A balance of power is defined as a situation in which the nations of the world have roughly equal power. A hyperpower is defined as a country which dominates world affairs, a nation which could be described as the most powerful country in the world. In a world in which there is a hyperpower, there is no balance of power, because only one country has most of the power. Throughout all of history, there was never a situation in which there was one nation which a nation could be described as a “hyperpower”. Yet following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War many believed that the United States will be the sole superpower. This seemed to make sense at the time. With the Soviet Union liberalizing, what other country could rival the US in strength? Some thought Japan, because of its economic growth. However, seeing as how Japan had a third of America’s total population it could not fully compete against America. Others thought that Germany will become a power after its unification, though there were no indications that a nationalist revival will take place in Germany.
Others did not see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War as a victory merely for the United States, but as a victory for liberal democracy. One of the most inaccurate predictions about the future to have been made in recent times was made not by a deranged conspiracist or a fraudulent psychic but rather by a political scientist who had received a Ph.D. at Harvard. That was Francis Fukuyama, who in 1989 had written an essay theorizing that, with the end of Communism and the Cold War, that an “end of history” was upon us. Fukuyama stated that as communism was falling, so was the last main opponent to liberal democracy. Because of this, liberal democracy was to flourish. Any remaining dictatorships, be it a military dictatorship, communist holdouts, theocrats, or absolute monarchs, would eventually be marginalized on the world stage, never to have any relevance, and will only become accepted in the international community once they become a liberal democracy themselves. Fukuyama was not the first to theorize of an “end of history”. He took from the philosophy of Hegel and Marx, both of whom had defined history as a progression from one period to another.
As history would later show, predictions of the United States and liberal democracy becoming dominant would soon be proven wrong. Already, it was naive to assume that history could “end” in the way Fukuyama predicted it would. Alongside this, religious fundamentalist and ethnonationalism served to prove as sufficient opponents to liberal democracy, especially in the global south. For one thing, Islamism, which had a complex relationship with the United States (Islamists hated the US for its support of Israel, but were willing to ally with it against communism), was growing in popularity in the Islamic World following the failure of secular Arab Nationalists to defeat Israel, the Iranian Revolution, and the expulsion of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s. Liberal elements in those countries faced strong opposition from Islamist groups, which were willing to use violence if necessary to achieve their goals. Not just that, but many liberal groups in the Middle East were small in size and the biggest opponents to Islamists were not them, but authoritarian regimes. The battle between Islamists and secular authoritarians, with liberals being sidelined, meant that it will take a long time for liberal democracy to becoming established in the region. Note that it wasn’t just Islam which was going through a religious revival - the rise in popularity of Hindu Nationalist groups meant that India’s title of “world’s largest liberal democracy” is not as secure as once thought. The growth of China, an authoritarian state which had recently crushed a democratic uprising, would also prove to become a threat to liberal democracy, yet this was not realized in 1989.
It was naive to assume that history could “end” in the way Fukuyama said it would. Yet the reason this is brought up was because following the end of the Cold War many people did indeed believe in a post-1989 consensus. Those beliefs experienced a drop in popularity throughout the 1990s, first due to events in the Middle East, then by events in East Asia, and later with events in Russia, and by the year 2000 nobody worth taking seriously considered liberal democracy’s triumph as inevitable. The future still had much in store.
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What happens when one of the largest countries in the region, which is a relatively stable absolute monarchy, in which the majority of people follow a faith which is different than that of most of its neighbors, experiences a theocratic revolution? One thing is for sure -- they won’t make much friends. That was what happened to Iran in 1979. Following years of political repression committed by the Iranian monarchy, the Iranian people rose up, overthrew said monarchy, went through a brief period of political instability before a theocracy was finally established. The new leaders of Iran made no secret of their overall plans - placing the Shia majority back in control of Iraq (and as a result, the holy sites of Najaf and Karbala back in Shia hands), overthrowing the al-Saud dynasty in Saudi Arabia in order to bring Makkah and Madinah in the hands of sympathetic Sunnis and Shias, and the eventual destruction of Israel in order to put Jerusalem back into Muslim hands. This did not make them any friends among most governments of the Middle East. In fact, most governments at all weren’t friendly towards the new Iranian government. The two of the most powerful nations at the time, the US and USSR, were despised by the new Iranian government, the former because of its support for Israel, and the latter for being “godless Communists” (later on in the year, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, further earning them the ire of Iran, and most Muslim governments).
