How would Desert Shield/Storm proceed without Egypt & Syria?

[Kome]

Maybe there was a suspicion that saddam Regime would collapse completely and Arab speaking units may be the core of the occupation forces?

I doubt it. 1991 was one of the few times the US asked the local people to rise up in support of the Americans, and then the people actually rose up. That's as close to a collapse as it was gonna get. Such a rare occurrence they had no idea how to deal with it and basically just tried to ignore it.

You get the impression the US was just going through the motions and didn't actually expect anyone to listen to the propaganda broadcast. From their POV they had expected the Iraqis to be 100% behind Saddam and Kuwait to have been a bloody slugfest, or even Iraqi armor blitzkrieging through Saudi Arabia.

That kind of ended up biting us in the ass when we tried it again in 2003 and they still remembered the first time.

iirc their contribution was mainly symbolic/ideological "Sadam can't claim to be fighting for Arab nationalism if most Arabs, even other Arab nationalist republics, are against him".

It was considered important to leverage the Arab League against Iraq yeah. There was a fear the Arab states would close ranks around Saddam if this was perceived as purely foreign meddling in Arab affairs. Or worse, Israeli backed foreign interventions.

Egypt and Syria didn't need much convincing though, Saddam had never been that popular with them.

 

[Monk78]

I doubt it. 1991 was one of the few times the US asked the local people to rise up in support of the Americans, and then the people actually rose up. That's as close to a collapse as it was gonna get. Such a rare occurrence they had no idea how to deal with it and basically just tried to ignore it.

You get the impression the US was just going through the motions and didn't actually expect anyone to listen to the propaganda broadcast. From their POV they had expected the Iraqis to be 100% behind Saddam and Kuwait to have been a bloody slugfest, or even Iraqi armor blitzkrieging through Saudi Arabia.

That kind of ended up biting us in the ass when we tried it again in 2003 and they still remembered the first time.


It was considered important to leverage the Arab League against Iraq yeah. There was a fear the Arab states would close ranks around Saddam if this was perceived as purely foreign meddling in Arab affairs. Or worse, Israeli backed foreign interventions.

Egypt and Syria didn't need much convincing though, Saddam had never been that popular with them.

Egypt send aid and aircraft to help saddam against Iran
Their contribution to gulf 91 was purely opportunistic

 

[Monk78]

If you're referring to Pollack, he wrote that the arabs should have won many victories, easily, but were let down by inept tactical commanders, particularly.

No Tom cooper

 

[Kome]

Egypt send aid and aircraft to help saddam against Iran
Their contribution to gulf 91 was purely opportunistic

Everyone sent aid to Iraq against Iran. During the Iran-Iraq War Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were tight with Saddam. That didn't stop Kuwait from siphoning Iraq's oil or Iraq from threatening/actually invading them.

Supporting Iraq in 1980 was pure opportunism. They weren't doing it because they liked him.

 

[Monk78]

Everyone sent aid to Iraq against Iran. During the Iran-Iraq War Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were tight with Saddam. That didn't stop Kuwait from siphoning Iraq's oil or Iraq from threatening/actually invading them.

Supporting Iraq in 1980 was pure opportunism. They weren't doing it because they liked him.

Syria and Libya didn’t

 

[Sunny]

Syria and Libya didn’t

Yeah, Syria was an ally of Iran during that war. Even though Assad Sr. and Saddam were both Baathists, they hated each other. In fact during the 1970s, they tried to assassinate each other a few times. Saddam was technically Vice President at the time, but he was the de facto leader. So when the Iran-Iraq war started, Assad gave full support to Iran.

As for Gaddafi, not sure why he was against Iraq.