The United States and Iraq Since 1990

A Brief History with Documents

Robert K. Brigham

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781405198998
  9781405198981
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118294550
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers a concise history of US policy in Iraq since 1990 and how it has evolved over two decades.

• Examines US relations with Iraq from both a regional and international perspective
• Argues that the only way to clearly understand US policy toward Iraq is to see it in its proper historical context and within a transnational framework
• Uses recently declassified documents at the end of each chapter to illustrate US decision-making in the wars for Iraq
• Addresses the importance of the changing domestic climate surrounding two decades

1

The First Gulf War, 1990–1991

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Chronology

1957	Eisenhower Doctrine
1958	Military coup in Iraq against King Faisal II
1963	Baathist coup against General Abdul Karem Qassim
1968	Second Baathist coup led by General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr
1979	Saddam Hussein seizes power in Iraq
1990	Iraq invades Kuwait
1991	The First Gulf War

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“The Middle East has abruptly reached a new and critical stage in its long and important history,” U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower explained to Congress in January 1957. “In past decades many of the countries in that area were not fully self-governing. Other nations exercised considerable authority in the area and the security of the region was largely built around their power. But since the First World War there has been a steady evolution toward self-government and independence. This development the United States has welcomed and has encouraged. Our country supports without reservation the full sovereignty and independence of each and every nation of the Middle East.”¹ Eisenhower's commitment to an independent Middle East was the cornerstone of the Eisenhower Doctrine announced shortly after the 1956 Suez Crisis when Egypt's leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had seized and nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain, France, and Israel launched retaliatory strikes against Egypt, but Eisenhower did not support the raids. Instead, he warned old colonial powers that he would not allow them to maintain an imperial stance in the Middle East. More importantly, Eisenhower declared that the United States would not stand “idly by to see the southern flank of NATO completely collapse through Communist penetration and success in the Mid East.”² Eisenhower believed that the Soviet Union's interest in the Middle East was “solely that of power politics. Considering her announced purpose of Communizing the world, it is easy to understand her hope of dominating the Middle East.”³

Indeed, Eisenhower's deepest concern was that the United States might be losing ground to the Soviets in the Middle East. He feared that the loss of any country in the region to communism would so endanger American interests and those of its allies that the United States would be forced to alter its own political and economic systems. Eisenhower explained that the Middle East “contains about two thirds of the presently known oil deposits of the world and it normally supplies the petroleum needs of many nations of Europe, Asia and Africa.” Even the United States, a net exporter of oil at the time, depended on cheap oil from the Middle East to maintain economic growth and production. If the Soviets captured the region or any part of it, Eisenhower worried that it would “have the most adverse, if not disastrous, effect upon our own nation's economic life and political prospects.”⁴ To counteract the Soviets, therefore, Eisenhower announced U.S. support for any nation feeling the communist threat. Specifically, the Eisenhower Doctrine pledged to “authorize the United States to cooperate with and assist any nation or group of nations in the general area of the Middle East in the development of economic strength dedicated to the maintenance of national independence.” It would also approve “military assistance and cooperation with any nation or group of nations which desires such aid.” Finally, it would commit “the employment of the armed forces of the United States to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid, against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by International Communism.”⁵ Congress, obviously moved by the president's speech, eventually approved Eisenhower's request for an additional $200,000,000 in discretionary funds in 1958 and 1959 to combat communism in the Middle East.

Much of Eisenhower's attention was devoted to Israel and her neighbors, but he was most worried about communist advances in what he called the “northern tier,” Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan. These vulnerable states were of significant geo-strategic importance, and Iraq and Iran held significant economic resources. Eisenhower bound them together in a mutual defense agreement known as the Baghdad Pact. Each of the four nations (with aid from Britain and the United States) pledged to support each other against communist advances. The Soviets called the Baghdad Pact “an appendage of NATO,” proving to Eisenhower that the league was the right move. Eisenhower made other diplomatic moves to shore up the alliance. Early in his in presidency, Eisenhower had at least tacitly supported a coup against Iranian leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, returning the conservative shah to power in Iran. In Iraq, John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's secretary of state, feared that the Soviets had turned more aggressive and that Baghdad leaders could feel “the hot breath of the Soviet Union on their necks.” He urged Eisenhower to take a more aggressive stance in supporting the conservative monarchy led by King Faisal II and his deputy, Prime Minister Nuri al-Said. Eisenhower concurred, and the United States poured millions of dollars into Iraq to support the Baghdad government.

Thus was born America's commitment to Iraq and the beginning of the U.S. effort to influence and control politics in Baghdad. Like those that would follow it, Eisenhower's attempt to shore up the government in Baghdad against its many critics failed miserably. Within months of the passage of the Eisenhower Doctrine, on July 14, 1958, the conservative government was overthrown in a military coup. An unstable republic replaced the monarchy and ushered in a decade of rebellion. The new military government, led by General Abdul Karem Qassim, quickly abolished the monarchy, dissolved parliament, and officially recognized the Soviet Union and China. But Qassim's government also felt tremendous pressures that threatened to tear it apart. Kurds in northern Iraq launched an independence movement, and Qassim felt he was the target of constant coup plots instigated by Nasser in Egypt. Iraqi leaders were caught between their strong anti-Western feelings and the fear of U.S. intervention. In the summer of 1961, a dispute between Iraq and Britain over the right to Kuwaiti independence also threatened the Qassim government. Only a Soviet veto at the United Nations Security Council of a British resolution claiming Kuwait's full independence kept war at bay. The Arab League also played a pivotal role in the crisis, eventually inviting Kuwait to join its ranks, thus ensuring that Qassim's government would leave Kuwait alone. When President Kennedy officially received Kuwait's new ambassador to the United States in June 1962, Qassim withdrew Iraq's ambassador from Washington, downgraded its embassy in Washington to a consulate, and ordered the U.S. ambassador to leave Iraq.⁶ Though he did not cut off all diplomatic relations completely, it was clear by 1962 that relations between Iraq and the United States were severely strained.

