Persian Gulf War

Persian Gulf War (1991).On 1 August 1990, Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait and proclaimed it a province of Iraq. This action led to the Persian Gulf War, which had two major phases. The first, “Desert Shield,” was a largely defensive operation aimed at protecting Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf, and employing United Nations (UN) economic sanctions to force Iraq out of Kuwait. In the second phase, known as “Desert Storm,” a UN coalition commanded by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf of the U.S. Army expelled the Iraqi forces from Kuwait. General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played a key role in planning the war's strategy.

Saddam Hussein almost certainly saw the annexation of oil‐rich Kuwait as a means of solving Iraq's economic problems and counted on the world's unwillingness to mount any effective opposition. Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States supported Kuwait's government in exile, however, and President George Bush ordered U.S. military forces to the Gulf on 7 August. Japan, Britain, France, most other European nations, and the Soviet Union condemned the invasion, as did key Arab states like Algeria, Egypt, and Syria. Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), however, supported Iraq. On 29 November, the United States obtained a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of “all necessary means” if Iraq did not withdraw by 15 January 1991.

In “Desert Shield,” the United States deployed some 527,000 personnel, 100 naval vessels, 2,000 tanks, 1,800 fixed‐wing aircraft, and 1,700 helicopters. Britain deployed 43,000 troops, and France, 16,000, each with supporting tanks, combat aircraft, and other military hardware. Of the Arab states, Saudi Arabia deployed 50,000 troops; Egypt, 30,200; and Syria, 14,000. Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) each deployed a significant portion of their small forces.

Iraq responded by building up its military forces in Kuwait to 336,000 men and some 9,000 battle tanks, other armored vehicles, and major artillery weapons. Despite UN economic sanctions and diplomatic efforts, Iraq further expanded its military capabilities in Kuwait and along its border with Saudi Arabia.

The air‐war phase of “Desert Storm” began on 17 January 1991 when the United States and its coalition allies launched devastating attacks on Iraqi command‐and‐control facilities, communications systems, air bases, and land‐based air defenses. U.S. sea‐launched cruise missiles and F‐117 stealth aircraft quickly demonstrated that they could attack even heavily defended targets like Baghdad, Iraq's capital. Within three days, U.S., British, and Saudi fighters had established near air superiority. Over the next month, UN coalition aircraft went after Iraqi armor and artillery in Kuwait and attacked Iraq's forward defenses; elite Republican Guard units; air bases and sheltered aircraft; hardened command‐and‐control facilities; military supply depots; and biological, chemical, and nuclear warfare installations.

Iraq retaliated by launching modified Scud missiles against targets in Saudi Arabia and Israel, but these strikes did not alter the course of the war. Iraqi ground forces were struck by more than 40,000 air sorties, causing 84,000 Iraqis to desert and destroying 1,385 tanks, 930 other armored vehicles, and 1,155 artillery pieces. The air attacks also severely reduced the flow of supplies to Iraqi ground forces in Kuwait and heavily damaged Iraq's military command and communications centers, ammunition storage sites, naval vessels, and electric‐power‐generating capability.

The land offensive to liberate Kuwait began on 24 February. UN land forces attacked along a broad front from the Persian Gulf to the Iraqi‐Saudi border. This attack had two principal thrusts: a highly mobile “left hook” around and through Iraqi positions in western Kuwait and a move straight through Iraq's defenses along the Kuwaiti border. While some Republican Guard units fought well, many Iraqi troops, poorly trained conscripts with low morale and little motivation, fled after putting up brief resistance; others surrendered. As a result, UN forces reached their objectives in Kuwait in half the time originally planned.

By 26 February, coalition land forces were in Kuwait City, and U.S. forces had advanced to positions in southern Iraq. These nighttime advances had taken place despite heavy rain, mud, and weather problems that hampered air support. Baghdad announced on 26 February that all Iraqi forces would withdraw from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660. Military operations ended on 28 February.

The Persian Gulf War achieved all of the United Nations' original objectives, principally the restoration of Kuwait. Iraqi casualties totaled 25,000 to 65,000. In contrast, UN forces lost fewer than 200 personnel, excluding losses to friendly fire, plus four tanks and nine other armored vehicles. The conflict demonstrated the importance of joint operations, high‐tempo air and armored operations, precision‐strike systems, night and all‐weather warfare capabilities, and sophisticated electronic warfare and command‐and‐control capabilities.

President Bush's mobilization of a broad anti‐Iraq coalition and his rallying of public opinion behind the war represented the high point of his presidency, producing a spike of popularity. Gulf War veterans returned to heroes' welcomes. The Pentagon, having learned in the Vietnam War the power of the media to shape home‐front perceptions, strictly controlled journalistic coverage of the Gulf War. Most Americans experienced the conflict through fleeting television images of bombing raids and streaking missiles.

The Gulf War did not, however, bring stability to the region or drive Saddam Hussein from power. These failures led many observers to argue that the United Nations should have expanded its objectives and invaded Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime. Others point out, however, that this might have caused an Iraqi civil war, led to bloody urban combat, or forced a long UN occupation of a sovereign state.

After the war, U.S. and British aircraft enforced UN no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq to protect the Kurdish and Shiite communities from Saddam Hussein's brutal repression; the UN enforced sanctions on Iraq's oil exports; and UN inspectors monitored the dismantling of Saddam's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. Tensions remained high amid suspicions that the regime was concealing its weapons programs and as U.S. and British planes bombed Iraqi anti-aircraft installations that fired on planes enforcing the no-fly restrictions.

Beginning in 2001, key figures in the George W. Bush administration pushed for a more aggressive policy to complete the “unfinished business” of the Persian Gulf War. These pressures intensified after the attacks of September 11, 2001, despite the lack of evidence linking Saddam to the attacks. The Iraq War of 2003 did, indeed, result in Saddam's overthrow, but many of the potential after-effects that had restrained the first Bush administration from pursuing the Persian Gulf War into Iraq did, in fact, occur.
See also Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with the Middle East; Military, The; Post–Cold War Era.

Bibliography

H. Norman Schwarzkopf , It Doesn't Take a Hero, 1992.
U.S. Department of Defense , Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress, 1992.
Anthony H. Cordesman , After the Storm: The Changing Military Balance in the Middle East, 1993.
U.S. AirForce , Gulf War Power Survey, ed. Eliot Cohen, 1993.
U.S. Army , Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War, directed by Robert H. Scales, 1993.

Anthony H. Cordesman

; Updated by

Paul S. Boyer