The Gulf Conflict, 1990-1991

by Lawrence Freedman, Efraim Karsh

The Gulf Conflict provides the most authoritative and comprehensive account to date of Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, its expulsion by a coalition of Western and Arab forces seven months later, and the aftermath of the war. Blending compelling narrative history with objective analysis, Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh inquire into the fundamental issues underlying the dispute and probe the strategic calculations of all the participants.

Genres: History, Military Fiction, Middle East, Military History, Politics

540 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Sir Lawrence David Freedman, KCMG, CBE, PC, FBA is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London.

Reviews

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an insanely thorough and panoramic history of the Gulf Crisis. There's nothing unusual about the argument or the explanations of different actors' behavior and beliefs. Nevertheless, this is a very valuable resource for any scholar who needs an overview of the conflict. Karsh and Freedman are especially good at breaking down the many international actors who played a role in this conflict and taking the time to explain the motives of the main actors. Their judgements are balanced and not too critical; they are definitely scholars with an appreciation for the limits of power, the stresses of leadership, and the complexity of human motives. For example, they offer the best explanation of the role of oil in this conflict that I've seen yet. Kuwait never would have been invaded unless they had oil, and the US would be much less interested in the region without oil. Still, the US could have just accepted Saddam's promise not to invade Saudi Arabia, keep all or most of Kuwait, and then buy up Saddam's oil, treating the elimination of Kuwait as the new normal. The fact that the US didn't pursue this suggests there was more to the picture than oil. Moreover, Freedman and Karsh do a nice job showing how moved Bush was against Iraqi aggression and atrocities. People make history, after all, and Bush genuinely saw the invasion as an ethical outrage that had to be reversed.

One interesting point in this book relates to what the NWO really means. Karsh and Freedman argued that this was not so much a crusade for human rights (Bush was fairly ok with letting atrocities go down within states) but a fight to reassert the old rules of international politics dating back to the UN Charter (and probably to the Peace of Westphalia). These include non-aggression, the settlement of disputes by negotiation, the sanctity of sovereignty, the illegality of eliminating and absorbing another nation, and the importance of not incentivizing aggressive behavior through deals and concessions. For these authors, the NWO is really a reassertion that the rules hadn't changed and that the US might be more willing to enforce them now that the Cold War had ended. I found this to be a mostly sensible interpretation.

The biggest problem with this book is that it is too dense and detailed. There are several areas that could be condensed, considerable repetition, and some extraneous information. As a consequence, I don't recommend it to the casual reader. In fact, I haven't really found a book yet on the Gulf War that really works for the casual reader. Still, for scholars, this should be a go-to text for its thoroughness and wide range of evidence.

[Rob Markley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately forgotten what this had to say