Iraq Without the Gulf War?

Prior to the first Gulf War, Iraq was one of the most developed countries in the Middle East. Iraq's GDP Per Capita was $2304 in 1989, and its GDP was $38 Billion. Primary healthcare services reached about 97% of the Urban Population and 78% of the Rural Population, while literacy rates were as high as 89%. Iraq was ranked 50th out of 130 countries on the 1990 UNDP HDI list. All this progress was undone when Saddam invaded Kuwait, resulting in the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure and the decimation of the Iraqi economy. The Gulf War has to be one of the great tragedies of our time, since all the progress that had been achieved prior to the war was largely undone by a single megalomaniac. While looking over the Wikipedia page on the Gulf War, however, I came upon an interesting tidbit:

"Discussions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, mediated on the Arab League's behalf by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, were held on 31 July and led Mubarak to believe that a peaceful course could be established. The result of the Jeddah talks was an Iraqi demand for $10 billion to cover the lost revenues from Rumaila; the Kuwaiti response was to offer $9 billion. The Iraqi response was to immediately order the invasion."

Let's say for the sake of argument that Iraq either accepts the Kuwaiti offer or the rest of the Arab League is able to convince Kuwait to raise its offer. Without the Gulf War, how would Iraq look today? (I'm thinking that Iraq would have a GDP per capita of $4500-5100 and a population of 38 million) If the Arab Spring isn't butterflied away, do you think it'd look more like what happened in Libya with urbanites leading the charge or more like Syria, where the Islamists and tribal groups have gained the upper hand? And hell, what about the Iraqi armed forces? How would they look?
 

Delta Force

Banned
The Iran-Iraq War was even worse. I have seen estimates of trillions of dollars lost from war expenditures, economic damage, and opportunity costs.
 
Prior to the first Gulf War, Iraq was one of the most developed countries in the Middle East. Iraq's GDP Per Capita was $2304 in 1989, and its GDP was $38 Billion. Primary healthcare services reached about 97% of the Urban Population and 78% of the Rural Population, while literacy rates were as high as 89%. Iraq was ranked 50th out of 130 countries on the 1990 UNDP HDI list. All this progress was undone when Saddam invaded Kuwait, resulting in the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure and the decimation of the Iraqi economy. The Gulf War has to be one of the great tragedies of our time, since all the progress that had been achieved prior to the war was largely undone by a single megalomaniac. While looking over the Wikipedia page on the Gulf War, however, I came upon an interesting tidbit:

"Discussions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, mediated on the Arab League's behalf by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, were held on 31 July and led Mubarak to believe that a peaceful course could be established. The result of the Jeddah talks was an Iraqi demand for $10 billion to cover the lost revenues from Rumaila; the Kuwaiti response was to offer $9 billion. The Iraqi response was to immediately order the invasion."

Let's say for the sake of argument that Iraq either accepts the Kuwaiti offer or the rest of the Arab League is able to convince Kuwait to raise its offer. Without the Gulf War, how would Iraq look today? (I'm thinking that Iraq would have a GDP per capita of $4500-5100 and a population of 38 million) If the Arab Spring isn't butterflied away, do you think it'd look more like what happened in Libya with urbanites leading the charge or more like Syria, where the Islamists and tribal groups have gained the upper hand? And hell, what about the Iraqi armed forces? How would they look?

Are you sure it's not simply deferred? Six months later iraq asks for more money?

Or given saddam Hussein's megalomania, maybe he gets involved in other conflicts. Invading Saudi or Jordan, or worst case, nuclear war with Israel in the late 1990s.
 
Are you sure it's not simply deferred? Six months later iraq asks for more money?

Or given saddam Hussein's megalomania, maybe he gets involved in other conflicts. Invading Saudi or Jordan, or worst case, nuclear war with Israel in the late 1990s.

I suppose that the best option, then, would be to get rid of Hussein either during or after the Iran-Iraq War - since his massively overinflated ego is all too likely to make him attempt something.
 
this would have a major impact on the USA as well... no Gulf War means no US troops stationed semi-permanently in the ME means Al Qaida has no grudge against the USA meaning no 9/11....
 
As far as I know, Saddam was rather panicky about Iran.

I think Israel was used more as an easy target for things.

Saddam was convinced that US would not attack him (after 9/11) as he saw no reason for it. After all, he was cagey about his WMD's but that was not directed at the West. It was to ensure that Iran should not attack him.

There is a lot of good info in Gordon & Trainor's "Cobra II" on this aspect.

