WI: Iraq never invades Kuwait

What if Iraq decided it would not have been worth it to invade Kuwait because they realized the West would intervene? What would the global and regional consequences be?
 
There are many butterflies from this one. For one thing the US military lost the last vestiges of the sense of being lost after Vietnam. I think that if Hussein didn't go after Kuwait the US eventually would have been tempted to go after Iran and that would probably not go well. Of course, in the short term Bush was probably destined to lose the 1992 election. After all, by that point the Republicans had held the presidency for 12 years and the US was due for a swing to the Democrats.
 
Or they might still try to go after Iraq later, under another pretense, human rights, WMD programs etc. The israelis will of course be more frantic the stronger the iraqis get, like i said with another occasion they might try attacks against the iraqi nuclear program, if only to provoke them to shoot back and somehow get the US involved.

The iraqi military will of course be somewhat stronger, while my understanding, if there is no war in 1991, is that there will be a significant level of reduction in the US military (other might know more about this). On the other hand, it might be harder for the hawks to sell a war (at least in the early nineties, we know what happened later, Yugoslavia, Iraq II, Afghanistan, Lybia etc.) against either Iran or Iraq without them taking some kind of "aggressive" action. Btw yeah attacking Iran will be a cluster 10 times worse than Iraq was, good luck with that.
 

jahenders

Banned
I can't see the US actually going to war with Iran without some very direct provocation in the 90s or so (heck, we didn't go to war when they took over our "sovereign" embassy.

Likewise, without Gulf War I, there's probably no invasion Iraq, barring some other other direct provocation.

It's possible that the US MIGHT get involved in an air strike on on or the other if they're rattling enough sabers and threatening nukes, but that's all that's likely unless Osama is hidden BLATANTLY supported by, one or the other.

It might not, but assuming 9/11 still happens as it did, Bush invades AFG, but doesn't do anything but threaten Iraq to avoid Al Qaeda. AFG, and the hunt for Osama, goes a little better because it's the sole focus and there are less things focusing radical Islam on the US.

So, Saddam, and/or his scumbag sons, are likely still in power.

Or they might still try to go after Iraq later, under another pretense, human rights, WMD programs etc. The israelis will of course be more frantic the stronger the iraqis get, like i said with another occasion they might try attacks against the iraqi nuclear program, if only to provoke them to shoot back and somehow get the US involved.

The iraqi military will of course be somewhat stronger, while my understanding, if there is no war in 1991, is that there will be a significant level of reduction in the US military (other might know more about this). On the other hand, it might be harder for the hawks to sell a war (at least in the early nineties, we know what happened later, Yugoslavia, Iraq II, Afghanistan, Lybia etc.) against either Iran or Iraq without them taking some kind of "aggressive" action. Btw yeah attacking Iran will be a cluster 10 times worse than Iraq was, good luck with that.
 
If the US does go after Iran, Saddam might become a cobelligerent and stab the Iranians in the back like the opportunist he is. The question is how the US would respond to suddenly being allied to somebody they don't really like anymore.
 
If the US does go after Iran, Saddam might become a cobelligerent and stab the Iranians in the back like the opportunist he is. The question is how the US would respond to suddenly being allied to somebody they don't really like anymore.

They declare that Saddam is a not-so-bad guy after all and people will believe them... That why the White House PR specialists are paid for.

Saddam and his regime were laic, and AQ hated him for that. He can even become a regional ally against international terrorism!

Another interesting question: would the Arab Spring of 2011 spread to Iraq, and would things degenerates into a civil war like in Libya and Syria?
 
They declare that Saddam is a not-so-bad guy after all and people will believe them... That why the White House PR specialists are paid for.

Saddam and his regime were laic, and AQ hated him for that. He can even become a regional ally against international terrorism!

Another interesting question: would the Arab Spring of 2011 spread to Iraq, and would things degenerates into a civil war like in Libya and Syria?

If the Arab Spring happens, then Saddam or his successor Qusay will make Bashar al-Assad and Gaddafi look like nice guys. Think the Al Anfal campaign and the 1991 massacres of Shiites, except even worse.
 
Agreed in the event that the 'Arab Spring' even occurs ITTL, Iraq will resemble a blood bath.

It would also be interesting to see how Iraq develops without sanctions and what military weapons they would possess.
 
Agreed in the event that the 'Arab Spring' even occurs ITTL, Iraq will resemble a blood bath.

