ABSTRACT
The Community fully backed the UN Security Council's resolutions calling upon Iraq to withdraw its troops from Kuwait, with most West European countries involved in the embargo effort in some way or other. The crisis of Kuwait seemed to have provided a possible scheme for the political integration of Europe, around concentric circles. The twelve members of the European Community, it is true, all subscribed to the resolutions calling upon Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait and to impose a trade embargo on Iraq. The Kuwait crisis had another impact on US-West European relations: accelerating the American withdrawal from Western Europe. European political unification was accelerated by German unification, but the Kuwait crisis acted "as if a turbo-charger had been switched on." British Prime Minister John Major made clear on January 22 that the European Community's response to the Kuwait crisis cast doubts on its goal of political union.
