War In The Gulf

Implications For Israel

Joseph Alpher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367216085
• eBook ISBN: 9781000011449
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A study by a team of researchers at the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. It assesses the strategic ramifications for Israel of military, political, economic and social aspects of the Gulf War, and concludes with a set of policy recommendations for Israel.

1. The Gulf War — Main Political and Military Developments

Shlomo Gazit

A Crisis Nobody Wanted

The Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, the subsequent political and military steps, and their culmination in Operation Desert Storm carried out by an international coalition under US leadership, resemble a Greek tragedy: each of the actors wanted to halt the slide toward war, yet fate willed otherwise. And it was fate that determined the course of events.

Nobody could have surmised that Iraq would steer itself into a collision course with the superpower that stood at the helm of a vast international coalition and was acting on the authority of the UN Security Council. The Iraqi moves that placed Baghdad on that course were a pitiful combination of ignorance, insolence and megalomania. By any standard of logic, they should not have happened. But then, history is full of events nobody would have thought possible.

On the eve of the occupation of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, both Iraq and the United States were captives of political conceptions that impeded due consideration, in-depth analysis and a realistic assessment of imminent developments. For Iraq, this is true for the period of crisis as well, and even for the period of military operations.

The following analysis will focus on these conceptions and their impact on the political and military steps taken during the crisis and war.

Iraq's Political Conceptions

The background to the long-standing conflict around Iraq's refusal to accept Kuwait's separate existence is too well known to bear repeating here. Suffice it to say that Iraq claimed Kuwait as part of the former Ottoman province of Basra, and as an integral section of the geographical unit situated to the southwest of the Shatt al Arab River — Iraq's natural zone of access to the Persian Gulf. In 1990, however, historical argument was more a pretext to justify action than a concrete motive for it.

The actual causes had more to do with the eight-year war with Iran and the attrition and economic damage it had caused Iraq, Baghdad's foreign debt, at the conclusion of the war, was estimated at $70-80b. Not surprisingly, the regime was looking for quick and unconventional remedies to extract itself from its economic straits. Rich Kuwait was a bait too tempting to ignore, and a quick military move designed to "transfer" its assets to the Iraqi treasury looked like an easily attainable objective.

But these considerations cannot be viewed separately from the wider political and strategic context, as seen from Baghdad. Iraq's ambition was to assume a leading role in the inter-Arab system. It had expected to achieve this by means of the war against Iran, but the way it conducted that war on the ground did not allow Baghdad to benefit on the Arab scene, and eventually added to its harsh frustrations. The strategic advantages expected to accrue from a takeover of Kuwait were to make up for the earlier wartime failures, and render Iraq a leading and pivotal Arab force after all. Notably, Iraq's original aims in going to war against Iran in 1980 were partly identical with the objectives of 1990: the achievement of direct, unhampered access to the Gulf and a greater share in the regional oil export industry.

Prevailing political conceptions led Iraq into an erroneous evaluation of the reaction liable to follow from the occupation and annexation of Kuwait. We do not, at the present time, know enough about the decisionmaking process in Saddam's Baghdad. Possibly, decisions flowed from the imagination, understanding and world view of a single man—Saddam Hussein. The people closest to him may not have been able to influence him; more likely, they may have been afraid to present data liable to contradict his thought patterns and the decisions he had already made. Alternatively, planners and advisers in Baghdad may themselves have fully shared the prevalent conceptions. In either case, the end result was bound to be the same.

Toward the end of June 1990, Iraq launched a campaign of bitter complaints against Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for having exceeded the oil production quotas set for them by OPEC. Thereby, so Iraq argued, they had lowered world oil prices and reduced the oil incomes of other OPEC members.

Some six weeks later, on July 17, Iraq threatened for the first time to use force against the offending OPEC states: they had cost Iraq billions of dollars in lost oil income; moreover, Kuwait had caused Iraq a yearly loss of $2.4b. by marketing oil from a disputed section of the Rumayla oil fields.

Had Iraq confined itself to seizing the two islands (Bubiyan and Warba) controlling the exit from the Shatt al-Arab to the Gulf as well as the Kuwaiti part of the Rumayla fields, it is doubtful whether Kuwait would have found any allies willing to risk military involvement for the sake of recovering such limited parts of its territory. But then Saddam Hussein's problem was his outsized appetite.

Iraq's mistaken conceptions can be subsumed under eight headings:

The occupation of Kuwait not a threat to others

There are signs that Saddam Hussein indeed planned, though not immediately, to exploit his success in Kuwait to grasp military control of additional areas of the Arabian Peninsula, whether in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. But what mattered most in shaping events were not Saddam's own plans, but the genuine fears of others in the region as to Iraq's intentions and, in particular, the distrust — by now total — of any promises made by Saddam Hussein. The latter altogether ignored the shock waves that spread throughout the Arab world as a result of the first instance in modern history of an Arab state being swallowed whole by an Arab neighbor.

