Saddam Hussein Does Not Invade Kuwait

[Xenophonte]

A thing that closely related to non Invasion of Kuwait /no Gulf War, scenario and that, I believe, that should be remarked. It's that it was a heavily televised war with both the American Media as the European ones focusing on it.
Resulting on a high impact media coverage that influenced both to the same Media corporations and their way to cover future events/wars so as well as to the millions of viewers, watching it from their homes/works, perceptions and opinions from both the US military cappabilities, as from the war on itself...
Cause both the Media coverage of it, even with the Vietnam war precedent, the technological advances had allowed to bring the coverage of that war and as it was fought, to an unprecedented level, to millions of Americans homes and (at certain extent, at least) to the rest of the world.
So, if not butterflied would perhaps be possible that instead to internationalize both their (news) programing/editorial, they would keep their mostly American perspective, thus 'd the CNN 'd have a harder and longer time to be in position to get the such preeminent position.Cause, it was key to allow it, both to become a household brand at global level so as well as to turn its International division, into the worldwide default option, for so many years, in what respect to live coverage and analysis of the top news events and/or breaking news...
Also, IIRC the Gulf War and the US Army relation with the Media, so as the way that the US Govt and the Army provided info, to Media covering it, either in the US or in the terrain was quite new and helped to establish the way that the US Govt would do so in the future...

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

He actually does. His whole credibility came from him positioning himself as a great Arab leader, the heir to Nasser who would make Iraq a world power. How would it look if his legacy was to leave a wrecked country?

Iraq was the third economy in the Middle East until Saddam took power, the Iran-Iraq and Gulf War destroyed Iraq. Saddam clearly didn't care much about the well-being of his people

 

[starman]

If we are talking about 1990, then the only option facing Iraq if not a Kuwaiti adventure would be economic catastrophe.

I dunnoo…. in negotiations prior to the 1990 invasion the Kuwaitis offered Iraq $10 billion in compensation for slant drilling. Possibly due to a misinterpretation of Glaspie, Saddam decided he could be more ambitious.

 

[I lurk therefore I am]

No invasion of Kuwait could well butterfly away the rise of global terrorism, Al Qaida and 9/11.

Up until 91, AQ was just a small group doing logistics and recruitment for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bin Laden approached the Saudi Government and offered to help drive the Iraqis out. The Saudis told him where to go and called the US instead.

Having the armies of the unbelievers deployed to the land of the two holy Mosques (and being rebuffed by the Saudi Government) caused Bin Laden to really lose his shit and, with Al Zawahiri, create AQ's main manifesto to overthrow the rulers of the Muslim world and replace them with "proper" Muslims. But to do that, first he needed to remove Western Influence from the Muslim world....

Take away the invasion of Kuwait, and you change Sunni Islamic extremism as we know it today completely. It may well still exist, but far more localised, rather than the global movement it is today. You also take away Iraq 2, and AQ in Iraq joining up with ex-Ba'athists to form ISIS.

Edit: Also, no 9/11 means no invasion of Afghanistan and much less Islamophobia in the West. The world will be a very different place.

 

[DCC1966]

USA threw money at all sorts of South American leaders with the only qualification being "does he hate Castro"

Who was a cats paw for the Soviet Union, which was an existential threat to the US. Iran is a threat, but not an existential threat, so the US can afford to be pickier about its proxies.

Consider that Nicaragua is Sandinista again, and the US does not care. (Even when the Sandinistas massacre student protestors.)

 

[rfmcdonald]

Iraq was the third economy in the Middle East until Saddam took power, the Iran-Iraq and Gulf War destroyed Iraq. Saddam clearly didn't care much about the well-being of his people

That is the wrong way to view it. Yes, of course he caused huge suffering, but he did legitimately imagine that he would be able to make Iraq a real power. He was incompetent but that is a separate issue.

I dunnoo…. in negotiations prior to the 1990 invasion the Kuwaitis offered Iraq $10 billion in compensation for slant drilling. Possibly due to a misinterpretation of Glaspie, Saddam decided he could be more ambitious.

$10 billion would not begin to cover the debt, which was close to $40 billion to the Gulf States alone.

https://www.axios.com/2020/01/02/iraq-debt-saga

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1990/08/09/iraq-owed-up-to-79-billion-to-foreigners/107a73d4-5ef0-4da1-905d-04dbd2210662/

The debt crisis was solved only by a post-invasion program of debt forgiveness. There was no obvious route before that.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

That is the wrong way to view it. Yes, of course he caused huge suffering, but he did legitimately imagine that he would be able to make Iraq a real power. He was incompetent but that is a separate issue.

The country was completely wrecked after the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War only worsened his situation and yet he still remained in power until the War on Terror so it doesn't seem to me like he needs that legitimacy.

