Maybe not as far-fetched as it sounds.
Alan Munro's book "Arab Storm" is the background and his analysis is rather comprehensive.
Iraq was not in a good shape after the Iran war.
Kuwait had a long tradition of being a greedy lot and not adhering to any agreements. They were not particular well-liked by any of the other Arab nations.
The one nation really counting was Saudi, where one of the Saudi rulers said "Kuwait think there are three super powers, USSR. US and Kuwait". And it was not a joke.
A few quotes and edited pieces from Munro:
"""""""""""""""
"Kuwait opened diplomatic reltions with the eastern bloc at a time when their Gulf partners abstained from such contacts"
Kuwait was not a signatory to the GCC defence apct at the time of the invasion
In 1990 Kuwait produced above their oil quota in defiance of OPEC. This irritated Saudi immensely and made Saddam very angry.
Kuwait made a point of publicly recording the $12 bn Iraqi debt in their IMF statistics for 1990. THAT is public humiliation of the first order.
The Arab summit in Amman in February 1990 (ACC meeting), comprised Egypt, Jordan and Yemen.
Saddam realised thta he had to have Saudi on his side; hence his attention to King Fahd.
The Arab League summit in May 1990 was engineered to put Saddam as the leader of the Arab world and to give him a free hand in terms of Kuwait.
King Fahd tried to get the meeting postponed and tried to get Mubarak in on it as well.
King Fahd and Mubarak worked hard at the summit to ward off the mroe outrageous Iraqi things (Palestine, The West, the super gun, etc).
""""""""""""""""""""""""
In essence, Saddam managed to get everybody rather apprehensive of what he wanted to do and to divert the attention away from real grievances against Kuwait towards his designs on the other Arab nations.
In short: It did not do him any good. Saudi got more and more scared of it all. Saudi strated to fear Saddam might have an invasion of Saudi in the book as well. Or at least some of the other GCC nations.
What IF Saddam had kept the focus on Kuwait and elaborated on the Kuwait behaviour? And not threatened Saudi.
Could he have managed to get a blank cheque from the other nations in the region?
Could they have sanctioned his invasion? What could US do if Saudi had ok'd Saddam?
How would the world look like?
Ivan
Alan Munro's book "Arab Storm" is the background and his analysis is rather comprehensive.
Iraq was not in a good shape after the Iran war.
Kuwait had a long tradition of being a greedy lot and not adhering to any agreements. They were not particular well-liked by any of the other Arab nations.
The one nation really counting was Saudi, where one of the Saudi rulers said "Kuwait think there are three super powers, USSR. US and Kuwait". And it was not a joke.
A few quotes and edited pieces from Munro:
"""""""""""""""
"Kuwait opened diplomatic reltions with the eastern bloc at a time when their Gulf partners abstained from such contacts"
Kuwait was not a signatory to the GCC defence apct at the time of the invasion
In 1990 Kuwait produced above their oil quota in defiance of OPEC. This irritated Saudi immensely and made Saddam very angry.
Kuwait made a point of publicly recording the $12 bn Iraqi debt in their IMF statistics for 1990. THAT is public humiliation of the first order.
The Arab summit in Amman in February 1990 (ACC meeting), comprised Egypt, Jordan and Yemen.
Saddam realised thta he had to have Saudi on his side; hence his attention to King Fahd.
The Arab League summit in May 1990 was engineered to put Saddam as the leader of the Arab world and to give him a free hand in terms of Kuwait.
King Fahd tried to get the meeting postponed and tried to get Mubarak in on it as well.
King Fahd and Mubarak worked hard at the summit to ward off the mroe outrageous Iraqi things (Palestine, The West, the super gun, etc).
""""""""""""""""""""""""
In essence, Saddam managed to get everybody rather apprehensive of what he wanted to do and to divert the attention away from real grievances against Kuwait towards his designs on the other Arab nations.
In short: It did not do him any good. Saudi got more and more scared of it all. Saudi strated to fear Saddam might have an invasion of Saudi in the book as well. Or at least some of the other GCC nations.
What IF Saddam had kept the focus on Kuwait and elaborated on the Kuwait behaviour? And not threatened Saudi.
Could he have managed to get a blank cheque from the other nations in the region?
Could they have sanctioned his invasion? What could US do if Saudi had ok'd Saddam?
How would the world look like?
Ivan