Content warning: chemical weapons use
I wrote this to challenge the idea that the US acted benevolently during the first gulf war, which has been presented as analogous to the Ukraine war.
Saddam invaded Kuwait. The US and its allies, supported by the UN, intervened. But the US cannot be seen as a benevolent actor. That war might have been avoided if not for US actions, just like the other wars and military operations that Saddam was involved in during those years.
There is some evidence that the US green lit Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and the plan to annex the north. Part of the claim is that the US
instructed its ambassador to Baghdad to tell Saddam “in effect” that he could “take the northern part of Kuwait.”
Why would Saddam look to the US for permission or support? They were previously allies. There is a similar accusation that the US green lit Saddam’s war against Iran, although it’s not clear-cut
records reveal that th[is] green light thesis has more basis in myth than in reality. Preoccupied with issues such as the Iran hostage crisis and the implications of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter administration officials neither expected nor welcomed Saddam’s attack on Iran. The Iraqi dictator, for his part, believed that Washington would oppose rather than support his war.
Regardless, once the war began, the US supported it, by selling Saddam ‘dual use’ armaments—equipment that can be used by war but which the US could claim another intended purpose, such as helicopters. Other support included sharing aerial images and supplying Iraq with e.g. tanks through a swap deal with Egypt and the equipment and cultures needed to produce chemical weapons.
Foreign Policy broke a story that the US supported Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran, 2, 3:
In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.
The March 1988 Iraqi attacks on the Kurdish town of Halabja–where Iraq government forces massacred upwards to 5,000 civilians by gassing them with chemical weapons–was downplayed by the Reagan administration, even to the point of leaking phony intelligence claiming that Iran, then the preferred American enemy, was actually responsible.
Despite this, the United States increased its support for Saddam Hussein’s regime during this period, providing agricultural subsidies and other economic aid as well as limited military assistance. American officials looked the other way as much of these funds were laundered by purchasing military equipment despite widespread knowledge that it was being deployed as part of Baghdad’s genocidal war against the Kurds. The United States also sent an untold amount of indirect aid–largely through Kuwait and other Arab countries–which enabled Iraq to receive weapons and technology to increase its war-making capacity.
This ally ship between Saddam and the US began again after the US kicked out Saddam from Kuwait. There were uprisings throughout Iraq, with 15 out of 18 provinces breaking away from his regime. ‘[O]nce it [wa]s clear that the U.S. w[ould] not support the rebellion, Saddam’s forces crush[ed] the revolt throughout Iraq.’
The US could have put a stop to Saddam in 1991 (ignoring for now that Saddam got a head start due to US support). The US was certainly not shy of intervening in the region, which raises questions as to why it did not support e.g. the Kurds in the north, whom the US had already supported and may have even tried to secure Kurdish independence. Instead, it stood by while Saddam used chemical weapons against Kurds—after inciting them to fight Saddam.
This was neither the first, second, nor the final time that NATO member states would betray the Kurds, 2, 3. They have bitterly learned that have ‘no friends but the mountains’, as they say. The French and British promised independence and autonomy to the Kurds at Sèvres, only to later give that land to others, at Lausanne, when Turkey resisted the earlier proposal.
Curiously, the plan to use chemical weapons against the Kurds was that of Winston Churchill:
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilized tribes… it would spread a lively terror.
Churchill, of course, being an earlier leader of another, later NATO member. He is well known for the deaths of millions of his other allies, 2 and less well-known for shipping and using 50,000 M Devices (chemical weapons) against Soviet Russia in 1919.
Not only did the US initially support Saddam in one way or another against Kuwait, in the same era it also supported Saddam’s attacks against Iran and Iraqi-Kurds. Crucially, it did not step in to curb heinous human rights violations, instead following a long trend of other western actors; which makes puts into question US motivations in helping to kick Saddam out of Kuwait.
With Kuwait, as in Ukraine, Iraq-Iran, Northern Iraq, and Syria, the US/NATO (or current NATO members before NATO existed), had an opportunity to prevent or minimise war but instead they fanned the flames. Because NATO is a warmonger alliance.
Of course, for a full perspective of the Ukraine war, Russia’s actions must also be analysed. But whatever the results of that analysis, it cannot dilute the fact that NATO and its members have always provoked conflict and acquiesced to the use of the most abhorrent weapons.
Due to the clear historical record, e.g. with the Kurds, there are no strong reasons to assume that the US/NATO will remain loyal to Ukraine after they have got whatever they want from the carnage. NATO’s motivations must be interrogated at every turn because if it is acting benevolently in Ukraine, this will be the first time in its history of such selflessness.