At the time of its sudden attack on Iran in 1980, many actors in the inter-Arab system had sided with Baghdad. They saw the Iraqi move as being calculated to bring down Khomeini and his regime, and to do away with the threat of Shi'ite fundamentalism. By contrast, in 1990 Iraq attacked an Arab country that had stood by it for eight years during the war. Moreover, Iraq had shortly before promised unequivocally to let negotiations run their full course and refrain from the use of force.

Only six days after the assault on Kuwait, Baghdad proclaimed formal annexation. This was meant to signal the world that the occupation of Kuwait was irreversible, and its evacuation no longer negotiable. At the same time, it was meant to tie Baghdad's own hands and counteract any future tendency toward compromise. Yet not a single foreign country recognized the annexation decree, which not only failed to weaken the resolve of the opponents of the occupation (assuming that anyone in Baghdad had believed that it might), but may well have strengthened their determination to unite against Iraq. Saddam Hussein erred in assuming that the Arab world would shrug off the elimination of an Arab state by a neighbor as a matter to be taken in its stride.

Arab ststes would not ally themselves with infidels

A second conceptual error on the part of Saddam Hussein was that Muslim-Arab states would never consider asking for military and political support from outsiders and would not join a political and military coalition with "infidels." Hence he thought he need not fear military steps to evict him from Kuwait. Against the Iraqi armed forces — "fourth largest in the world" — no purely Arab force, singly or combined, could represent a threat. And indeed, if Saudi Arabia had not permitted an international coalition to use its territory as a staging area, no campaign using conventional weapons could have succeeded.

During nearly half a century of Arab endeavors to achieve inter-Arab unity, the basic political and strategic assumption was that the threat to the Arabs originated from the outside, while their defense and protection would come from within, through inter-Arab cooperation. Now came the Kuwaiti crisis and completely dispelled this assumption — it was the threat that came from within, and salvation from the outside.

Linkage with the Arab-Israel conflict

When Saddam Hussein realized the vehemence of the storm he had unleashed, he decided to appear "flexible" and "constructive." Iraq, he asserted, was not the only Middle Eastern country to have seized territory by force. Baghdad would agree to review the Kuwaiti question, if Israel declared itself ready to abandon the territories it had occupied in 1967, and if Syria agreed to withdraw its troops from Lebanon.

This Iraqi pronouncement (made on August 12,1990) created the famous "linkage" that was to become a permanent feature of the crisis — and beyond. Iraq's assessment (or hope) was that customary Arab politics would make it impolitic for any Arab capital to reject or ignore this linkage; Israel for its part would, as a matter of course, refuse. The outrage over the crisis would thus be deflected from Iraq to Israel, pressure on Baghdad to evacuate Kuwait would be turned aside, and eventually Kuwait would remain in Iraq's continued possession.

But nobody was deceived. True, there were politicians in the West who spoke in terms of seeking a solution to all regional problems, with the Israeli-Palestinian issue a high-priority item among them; but linkage as Saddam Hussein had proposed it was universally rejected. It occurred to nobody in the outside world to ask Israel to commit itself to the evacuation of its occupied areas as a condition for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. Indeed, except for Yasir Arafat, no single Arab leader adopted the Iraqi proposal such as it was.

The political line eventually followed was that laid down by US President Bush, who came out against any Iraqi attempt to set conditions of any kind for leaving Kuwait.

Notably, Saddam Hussein never said in so many words that an Israeli withdrawal would lead to an Iraqi evacuation. When questioned on this point he was always evasive, saying no more than that Iraq would agree to "discuss" the future of Kuwait.

An international coalition against Iraq would not be formed

Iraq failed to read the new international map correctly: the map of a world system in which superpower rivalry no longer operated.

The campaign to free Kuwait could not have succeeded without Washington's ability to mobilize broad international support. That support was predicated, in large measure, on the earlier dismantling of the old Eastern Bloc. This also lent new vigor to the UN Security Council, which the Cold War had long paralyzed through the frequent use of the great-power veto.

After the event, President George Bush stated that he would have ordered a military action to be launched even if no operative resolution to that effect had been passed in the Council; but looking back at events, there can be no doubt that he could not have done so without political, military and financial partners. Indeed, it is doubtful whether US public and congressional opinion would have backed unilateral military action by Washington.

The Soviet Union would not stand idly by

Iraqi ignorance of the post-Cold War world produced another mistaken conception: Baghdad evidently clung to the assumption that the Soviet Union would not allow outside forces to attack, let alone defeat, Iraq. Saddam Hussein did speak of the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe as early as February 1990, when he pointed to the Soviet Union's diminished role. But he obviously did not grasp the full impact of the shift. He kept thinking of the international system as being split into blocs and as incapable of arriving at unequivocal, operative decisions. He refused to believe that the Soviet Union no longer had a Middle East policy of its own, and would yield to the United States. He failed to comprehend that what now mattered most to Moscow were domestic concerns, and that western aid (in particular US aid) bad become more important than a forward-looking policy with regard to international disputes. Hence the need for Soviet policy coordination with the United States.

