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In 1988, the Iran-Iraq War ended, but the chaos in the Middle East was far from over.
Iraq, which suffered significant damage during the war and incurred large debts, invaded Kuwait in an attempt to compensate for its economic losses by seizing Kuwaiti oil fields.
Saddam
This move will naturally be opposed by many countries, not to mention the Americans who are closely eyeing oil interests in order to maintain the hegemony of the dollar, and the international community will not sit idly by while the occupation of Kuwait leads to an increase in oil prices.
As latecomers, we naturally know the outcome of this war, and the Iraqi army was swept away in less than two months, so many people who saw this history questioned - how did Saddam Hussein dare to provoke the United States head-on with Iraq's strength?
Iraq in the eyes of the international community at that time
In fact, before the Gulf War officially began, the international community generally did not consider Iraq vulnerable.
Strategic map of the Iran-Iraq war
In the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq, as the first raider, was eventually embarrassed by the counterattack, once requested assistance from the United States, indeed it seems that Iraq's military is weak, but the loss of the war is mainly attributed to the internal command confusion and backward tactical thinking of the Iraqi army, in terms of weapons and equipment, Iran is far inferior to Iraq.
In 1990, Iraq was at its peak in history, at least its military and industrial industry was at its absolute peak. At that time, Iraq had 77 standing army divisions, a total of 1.2 million people, and a literacy rate of more than 90%, and the number and quality of Iraqi troops in the Middle East were outstanding.
In terms of mechanized forces, Iraq had 4,280 standing tanks, of which 750 were T72 that China could not ask for, 3,700 artillery pieces and 2,800 armored personnel carriers.
MiG-29
In addition, Iraq had early warning aircraft earlier than China, and also formed an army aviation system, with a simple but combat-ready helicopter unit. In terms of official air force, Iraq's air force has advantages over China, Britain and France in the same period, with nearly 700 fighters of various types, including the MiG-29, the most advanced model at that time.
Looking only at paper power, Iraq's military strength in 1990 was firmly in the top three even in today's Middle East, when Iraq was undoubtedly the most armamentally powerful country in the whole of Asia.
Of course, in recent years, the trend of overturning cases has prevailed, and it is inevitable that many media have exaggerated the strength of the Iraqi army in order to grandstand, although Iraq was in the first echelon at that time in terms of army size and weapons and equipment, but the combat effectiveness of the army was comprehensively measured from many aspects, and many self-media said that Iraq was the third military power in the world at that time, which is completely exaggerated.
Il-76
In the early 80s of the 20th century, the largest overseas user of the Soviet Union's Il-76 strategic transport aircraft was Iraq. It was precisely because Iraq forged a deep cooperative relationship with the Soviet Union at its strongest in the late seventies that it was able to acquire so many Soviet-made weapons.
But Soviet-made armies abound, few with the equivalent of the Cuban army, and the Iraqi army lagged far behind in learning modern tactics, perhaps even less than some African countries such as Tanzania.
In addition, although Saddam Hussein focused on developing his own military industry, Iraq's military industry is still highly dependent on imports and modifications, such as Iraq's famous Anand series of early warning aircraft, which is based on the Il-76 transport aircraft, modified radar system and manufactured, the actual combat capability is extremely limited.
Gulf War
Therefore, although Iraq installed early warning aircraft 20 years earlier than China, it still did not have a perfect air war early warning system at the time of the 2003 Iraq War.
However, as we said earlier, just looking at paper strength, no one will feel that Iraq is vulnerable, and the countries around the world at that time also agreed that it was very risky to directly send troops to attack Iraq, including the US military itself, and many staff officers held conservative views before the war.
It can be said that before the Gulf War officially began, the two sides as the main body of the war lacked a correct understanding of themselves and the enemy.
Saddam Hussein under internal pressure
When paying attention to Iraq's military strength, the internal and external situation facing Iraq at that time cannot be ignored.
The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 severely depleted the national power of Iran and Iraq, and after the war, Iraq accumulated $70 billion in new debts to other Middle Eastern countries, of which $14 billion was borrowed from Kuwait.
Saddam
Faced with the conflict between the post-war need to rebuild and the empty state finances, Saddam Hussein needed an outlet to deflect domestic tensions.
