One of the first Arab leaders to recognize the realities of the post–Cold War world was the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. As early as March 1990, Hussein had warned his fellow Arab leaders that “for the next five years there would be only one true superpower”—the United States.² In many ways, Iraq was better positioned than the other Arab republics to make the transition from the old rivalries of the Cold War to the new realities of American predominance. Although Iraq had enjoyed particularly close relations with the Soviet Union, confirmed in their 1972 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, the eight-year Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) had led to a thaw in U.S.-Iraqi relations. American hostility to the Islamic Republic of Iran drove the Reagan administration to support Iraq in order to prevent an outright Iranian victory. Even after the war ended in stalemate, Washington had continued its rapprochement with Baghdad. The new American president, George H. W. Bush, had every intention of building better relations with Iraq when he came to office in January 1989. In October of that year the Bush administration issued a national security directive that set out U.S. policies toward the Persian Gulf that put a high premium on closer ties to Iraq. “Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East,” it read. “The United States should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence with Iraq.” The directive also encouraged an opening of the Iraqi market to American companies. “We should pursue, and seek to facilitate, opportunities for U.S. firms to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy.” This extended to “non-lethal forms of military assistance” to enhance American influence over the Iraqi defense establishment.³ Saddam Hussein could be forgiven for believing he had guided his country well through the turmoil of the end of the Cold War. Yet Saddam Hussein still faced daunting challenges ruling his country—challenges stemming from disastrous decisions taken since he came to power in 1978. The Iraqi president’s unprovoked and ultimately fruitless war with Iran had taken a terrible toll on the country—and his own support base among the Iraqi populace. Half a million Iraqi men died in the course of the eight-year conflict, provoking domestic opposition to Hussein’s rule. As the war dragged on, the opposition to Saddam Hussein grew violent. In 1982 Hussein survived an assassination attempt in the village of Dujail to the north of Baghdad. The Iraqi president responded with overwhelming violence, ordering his security forces to kill nearly 150 villagers in retaliation. In northern Iraq, Kurdish factions took advantage of the war with Iran to make a bid for autonomy. The Iraqi government responded with an extermination campaign dubbed al-Anfal, or “the spoils.” Between 1986 and 1989, thousands of Iraqi Kurds were forcibly resettled, 2,000 villages were destroyed, and an estimated 100,000 men, women, and children were killed in Anfal operations. In one of the most notorious incidents, the Iraqi government used nerve gas against the village of Halabja in March 1988, killing 5,000 Kurdish civilians.⁴ Along with the Kurds, the Sunni and Shiite communities of Iraq also faced intense repression—arbitrary arrest, widespread torture, and summary executions—to stifle dissent. Only confirmed members of the ruling Ba’th Party were to enjoy confidence and advancement within Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Once celebrated for its secular values, high literacy rates, and gender equality, by 1989 Iraq had degenerated into a republic of fear.⁵ Besides a restive populace, the most immediate challenge facing Saddam Hussein at the end of the Iran-Iraq War was the reconstruction of his country’s shattered economy. Iraq’s wealth derived from its massive petroleum resources. For eight years, the country’s vital lifeline of oil had been cut by attacks on pipelines and port facilities, and a ruthless tanker war that took the Iran-Iraq conflict to the Gulf’s international shipping lanes. Deprived of oil revenues, Iraq had been forced to borrow billions of dollars from its Arab Gulf neighbors to sustain its war effort. By the war’s end in 1988, Iraq owed some $40 billion to the other Gulf states, and debt repayment consumed over 50 percent of Iraq’s oil income in 1990.⁶ Compounding Iraq’s difficulties was the steady decline in the price of oil. To pay off his country’s debts Saddam Hussein needed oil prices to remain in the range of $25 a barrel (at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, prices had reached as high as $35 a barrel). He watched in despair as the international price slumped to $14 by July 1990. The Gulf, at peace once again, was now able to export all the oil the world needed. To make matters worse, some Gulf states were producing well beyond their OPEC quotas. Kuwait was one of the worst offenders. Kuwait had its own reasons for breaking ranks with OPEC over production quotas. Earlier in the 1980s, the Kuwaiti government had diversified its economy by investing heavily in Western refineries and opening thousands of gasoline stations across Europe under the new brand name “Q-8,” a homonym for “Kuwait.” Kuwait’s crude oil exports increasingly went to its own facilities in the West. The more crude oil the Kuwaitis sold to their Western refineries, the higher their profits in Europe.