Finally, Soviet statements in the early days of the crisis, particularly those made by Edward Shevardnadze, indicate that Moscow felt a genuine distaste for Iraqi aggression, and considered it unacceptable to world opinion.

The West would be deterred by terrorism and terrorist threats

Saddam Hussein's political style was that of a bully applying extreme terrorist tactics. His assumption was that the world would buckle under and let itself be deterred, not daring to react.

Such bullying tactics included the atrocities in Kuwait; the seizing of thousands of innocent hostages, some to be placed in vital wartime installations to act as human shields; Saddam Hussein's terrifying television appearance with a group of British children from among the hostages; the seizure of foreign embassies; and the threats that allied soldiers would "drown in rivers of blood and arrive home in coffins." Saddam Hussein clearly failed to see that such tactics not only failed to serve his purpose, but actually strengthened the resolve of his opponents to take action against him.

The US would not go to war

The most dangerous of Saddam Hussein's misconceptions held that the United States had not yet overcome the trauma of Vietnam and that it was a democracy in decay, a paper tiger. This was his assumption prior to moving into Kuwait, and his interpretation of messages from Washington that appeared to him to indicate that the US was indifferent to the fate of Kuwait. It remained Saddam Hussein's assessment for most of the months of crisis up to the outbreak of war. The international embargo and the troop concentration were seen in Baghdad as no more than a scare campaign. Washington, so Iraqi opinion asserted, was uninterested in, or incapable of, following up on its preparations with military action. Each time President Bush made a move calculated to allow Saddam Hussein to extricate himself from Kuwait and defuse the crisis (by the meeting of US and Iraqi foreign ministers, for instance, or the proposed summit of the two presidents), Baghdad interpreted it as a sign of weakness, hesitation and unwillingness to take military action.

Most probably, Saddam Hussein's error in this respect simply stemmed from the culture gap. His mindset as an all-powerful, unaccountable personal tyrant made it too hard for him to understand the workings of democracy. He misinterpreted the real weight and significance of popular anti-war demonstrations he saw on television, and of parliamentary debate. They seemed to presage the domestic disintegration of the United States and to prove its weakness.

Apparently it was only shortly before the ultimatum ran out that Iraq realized the seriousness of US intentions. But even then Saddam Hussein believed that Washington might shrink back at the last moment; and, if it did not, that Iraq could not be decisively defeated. In making these assumptions, he was guided by contempt for the American fighting spirit and military competence; and by his belief, first, in Iraq's ability, and that of its armed forces, to hold out, even under harsh punishment, and secondly, in his ability to extract a political victory from a drawn-out war of attrition in which he caused the US heavy casualties. Therefore, intransigence would still pay.

Here Saddam Hussein added insult to injury: he adopted an insulting style that needlessly affronted the American president and people. This offensive personal behavior eventually made it easier for President Bush to mobilize broad popular support for his policy.

Notably, Saddam Hussein was not alone in his low-assessment of US resolve. Many in the West, and in the United States too, were as doubtful as he was of US determination to go to war, and of US military competence should war come after all.

Flexibility after all

Despite his grave errors, Saddam Hussein also took a number of decisions attesting to a measure of flexibility:

• — The first instance was Iraq's brilliant move, early on in the crisis, of total appeasement of Iran. Here Baghdad waived all claims that had served as justification for its 1980 attack on Iran, as well as the few gains with which it had come out of that war eight years later. It thus removed the threat to its eastern flank and laid the ground for measures to partially evade the embargo and, later, for sanctuary in Iran for Iraqi combat aircraft.
• — After using the foreign hostages to make "gestures" to various conciliatory western leaders (Kurt Waldheim, Jesse Jackson, Edward Heath, and others) who were drawn to Baghdad by their plight, Saddam Hussein set them all free and gave up the idea of using them as human shields.
• — Iraq exercised full control over its forces to prevent local initiatives or incidents likely to cause a flare-up. It decided not to resist allied inspection of its tankers and other merchant ships, and even to allow allied detachments to
• board them. Furthermore, Baghdad refrained from a preemptive strike against the allied buildup.

This policy, of course, was predicated on the Iraqi misapprehension of American lack of resolve. But it also contained yet another mistaken concept: that ostensible flexibility, and cynical manipulation of hostages, might drive a wedge between members of the coalition or weaken their determination.

Later oil, when the war was at its peak, Iraq proclaimed its readiness for total withdrawal from Kuwait, hoping thereby to prevent the impending allied ground attack. When this too failed to work, Baghdad eventually signed the humiliating ceasefire terms dictated to it by the United S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Chapter 1. The Gulf War—Main Political and Military Developments
• Part I. Global and Inter-Arab Implications
• Part II. Military Lessons
• Part III. Arab-Israel Peace Process
• Part IV. The Israeli Domestic Scene
• About the Members of the Study Group