Such behavior is not uncommon in modern world history, such as Ugandan tyrant Amin's attempt to divert internal contradictions in the army by attacking Tanzania; Argentine dictator Galtieri declared war on Britain, attacked the Falklands and suppressed domestic opposition; Honduras' war against El Salvador used populism to ease military-civilian tensions; Trujillo, the dictator behind Dominica, sent troops to massacre Haitians to vent their grievances.
Unlike these "peers", Saddam Hussein was forced to start fighting again in the window period when the army had just experienced a big war, and should have entered the stage of recuperation. This anomalous behavior caused observers and strategic advisers around the world, including the U.S. Army Staff, to misjudge Saddam's determination to fight.
Iraq invaded Kuwait
Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait did not mean to pay the bills by force, but rather than $14 billion in debt, Saddam Hussein wanted the opportunity to manipulate the world oil market.
At the end of the Iran-Iraq War, more than 40% of Iraq's oil field facilities were destroyed, oil production capacity fell sharply, and oil export profits accounted for half of Iraq's national fiscal revenue at that time.
Affected by the Iran-Iraq war, Middle Eastern countries are more or less reducing oil production, and Kuwait is the first country to announce an increase in production after the war, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, relying on accounts is not the primary purpose, encroachment on oil resources is not the primary purpose, suppressing international oil prices is his core goal.
Iraqi army
On the other hand, Iraq's huge army is actually the product of excessive military expansion in response to the war. Iraq had a population of less than 17 million, but mobilized 1.2 million standing troops, including reserves and cadets, and there is no doubt that the manpower reserves of an entire generation of young men in Iraq at that time were completely drained.
Too large a military size is a problem for any country, such as European countries at the end of World War I, such as the United Kingdom at that time, because of excessive military spending and a large number of retired soldiers caused by social security shocks, and fell into a state of instability for nearly a decade.
This is even more difficult for a country like Iraq, where the social situation has never been stable.
Once a large number of soldiers who end their studies and enter the battlefield due to military service are discharged, there is no doubt that they will become a destabilizing factor immediately after returning to society, and even if they can rely on the security force to maintain stability in terms of public security, the employment gap created by these veterans will affect the overall national economy.
Saddam
In order not to let the military influence society, it is necessary to maintain the army, and in a complex area such as the Middle East, where wars are frequent, maintaining a large army is bound to go to export wars.
In general, sending troops to Kuwait was a choice that Saddam was forced to make in order to solve the internal and external problems facing Iraq, and the success of the war and the benefits of plundering Kuwait's resources were the main factors that made him firmly believe in the idea of occupying Kuwait.
Lack of expectations for U.S. troops
As another subject of the Gulf War, the attitude of the United States is naturally closely related to Iraq's response.
In fact, the relationship between Iraq and the United States at that time was not bad, as mentioned earlier, in the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq once needed to request American assistance to deal with the Iranian offensive, although Iraq was close to the Soviet Union in terms of arms sales orders, but there was no direct hostility with NATO countries.
Jamal Abdul Nasser
Even Iraq's second and third largest sources of arms are France and the United States, and Iraq is also one of the important nodes of the United States' oil hegemony, so Saddam Hussein believes that the United States may not necessarily make a big move for the projectile land.
This kind of diplomatic judgment is also not uncommon in the modern history of the world, and all countries that have walked through the Cold War era have the same understanding that the United States and the Soviet Union will sell their interests to countries that need to be wooed for their own interests and ideological competition, and even bear diplomatic pressure on their behalf.
Egyptian leader Nasser once judged that the United States and the Soviet Union would mediate Britain and France for the sake of influence in the Arab world to prevent the two countries from sending troops to attack Egypt after recovering the Suez Canal; The notorious Indonesian dictator Suharto also boasted of Indonesia's key position in the Asia-Pacific layout of the United States, won the neutral attitude of the United States, and forcibly occupied the Portuguese overseas province of East Timor.
Location map of Iceland
Most typically, Iceland even relied on its geographical value (holding the Mid-North Atlantic Ridge, which was the bridgehead of NATO's Western European system against Soviet submarines during the Cold War) that led the United States to constantly suppress Britain and seize territorial waters and fishing grounds that belonged to Britain.
Galtieri in Argentina even fantasized that he could rely on friendly diplomatic relations with Britain to make Britain calm down directly after it was declared war. Saddam Hussein's mere belief that Iraq's "importance" would allow the United States to make concessions to his occupation of Kuwait was not an exaggeration, and even in the eyes of many other countries at the time, it was a non-low probability event.