 

[raharris1973]

No invasion of Kuwait could well butterfly away the rise of global terrorism, Al Qaida and 9/11.

Up until 91, AQ was just a small group doing logistics and recruitment for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bin Laden approached the Saudi Government and offered to help drive the Iraqis out. The Saudis told him where to go and called the US instead.

Having the armies of the unbelievers deployed to the land of the two holy Mosques (and being rebuffed by the Saudi Government) caused Bin Laden to really lose his shit and, with Al Zawahiri, create AQ's main manifesto to overthrow the rulers of the Muslim world and replace them with "proper" Muslims. But to do that, first he needed to remove Western Influence from the Muslim world....

Take away the invasion of Kuwait, and you change Sunni Islamic extremism as we know it today completely. It may well still exist, but far more localised, rather than the global movement it is today. You also take away Iraq 2, and AQ in Iraq joining up with ex-Ba'athists to form ISIS.

Edit: Also, no 9/11 means no invasion of Afghanistan and much less Islamophobia in the West. The world will be a very different place.

Yes, this is a big deal. The broader consequences of all this are what I was getting at in post #16, at length....probably at excessive length

 

[rfmcdonald]

The country was completely wrecked after the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War only worsened his situation and yet he still remained in power until the War on Terror so it doesn't seem to me like he needs that legitimacy.

Saddam retained that position of prominence, despite his many failures as a leader, precisely because he was coasting on his proclaimed record and Iraq's prior successes. He was a persistent threat despite that.

He was a monstrous failure as a leader, but I think it is a mistake to understand him only as that. He had huge goals, goals which resonated with the masses.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

Saddam retained that position of prominence, despite his many failures as a leader, precisely because he was coasting on his proclaimed record and Iraq's prior successes. He was a persistent threat despite that.

He was a monstrous failure as a leader, but I think it is a mistake to understand him only as that. He had huge goals, goals which resonated with the masses.

Well he can claim his "successes" even better if he didn't get destroyed by the US in the Gulf War, no?

 

[Reggieperrin]

The country was completely wrecked after the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War only worsened his situation and yet he still remained in power until the War on Terror so it doesn't seem to me like he needs that legitimacy.

Well he can claim his "successes" even better if he didn't get destroyed by the US in the Gulf War, no?

That Saddam afterwards managed to hang on as the scariest rat in the shithouse doesn’t have much relevance to his decision making at the time he was trying to keep his status as one of the Big Bosses of the Middle East.

He was making a play to get back to the champagne and caviar days of the late seventies because he didn’t want to be in charge of a broke country. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have stayed in charge of Broke Iraq, not even that he was particularly worried about staying in charge, but that’s not how those kinds of people think.

He was Saddam, he was going to be a rich dictator not a poor one, so Kuwait, the US & Saudis were going to fold.

Just like how he was going to be the man who remade Greater Iraq, so of course the Iranians were going to fold.

Limited ambition, humility, and low-risk decision making are not how you get from being a nobody to Supreme Mustache of The Arab Nation or whatever.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

That Saddam afterwards managed to hang on as the scariest rat in the shithouse doesn’t have much relevance to his decision making at the time he was trying to keep his status as one of the Big Bosses of the Middle East.

He was making a play to get back to the champagne and caviar days of the late seventies because he didn’t want to be in charge of a broke country. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have stayed in charge of Broke Iraq, not even that he was particularly worried about staying in charge, but that’s not how those kinds of people think.

He was Saddam, he was going to be a rich dictator not a poor one, so Kuwait, the US & Saudis were going to fold.

Just like how he was going to be the man who remade Greater Iraq, so of course the Iranians were going to fold.

Limited ambition, humility, and low-risk decision making are not how you get from being a nobody to Supreme Mustache of The Arab Nation or whatever.

That doesn't mean he had to invade Kuwait, just that it was quite likely for him to do so; he still could've done otherwise.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Whoever the Democrats run 1992, they won't have much to legitimately criticize George H. W. Bush on foreign policy. Things are going well on the Eastern Bloc/Soviet front, it's disintegrating without the world blowing up. Critics can say Bush's policy is over-cautious and reactive, but that's just blather when things are going your way. Old historic complaints about support for right-wing Latin American and Asian dictators won't have any punch because those areas are going through a peak wave of democratization too. What would connect a bit better are criticisms that the Bush Administration is leaving the Chinese Communist Party unaccountable for the Tiananmen Massacre and too cozy with the regime, sending Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor, there too soon after the massacre.

But mainly, the Democratic focus would be that Bush has not attended to overdue domestic reforms that need doing, bringing back jobs, boosting employment, and taming the budget deficit.

Of course for a lot of voters, domestic policy is the main concern most of the time. There won't be much to attack him on foreign policy but they can still talk about needed reforms.

