Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
Desert Storm could have happened in that alternate reality but I'm not so sure it would have, if the Soviet Union had stuck around.
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Everyone keeps talking like the USSR wasn't around in 1990. It was.
Saddam invaded Kuwait August 2, 1990.
The ground campaign part of Desert Storm kicks off on Feb 24th 1991.
The Coup against Gorbachev that led to the dissolution of the USSR was on August 19, 1991.
So, there was a Soviet Union at the time of the Gulf War... there just weren't any satellite states in Eastern Europe any more, even though the Warsaw Pact wasn't formally dissolved until July 1, 1991.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I think that Saddam very well could have invaded Kuwait in the alternative '91, but I think that the combined political and economic pressure the West and the Communist Bloc would have forced Saddam to back down and pull out of Iraq before military action was taken on the part of the Coalition. That's the way I see it. Saddam invaded but pulled out under pressure from both the West and the Soviet Bloc, before Desert Storm.
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I disagree with you on this on the grounds that the historical record indicates that Saddam was impervious to diplomatic pressure. He also appears to have been impervious to being able to tell when he was getting in over his head.
While there wasn't any serious diplomatic pressure on Iraq to stop fighting Iran (what with Iran being a pariah state), there can be little doubt that Saddam had bitten off more than he could chew with Iraq. By the second year of the eight year war, Iraq was on the strategic defensive.
In the First Gulf War, no amount of diplomatic pressure could shift him. Furthermore, Saddam seemed unable to understand the capability of the military force arrayed against him, nor the world's political will to use it. He seemed to think he could wave Israel at the Arab world, like a red cape in front of a bull, and the Arab states would just bail out of the coalition and American will to act would crumble without Arab support. He seemed to bank on a fantasy that even if the US used military force, America's "cowardice" and unwillingness to accept casualties would lead to a failure of will and an American pullout. Maybe he was banking on a repeat of the US pullout from Peacekeeping in Beirut. But it's clear he couldn't be reasoned with and he couldn't see the danger he was placing himself in because he preferred to see the world as he wished it was, rather than how it really was.
Same thing in 2002. When faced with diplomatic pressure and the threat of military action from a country that was still looking for payback for 9/11, a country that had clearly demonstrated it's ability to clean his clock ten years earlier, he still wouldn't get out of the way of the oncoming train. He didn't even have any WMDs to hide from the UN inspectors, which makes his game of chicken all the more baffling.
History demonstrates that Saddam couldn't be made to back down through diplomatic pressure.
He had to be put down through military action.
He got away with attacking Iran. He thought he could get away with attacking Kuwait. He thought he could get away with bluffing the US on inspections. This guy clearly got his intel from the Department of Wishful Thinking.
For my money Saddam's MORE likely to Invade Kuwait in an alternate 1990 because, with the Cold War still hot, he'd think the USSR wouldn't want to look weak by allowing the US to beat up on one of their client states. The truth is that the USSR wouldn't much appreciate one of their client states (like Iraq) drawing the USSR into a confrontation with the West that the USSR may not be prepared for.
A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing.