On August 8, President Bush made a formal speech on the occasion of the arrival of the airborne division No. 82 in Saudi Arabia. He stated the US’s four goals: 1) The Iraqi troops must withdraw unconditionally and completely from Kuwait; 2) the legitimate Kuwaiti government must be restored to replace the puppet regime; 3) the United States was devoted to the peace and stability in the Persian Gulf; and 4) the United States would safeguard the life and safety of its citizens living abroad. Meanwhile, Push explained that the United States dispatched troops to the Gulf at the invitation of the Gulf countries and their strategy was defensive, mainly to protect Saudi Arabia, and would not initiate a war. [21] Secretary of State James Baker made a speech the next day in Turkey saying that the United States sent troops in order to protect Saudi Arabia and that the US did not want a war with Iraq after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. [22] The messages sent by the US leaders were very clear: The entry of the US troops into the Gulf was defensive. Its objective was to prevent Iraq from attacking Saudi Arabia. The US would use non-military means to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

       In the following two months, the United States quickly dispatched troops to the Gulf region and basically achieved the purpose of “deterrence.” The Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia did not happen (if Iraq had this plan). However, the United States failed to achieve the goal of compelling Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait by non-military means.

       The US non-military endeavors concentrated mainly on three aspects. First, it was active in the United Nations and tried to rely on the role and influence of the United Nations to effect worldwide economic sanctions against Iraq. Second, it coordinated with NATO and tried to win support and cooperation of the NATO countries, particularly the support and cooperation from Turkey. Third, it tried to win over the Arab countries to join the US anti-Iraq battle front, and in particular, tried to obtain Saudi Arabia’s support of its military deployment in the Gulf. The US promised to provide weapons to Saudi Arabia and remit debts of some Arab countries.

It should be said that the US efforts had made great achievements. Iraq was left in unprecedented political isolation. The economic sanctions were very effective. Meanwhile, the military pressure on Iraq also increased day by day. However, these measures did not force Iraq to accept the US conditions, and more and more US decision makers started to believe that non-military measures basically could not achieve the goal of forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

       Why couldn’t the non-military measures have decisive effect on the Iraqi decision makers? The reasons must be very complicated. As aforementioned, the US strategic interests in the Gulf region collided with that of Iraq, and the US had decided that Iraq was a major threat, or a major enemy to its interests in the region. These two basic factors were brought into foreground by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Under this situation, the United States and Iraq could hardly accept any form of arrangement other than engaging in a contention of power.

       In the process of the contention, non-military measures also comprised part of the power policy. Both sides backed their non-military measures by their military strength. Under this situation, the amount of attention that one side paid to the non-military measures of the other side very often depended on its judgement of the other side’s military strength and the resolution and ability of using the strength.

An accurate answer to why the Iraqi decision makers refused to submit to the coercive diplomacy may not be available until the disclosure of the Iraqi diplomatic documents. But at least two points may be very crucial. First, as the US decision makers had noticed, the Iraqi leaders believed that procrastination was to their benefit. Second, the Iraqi leaders may think that the US leaders would be retarded by the memory of the Vietnam War and would not make the determination to wage a war against Iraq in the desert. At least before November 8, when President Bush announced the dispatch of additional 200,000 troops to the Gulf, Saddam had reasons to make such a judgement. [23](23) It was declared by the US leaders themselves that they would resort to military “deterrence” in the case of Saudi Arabia and to non-military “coercion” in the case of Kuwait. This may have led the Iraqi leaders to misjudge that so long as they could hold on, its occupation of Kuwait would be accepted as a fait accompli. However, the reality is when the previous US actions had resulted in Saddam’s misconception, the US leaders decided to spare no force against Iraq in order to drive it out of Kuwait. In this sense, the failure of the diplomatic “coercion” is a direct result of its confined “military deterrence.”

IV. Conclusion

       It is very unique to study certain aspects of the US policies in the Gulf War as a special case study on crisis management. If the situation before the outbreak of the US-Iraq War can be described as a crisis, it was a crisis between an only superpower and a regional hegemony at the end of the cold war. Compared with the crises between the US and the Soviet Union (such as the Cuba missile crisis) during the cold war period, a big difference is that there was a great disparity in both the military and political influence between the US and Iraq. Therefore, the US, having often misled the other side, could prolong the crisis and meanwhile manage it – by measures ranging from isolating Iraq to waging a war against it. Later developments have showed that after its victory in the Gulf War, the United States has become inclined more and more to use force and less and less to use non-military measures on the basis of sober judgement of the situation in handling and resolving crises. The Kosovo War serves as clear evidence. (end)