It would also be interesting to see how Iraq develops without sanctions and what military weapons they would possess.
there was no Arab Spring.
 
I can't see the US actually going to war with Iran without some very direct provocation in the 90s or so (heck, we didn't go to war when they took over our "sovereign" embassy.

Likewise, without Gulf War I, there's probably no invasion Iraq, barring some other other direct provocation.

It's possible that the US MIGHT get involved in an air strike on on or the other if they're rattling enough sabers and threatening nukes, but that's all that's likely unless Osama is hidden BLATANTLY supported by, one or the other.

It might not, but assuming 9/11 still happens as it did, Bush invades AFG, but doesn't do anything but threaten Iraq to avoid Al Qaeda. AFG, and the hunt for Osama, goes a little better because it's the sole focus and there are less things focusing radical Islam on the US.

So, Saddam, and/or his scumbag sons, are likely still in power.

There will not be a 9/11. Al Qaeda's stated reason for the attack was the presence of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia. The reason they were there was due to the first Gulf War. If Iraq doesn't invade Kuwait, there is no need to have large numbers of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia.

Torqumada
 
The West may still actually try to disarm Iraq through negotiation instead of war. Instead of there being a controversial deal with Iran, it would be with Baghdad instead.
 
The West may still actually try to disarm Iraq through negotiation instead of war. Instead of there being a controversial deal with Iran, it would be with Baghdad instead.

Why? Prior to August 1990 Saddam's Iraq was regarded as a very useful counterweight to the Ayatollahs' Iran which had been regarded as the real threat by the US since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. If anything the US might have aided Iraq through money and arms in order to prevent Iranian expansion.
 
What if Iraq decided it would not have been worth it to invade Kuwait because they realized the West would intervene? What would the global and regional consequences be?

If Saddam doesn't go into Kuwait the Saudis and Kuwaitis continue to fund his anti-persian crusade.
strange as it might seem the world might be a slightly better place because the first sign of IS raising its head in his territory would see a lot of IS people disappeared.
Saddam would worry about crossing into syria to get them and the Saudis would turn a blind eye.

it'd be a sick world where having saddam still in power is a better one.
but would it be worst that what is happening now?
sorry if people don't like this its not meant to be political
 
Why? Prior to August 1990 Saddam's Iraq was regarded as a very useful counterweight to the Ayatollahs' Iran which had been regarded as the real threat by the US since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. If anything the US might have aided Iraq through money and arms in order to prevent Iranian expansion.

Might have? This is exactly what the US had been doing before 1990!

To be sure, with the Iranian capitulation ending the long Iraq-Iran war, US support was cooling down, which possibly has some bearing on why he did choose to invade Kuwait OTL.

I'm aware of two factors that probably motivated him most:

1) Kuwait had loaned Iraq a whole lot of money during the I-I war, and now that it was settled adversely from the Iranian POV, the monarchy was calling in the debt. Saddam asked them to forbear it or anyway go slow with payment demands since Iraq was also battered and I daresay the slack state of the global economy did not help either. But they wanted their debt repayed promptly. From SH's point of view, Iraq had fought and bled to secure the interests of all the Gulf states and principalities, now they, having sat back and risked nothing but money, wanted the money back too.

2) The Iraqis accused Kuwait of offset oil drilling, with wells on the Kuwait side of the border slanting across into fields under Iraq. I suspect this was the truth. In the context of Kuwaiti insistence on strict repayment of debts, this sort of thing would be all the more infuriating.

Although I guess American aid had slowed down to a trickle compared to wartime support the Yankees had given, the Bush administration still professed to support SH; this did not change until the invasion. Had he swallowed his pride and anger and avoided doing anything so drastic (which might have been too much to ask of the thug) I'd think the US would have regarded him as an asset from that day to this, at least as long as Iran was seen as posing any sort of potential threat.

He'd also be seen as a bulwark against other brands of Islamic fundamentalism, as others have suggested or implied above.

Whether it would have been possible to engineer sufficient war fever to take on as misguided an adventure as a US invasion of Iran is really hard for me to judge, gobstopped as I am by some of the incredibly foolhardy things we've done in the OTL interim. I rather hope not and I don't think the Iranians would have done anything worse than OTL to serve as provocations, no matter how energetically spun the OTL issues might have been by US hawks.
 
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