Iran’s western neighbor, Iraq, was under the control of the Sunni minority, with its leader being Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein was an Arab nationalist who, even before the Iranian Revolution had been eyeing Khuzestan, the Arab parts of Iran, which were situated next to the Iraqi border in the southwest. The Iranian Revolution and its resulting instability had convinced Saddam that Iraq could quickly defeat Iran in a war and take Khuzestan for itself. Not only that, but a war would be needed to distract Iraq’s Shia majority from being inspired by the Iranian Revolution and revolting against their Sunni leaders. When war did happen, it was not the quick victory Saddam had expected. In spite of Iraq receiving aid from the United States, the Soviet Union, and most of the Gulf States, the Iran-Iraq War ended up turning into an eight-year long, inconclusive, war of attrition. By its end neither side had accomplished any of its goals. Both sides claimed victory, but the war had ended in the status quo. Khuzestan remained under Iranian control, and there had been no Shia revolution in Iraq.
Yet to say that the Iran-Iraq War resulted in nothing much happening would be wrong. Iraq had received aid from Gulf states wary of the Iranian Revolution spreading across its borders. One of those states, Kuwait, had given loans to Iraq to help it in the war against Iran. By the war’s end, Iraq could not afford to pay back its debt, and Kuwait was not willing to forgive their debt. This reason, along with allegations that Kuwait was stealing Iraqi petroleum through slant drilling, along with nationalist sentiments that Kuwait was an artificial state which only exists because of British colonialism, had lead to the Iraqi government deciding that military action was the only course of action which would lead to them being relieved of all their debt, and taking Kuwait’s oil reserves for themselves.
The buildup of Iraqi troops around its border with Kuwait was noticed by the United States. On July 25th the American ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, was sent to meet with Saddam. She had given vague, yet somewhat approving, remarks to Saddam, stating that the United States had no opinion on “Arab-Arab conflicts” and that “Secretary [of State] [Walter] Mondale has directed me emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.'' These remarks made it seem that America would look the other way if Iraq were to invade Kuwait.
The US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, in a meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Following Saddam’s meeting with Glaspie, Iraq was set to invade Kuwait. On August 2nd, 1990, at around 2 AM, the first Iraqi troops entered Kuwait. War had begun.
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It did not take long for Iraq to gobble up the emirate of roughly 18 thousand square kilometers (which was roughly 4% of the size of Iraq). It took less than 48 hours for Iraq to fully occupy Kuwait. One key aspect about the invasion of Kuwait was that most of the royal family was killed following Iraqi bombardment of the royal palace. Because of this Iraq couldn’t really get someone from the royal family as a figurehead to legitimize a potential puppet government. Because of this when Iraq did install a puppet government it made said a government a republic and put Ala’a Hussein Ali, a colonel in the Iraqi Army, in charge of the new “Republic of Kuwait”. Seeing as there wouldn’t be many Kuwaitis pledge allegiance to a foreigner which literally nobody in the country had heard of until now, Iraq eventually abolished the Republic of Kuwait and annexed it, perhaps hoping that Kuwaitis will instead pledge allegiance to the man who held the Iranians at bay, and if not that, to the ideology of Pan-Arabism.
Whether or not Iraq thought it was in their best interests to make Kuwait an effete puppet state or make it a part of itself, one thing was for sure - this wasn’t the Middle Ages anymore. Unless you were a country which had considerable power (or was friendly with a country with considerable power), you could not invade another country and exert your will on them without incurring some sort of consequence. But Iraq went a bit further - it invaded another country and annexed them. Seeing as how they didn’t have many powerful allies, and that they weren’t powerful themselves, Iraq was subject to international condemnation and sanctions. But to some, that wasn’t enough. For the Gulf states, the invasion of Kuwait and the killing of most of its royal family sent shivers down the spines of the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others. Not only that, but Saddam has ample reason to be angry at Saudi Arabia, seeing as how Iraq also owed them money, and that the Saudi monarchy had traditionally been opposed to Pan-Arabism, there were some who thought that Saudi Arabia was next. And Iraq stood a good chance of winning.