⁷ These refining and marketing outlets generated higher profit margins than the export of crude and insulated Kuwait from variations in the price of crude oil. Kuwait was more interested in generating maximum output than seeking the highest price per barrel by hewing to OPEC’s guidelines. Iraq, in contrast, had no such external outlets, and its revenues were inextricably linked to the price of crude oil. Every drop of one dollar in the price of a barrel of oil represented a net loss of $1 billion to Iraq’s annual revenues. In OPEC meetings, Iraq and Kuwait found themselves on the opposite side of the table, with Iraq pressing to reduce output and drive up the price of oil while Kuwait called for greater output. The Kuwaitis paid little attention to Iraqi concerns. In June 1989 Kuwait simply refused to be bound by the quota it was assigned by the other OPEC members. Having supported Iraq?s war effort against Iran with loans totaling $14 billion, the Kuwaitis felt justified in putting their own economic interests first now that the war was over. Saddam Hussein began to pin the blame for Iraq’s economic woes on Kuwait, and he responded by applying pressure and threats to the small Gulf shaykhdom. He called on Kuwait not only to forgive Iraq’s $14 billion debt but to make a further loan of $10 billion for Iraq’s reconstruction. He accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi oil from their shared Rumaila oil field. He also claimed that Kuwait had seized Iraqi territory during the Iran-Iraq War, and he demanded the “return” of the strategic islands of Warba and Bubiyan at the head of the Gulf both for military facilities and to provide Iraq with a deep-water port. Hussein’s assertions, though unfounded, reopened Iraq’s long-standing challenge to Kuwait’s frontiers and independence. Iraq had already claimed Kuwait as part of its territory twice in the twentieth century—in 1937, and upon Kuwaiti independence in 1961. Yet Iraq’s Arab neighbors took these new claims and threats to be no more than empty rhetoric. The Arab states were mistaken: in July 1990, Hussein backed up his words with actions when he deployed large numbers of troops and tanks to Iraq’s border with Kuwait. The other Arab states were forced into action, now aware that a serious crisis was brewing. Egypt and Saudi Arabia responded to the growing crisis by trying to broker a diplomatic solution. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and President Mubarak of Egypt arranged a meeting between the Kuwaitis and Iraqis in the Saudi Red Sea port of Jidda, scheduled for August 1. Saddam Hussein promised the Arab leaders before the meeting that all differences between Iraq and its neighbors would be settled in a “brotherly manner.” Saddam Hussein had already made up his mind to invade Kuwait. Before sending his vice president to meet with the Kuwaiti crown prince in Jidda, Hussein requested a meeting on July 25 with the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, to sound out Washington’s position on the crisis. Glaspie assured the Iraqi president that the United States had “no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.”⁸ It appears that Hussein interpreted Ambassador Glaspie’s remarks to mean the United States would not intervene in an inter-Arab conflict, and shortly after the meeting, he changed the scope of his invasion plans. Initially he had envisaged a limited incursion into Kuwait to seize the two islands and the Rumaila oil field. Now he called for a total occupation of the country. In a meeting with the governing Revolutionary Command Council, Hussein argued that if he were to leave the ruling al-Sabah family in charge of part of Kuwait, they would mobilize international—particularly American—pressure to force Iraq to withdraw. A quick and decisive invasion that toppled the al-Sabah before they had a chance to call for American intervention would give Iraq the best chance for success. Moreover, were Iraq to absorb its oil-rich neighbor entirely, it could solve all its economic problems at once. When Saddam Hussein sent his Vice President to meet with the Kuwaiti Crown in Jidda on August 1, he was using diplomacy to achieve total surprise for his military plans. The meeting between Ezzat Ibrahim and Shaykh Saad al-Sabah was conducted amiably, without any hit of threats. The two men parted on good terms and agreed to hold their next meeting in Baghdad. By the time they left Jidda at midnight, Iraqi troops were already moving across the border into Kuwait.