the early morning hours of August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces moved across the border and proceeded, with great brutality, to seize control of Kuwait. The result would be the first crisis of the post–Cold War world. It would also open a new era for world oil supplies.
Iraq proffered many rationales for the invasion. Whatever the justifications, the objective was clear: Saddam Hussein intended to annex Kuwait and remove it from the map. An Iraq that subsumed Kuwait would rival Saudi Arabia as an oil power, with far-reaching impact for the rest of the world.
“NOT SO FAST”
In the morning on August 2, Washington, D.C., time, President George H. W. Bush met with his National Security Council in the Cabinet Room at the White House. The mood was grim. The peace and stability so many around the world had hoped for was now suddenly and unexpectedly threatened. Just eight months earlier, the Berlin Wall had fallen, signaling the end of the Cold War. The key nations still had their hands full trying to peacefully wind down that four-and-a-half-decade confrontation.
With the annexation of Kuwait, Iraq would be in a position to assert its sway over the Persian Gulf, which at the time held two thirds of the world’s reserves. Saddam already had the fourth-largest army, in number of soldiers, in the world. Now Iraq would also be an oil superpower. Saddam would use the combined oil reserves, and the revenues that would flow from them, to acquire formidable arsenals, including nuclear and chemical weapons; and, with this new strength, Iraq could project its influence and power far beyond the Persian Gulf. In short, with this invasion and annexation, Iraq could rewrite the calculations of world politics. Allowing that to happen would run counter to four decades of U.S. policy, going back to President Harry Truman, aimed at maintaining the security of the Persian Gulf.
The discussion in the Cabinet Room on August 2, perhaps reflecting the initial shock, was unformed and unfocused. Much of it seemed to turn toward various forms of economic sanctions, almost as though adjusting to a new reality. Or at least it seemed that way to some in the room, including President Bush himself, who was “appalled,” as he put it, at the “huge gap between those who saw what was happening as the major crisis of our time and those who treated it as the crisis du jour.”
“ We will have to get used to a Kuwait-less world,” said one adviser, acknowledging what seemed to be a fait accompli.
Bush raised up his hand.
“Not so fast,” he said.2
DESERT STORM
Thereafter unfolded an extraordinary enterprise in coalition building—with some 36 nations signing on, in the form of either troops or money, under the auspices of the United Nations. The coalition included Saudi Arabia, whose largest oil field was only 250 miles from its border with Kuwait and whose ruler, King Fahd, told Bush that Saddam was “conceited and crazy” and that “he is following Hitler in creating world problems.” It also included the Soviet Union, whose president, Mikhail Gorbachev, said something that would have been unthinkable only a couple of years earlier—that the Soviet Union would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the United States in the crisis.3
Over the six months that followed, a coalition force steadily and methodically assembled in northern Saudi Arabia until it numbered almost a million strong. In the very early predawn hours of January 17, Operation Desert Storm commenced its first phase, with aerial bombardment of Iraqi military targets. On January 23, the Iraqis opened the valves on Kuwait’s Sea Island Oil Terminal, releasing upwards of six million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf, the largest oil spill in history, in an effort to foil what they expected to be an offensive from the sea by U.S. Marines. A month later, on February 23, coalition forces liberated Kuwait City. The next day, the coalition forces swept north from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, throwing back the Iraqi army. The invasion from the sea turned out to be a feint. The actual ground war took no more than a hundred hours, and it ended with Iraqi forces in full retreat.
But if Hussein could not have Kuwait, he would try to destroy it. Hussein’s soldiers left Kuwait burning. Almost eight hundred oil wells were set aflame, with temperatures as high as three thousand degrees, creating a hellish mixture of fire and darkness and choking smoke and gross environmental damage. As much as six million barrels of oil a day were