In the west, the invasion of Kuwait was met not with as much worry as it did in the Khaleej, but to say people just shrugged it off would not be an accurate assessment. Oil prices spiked, and in fact that was the primary concern. People were not expecting an international crisis to occur so soon following the Revolutions of 1989. But now the question was what is to be done? Sanctioning Iraq may punish it for its aggressive behavior but it was soon becoming clear that Iraq had no intention of withdrawing. Criticism began to be leveled against President Dukakis by his Republican opponents for his indecisiveness in the Kuwait problem. Many believed that giving Iraq Kuwait was similar to the policy of “appeasement” done to Germany before World War II. It seemed unlikely that Iraq would just stop at Kuwait.
Despite the criticism from the Republican Party, there were few people in the west who wished to go to war with Iraq. First was the issue of Vietnam. Following America’s withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, many Americans were uneasy with another war abroad if it did not mean America could get something out of it. Vietnam, at least, had the issue of communism expanding in the east hanging over America’s heads, why should America fight to free a small emirate in the Middle East? Even those criticizing Dukakis for being “soft” on Iraq mostly did not want war with Iraq (In fact, many did not know what they *did* want, aside from vaguely wanting to be “tougher on Iraq”, which could mean anything. Most criticism against Dukakis on the issue of Iraq happened because most of his Republican opponents wanted to try and make him look bad, not because they cared about Kuwait).
Needless to say, the reluctance of most of the American public to support military action against Iraq over Kuwait did not stand well with the Gulf lobby. To the Gulf lobby, some sort of military action, be it an airstrike on Iraqi positions in Kuwait, or an all out war, was the best option to prevent further Iraqi expansionism. But they knew that they couldn’t invade Iraq by themselves and expect a quick victory, or even a victory at all. No, America must be brought in as an ally or else there would either be a long and bloody war, or no war and Iraq becomes emboldened to further expand its influence.
So on September 28th, 1990, a Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah al-Sabah gave testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Her testimony told of the barbarity of the occupying forces of Iraq. Babies were taken from hospitals and left to die, men suspected of being with the Kuwaiti military or police are tortured publicly, orphanages are destroyed, women were raped, etc. Very horrible stories were told, and public opinion soon shifted to supporting military action against Iraq. There was only one problem with these stories - they never happened.
Nayirah al-Sabah at her testimony
While most watching her testimony were convinced, there were some who noticed a few things off, such as that she only gave out her first name. Some of those few were journalists, who did an investigation and found that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, Saud al-Sabah, who (along with his family) fled to Saudi Arabia only a couple hours following the Iraqi invasion, and thus neither he nor his family could have witnessed the conduct of the Iraqi occupiers. Further investigation showed that the testimony was organized as a public relations campaign for the group Citizens for a Free Kuwait. These revelations turned public opinion in the United States sharply against military action against Iraq, and put an end to the Gulf lobby’s attempts to do so. If America wasn’t going to intervene, neither would the rest of the west.
With the west not preparing to intervene, the fear which pervaded in the Khaleej grew and grew. With the west being less and less likely to intervene, and Iraq becoming more and more militaristic, many in the Khaleej feared that Iraq will eventually attack Saudi Arabia. Many called for a preemptive strike, but that ran a significant risk of failure (and by attacking Iraq, will lead to many in the Muslim world sympathizing with them more rather than Saudi Arabia). The possibility of arming Kuwaiti refugees and bringing them to occupied Kuwait was floated, but the small size of Kuwait, along with the numerous Iraqi troops occupying it, would make it very difficult to bring Kuwaiti refugees back to Iraq (Iraq had no interest in bringing back Kuwaiti refugees, and instead sought to repopulate Kuwait with Iraqi Arabs). Iraqi Shia groups received aid from Iran and were just as much anti-Saudi as they were anti-Saddam.
The Gulf states could not destabilize Iraq, and they could not invade Iraq without incurring a great risk. But that did not mean that tensions dissipated. The image of the death of the Kuwaiti royal family still existed in the minds of the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and as such they could not let their guard down regarding Iraq.
---
As it turns out, Saudi Arabia didn’t need to invade Iraq.
