Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Nineties (150 page)

The ending of the Cold War not only sharply diminished the thermonuclear threat. It also, for the first time, made it possible for the United Nations Security Council to function in the way its creators intended, as an instrument to deal quickly and effectively with aggression. The occasion arose on 2 August 1990 when, without warning, Iraqi forces invaded and occupied Kuwait in the course of
a single day. As we have already noted, Iraq had built up immense armed forces, with some help from the United States and Britain, but chiefly through Soviet Russia, China, France and (in specialist technical fields) West Germany. The assault was not without a prolegomenon. Iraq not only had a border dispute with Kuwait, involving part of one of its oilfields, but a much larger claim that the entire country was, in terms of the old Ottoman administrative divisions, Iraq’s ‘lost province’. This had no historical basis, since Kuwait had been internationally recognized as a separate entity long before Iraq had been put together by the British as a League of Nations mandate in 1920–2. But it was part of Saddam Hussein’s vision of a resurrected Greater Babylonia; that was why he had acquired such immense armed forces. A further grievance against Kuwait was that it had lent him immense sums, to finance his eight-year war against Iran, and was now demanding repayment of the capital, or at least some interest. Saddam also accused all the Gulf states (17 July 1990) of ‘conspiring with the United States’ to cut the price of crude oil and ‘stabbing Iraq in the back with a political dagger’. Five days later he began to move troops and armour toward the border. On 27 July, under Iraqi pressure, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (
OPEC
) did in fact raise the so-called target price for oil to $21 a barrel. The same day, however, the US Senate ended farm credits for Iraq and prohibited any further transfers of military technology. By 31 July some 100,000 Iraqi troops were on the Kuwait border, and talks between Iraqi and Kuwaiti plenipotentiaries, held in Jeddah the same day, broke down after two hours. At the time it was widely reported that the American ambassador in Baghdad, in conversation with Saddam Hussein, had failed to warn him that an occupation of Kuwait would be regarded by Washington as a threat to America’s vital interests; but this was denied in evidence before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in March 1991.
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One thing is clear, however: there was a failure of US (and British) intelligence, and the actual invasion came as a surprise and a shock.

By a stroke of good fortune, however, this act of aggression coincided with an international meeting in Aspen, Colorado, attended by, among others, Margaret Thatcher. She was thus able to meet President Bush immediately. Together they determined on a joint Anglo-American approach which remained solid throughout the many anxious months of diplomacy and military build-up which followed, and the actual hostilities. In fact at no time since the Second World War had the ‘special relationship’ between the Anglo-Saxon powers (as de Gaulle used to call them caustically) functioned so successfully.

The first Allied priority was to prevent Saddam invading Saudi Arabia, and indeed rolling south to absorb all the rich oil states of the Gulf. With such resources, it was believed, Iraq could, within a few years, acquire not only nuclear weapons but the means to deliver them over immense distances, thus threatening Europe (and possibly even the United States) as well as Israel and other Middle East countries. It was at this point that the new self-confidence created among the civilized Western powers by the events of the 1980s, including the successful conduct of the Falklands campaign, the liberation of Grenada, the Libyan raid and the intervention in Panama, paid handsome dividends. George Bush and Margaret Thatcher determined from the start not merely to protect Saudi Arabia by force, but to liberate Kuwait too, whatever it cost. Moreover, they agreed to proceed at every stage with the full backing of the UN Security Council and, following its resolutions, to build up the most broadly based international force possible, including Arab states.

The involvement of the UN, which would have been impossible so long as the Cold War continued, was the best possible proof that it had in fact ended. Soviet Russia also cooperated with the Anglo-American diplomatic effort throughout, in private even more wholeheartedly than in public. It was, of course, influenced by self-interest. On the one hand, its military investment in Iraq was enormous (including over 1,000 technicians and advisers), and it wished to avoid an armed conflict if possible; hence it stressed throughout the desirability of a non-violent solution. On the other hand, its need for American financial and economic assistance was becoming daily more pressing, and this inclined Moscow to follow the American lead in the last resort and to get the Gulf problem disposed of as quickly as possible.