Both Iraq *and* Iran needed reconstruction revenue and wanted prices to go up.

It should be noted that Saudia Arabia was the only OPEC member who didn't cheat on their production quotas, staying at the agreed upon level until everyone else (including Iraq and Kuwait) violated their quotas.

$10 billion would not begin to cover the debt, which was close to $40 billion to the Gulf States alone.

$10 billion from Kuwait plus whatever he can get from an intact economy is better than nothing, a bunch of American sanctions, and a ruined agricultural and tourist sector. Granted Iraq is a petrolstate, but still... You can't seriously be arguing that doing nothing would be worse than invading Kuwait.

 

[rfmcdonald]

$10 billion from Kuwait plus whatever he can get from an intact economy is better than nothing, a bunch of American sanctions, and a ruined agricultural and tourist sector.

80% of infinity is still infinity.

Given how dysfunctional the non-oil sectors of the Iraqi economy war, since understandably no one in business wanted to make big decisions in case they got purged, counting on agriculture or tourism to replace oil would be a terrible idea. Hell, even if he was a normal leader, you would still have Dutch disease. (But then, if he was a normal leader, you would not have had the war.)

Granted Iraq is a petrolstate, but still... You can't seriously be arguing that doing nothing would be worse than invading Kuwait.

From the perspectives of Saddam, it very much would be. That it was a direct consequence of the bloody choices he made, including an attempt to conquer Iran and campaigns of domestic suppression that reached the level of genocide, just makes it tragic.

Saddam was a terrible leader.

If he was somehow deterred from invading Kuwait, then economically the 1990s might not look that different. Instead of a disastrous war and international sanctions, you would have a debt default and a dark path forward. Think of something like Venezuela without that country's positive past of peace and investments in infrastructure and pluralism.

 

[CalBear]

Who was a cats paw for the Soviet Union, which was an existential threat to the US. Iran is a threat, but not an existential threat, so the US can afford to be pickier about its proxies.

Consider that Nicaragua is Sandinista again, and the US does not care. (Even when the Sandinistas massacre student protestors.)

DO NOT drag current political matters outside of Chat.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

DO NOT drag current political matters outside of Chat.

Isn't Soviet Union like... not current? Anything taking place during Biden administration, that's current. I'd also argue anything from the past 3 (Trump, Obama, and Bush) might be too close to home. But Soviet Union is kind of not current isn't it?

 

[CalBear]

Isn't Soviet Union like... not current? Anything taking place during Biden administration, that's current. I'd also argue anything from the past 3 (Trump, Obama, and Bush) might be too close to home. But Soviet Union is kind of not current isn't it?

Read the post that I responded to, specifc the last sentence.

 

[raharris1973]

Alright, let's keep current politics out, and stop arguing over the basic premise of whether Saddam *can* restrain himself from invading Kuwait.

I think that @EasternRomanEmpire's and @Alex Zetsu's attempts to argue it would be easy, or seen as cost-free or optimal (even though with hindsight, it would have been) are provoking a continuation of the argument by the others on why invading Kuwait to grab its wealth seemed like an attractive option and a high-reward, low or medium risk gamble.

It is not a productive discussion anymore.

On the one hand, invading Kuwait was very much, "in character" for Saddam's personality and the behavior's that got him to where he was in life, and a had a certain logic based on his country's objective circumstances in 1990, and he was not getting loud or consistent deterrent advance signals indicating a huge downside risk.

On the other hand, if he invades Kuwait, then we don't have a scenario.

So, if we want a scenario to explore, and I think we do, we need a solution, that involves probably more than Kuwaiti (and other GCC) reasonableness on debt and ending slant-drilling, and minor compromises on slant-drilling, but also some heavy-duty behind the scenes military posturing and tough talk to Iraq from multiple countries (Washington *and* Moscow), or Saddam dying and his sons being preoccupied with succession matters for awhile, or some other distractions. Pick one or more things that impresses Saddam with downside risk, without pushing him to desperately advance, and then you can have your further discussion of consequences.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

So, if we want a scenario to explore, and I think we do, we need a solution, that involves probably more than Kuwaiti (and other GCC) reasonableness on debt and ending slant-drilling, and minor compromises on slant-drilling, but also some heavy-duty behind the scenes military posturing and tough talk to Iraq from multiple countries (Washington *and* Moscow), or Saddam dying and his sons being preoccupied with succession matters for awhile, or some other distractions. Pick one or more things that impresses Saddam with downside risk, without pushing him to desperately advance, and then you can have your further discussion of consequences.

Gorbachev is never going to use force.

 

[raharris1973]

Gorbachev is never going to use force.

He doesn't have to, he can just talk to Saddam about how *his* using force is unacceptable, and have some Soviet Generals or Admirals help deliver the message.