To say that the fear of war in the Middle East only existed in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf would be an erroneous statement. The fact that many Kuwaiti refugees still remained around the general area of the Iraqi border had not been overlooked by the Iraqi government. Even though talks of arming said refugees had mostly gone away, many in the Iraqi government feared that Saudi Arabia eventually would. Alongside this, prince Naser al-Sabah, one of the few members of the Kuwaiti royal family to survive the Iraqi onslaught, lived in Riyadh and has proclaimed himself to be the current Emir of Kuwait.
It would be Naser who would give Iraq the basis for war. On December 9th, 1990, Naser gave a speech to a Kuwaiti refugee camp near the Iraqi border, promising them that their “hardships will soon cease” and that they will soon return to their homeland. That alone seemed to vindicate the paranoia regarding Saudi Arabia which pervaded around the Iraqi leadership. Such paranoia was further vindicated when, two days later, Naser met with Saudi King Fahd. The meeting was described in Saudi media as a “meeting between two great leaders”. The word “leaders” had seemed to imply that Saudi Arabia was planning on invading Iraq and make Kuwait independent, with Naser in charge.
On December 28th, 1990, at around 10 AM local time, the people of Iraq awoke to Saddam’s voice on Baghdad radio.
“In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.
O great, strong, valiant people of Iraq. O Arabs, O Muslims around the world. It is with great pride that I announce to you about the defensive measures which we have taken in the Arabian Peninsula.
It is no secret that the unjust tyrants of Riyadh had long been plotting our downfall. Since the 17 July revolution we have seen them being friendly to the Americans and the Zionists, eventually turning into their lapdog. We saw how, during our Qadisiyyah, they turned their backs on us, did not help us at all as we were struggling to resist the Khomeini’s Persian soldiers and free the Arabs living under their yoke. They have little care for the unity of Arabs, little care for Muslims, only for themselves.
Recently they have been more and more open about their hostility towards us. Following the liberation of Kuwait, al-Saud has been planning an invasion of Iraq. They plan to arm the cowards who fled, tear away the Kuwait governorate from us and put in place their own puppet, thus doing away with one of the biggest steps to achieving Arab unity. We will not allow that to happen, and neither will we allow the armies of al-Saud to attack us. We have noticed the buildup of soldiers around our border and have decided not to wait for when they have readied themselves to attack us.
Already, we are seeing how much of a paper tiger al-Saud is. Their forces are crumbling, numerous Arabs living under their tyrannical rule have decided to side with us, with Arab unity, with Islam.
We will be victorious, God willing.”
Just six hours prior, the first Iraqi soldiers had invaded Saudi Arabia. Because of the nature of the attack, along with Iraq having both numerical and military superiority over the Saudis, the Iraqi onslaught was going well for them. The Kuwait crisis had gave way to something more dire. The largest country in the Middle East, with one of the largest oil supplies in the world, which held the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, was under attack. And it was losing.
Others did not see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War as a victory merely for the United States, but as a victory for liberal democracy. One of the most inaccurate predictions about the future to have been made in recent times was made not by a deranged conspiracist or a fraudulent psychic but rather by a political scientist who had received a Ph.D. at Harvard. That was Francis Fukuyama, who in 1989 had written an essay theorizing that, with the end of Communism and the Cold War, that an “end of history” was upon us. Fukuyama stated that as communism was falling, so was the last main opponent to liberal democracy. Because of this, liberal democracy was to flourish. Any remaining dictatorships, be it a military dictatorship, communist holdouts, theocrats, or absolute monarchs, would eventually be marginalized on the world stage, never to have any relevance, and will only become accepted in the international community once they become a liberal democracy themselves. Fukuyama was not the first to theorize of an “end of history”. He took from the philosophy of Hegel and Marx, both of whom had defined history as a progression from one period to another.
