Bin Laden in this unlikely scenario might have been allowed by Saudi Arabia to try and use his "Brigade of Strangers" to try and turn Kuwait into another Afghanistan. He fails of course as he has nowhere near enough fighters, but even if he could somehow get enough jihadis together, Kuwait would have got smashed in the process.
US abandones Kuwait
- Thread starter ChadMachine999
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- gulf war iraq kuwait saddam hussein
Pretty sure “ally” is stretching it, iirc it was a because they were at war with Iran.
Indeed.
And imagine if that coalition would be led by either Russia and/or China (admittedly Russia itself is an oil exporter but might not want to miss the opportunity to further meddle in the oil business) which would then try to exploit the opportunity to get a foothold (economically, politically or even militarily) in the Persian Gulf.
Now that is something which the US would really get concerned about.
Garrison
Donor
Who controls the supply of crude oil in the Middle East is very much the USA's problem. Having Saddam Hussein setting prices is not going to be acceptable, especially if a US failure to intervene leaves Saudi Arabia vulnerable as well.
Saddam Hussein was never a true US ally. In the Iran-Iraq war the US supported him after 1982 as the lesser evil in the conflict in order to prevent Iran from overrunning Iraq and spreading its influence in the Middle East (there are assertions but no proof that the US encouraged or greenlit Saddam’s invasion), something that would have severely destabilized the regional balance. That doesn’t mean that US in was actually supportive of Saddam or his goals, Kissinger’s quote of "It's a pity they both can't lose” sums up pretty well the US position.
Also, there is no straight road from 1991 to 2003. It was the later invasion of Iraq that destabilized the country and led to the rise of groups like ISIS, not the 1991 intervention in Kuwait and there is no reason to think that the intervention in Kuwait had to necessarily be followed up by an invasion of Iraq.
Allowing Saddam to annex Kuwait would not only have led to Saddam being in a controlling position over a pretty large part of the world’s oil reserve, but also to the destabilization of the Middle East as Saudi-Arabia would feel deeply threatened by Iraq and at minimum instigate an arms race in the region that would have dwarfed Saudi-Arabia post-Gulf War military expansion and possibly going nuclear as a deterrent against Iraq as the Iraqi army was a lot larger than the Saud military.
The international implication of the UN allowing Saddam to annex Iraq in direct violation of the rules of international law would also have been devastating. The UN would have proven itself an even bigger paper tiger than anything it did IOTL that cannot even enforce one of its core rules (no territorial acquisition by force) against a regional power like Iraq. Any power with territorial claims against its neighbor would take notice and wars between countries would likely again be much prevalent than IOTL today.
Also, there is no straight road from 1991 to 2003. It was the later invasion of Iraq that destabilized the country and led to the rise of groups like ISIS, not the 1991 intervention in Kuwait and there is no reason to think that the intervention in Kuwait had to necessarily be followed up by an invasion of Iraq.
Allowing Saddam to annex Kuwait would not only have led to Saddam being in a controlling position over a pretty large part of the world’s oil reserve, but also to the destabilization of the Middle East as Saudi-Arabia would feel deeply threatened by Iraq and at minimum instigate an arms race in the region that would have dwarfed Saudi-Arabia post-Gulf War military expansion and possibly going nuclear as a deterrent against Iraq as the Iraqi army was a lot larger than the Saud military.
The international implication of the UN allowing Saddam to annex Iraq in direct violation of the rules of international law would also have been devastating. The UN would have proven itself an even bigger paper tiger than anything it did IOTL that cannot even enforce one of its core rules (no territorial acquisition by force) against a regional power like Iraq. Any power with territorial claims against its neighbor would take notice and wars between countries would likely again be much prevalent than IOTL today.
Deleted member 90949
The problem with Hussein becoming a US ally was that he was closely aligned with the USSR for decades.
Then again the USSR ceased to exist at the end of 1991.
Saddam was too erratic and therefore destabilizing, too expansionist, too much interested into becoming leader of the Arab world to ever become a true US ally. In the late 1980s to 1990s the US desired stability in the region and Saddam was never likely to be an anchor for stability and by invading Kuwait he destroyed any remaining doubts about that.
It is possible that Saudi-Arabia can assemble such a coalition to deter Saddam from invading Iraq in 1990/91 out of fear of these countries fear of Saddam and by bribing countries, but in the long-term Saudi-Arabia cannot count on Egypt, Pakistan or Syria to defend it from future Iraqi aggression (Egypt and Pakistan are too far away and have issue closer to home that become more important again after a couple of years and Syria is no reliable ally for the traditional kingdom). Saudi-Arabia will absolutely engage in a massive military build-up and at least consider going nuclear to deter Saddam in the long term, which Israel wouldn’t like at all but might tolerate if Saddam is moving aggressively in the region; a clandestine Saudi-Israeli alliance is possible in this case especially if Saddam supports the PLO militarily in order to burnish his Arab nationalist credentials, none of which would in any way be good for regional stability.
I don’t think he was allied to ussr
Just a client for Soviet weaponry
You just need to stop the Ultra-Conservatives from convincing Bush W from kicking off GW2. Afghanistan is going to happen the moment those airliners hit the twin towers, Iraq was just a bolt on.
Bush didn't need to play nice as the Soviets were no longer a strategic competitor. Why keep propping up Saddam when the Russians are no longer in the position to back his play, all the Russians want to do is sell him as much obsolescent hardware as they can shift for hard cash.
If you look at what Saddam was doing, he was obviously winding up to being in a position to fight the Israeli's at some point in the 1990's if he needed to, his construction of bunkers to protect Baath party members (well the important ones anyway) combined with his missile and nuclear weapon programs would have wound the Israeli's up to at least have an arms race directed at Iraq which would have been massively destabilizing. The Saudi's would certainly have been chatting to Dr Khan about a nuclear capability which would have set the Israeli's and Iranians off on four cornered arms race of epic proportions.
We should have paid Russia 1 trillion dollars to go and kick behind in Afghanistan and it would have been more economical probably avoided Iraq war too
A four-way power struggle and arms race (potentially including nukes) between Israel, Saudi-Arabia, Iraq and Iran for control of the Middle East (or in the case of Israel keeping the country safe and secure), in which Iran funds any Shia terrorist groups/militias it can find, the Saudis fund Bin-Laden and fundamentalist Sunni terrorist groups/militias, Iraq funds any more or less secular terrorist groups/militias like the PLO and any other terrorist groups/militias not supported by Iran or Saudi-Arabia, would be a nightmare scenario that has the potential to make the modern Middle East stable by comparison.
Kuwait wasn't holding hundreds of US diplomats and their families hostage, unlike Iran.
Because among other reasons the fear that if you allowed him to annex Kuwait without any real repercussions an opportunist like Saddam might then cast eyes on Saudi Arabia. And the idea of Saddam effectively controlling most of the world's oil exports should scare anyone.
Saddam was a terminal opportunist. If he saw a weak neighbor that had something valuable that he wanted and thought he could get away with he'd go for it.
And theoretically if he did control Iraq, Kuwaiti and SA's oil production he could embargo any country he felt like severely disrupting the world economy.
I wonder how much different the Iran Iraq war would have gone if the New Islamic gov had just kicked out the Embassy staff or quickly released them.
Iran takes hostages in 1979, so help gas people to death by the 10,000s in the 80s after the crisis is over?