THEREFORE:

I think you have to go a bit further back to avoid Gulf War V1.0

1) Iraq building an alliance among Arabic countries against Iran (which is Persia, not Arabic), supplying ground troops, etc.

2) Play on the fears of the Mullah's exporting their brand of Islam.

3) Get more US support onboard. How much more is a good question insofar as US was heabily involved. ("President Ronald Reagan decided that the United States "could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran", and that the United States "would do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran"

3) US ground troops a la "Desert Storm" type deployment. There is no way out of this if Iran has to be defeated. The surrounding countries are too small to field bigger armies (or at least more professional armies)

As it was, the Iraq economy got destroyed through those 8 years and soemthing had to happen. It was more than just the billions from Kuwait (although that was the tipping point).

The OPEC countries (with Kuwait at the head of it all) dropped the price on oil. Saddam begged them not to hurt his economy by doing that. But, lo and behold, that was exactly what happened. I have a number of $2 billion a month in lost revenue on that account. Could be wrong there, though.

Kuwait also asked for its share of the Iran-Iraq war cost back as they believed it was a loan. Saddam thought it was a donation. When they insisted (despie mediation efforts), Saddam lashed out.

Saddam was accused by the Mullahs of not being a "good Muslim". When he tried to show up at mid-week service etc, they called him a hypocrite.

In essence, they were gunning form him.

The showdown with Iran probably had to happen. I cannot see a reasonable scenario where it does not happen at some point.

So, in my opinion. To avoid a Gulf war V1.0 you have to squash Iran in 1980's.

... and that without having Iraq to carry the can alone.

Now, Let us for a moment consider that Iran is off the map. Defeated, regime change, those great things.

1) US/UK is present in ME and, together with Iraq and all other Arabic countries occupy Iran: Islamic world opinion might not like this idea, although it is endorsed by the Arab League.

2) US/UK taking part in defeating Iran but do not stay in Iran: Iran cannot go back to the Shah. So someone else has to be found. Democracy is not so prevalent, so this is not so easy

3) UN troops, all good Muslims, to control and de-arm Iran. Difficult without some buy-in from Shia groups.

Now, let us assume we get one of these scenarios to work.

Gulf War V1.0 does not happen.

But then (which I think is going to happen then): The joker in the pack: Kurdistan!

Now what? That can easily trigger something where Turkey gets involved. And that is NATO.

Or: Afghanistan

So maybe Iraq will support the Muslim grous against the "godles" Russians (who btw just helped him out.

Saddam has to have outside enemies to blame if the economy is shaky. Hence there can be no "living in peace".

The trick is to not upset US.

Just a few thoughts on this one.

Ivan
 

Cook

Banned
Let's say for the sake of argument that Iraq either accepts the Kuwaiti offer or the rest of the Arab League is able to convince Kuwait to raise its offer.
I’m afraid that the most that would achieve would be a delay to events and Saddam would have to come up with another reason to justify the invasion of Kuwait instead of slant drilling; he had already decided on the invasion prior to engineering the dispute.
 
Dave They would have done 9/11 either way, they just want to kill it's typical of isolationists of the sort. You always need an enemy to control your population with. So We'd see Bin ladin go to war with the US over every perceived slight made he could dream up.
 
When I saw the title I thought 'first Gulf war' refered to the iran-Traq war. A more solid PoD is waving away Saddam Hussein & proposing Iraq be ruled by lesser politicians for the next thirty years.
 
I’m afraid that the most that would achieve would be a delay to events and Saddam would have to come up with another reason to justify the invasion of Kuwait instead of slant drilling; he had already decided on the invasion prior to engineering the dispute.

Saddam's hostility to Kuwait was entirely due to Kuwait's unwillingness to forgive Iraq's debt - prior to the end of the Iran-Iraq War, he was on good terms with them. That's not to say, however, that he wouldn't have done something else instead of invading Kuwait, however... :rolleyes:
 
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Cook

Banned
Saddam's hostility to Kuwait was entirely due to Kuwait's unwillingness to forgive Iraq's debt - prior to the end of the Iran-Iraq War, he was on good terms with them. That's not to say, however, that he wouldn't have done something else instead of invading Kuwait, however...
Prior to the end of the Iran- Iraq war he needed them to kick in regular and massive loans to Iraq to continue the war; most people find the capacity to be polite to their bank manager when they want a new loan. Generally speaking it isn’t considered appropriate to shoot the bank manager because you don’t want to pay back the loan.