As history would later show, predictions of the United States and liberal democracy becoming dominant would soon be proven wrong. Already, it was naive to assume that history could “end” in the way Fukuyama predicted it would. Alongside this, religious fundamentalist and ethnonationalism served to prove as sufficient opponents to liberal democracy, especially in the global south. For one thing, Islamism, which had a complex relationship with the United States (Islamists hated the US for its support of Israel, but were willing to ally with it against communism), was growing in popularity in the Islamic World following the failure of secular Arab Nationalists to defeat Israel, the Iranian Revolution, and the expulsion of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s. Liberal elements in those countries faced strong opposition from Islamist groups, which were willing to use violence if necessary to achieve their goals. Not just that, but many liberal groups in the Middle East were small in size and the biggest opponents to Islamists were not them, but authoritarian regimes. The battle between Islamists and secular authoritarians, with liberals being sidelined, meant that it will take a long time for liberal democracy to becoming established in the region. Note that it wasn’t just Islam which was going through a religious revival - the rise in popularity of Hindu Nationalist groups meant that India’s title of “world’s largest liberal democracy” is not as secure as once thought. The growth of China, an authoritarian state which had recently crushed a democratic uprising, would also prove to become a threat to liberal democracy, yet this was not realized in 1989.
It was naive to assume that history could “end” in the way Fukuyama said it would. Yet the reason this is brought up was because following the end of the Cold War many people did indeed believe in a post-1989 consensus. Those beliefs experienced a drop in popularity throughout the 1990s, first due to events in the Middle East, then by events in East Asia, and later with events in Russia, and by the year 2000 nobody worth taking seriously considered liberal democracy’s triumph as inevitable. The future still had much in store.
---
What happens when one of the largest countries in the region, which is a relatively stable absolute monarchy, in which the majority of people follow a faith which is different than that of most of its neighbors, experiences a theocratic revolution? One thing is for sure -- they won’t make much friends. That was what happened to Iran in 1979. Following years of political repression committed by the Iranian monarchy, the Iranian people rose up, overthrew said monarchy, went through a brief period of political instability before a theocracy was finally established. The new leaders of Iran made no secret of their overall plans - placing the Shia majority back in control of Iraq (and as a result, the holy sites of Najaf and Karbala back in Shia hands), overthrowing the al-Saud dynasty in Saudi Arabia in order to bring Makkah and Madinah in the hands of sympathetic Sunnis and Shias, and the eventual destruction of Israel in order to put Jerusalem back into Muslim hands. This did not make them any friends among most governments of the Middle East. In fact, most governments at all weren’t friendly towards the new Iranian government. The two of the most powerful nations at the time, the US and USSR, were despised by the new Iranian government, the former because of its support for Israel, and the latter for being “godless Communists” (later on in the year, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, further earning them the ire of Iran, and most Muslim governments).
Iran’s western neighbor, Iraq, was under the control of the Sunni minority, with its leader being Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein was an Arab nationalist who, even before the Iranian Revolution had been eyeing Khuzestan, the Arab parts of Iran, which were situated next to the Iraqi border in the southwest. The Iranian Revolution and its resulting instability had convinced Saddam that Iraq could quickly defeat Iran in a war and take Khuzestan for itself. Not only that, but a war would be needed to distract Iraq’s Shia majority from being inspired by the Iranian Revolution and revolting against their Sunni leaders. When war did happen, it was not the quick victory Saddam had expected. In spite of Iraq receiving aid from the United States, the Soviet Union, and most of the Gulf States, the Iran-Iraq War ended up turning into an eight-year long, inconclusive, war of attrition. By its end neither side had accomplished any of its goals. Both sides claimed victory, but the war had ended in the status quo. Khuzestan remained under Iranian control, and there had been no Shia revolution in Iraq.
Yet to say that the Iran-Iraq War resulted in nothing much happening would be wrong. Iraq had received aid from Gulf states wary of the Iranian Revolution spreading across its borders. One of those states, Kuwait, had given loans to Iraq to help it in the war against Iran. By the war’s end, Iraq could not afford to pay back its debt, and Kuwait was not willing to forgive their debt. This reason, along with allegations that Kuwait was stealing Iraqi petroleum through slant drilling, along with nationalist sentiments that Kuwait was an artificial state which only exists because of British colonialism, had lead to the Iraqi government deciding that military action was the only course of action which would lead to them being relieved of all their debt, and taking Kuwait’s oil reserves for themselves.
The buildup of Iraqi troops around its border with Kuwait was noticed by the United States. On July 25th the American ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, was sent to meet with Saddam. She had given vague, yet somewhat approving, remarks to Saddam, stating that the United States had no opinion on “Arab-Arab conflicts” and that “Secretary [of State] [Walter] Mondale has directed me emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.'' These remarks made it seem that America would look the other way if Iraq were to invade Kuwait.
