What caused America to stop supporting Hussein prior to the first Gulf War?





What evidence leads you to believe this?

What caused America to stop supporting Hussein prior to the first Gulf War? I don't think we fully stopped support until he invaded Kuwait. The invasion was in August (I think?), and just 6 or seven months before that Bush had issued a directive reaffirming a policy of constructive engagement toward Iraq. We continued to offer Saddam credits and generous loan terms as a carrot, and threatened sanction reprisal as a stick, to try and persuade him to moderate his human rights abuses and halt his developement of WMD. He was certainly not a friend, but remained a dubious associate.

I'd say the collective eyebrow was raised after the Iran/Iraq war when, instead of using oil revenues to pay off his tens of billions in war debts, he increased military capability, accompanied with verbal assaults on America and its allies (Israel in particular). But, in general, the US remained complacent and conciliatory until the invasion.

The other interpretation is of course that America's foreign policy was rewritten in the 1989-90 period, and it needed a new arena to be 'tested.'

In 1988 a study was comissioned by Reagan, and written by Frank Charles Ikle and Henry Kissinger. This policy review was generated as it became clear to U.S. leaders and planners that the policy of containment had rendered High Intensity Conflicts (read major intercontinental wars) unlikely, and Low Intensity Conflicts were limited in their applicability (read Contra scandal, funding Taliban, etc.)

So, the Comission on Integrated Long Term strategy drafted a report entitled "Discriminate Detterance." It identified that in the future, regional conflicts were more likely to threaten U.S. interests, and prevent the U.S. from protecting its allies. These conflicts would occur outside the traditional sphere of NATO.

So, this policy outlined a new way of "defending" America's interest: Middle Intensity Conflicts. (I'm not just making these terms up.) Such conflicts were described as such:

1. U.S. efforts to protect vital U.S. interests overseas will provoke conflict with Regional Powers.
2. These conflicts cannot escalate slowly.
3. Conflict must be high-tech, lethal, and non-nuclear.
4. The U.S. must take on the role of "protector" against new regional powers.

This sort of conflict was earmarked as the new "mission" of the U.S. military (followed up by the report "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (1990). It was an extremely costly program (again recognized in the original report), one that would allow America to continue it's enormous military expenditure while moving away from nuclear technology and massive deployment capabilities, and one that established a clear agenda. This report, incidentally, was officially adopted by the Department of Defense in January of 1990, in case anyone was wondering...

I don't know, UJ, your first sentence would lead one to conclude that we stopped supporting Saddam because of a new foreign policy technique we wanted to test, and the rest of your post would indicate that the reason behind the new foreign policy objective was to field new types of potential threats. Maybe this had something to do with Saddam's apparent preoccupation with WMD and power expansion after the Iran/Iraq war? Your argument doesn't explain why we were complacent until after the invasion.

Up until the time of the invasion Saddam was arming himself and talking smack, but the majority of the Middle East was basically unconcerned. Kuwait didn't ask for our help, and Saddam had assured many Arab leaders..the president of Egypt, King Husseun of Jordan, and King Faud of Saudi (with whom he concluded a defense pact in 1989), promising not to attack Kuwait. After the invasion, we changed our position (and we certainly weren't the only ones).

What caused America to stop supporting Hussein prior to the first Gulf War?
I would tend to agree with Mrs P's assessment as to the reason we stopped support Saddam. His transgressions were largely ignored prior to invading Kuwait. We didn't choose to end that tenuous relationship until Saddam made himself a larger enemy of the international community.

What evidence leads you to believe this?
Mostly text from Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer and Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke. Both books detail the inherent danger in playing the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" game that is persistent in US foreign policy dating back to the early days of the Cold War (arguably earlier).

Doc

What caused America to stop supporting Hussein prior to the first Gulf War?

Question assumes support was voluntary.

The U.S. had to deal with whatever tyrant ruled, and as we know it was Hussein.

IF we, out of principle, gave him the cold shoulder, then critics would charge us with forsaking a foreign policy and not using our influence the best we can.

Support was voluntary. Nothing bad whatsoever would have happened to America as a nation if Saddam had never taken power. Now, the oil industry might have seen a chunk cut out of their profits, and maybe SUVs wouldn't have been all the rage for so long, but American security and the basic economic structure would not only not have been harmed, it probably would be far stronger.

There is, for me, no excuse that allows the policymakers to install and support brutal dictators over a people. Certainly, the only involuntary support would be support under threat of immediate destruction. That was not the case. Every scrap of evidence shows Iran was far more nationalistic than pro Soviet or pro China. And that has been true of many nations America has invaded and manipulated.

One word: stupidity. Saddam Hussein was probably our biggest asset in the Middle East. Our withdrawing of support directly lead to terrorist attacks against us. Had we allowed him to take over Kuwait, and then Saudi, guess who Bin Laden would be fighting? And Hussein, due to the fact that he would stop at NOTHING to get to his enemies, would take care of this Al Qaeda business over a weekend. Problem solved.

The fact that he wanted to expand in the Middle East could have been easily played in our favor. The more he would spread, the more fire he would draw to himself from the Muslim terrorists. He, in turn, would annihilate them and everyone who looked like them. I think that it in a situation like that it would have been rather easy to get him addicted to our weapons and supplies for his wars. Somehow, I think oil prices would not be an issue for the US today, if Hussein controlled most of the Middle East oil, and his self perpetuation was tied to us.

Or we can just police the world and see where that gets us.

He invaded Kuwait and threatened to invade Saudi Arabia.



The US put together (in conjunction with the UN) a large coalition of nations and expelled Iraq from Kuwait using military force.

However, Mr. Bush made the classic mistake of warfare which was stopping before the business was finished, thus, leaving us with the current war to fight.

Arguably, this finished business should have been taken care of by Mr. Clinton after Saddam threw out the UN WMD inspectors in 1996 and certainly after Saddam attempted to assassinate Mr. Bush in 1998. But, apparently, Mr. Clinton had other, more pressing priorities like conducting "private" meetings with a certain unpaid White House intern on a basis more frequent than his meeting with the head of the CIA, for example.....

The terrorist attack on 9/11 put this unfinished business back on the map and any responsible president (like our current one) could not let this issue fester for yet another administration given the threat of state-sponsored terrorist attacks using WMD's developed by that "state".

I'm not so sure, thinking in context of the time in which Hussein had taken power in the late 70s; he could've just as easily became a Soviet client as he did an American one.... as it turned out, he really seemed to have ended up playing both sides against the middle, for his own aims. He is, after all, an intensely egotistical and self-centred man, and cared nothing for anyone's politics and ambitions but his own.

It's not beyond the realm of the possible that the United States and the Soviet Union both were conned by Saddam Hussein. Just because you're a superpower doesn't mean you can't get played....

But if Saddam had not come to power, though, it's entirely likely that Syria and Iraq would be one country under the Ba'ath Party (then-Iraqi president al-Bakr was negotiating as much).... of course, that could very likely have come, been, and gone already by the time the 90s rolled around.... middle eastern politics are like that.

Anyway....