US persuaded Saddam to stay out of Kuwait?

Surely this has been done, so I welcome folks to post the links and shut me down here. But I find it fascinating the POD of keeping US forces out of the middle east via keeping Saddam out of Kuwait.
 
Saddam needs to do something to settle his war debts. Given his personality, it probably involves force. He might threaten the Saudis instead. No doubt Bush puts his foot down again, at which point Saddam says that since he fought a costly war on behalf of the States, he should be reimbursed for some of the expenses, lest he be forced to find solace some other way. Then I can imagine things getting really awkward.
 
I assume the US has underestimated the need of a dictator to have a "sucess". Kuwait was an (too) easy target. If the US could hold Iraq as an ally in the long run is questionable. If the (quiet) alliance lasted the US would be in a nice positon to harrass Iran. Another Iran-Iraq war is almost certain in this scenario (as Saddam NEEDS a foreign enemy).
 
If we can avoid GW1, do we butterfly away 9/11, invasion of Afghanistan, GW2, US-occupation of Iraq, ISIS, Europe refugee crisis, etc?
 
April Glaspie (or whatever her name was). Late July 1990 she made a goof that convinced Saddam America wouldn't react if he invaded Kuwait. So he did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie
Reading that Wikipedia article the below caught my eye...

of the Brookings Institution, writing in the New York Times on February 21, 2003, disagreed with the views (previously cited) of observers like Edward Mortimer:

“ In fact, all the evidence indicates the opposite: Saddam Hussein believed it was highly likely that the United States would try to liberate Kuwait but convinced himself that we would send only lightly armed, rapidly deployable forces that would be quickly destroyed by his 120,000-man Republican Guard. After this, he assumed, Washington would acquiesce to his conquest.
When has America demonstrated in its history that it would acquiesce to any conquest? Yes it's an attack on a pseudo-protectorate not USA soil, but surely there was some historian in Japan shaking his head at this....
 
When has America demonstrated in its history that it would acquiesce to any conquest? Yes it's an attack on a pseudo-protectorate not USA soil, but surely there was some historian in Japan shaking his head at this....

From what I've read, it's an interpretation specific to the Middle East. There, we failed in Vietnam, failed to save the Iran hostages, cut and ran from Lebanon after one bad bombing in 1983, and later cut and ran from Somalia after losing a helicopter, not to mention doing nothing about the '98 embassy bombings or the USS Cole. Al Qaeda and others in the region really didn't take American resolve seriously. Hell, they arguably had much better reason than the Japanese ever did to doubt us.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
When has America demonstrated in its history that it would acquiesce to any conquest? Yes it's an attack on a pseudo-protectorate not USA soil, but surely there was some historian in Japan shaking his head at this....

Not only that, but Saddam should have been well aware that, if his prediction had come true and the lightly armed American forces had been overrun by the Republican Guard, that would require the United States to send in an overwhelming force and crush the Iraqi military like a pea under a sledgehammer, not the other way around.
 
Not only that, but Saddam should have been well aware that, if his prediction had come true and the lightly armed American forces had been overrun by the Republican Guard, that would require the United States to send in an overwhelming force and crush the Iraqi military like a pea under a sledgehammer, not the other way around.

Just like the Beirut bombing caused Reagan to double down? I honestly don't blame Saddam for that, just for overestimating his own forces. I don't often agree with neoconservatives, but I can definitely buy their interpretation that we were seen as cowards at the time.
 
I imagine many a defence contractor raised his glass to Saddam, as they must have been rather worried that the end of the Cold War would cut into their sales commissions.
 
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