The US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, in a meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Following Saddam’s meeting with Glaspie, Iraq was set to invade Kuwait. On August 2nd, 1990, at around 2 AM, the first Iraqi troops entered Kuwait. War had begun.
---
It did not take long for Iraq to gobble up the emirate of roughly 18 thousand square kilometers (which was roughly 4% of the size of Iraq). It took less than 48 hours for Iraq to fully occupy Kuwait. One key aspect about the invasion of Kuwait was that most of the royal family was killed following Iraqi bombardment of the royal palace. Because of this Iraq couldn’t really get someone from the royal family as a figurehead to legitimize a potential puppet government. Because of this when Iraq did install a puppet government it made said a government a republic and put Ala’a Hussein Ali, a colonel in the Iraqi Army, in charge of the new “Republic of Kuwait”. Seeing as there wouldn’t be many Kuwaitis pledge allegiance to a foreigner which literally nobody in the country had heard of until now, Iraq eventually abolished the Republic of Kuwait and annexed it, perhaps hoping that Kuwaitis will instead pledge allegiance to the man who held the Iranians at bay, and if not that, to the ideology of Pan-Arabism.
Whether or not Iraq thought it was in their best interests to make Kuwait an effete puppet state or make it a part of itself, one thing was for sure - this wasn’t the Middle Ages anymore. Unless you were a country which had considerable power (or was friendly with a country with considerable power), you could not invade another country and exert your will on them without incurring some sort of consequence. But Iraq went a bit further - it invaded another country and annexed them. Seeing as how they didn’t have many powerful allies, and that they weren’t powerful themselves, Iraq was subject to international condemnation and sanctions. But to some, that wasn’t enough. For the Gulf states, the invasion of Kuwait and the killing of most of its royal family sent shivers down the spines of the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others. Not only that, but Saddam has ample reason to be angry at Saudi Arabia, seeing as how Iraq also owed them money, and that the Saudi monarchy had traditionally been opposed to Pan-Arabism, there were some who thought that Saudi Arabia was next. And Iraq stood a good chance of winning.
In the west, the invasion of Kuwait was met not with as much worry as it did in the Khaleej, but to say people just shrugged it off would not be an accurate assessment. Oil prices spiked, and in fact that was the primary concern. People were not expecting an international crisis to occur so soon following the Revolutions of 1989. But now the question was what is to be done? Sanctioning Iraq may punish it for its aggressive behavior but it was soon becoming clear that Iraq had no intention of withdrawing. Criticism began to be leveled against President Dukakis by his Republican opponents for his indecisiveness in the Kuwait problem. Many believed that giving Iraq Kuwait was similar to the policy of “appeasement” done to Germany before World War II. It seemed unlikely that Iraq would just stop at Kuwait.
Despite the criticism from the Republican Party, there were few people in the west who wished to go to war with Iraq. First was the issue of Vietnam. Following America’s withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, many Americans were uneasy with another war abroad if it did not mean America could get something out of it. Vietnam, at least, had the issue of communism expanding in the east hanging over America’s heads, why should America fight to free a small emirate in the Middle East? Even those criticizing Dukakis for being “soft” on Iraq mostly did not want war with Iraq (In fact, many did not know what they *did* want, aside from vaguely wanting to be “tougher on Iraq”, which could mean anything. Most criticism against Dukakis on the issue of Iraq happened because most of his Republican opponents wanted to try and make him look bad, not because they cared about Kuwait).
Needless to say, the reluctance of most of the American public to support military action against Iraq over Kuwait did not stand well with the Gulf lobby. To the Gulf lobby, some sort of military action, be it an airstrike on Iraqi positions in Kuwait, or an all out war, was the best option to prevent further Iraqi expansionism. But they knew that they couldn’t invade Iraq by themselves and expect a quick victory, or even a victory at all. No, America must be brought in as an ally or else there would either be a long and bloody war, or no war and Iraq becomes emboldened to further expand its influence.
So on September 28th, 1990, a Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah al-Sabah gave testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Her testimony told of the barbarity of the occupying forces of Iraq. Babies were taken from hospitals and left to die, men suspected of being with the Kuwaiti military or police are tortured publicly, orphanages are destroyed, women were raped, etc. Very horrible stories were told, and public opinion soon shifted to supporting military action against Iraq. There was only one problem with these stories - they never happened.
