![]() The crisis in the Persian Gulf offers a great opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Before the intervention, Bush had addressed the US Congress, stressing the importance of the “unique and extraordinary moment”. The rapid military campaign was a success – and its implications were potentially massive. PJF Military Collection / Alamy Stock Photo The ‘Highway of Death’ where thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers were killed. Military action included the systematic targeting of Iraqi infrastructure, including the sustained – and controversial – attack against retreating Iraqi military personnel along the road connecting Kuwait with Iraq, which was subsequently dubbed the “Highway of Death”. Once diplomatic and economic pressure to deter Saddam failed, the US – under then president George HW Bush, assembled the largest international coalition since the second world war and – with the authorisation of the UN Security Council – began a five-week military operation that pushed Saddam’s forces back into Iraq and reinstated the Kuwaiti royal family at the helm of the country. ![]() Not quite grasping what the waning of the cold war would mean for his own regional ambitions, Saddam ordered the invasion and annexation of Kuwait on August 2 1990. Saddam’s motives in fact related to his need to replenish an impoverished Iraqi economy that had been severely undercut by a protracted and costly war against Iran (1980-1988), which resulted in more than 1.5 million estimated Iraqi and Iranian deaths. ![]()
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