Bush, Thatcher and Building the Coalition
The First Phone Calls
When Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait City in the early hours of 2 August 1990, Margaret Thatcher was in Aspen, Colorado, attending a conference, and President George H. W. Bush flew out to join her. Within hours both leaders had spoken; within a day they were sitting together at the Aspen Institute. The image of the two of them — Bush cautious, Thatcher already certain — would shape the diplomacy of the next six months.
Thatcher’s later line to Bush, “remember George, this is no time to go wobbly”, captured Britain’s position. The annexation of Kuwait was, in her view, an unambiguous breach of international law that had to be reversed by force if necessary. Bush, more cautious by temperament, agreed within days. By 5 August he was telling reporters at Andrews Air Force Base, “this will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait”. The choice had been made: Kuwait would be liberated, not negotiated.
Two UN resolutions framed the international response. UN Resolution 660 on 2 August demanded immediate Iraqi withdrawal. UN Resolution 678 on 29 November set the deadline of 15 January 1991, after which member states could use “all necessary means”.
Operation Desert Shield
The first military priority was not liberating Kuwait but defending Saudi Arabia. Iraqi armoured divisions sat on the Saudi border, and the Saudi eastern oil fields were unprotected. King Fahd had to choose between trusting the United States to send forces or watching Saddam set the agenda for the whole region. After tense diplomacy — Defense Secretary Dick Cheney flew to Riyadh to brief the Saudi cabinet — King Fahd issued a formal invitation on 7 August 1990.
Operation Desert Shield moved the largest American military force overseas since Vietnam. By autumn around 250,000 US troops were in the Gulf; by December the total coalition force exceeded 500,000. Britain’s contribution, codenamed Operation Granby, eventually included some 53,000 personnel including the 1st Armoured Division.
Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker insisted that the coalition had to be visibly Arab as well as Western. If the operation looked like a colonial war by Christian powers against a Muslim country, Saddam’s pan-Arab framing would gain traction. The price of Arab cover was relentless coalition diplomacy. Egypt sent two divisions, Syria sent one (a remarkable diplomatic moment given Hafez al-Assad’s usual hostility to Washington), and Saudi Arabia provided forces as well as bases. Crucially, Israel was kept out of the coalition entirely — bringing Israel in would have driven the Arab states straight back out.
The UN Campaign
Bush ran the diplomatic campaign through the United Nations rather than around it. Resolution 660 condemned the invasion within hours of the first reports. Resolution 661, four days later, imposed comprehensive economic sanctions. Through autumn 1990 a stream of further resolutions tightened the noose: blockading Iraqi shipping, banning air travel, demanding the release of foreign hostages Saddam was using as “human shields”.
Resolution 678 was the decisive step. Passed on 29 November 1990 by twelve votes to two (Cuba and Yemen) with one abstention (China), it authorised member states to use “all necessary means” to enforce the previous resolutions if Iraq had not withdrawn by 15 January 1991. The phrase “all necessary means” was the diplomatic permission for war — without it, military action would have lacked legitimacy and Arab support would have crumbled.
Funding and the Strange New World Order
Wars are expensive. The 1990–91 deployment cost roughly $61 billion in 1991 dollars, and the United States insisted that allies who benefited should pay. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait-in-exile each contributed around $16 billion. Germany and Japan, both barred by their post-war constitutional settlements from sending combat troops, contributed roughly $6 billion and $13 billion respectively. The result was a war the United States led but did not pay for — a model that would not be repeated.
The Soviet Union’s position was a quiet revolution. Mikhail Gorbachev refused to veto the UN resolutions, even though Iraq had been a Soviet client. Soviet diplomats pressed Saddam to withdraw, while keeping channels open in case a last-minute deal could be reached. For Bush, this was the “new world order” he spoke of in a September 1990 address to Congress — a post-Cold War system in which the great powers would cooperate against aggression. For Saddam, it was the most unwelcome surprise of the crisis.
Students often picture a US-UK operation with a few foreign flags pinned on for show. The reality was 35 contributing nations — including, importantly, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Morocco. The Arab and Muslim share of the ground force was a deliberate diplomatic achievement. Soviet acquiescence at the UN, although not active participation, denied Saddam the cover of superpower rivalry. Without that wide coalition the operation would not have happened, or would have collapsed politically before it could begin.
By January 1991 a 35-nation coalition with around 700,000 troops sat in Saudi Arabia, paid for largely by allies, with Soviet acquiescence at the UN and a Resolution 678 deadline counting down. Saddam had assumed the world was too divided to act; in fact it had assembled in front of him.