Nayirah al-Sabah at her testimony
With the west not preparing to intervene, the fear which pervaded in the Khaleej grew and grew. With the west being less and less likely to intervene, and Iraq becoming more and more militaristic, many in the Khaleej feared that Iraq will eventually attack Saudi Arabia. Many called for a preemptive strike, but that ran a significant risk of failure (and by attacking Iraq, will lead to many in the Muslim world sympathizing with them more rather than Saudi Arabia). The possibility of arming Kuwaiti refugees and bringing them to occupied Kuwait was floated, but the small size of Kuwait, along with the numerous Iraqi troops occupying it, would make it very difficult to bring Kuwaiti refugees back to Iraq (Iraq had no interest in bringing back Kuwaiti refugees, and instead sought to repopulate Kuwait with Iraqi Arabs). Iraqi Shia groups received aid from Iran and were just as much anti-Saudi as they were anti-Saddam.
The Gulf states could not destabilize Iraq, and they could not invade Iraq without incurring a great risk. But that did not mean that tensions dissipated. The image of the death of the Kuwaiti royal family still existed in the minds of the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and as such they could not let their guard down regarding Iraq.
---
As it turns out, Saudi Arabia didn’t need to invade Iraq.
To say that the fear of war in the Middle East only existed in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf would be an erroneous statement. The fact that many Kuwaiti refugees still remained around the general area of the Iraqi border had not been overlooked by the Iraqi government. Even though talks of arming said refugees had mostly gone away, many in the Iraqi government feared that Saudi Arabia eventually would. Alongside this, prince Naser al-Sabah, one of the few members of the Kuwaiti royal family to survive the Iraqi onslaught, lived in Riyadh and has proclaimed himself to be the current Emir of Kuwait.
It would be Naser who would give Iraq the basis for war. On December 9th, 1990, Naser gave a speech to a Kuwaiti refugee camp near the Iraqi border, promising them that their “hardships will soon cease” and that they will soon return to their homeland. That alone seemed to vindicate the paranoia regarding Saudi Arabia which pervaded around the Iraqi leadership. Such paranoia was further vindicated when, two days later, Naser met with Saudi King Fahd. The meeting was described in Saudi media as a “meeting between two great leaders”. The word “leaders” had seemed to imply that Saudi Arabia was planning on invading Iraq and make Kuwait independent, with Naser in charge.
On December 28th, 1990, at around 10 AM local time, the people of Iraq awoke to Saddam’s voice on Baghdad radio.
“In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.
O great, strong, valiant people of Iraq. O Arabs, O Muslims around the world. It is with great pride that I announce to you about the defensive measures which we have taken in the Arabian Peninsula.
It is no secret that the unjust tyrants of Riyadh had long been plotting our downfall. Since the 17 July revolution we have seen them being friendly to the Americans and the Zionists, eventually turning into their lapdog. We saw how, during our Qadisiyyah, they turned their backs on us, did not help us at all as we were struggling to resist the Khomeini’s Persian soldiers and free the Arabs living under their yoke. They have little care for the unity of Arabs, little care for Muslims, only for themselves.
Recently they have been more and more open about their hostility towards us. Following the liberation of Kuwait, al-Saud has been planning an invasion of Iraq. They plan to arm the cowards who fled, tear away the Kuwait governorate from us and put in place their own puppet, thus doing away with one of the biggest steps to achieving Arab unity. We will not allow that to happen, and neither will we allow the armies of al-Saud to attack us. We have noticed the buildup of soldiers around our border and have decided not to wait for when they have readied themselves to attack us.
Already, we are seeing how much of a paper tiger al-Saud is. Their forces are crumbling, numerous Arabs living under their tyrannical rule have decided to side with us, with Arab unity, with Islam.
We will be victorious, God willing.”
Just six hours prior, the first Iraqi soldiers had invaded Saudi Arabia. Because of the nature of the attack, along with Iraq having both numerical and military superiority over the Saudis, the Iraqi onslaught was going well for them. The Kuwait crisis had gave way to something more dire. The largest country in the Middle East, with one of the largest oil supplies in the world, which held the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, was under attack. And it was losing.