Hence, not without some argument and difficulty, the Security Council complied with the overall Anglo-American strategy. On 2 August Security Council Resolution 660 condemned the invasion and demanded an unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces. The phrase was reinforced by a statement from Bush: the United States, he insisted, required ‘the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait’. On 6 August, sc Resolution 661 imposed a trade embargo on Iraq. On 9 August,
SCR
662 ruled that Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait, announced in Baghdad, was unlawful, null and void. On 18 August,
SCR
664 rescinded Iraq’s order closing down diplomatic missions in Kuwait and demanded the right of all foreign nationals to leave. On 25 August the Security Council went an important step further and authorized the use of force to make sanctions work. Finally, on 29 November,
SCR
678 authorized ‘all necessary means’ to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait if they had not left by a deadline fixed at midnight on 15 January 1991. The text of 678 also permitted steps to be taken to ensure peace and stability in the area. All these resolutions, of which the last was by far the most important, were passed with the agreement of the five permanent members of the Security Council (two Marxist non-permanent members, Cuba and Yemen, voted against certain resolutions, but had no power of veto). The resolutions were negotiated beforehand with Russia, and indeed on 19 November George Bush and Gorbachev met privately in Paris to discuss the whole strategy in detail. Russia did not contribute to the Allied forces building up in the Gulf, but it was a consenting party to their use, and it actively assisted the process of
UN
authorization; it also privately provided various forms of military intelligence about the capability, siting and command-structures of Iraqi weapons systems which Russia had itself supplied to Saddam’s forces. The operation was thus the first positive result of the new relationship between the former Cold War powers.
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The Gulf War was able to demonstrate how effective the Security Council could be in resisting an aggressor and forcing him to disgorge, providing that – and this was a critical qualification – the United States, as the democratic superpower, and its leading allies, such as Britain, were willing to discharge their responsibilities to the
UN
Charter. The crisis was also the first one to be conducted, and indeed fought, entirely in front of the
TV
cameras, with many networks, such as the US-based Cable News Network, and the British-based Sky, providing twenty-four-hour coverage. Public opinion, therefore, played a prominent part throughout, and the American government, in the light of the bitter Vietnam experience, had to be careful to carry opinion with it in everything that was done. In fact the polls showed American voters moving steadily towards full backing of a forceful ejection of the Iraqi aggressor, and though Bush secured only a narrow majority in the Senate authorizing him to use force, his actions were later overwhelmingly endorsed by both Houses of Congress and by poll ratings sometimes as high as 90 per cent. British opinion was always behind the original Thatcher determination (wholly endorsed by her successor John Major) by large majorities (75–80 per cent). The ‘special relationship’ was thus able to supply the core of the enormous expeditional force which was assembled in the Gulf between August 1990 and January 1991 with the approval of the American and British electorates. French opinion also favoured forceful intervention; the French government was less enthusiastic, and indeed almost until the last moment President Mitterrand tried to play a lone game of
negotiations with the Iraqi dictator, though to no purpose; and in the end the French made a major contribution both to the Allied force and to its success. Opinion in other Western countries varied, though most made some contribution. West Germany and Japan claimed they were precluded from sending their armed forces by constitutional limitations, but they provided funds to finance the Allied war effort. By skilful diplomacy, the Anglo-Saxon powers also secured a large Arab military participation, not only by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait itself and other Gulf states, but by Egypt and Syria. Saddam Hussein’s efforts to reach over the heads of hostile Arab governments and arouse their peoples to his defence met little success. Nor did his hasty signature of a final peace agreement with Iran, on 15 August, by which he surrendered all the meagre territorial gains he had acquired at such cost in eight years of fighting, bring him any support from that direction. Hence the twenty-eight-strong Allied coalition which eventually participated in reversing the Iraqi aggression represented a large cross-section of the world community, and this too was a significant precedent and a major strengthening of the UN’s authority.
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The entire diplomatic-military exercise might still have foundered in doubt and acrimony if the operation itself, code-named Desert Storm, had proved a long and costly affair. Public support, especially in the United States, might have been eroded, and the Arab part of the coalition might have unravelled if Saddam had been able to register any major successes. As it was, he attempted to undermine the support of Arab governments for the US-led coalition by launching numerous missile attacks on Israeli cities, inflicting some casualties on civilians. He hoped to provoke an Israeli military response, and so be able to portray the Egyptian, Saudi and Syrian governments as Israel’s
de facto
allies. But Israel wisely held its hand, assisted by the prompt supply of US anti-missile Patriot rockets, which proved remarkably effective; so the Iraqi tactic failed. Desert Storm itself was planned with great care and executed with brilliant success. The Commander-in-Chief, General Norman Schwarzkopf, proved himself not merely an outstanding military supremo in directing one of the most complex international campaigns in history, involving sea, land and air forces, but showed himself well aware of the TV and public-opinion dimension of the operation. Indeed he proved himself an accomplished performer in front of the cameras at his regular briefings. His summary of Allied strategy, after the campaign was completed, immediately became a TV classic: it was as if one had watched the Duke of Wellington describing the Battle of Waterloo the day after it took place.

