ABSTRACT
The 2nd August 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait represented what Margaret
Thatcher rightly called, ‘‘a flagrant and blatant case of aggression’’ and an
‘‘outrageous breach of international law’’.1 Peter Shore called it, ‘‘the first
time since 1945 that an aggressor state has sought to change not just the
Government of another country or rectify its borders or impose penalties but
to destroy and annex the victim nation’’.2 In response, the UNSC adopted
Resolution 660 by 14 votes to nil, condemning the invasion and calling for
immediate and unconditional Iraqi withdrawal. On 6th August, the UNSC passed Resolution 661 by 13 votes to nil, with just Cuba and Yemen
abstaining, imposing comprehensive sanctions on Iraq and tellingly affirmed,
‘‘the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in response to the
armed attack by Iraq against Kuwait, in accordance with Article 51 of the
Charter’’. The war that followed occurred on the cusp of the Cold War and
post-Cold War worlds. It was the first major conflict of the post-Cold War
era, although when contrasted with the type of conflicts to come, it is perhaps
more accurately regarded as being the last of the Cold War era. As Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd recalled,
there was none of the intellectual and ethical questioning which later
beset our policy on Bosnia. In that later conflict we were operating
under a new and as yet unformed doctrine of humanitarian intervention
in the internal affairs of a foreign country. Questions of analysis and
doubts on policy cropped up at each stage. In the Gulf we were oper-
ating under the familiar necessity of resisting and reversing the aggression of one nation against another.3
