No Gulf War

So I learned the other day that than Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs General Colin Powell was very very much against going to war with Iraq over Kuwait, he felt Kuwait wasn't worth it and lobbied hard basically up till the start of the war for a strategy of containment, a long term Desert Shield, many other Americans thought that the US wouldn't go to war, the Iraqis thought it, so what if we hadn't?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
You need to have a better POD than "they decided not to go to war". Powell expressed some misgivings at the beginning of the crisis, but later was completely supportive of the war effort.

One possibility that has always intrigued me is whether Saddam Hussein would simply have taken the northern portions of Kuwait (the Rumaila oil field and offshore islands), rather than attempting to take over the entire country. Although I can see a UN denunciation of this move, I don't see anything approaching the massive effort to knock Iraq out of Kuwait as took place IOTL. I doubt you'd get a UNSC resolution authorizing the use of force and I doubt you'd get a congressional authorization either.
 
my best guess is that you could see a few more small scale conventional wars as dictators see that aggression can pay if you play your cards right
 
You need to have a better POD than "they decided not to go to war". Powell expressed some misgivings at the beginning of the crisis, but later was completely supportive of the war effort.

it seems to be far more than "some misgivings" to quote the man at a national security council "If it was Saudi Arabia I could see going to war, but Kuwait just doesn't seem worth it" of course he was of a minority view on the matter, and the Bush White House than and Powell latter worked hard to give the view of one mind, for war, on the matter, a different President maybe just a different Sec Def and there isn't a war.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
So I learned the other day that than Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs General Colin Powell was very very much against going to war with Iraq over Kuwait, he felt Kuwait wasn't worth it and lobbied hard basically up till the start of the war for a strategy of containment, a long term Desert Shield, many other Americans thought that the US wouldn't go to war, the Iraqis thought it, so what if we hadn't?
The issue wasn't really a military policy one. It was a diplomatic faux pas.

The war to remove Saddam from Kuwait had to happen for the US to save face in light of a huge mistake made by the diplomatic community that encouraged Saddam to attempt to take Kuwait in the first place.

Powell wasn't privy to that part of the equation. It was outside of his concern.
 
You have to remember that prior to the Gulf War actually taking place, people were expecting it to be a lot more painful for us - expecting thousands or tens of thousands of coalition dead for example.

There was also uncertainty about Iraqi WMD & terrorism & what Iran would do & whether pro-Western Arab governments might be overthrown if Israel was dragged in. Yes they could threaten to glass/flood Baghdad or whatever in retaliation for Iraqi CW, but that wouldn't guarantee that Iraq wouldn't use chemicals, etc.
 
Averting the Gulf War is difficult primarily because with all that debt piled up in eight years of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein was desperate to nullify it, and not particularly scrupulous about how he nullified it. Too, it's worth noting before the actual fighting started that people had a grotesquely exaggerated sense of Iraqi military power that a look at their performance against Iran should have nipped in the bud.
 
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