The Allied air assault began almost immediately after the 15
January deadline was reached and continued remorselessly up to and beyond the date set for the ground offensive on 24 February. The aim was to use precision weapons, involving the latest military technology (the Stealth bomber, Cruises, so-called ‘Smart’ bombs and laser guidance systems, and infra-red night-bombing equipment) to pinpoint identified military targets, avoid civilian areas and minimize non-military casualties. This aim largely succeeded; civilian casualties were minimal, and this helped the Allies to win the media war at home, as well as the actual one. Targeting proceeded systematically from command-and-control systems, radar and missile sites, airfields and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons establishments, to all systems of communications. Thence it spread to the pinpointing and carpet-bombing of Iraqi ground forces deployed in Kuwait and southern Iraq. The Iraqi air force was either destroyed or opted out of the combat at an early stage, and this greatly assisted the Allied air offensive, which eventually consisted of nearly 140,000 sorties.

The object was to win the war, in so far as it was possible, by the use of air power, thus minimizing Allied ground casualties. The strategy proved, in the event, more successful than even Schwarzkopf and his advisers, chief of whom was the Commander of British Forces Middle East, General Sir Peter de la Billière, had dared to hope. The land offensive, launched on 24 February, involved an elaborate deception plan, which worked. Iraqi resistance, thanks to the sustained air offensive, was lighter than expected, and by 28 February, forty out of forty-two Iraqi divisions in the war zone had been destroyed or rendered ineffective. Preliminary figures indicated that the Iraqis had lost 50,000 killed and 175,000 missing or captured. Allied casualties were 166 dead, 207 wounded and 106 missing or captured.
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Anxious not to exceed the terms of the
UN
mandate, and unwilling to go on to Baghdad and get dragged into Iraqi internal politics, Bush ordered a temporary cease fire on 28 February, provided Iraq accepted all Allied conditions, which Saddam agreed to do three days later. He himself was shortly involved in a struggle to retain power against his numerous internal enemies, and allied troops were obliged to move into northern Iraq to protect the Kurds from his vengeance. Thus an unprovoked aggression was decisively reversed by firm leadership from the civilized powers, within the strict framework of the United Nations, and in full accordance with international law. This augured well for the future of collective security, not merely throughout the 1990s but in the coming twenty-first century, and suggested that some, at least, of the lessons of the twentieth century were at last being learned.

The cost, however, was heavy in some ways; Iraq’s infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed, and Saddam himself had looted and wrecked much of Kuwait’s. The bills ran into many hundreds of billions of dollars though, by one of those ironies of modernity, the task of rebuilding the two countries was to act as a stimulant to Western economies and help to pull them out of recession. Saddam, however, in his rage and frustration, had committed two huge crimes, not just against Kuwait but against all humanity. He had released millions of tons of crude oil into the Gulf, which slowly drifted southwards and polluted a huge area of sea, seabed and coast; and he had set fire to about five hundred oil wells in the vast Kuwaiti fields. At the end of March 1991, it was calculated it would take at least two years to extinguish them, and in the meantime the largest man-made act of air pollution in world history would continue.