AHC: USSR joins the 1st Gulf War Coalition against Iraq

whitecrow

Banned
As the title says. With a POD that doesn’t butterfly away the 1st gulf War, have the U.S.S.R. join the military coalition against Iraq.

How can it be done? Would warmer U.S.-US.S.R. relations do it? Or maybe Soviet Union decides to replace Saddam with someone more amiable to Soviet control and so uses the 1991 War as an excuse to invade Iraq from the north?

What do you think?
 
This is nearly impossible, primarily for Soviet pride and the refusal of the Soviet military to accept fighting with NATO against a major former Soviet proxy.
 

whitecrow

Banned
This is nearly impossible, primarily for Soviet pride and the refusal of the Soviet military to accept fighting with NATO against a major former Soviet proxy.
So what about the idea of using the war as an excuse to replace Saddam with a better, more trustworthy proxy?
 

GarethC

Donor
A sine qua non for the US conquest of Iraq was that the bulk of the foreign contracts for the exploitation of its oilfields had been awarded to French and Russian companies, while US-based firms like Bechtel, Amec, and Halliburton (of which Cheney had been CEO) were forbidden by US law to work for Hussein's Iraq.

If we might have had the Russian work going to BP - perhaps along with BP's takeover of Amoco being unsuccessful - then Russia would be much more inclined to take part in the operation if the award of some of those exploitation contracts was accepted as the reward for their involvement. This would be discouraged by the US oil industry lobby and by the UK, which Wikipedia says contributed 45,000 troops to the initial invasion. While that number sounds high to me, it was far and away the biggest contribution to the effort from any other country, and while I can see the Bush administration stripping an Amoco-less BP of contracts to give them to Halliburton/KBR, I can't see the White House doing so to give them to Gazprom.

The bulk of Iraqi oil is located either in the Kurdish north-west or near Basra on the Gulf coast - and the US would be extremely reluctant to permit significant Russian interests in either place. Giving Russia a port on the Persian Gulf like Basra would be granting an enormous logistical advantage to a strategic competitor, particularly with the difficult relationship with adjacent Iran. Similarly, the importance of the Kurds to the internal issues within Turkey, a vital NATO partner and strategic ally against Russian ambition, would rule out granting Moscow significant influence in the north of Iraq.

So US politics (oil-industry backing for the GOP) is against giving Russia the opportunity to exploit Iraqi oil, and US foreign policy is against giving Russia the influence that would come with the opportunity to exploit Iraqi oil, so unless there is some compelling further reason why the whole campaign could not go ahead without Russian backing, I can't see it working out.
 
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A mistep by Saddam trying to bully the Russians into Vetoing something, Gorby trying to deflect the reactionaries by showing the SU is still a world player and Saddam that clients do what the SU tells them not what they feel like. Gorby trying to get the obvious coup troops out of the country or trying to get foreign currency through Arab subsidies and preserve SU contracts post war.

It needs something internal to the SU to make Gorby stronger vs. the apparat or more fearful of them as diplomatically they were pretty much aligned with the US/UK in the security council.

Its unlikely but not impossible - the immediate impact is likely to be on internal SU politics.
 
What could the Soviets offer in terms of troops?

Additional ships in the Persian Gulf would only cause more crowding and I think their sealift capacity was pretty crappy, so I don't think they could supply for example Third Shock Army (one of their elite formations at the time) to the region.

That leaves airpower and special forces, both of which were already available in abundance. Or is their something I'm missing?
 
What could the Soviets offer in terms of troops?

Additional ships in the Persian Gulf would only cause more crowding and I think their sealift capacity was pretty crappy, so I don't think they could supply for example Third Shock Army (one of their elite formations at the time) to the region.

That leaves airpower and special forces, both of which were already available in abundance. Or is their something I'm missing?

The Tsar Bomba?
 
What could the Soviets offer in terms of troops?

Additional ships in the Persian Gulf would only cause more crowding and I think their sealift capacity was pretty crappy, so I don't think they could supply for example Third Shock Army (one of their elite formations at the time) to the region.

That leaves airpower and special forces, both of which were already available in abundance. Or is their something I'm missing?

Probably a VDV division grouped with the Arab troops/USMC in their direct assault into Kuwait, if they feel fancy maybe an independent tank brigade sealifted in...although that seems a little iffy.

If you want to talk about a "hollow force" the Soviet Army in 1991 was exactly that, so look at the units they were able to deploy in the 90's and that should be a rough guide. I don't think anything other than airborne units is possible, and even if the USSR signed on to the effort, I think they would want to only be involved in the liberation of Kuwait itself.
 
No chance of the Soviets joining
this war. They were eventually prepared to look the other way but only after 6 months diplomacy in the UN. I remember it well.
 
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Anaxagoras

Banned
IIRC (and it was more than twenty years ago), there were Soviet ships in the Persian Gulf enforcing the UN embargo against Iraq in the early days of the crisis, but they left when it became obvious that the Americans were building up for an offensive war rather than simply deterring Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia.
 

whitecrow

Banned
So US politics (oil-industry backing for the GOP) is against giving Russia the opportunity to exploit Iraqi oil, and US foreign policy is against giving Russia the influence that would come with the opportunity to exploit Iraqi oil, so unless there is some compelling further reason why the whole campaign could not go ahead without Russian backing, I can't see it working out.
While that may be true (I have to say, I never knew American oil companies supported the war because they were excluded from doing business in Iraq. I always thought that loosing assets in Kuwait was the main motivator), I don’t think it matters very much. If USSR decides it wants to go after Iraq and makes a public announcement that it is joining the war what can US do about it?
Wasn't the Soviet Union falling apart at this point anyway?
Yes. That's part of the challenge here ;).
 

GarethC

Donor
While that may be true (I have to say, I never knew American oil companies supported the war because they were excluded from doing business in Iraq. I always thought that loosing assets in Kuwait was the main motivator), I don’t think it matters very much.
My reading comprehension was made of fail - I missed that OP was talking about the first Gulf War. Doh!

In 1991, I can't see it.

Russia wants Iran as a client-state - meddling in Iraq will only cause concern.

Russia wants to keep selling weapons to Iraq - invading will not help their business case.

Russia wants the war to cost the US a lot of money, and does not want to spend its own currency in reducing that burden.

Russia wants Israel distanced from the US; reducing the threat to Israel, and the threat of consequences should Israel go off-piste after a Scud attack, will not further that goal.

2 years after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and with the splitting off of the other SSRs' militaries, Russia's army was barely capable of such an expedition, and to do so reliant on either Iran or Turkey for supply would be rank folly.

Maybe the naval infantry could have done an amphibious landing, but IIRC, the sealift wasn't there at the time either. The ships were unmaintained and the sailors were unpaid.
 
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