ABSTRACT
The abrupt invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, leading to the unresisted occupation of the whole city-state, was the second international crisis in the Gulf region since Saddam Hussein became the president of Iraq in June 1979. Major differences exist between the Iraq-Iran war in 1980 and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. First, while the former involved antagonism between an Arab country and the Persian nation, the latter was about hostility between two neighbouring Arab countries. Second, the US policy of noninterference in the Iraq-Iran conflict stemmed from its intention of having revolutionary Iran deterred by the secular Iraqi regime, the then close ally of the Soviet Union. But the Bush administration’s swift response to the 1990 invasion by Iraq, which had already normalised diplomatic relations with Washington from November 1984, caught the Baghdad regime by surprise. One may wonder what the US response would have been had the pro-American Shah dynasty fallen victim to the Baghdad regime; or, if Kuwait’s main export was not oil, but broccoli, Bush’s least favourite vegetable.2
