,000 troops in the region.
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REFLECTION
What methods used by historians did you use in your investigation? In my investigation that I
conducted about the Gulf War, I mostly used resources that were written by biased sources, but
somehow I managed to use that disadvantage to my advantage.
What did your investigation highlight to you about the limitations of those methods? In my
investigation all of these limitations had a good outcome. Since most of my sources were American
based, I could also understand the flaws of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield.
What are the challenges facing the historian? How do they differ from the challenges facing a
scientist or a mathematician? The thing about history compared to math and science is that both of
those subjects simply are based on rules and logic, however with history, there is human behavior
involved too that could affect the possible outcomes.
What challenges in particular does archive-based history present? The problem about archived
based history is that a lot of the facts that are found are mainly true, but only true for the time when
that event had taken place.
How can the reliability of sources be evaluated? There are many ways to evaluate sources, but the
best way to evaluate a secondary source is to compare it to different primary sources, that have
different sources themselves, then you can confirm if it is either a biased or unbiased source.
What is the difference between bias and selection? A distinction of sampling bias is that it
undermines the external validity of a test, while selection bias mainly addresses internal validity for
differences or similarities found in the sample at hand.
What constitutes a historical event? Historical significance is the process used to evaluate what was
significant about selected events, people, and developments in the past. Significant events include
those that resulted in great change over long periods of time for large numbers of people. World
War II passes the test for historical significance in this sense.
Who decides which events are historically significant? Significance depends upon ones perspective
and purpose. A historical person or event can acquire significance if we, the historians, can link it to
larger trends and stories that reveal something important for us today.
Is it possible to describe historical events in an unbiased way? As humans every description, every
text we write is biased. This is not because we are all completely subjective beings when writing but
it is because writing as a human being always entangles bias. Bias is what makes a description
pass or fail judgment because it is what allows for the description to have a scope on the subject
instead of the completely unbiased, objective description.
What is the role of the historian? Historians work for a variety of employers, including themselves,
but they all have as their primary role the reporting of past events. ... However, a historian does
more than merely report dry statistical facts. To present the past, historians must also answer the
why and how, requiring them to fill multiple roles.
Should terms such as atrocity be used when writing about history, or should value judgments be
avoided? When the U.S. Broke away from the British. For the Americans the revolutionaries were all
freedom fighters. However, to the British they could be terrorist, usurpers to the British Empire.Both
have Bias that needs to be taken into account 'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom
fighter. But that is grossly misleading. It assesses the validity of the cause when terrorism is an act.
One can have a perfectly beautiful cause and yet if one commits terrorist acts, it is terrorism
regardless.
If it is difficult to establish proof in history, does that mean that all versions are equally acceptable?
Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning,
and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment
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 and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them. More precisely, relativism
covers views which maintain thatat a high level of abstractionat least some class of things have
the properties they have.

CITATIONS
Why the Gulf War Was Not in National Interest. The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company,
www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/91jul/layne.htm.

History.com Staff. Persian Gulf War. History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009,
www.history.com/topics/persian-gulf-war.

The Gulf War (Article) | 1990s America. Khan Academy, Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org/
humanities/ap-us-history/period-9/apush-1990s-america/a/the-gulf-war.

Mahnken, Tom. The Gulf War in Retrospect. Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, 20 Jan. 2011,
foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/20/the-gulf-war-in-retrospect/.

Taylor, Alan. Operation Desert Storm: 25 Years Since the First Gulf War. The Atlantic, Atlantic
Media Company, 14 Jan. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/01/operation-desert-storm-25-
years-since-the-first-gulf-war/424191/.

American Participation in the Gulf War. Dummies, www.dummies.com/education/history/

american-history/american-participation-in-the-gulf-war/.

Haass, Richard N. The United States and Iraq: A Strategy for the Long Haul. Brookings,
Brookings, 28 July 2016, www.brookings.edu/research/the-united-states-and-iraq-a-strategy-for-
the-long-haul/.

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