In addition, the impact of the Vietnam War cannot be ignored, when most countries believed that the United States lacked the courage to engage in another regional all-out war, including the US military staff itself.
Vietnam War
The lessons of the Vietnam War are vividly remembered, when the Soviet Union was still in the quagmire of Afghanistan, two typical negative cases were in front of it, and there was a general lack of confidence within the US military at that time for the decision to send troops to attack Iraq.
It can be said that Saddam's tough statement in international politics is most likely not that he wants to provoke the United States, but simply believes that the United States will not go to war in a high probability and puts on a posture of not yielding to try to pull the United States into the negotiating table.
During the first Gulf War, all the strategies of the Iraqi army served only one purpose - drag, learn from the experience of the Vietnam battlefield, drag until the US military thought the cost of war was too high and withdrew its troops, as for head-on confrontation or anti-aggression combat?
Throughout the Gulf war, proactive tactical thinking almost never emerged.
Saddam
The United States is determined beyond the imagination of all onlookers
Although Saddam's ideas were arrogant, they were indeed reasonable conjectures based on objective reality, and they were also in line with the expectations of most countries at that time, and no one predicted that the United States would show unimaginable tough determination on the Kuwait issue.
Legend has it that before heading for the Gulf, the US military prepared 15,000 body bags in advance to prepare for a tug-of-war of meat grinding, which is somewhat exaggerated. But from the logistics statistics of the US military that were later declassified, it can also be seen that the United States was ready to fight a war that smelled longer than Vietnam.
The US military made preparations for war seven months in advance; the Joint Transport Command mobilized a total of 100,000 people, launched more than 600 strategic transport planes and more than 10,000 sorties, three air tanker squadrons ensured the smooth flow of transportation lines, and more than 600 ships of various types stored massive materials for the 540,000-strong army without sleep.
American military buildup
The fuel used by the reserve mobile forces alone was stockpiled in advance with 6.1 million barrels, 4 million tons of various supplies and light and heavy equipment, and finally 4,300 tanks, 5,600 armored vehicles, 4,000 combat aircraft, and 2,300 artillery pieces were mobilized in the form of airdrops and sea transport.
Three other squadrons of sea reserves, carrying enough supplies and equipment for a standard brigade to fight for 30 days, patrolled the sea with about 20,000 reserve troops, ready to carry out rescue and sabotage operations. In addition, there are billions worth of war material reserves stored in other nearby Arab countries, and in order to transfer materials as soon as possible in the event of an accident, the US military has built 21 new field airfields.
In this way, the US military came up with the strongest war preparations since World War II, launched the largest air force in the 20th century, and carried out the most intense air raid in history that lasted 38 days.
George bush
The Supreme Soviet has repeatedly discussed that Afghanistan should not use troops, but Brezhnev's personal feelings influenced him to make a tough decision to start a war, and the Gulf War was also fought under the decisive decision of George W. Bush.
The difference is that the United States, because of the lessons of the Vietnam War, used a "lion fighting rabbit" attitude, and quickly ended the war in 42 days through investment regardless of cost, but the Soviet Union lacked expectations for the war in Afghanistan and was eventually dragged down. Of course, years later the United States will make the same mistakes in the same position.
Before the Gulf War, before the United States showed such a firm determination, launched such a terrifying military force, and displayed an informationized combat system that changed the mode of war, not only Iraq, but also all countries in the world did not expect that the strength of the United States had reached such a state.
U.S. F-15E fleet
We can see the United States and Iraq from the perspective of latecomers, which opened an era in the world at that time, but the countries of the world at that time did not know, and Iraq only talked about paper power, which was not inferior to the United States, which was not inferior to the labor expedition, and all countries expected another Vietnam War.
epilogue
War is an extension of politics, and the cause of the Gulf War is understood by many people, it is Saddam's act of transferring contradictions abroad, and it is aimed at the strategic goal of the United States to maintain oil hegemony, but the result is almost no one predicts correctly.
The backwardness in equipment can catch up, and the backwardness in concepts may be too late when problems appear.
The all-weather combat system and informationized combat concept displayed by the United States in the Gulf War influenced the thinking of all mainstream countries in the world in the following decades, and the mainland also began the reform of comprehensive military concepts and military science and technology after the Gulf War.
Thankfully, we are not the Iraq that was beaten backward in 1991, and we should be vigilant that belligerence is at stake, and forgetting war is doomed.