Diplomatic relations did not improve, even after Qassim was removed from power in another bloody coup. On February 8, 1963, Baathist army officers arrested Qassim and assassinated him, along with thousands of communists. There is some evidence, though not substantiated in documents, to suggest that U.S. intelligence officials aided the Baathists in their anti-communist raids.⁷ The Baathists were predominantly Sunni, but were more secular than religious. They believed in Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism, a juggling act of national priorities and regional loyalties. They tended to be socialist, but had an almost allergic reaction to communism. The Baathists were also decidedly against Nasser's Egypt and its growing regional influence. The new Baghdad government was also a sworn enemy of Israel. The Baathists promised an Iraq free from old imperial ties and Western influence, but would come to depend on Western aid to support its government. For these reasons, U.S. policymakers trod lightly in Iraq.

In July 1968, a group of disaffected Baathist officers launched another coup and installed General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr as leader of Iraq. These officers had grown increasingly despondent over the weak Iraqi economy and the failure of the previous Abdul Arif government to secure the northern regions of Iraq from Kurdish rebels. Shortly after taking power, al-Bakr secured complete authority by organizing a “select fraternity of political allies united by tribal and familial loyalties originating in common ancestry around the village of Tikrit.”⁸ At the heart of this group was an extended clan, the al-Bu Nasir. Among the young officers in this inner circle was Saddam Hussein, a relative of al-Bakr from the village of al-Auja, near Tikrit. Hussein was born in poverty on April 28, 1937. At age 10 he left his home for Baghdad, where he lived with an uncle and attended a local school. He joined the Baathist Party in 1957 and participated in anti-Qassim and anti-communist activity. He was a strong supporter of al-Bakr and had particular expertise in coopting or breaking tribal groups to extend the total control of the Baathists.⁹ Though other Baathist leaders experimented with the forced collectivization of land ownership and nationalization of land, Hussein focused his energies on securing power. He coordinated the activities of the Republican Guard, an elite military unit, using them for internal policing and national security issues. He was not afraid to use the Guard to eliminate potential political rivals or to destroy the Communist Party within Iraq. For his efforts, al-Bakr made Saddam Hussein the second most powerful figure in the Iraqi government.

Hussein used this position to further consolidate Baathist power inside Iraq, but also to reposition Baghdad in the international system. Though a sworn enemy of communism, Hussein moved Iraq closer to the Soviet orbit in the 1970s by signing several agreements on oil development and allowing the Soviets to use Iraqi ports in exchange for military weapons. Still, relations between Moscow and Baghdad never developed beyond these preliminary agreements in the early 1970s, allowing U.S. policymakers to watch Iraq from a calculated distance. Initial U.S. support for Kurds in northern Iraq never amounted to much either, allowing Baghdad to talk tough against the Americans but little else. By the end of 1978, Iraq was a secondary concern for U.S. policymakers.

All of that changed in 1979. First, the Iranian revolution of that year, that had ushered radical Shiites into power in Tehran, threatened to engulf Iraq. The Shiite majority in Iraq had lived in fear of Baathist power since the 1963 coup, but took great solace in the Iranian revolution. Riots in the predominantly Shiite areas of Iraq, especially east Baghdad, led many Shiites to question al-Bakr's policies. Furthermore, there was talk in Baghdad of an alliance between Iraq and Syria that would move Saddam Hussein down the chain of command, replacing him with Syrian premier Hafez al-Assad. In a pattern that would become typical of his rule over the next twenty-five years, Hussein moved quickly against both groups. He ousted al-Bakr and declared himself president of the republic, chief of the army, and leader of the Baathist Party. He ordered the assassination of hundreds of political rivals, attacked Shiite radicals all over Iraq, and brutally suppressed the Kurdish independence movement in northern Iraq. By the end of the year, Saddam's control over Iraqi political life was complete.¹⁰

In the first months of his rule, Saddam Hussein came to suspect that a radical Iran was Iraq's greatest threat. Ironically, officials in Washington were beginning to believe that U.S. policy toward Iraq had to be altered significantly to deal with the new Iranian regime. The Reagan administration made a concerted effort to improve relations with Baghdad, even though Saddam had committed horrendous human rights violations against his own people. Reagan officials, narrowly focused on U.S. national security needs, feared that continued Iranian attacks against Iraqi oil facilities threatened U.S. interests. The Reagan White House was also concerned that “sustained Iranian pressure could … b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Dramatis Personae
• Maps
• 1: The First Gulf War, 1990–1991
• 2: Clinton and Containment, 1992–2001
• 3: The Invasion of Iraq, 2003
• 4: The Deadliest Fighting, 2003–2006
• 5: The Surge, 2006–2008
• 6: Obama's War, 2009–2011
• Epilogue: The Future
• List of Documents
• Suggestions for Additional Reading
• Index