Desert Shield and Desert Storm

Desert Shield and Desert Storm were events that affected the entire world for many years. When Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi army invaded the small country of Kuwait it would change the way the world viewed Iraq forever. Iraq’s excuse for invading the smaller country was not one that most of the world bought into. Iraq needed to either leave Kuwait on their own, or be removed by force. The world could not sit by and watch Hussein take over the oil reserves of Kuwait. President Bush was forced to remove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. America had to be the police of the world in order to keep Saddam Hussein from controlling nearly all of the oil reserves in the Middle East. It was not something that America wanted to do, but it was something that they had to do.

Saddam Hussein had spent nearly eight years in the 1980’s fighting a war against their neighboring country of Iran. This war cost Iraq billions of dollars over the years. Iraq’s neighboring countries had supplied Iraq with loans of money to help with their fight against Iran. In the end, the loans totaled a sum of nearly forty billion dollars. Saddam Hussein demanded that the Gulf countries simply write these loans off, and not have Iraq pay them back for the money they had loaned Iraq. He was very concerned with the low oil prices in the late 1980’s because oil in Iraq accounted for nearly ninety-five percent of the government’s revenue. So if Hussein did not have to pay his neighboring countries back it would not send his countries economy into the ground. Hussein had to figure out some sort of way to get the money that he owed the other Gulf countries. In February 1990, at a summit meeting of the Arab Cooperation Council in Amman to mark the organization’s first anniversary, Saddam virtually demanded that the Gulf States bail him out of his financial difficulties. Apart from his wartime loans, he wanted fresh loans of thirty billion dollars to pay for reconstruction of his country. He told them “Let the Gulf states know, that if they do not give this money to me, I will know how to get it”.

This was a fierce warning to the measures Hussein was willing to take in order to keep his country strong and operational. He wanted the other Gulf States, namely the Kuwaitis to pay for his country to be rebuilt. On July 18, 1990 Saddam gave Kuwait an ultimatum. He wanted a stabilization of the international oil price, a moratorium on Iraq’s wartime loans, and the formation of an Arab plan similar to the Marshall Plan to assist with Iraq’s reconstruction program. If Kuwait refused Hussein warned to the Kuwaitis “ We will have no choice but to resort to effective action to put things right and ensure the restitution of our rights”. Kuwait did not give in to Hussein’s demands and soon after that Iraq started forming their army near the Kuwaiti border. The countries in the Middle East knew what Saddam Hussein was planning to do, but there was nothing they could do about it because Iraq had the biggest and strongest army in the region. They knew that Hussein would invade Kuwait very soon.

On August 2, 1990 the Iraqi army of 100,000 soldiers backed by 300 tanks crossed the Iraq/ Kuwait border and proceeded to march on the capital of Kuwait, Kuwait City. Six divisions of Iraq’s Republican Guard led the Iraqi military. The Republican Guard was the elite unit in Saddam Hussein’s army. They were the battle-hardened soldiers that had been fighting for Hussein for many years. Kuwait had an army of about 20,300 soldiers. These soldiers were no match for the 100,000 Iraqi soldiers. The invasion took hardly any time at all. Iraq had begun the invasion at 2 a.m. on August 2nd, and had taken over the capital by 11 a.m. the same day. It was an easy victory for the Iraqis. In purely military terms, the Iraqi action was considered well planned and efficiently implemented.

The invasion created a huge uproar in the world market. Many people looked for America to take some sort of military action immediately. United States President George Bush ordered an immediate US economic embargo against Iraq. Many countries put a freeze on all assets that they would send to Iraq, and Iran ordered the immediate Iraqi evacuation of Kuwait. The fifteen member United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 660 stating the Iraq withdraw all of its forces back to their position they had been on August 1, 1990. This one event had literally put the world into a state of shock. The main reason the world was concerned with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was oil. The whole reason Iraq invaded Kuwait was money to pay for their country to be rebuilt, and the main resource in the Middle East is oil. Oil and the money that the Middle Eastern countries make off of oil was the main motivation for Iraq invading Kuwait.

When Iraq took over Kuwait, they had nearly doubled their total oil reserves. After taking over Kuwait, Iraq