We know from his Jordanian allies that his original plan was to occupy Kuwait and the northern oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Kuwaiti drilling of the Rumaila oil field was just Saddam’s excuse, but it was never a reason; Saddam fashioned himself to be the leader of the Arab peoples and he meant to achieve it. This is a man who had the ruins of Babylon bulldozed and rebuilt; where the original had bricks stamped with Nebuchadnezzar’s name on them, the new bricks bear the name of Saddam.
 
Saddam Hussein clinged to power by terror tactics, bribes and not the least dividing and distracting his internal enemies. And during the Iraq-Iran war he was forced to give the military far more power, control and freedom than is the norm in dictatorships. The military had also due to pure darwinism become far more skilled than before.

So Saddam did fear a military coup, just like he himself had taken over the Baath party by force in 1979. Invading Kuwait was a good way to keep the military leadership focused on an external enemy and future military campaign rather than plotting "who should be the next president". The alternative would have been big purges or a military-backed coup. (Joseph Stalin had the same problem by 1945, but had a far stronger position.)

Not to mention that Saddam wasn't satisfied with his and Iraqs position. He was hemmed in by the Cold War, meaning that any military action against his neighbours would lead to conflict with the US or the Soviet Union. When Iran left the cold war alliances with US Saddam attacked. When the Berlin wall fell and the Cold War seemed abandoned Saddam attacked. I doubt Saddam would spend decades without trying to invade or conquer someone.

The possibilites for an Iraq that slowly during 25 years became better, richer and democratic are unfortunally very low.
 
The possibilites for an Iraq that slowly during 25 years became better, richer and democratic are unfortunally very low.

One of the inherent problems with both the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq is that the top of the regimes never represented the group with the most citizens. Instead they both represented minority factions that were a fifth or less of their countries population.

So how did Saddam deal with this problem? He pushed ethno-supremacist ideas among the Sunni Arab population of Iraq which were already there before he came into power into overdrive. He mentally made it ok for much of the Sunni Arab population to believe that mass murdering Kurds and Shia even with chemical weapons was acceptable because Sunni Arabs were superior to them.

The system where 20% mainly benefited from the countries oil wealth at the expense of the other 80% was only viable through extreme repression and violence. Now if Saddam had conquered Iran he would have been able to effectively spread the wealth around to the Kurds and Shia Iraqis better as there would have been more wealth to spread around. But, he failed and incurred huge debts for Iraq instead of a huge windfall from his planned conquest of Iran.

As the money dried up Saddam felt he had to get more Totalitarian to keep order. As the Army grew as well he seemed to feel he had to keep the army distracted by keeping Iraq at war or in a constant state of cold war with other countries.
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
Dave They would have done 9/11 either way, they just want to kill it's typical of isolationists of the sort. You always need an enemy to control your population with. So We'd see Bin ladin go to war with the US over every perceived slight made he could dream up.

Sorry, maybe it's because I'm a Brit, but I cannot understand any of this. Perhaps, you can run this by me again?
 
We know from his Jordanian allies that his original plan was to occupy Kuwait and the northern oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Kuwaiti drilling of the Rumaila oil field was just Saddam’s excuse, but it was never a reason; Saddam fashioned himself to be the leader of the Arab peoples and he meant to achieve it.
While he adhered to many of Stalin's ideas, "Socialism in one Country" certainly wasn't one of them. :p

One of the inherent problems with both the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq is that the top of the regimes never represented the group with the most citizens. Instead they both represented minority factions that were a fifth or less of their countries population.
True, I once read that the Ba'ath Party had only 168 members when it took power in 1968! :eek:
 
A man who invades and annexes a country over a debt disagreement (plenty of countries in history have simply stopped paying as opposed to ordering an attack) isn't really the most reasonable or stable actor.

There is really no guarantee that Saddam winning out at the Arab League would have done much to check him. Instead he may well have tried to play fears of regional war to his advantage. A gambler who wins is generally inclined to go back to the table for another round. Saddam is just going to leverage his total military superiority over Kuwait to hit that piñata until it runs out of candy.
 

Cook

Banned
I am relatively sure Saddam's never planned to conquer Iran. He aimed to obtaine one province IIRC.


Correct; he wanted to seize Khuzestan (Arabistan), which contains Iran’s richest oil fields. On that occasion he used the excuse of demanding a revision of the Shatt-al-Arab border demarcation; the Iran-Iraq border had been settled as running down the centre of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway (which was consistent with international law), Saddam claimed the border should run along the Iranian shore line, giving him the entire waterway. As excuses for invasions go, that has to be one of history’s flimsiest.
 
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