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The First Gulf War or Operation Desert Storm was a direct result of the Iraqi army
invading its tiny oil-rich neighbor to the south, Kuwait, on August 2, 1990. When Saddam
refused to withdraw its troops, a coalition of nations led primarily by the United States launched
an air campaign followed by a ground invasion six weeks later to liberate Kuwait.
Background
Following Saddam Hussein’s disastrous war with Iran during the 1980’s, Iraq found itself
incredibly in debt to many nations whom Hussein had borrowed money from to finance said war.
During the first two years of this war, Kuwait was actually a neutral party in this conflict, only
choosing sides after fears that the spirit of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 would spring up within
its own borders thus forcing them to choose sides anyways (Pariona, 2019). Kuwait chose to
side with Iraq, even going so far as to provide financial support. This incensed Iran which in
turn violently lashed out at Kuwait. When it was all said and done, Kuwait had gone on and
provided Saddam Hussein around $14 billion U.S. dollars.
To further help Iraq in this war, not only did Kuwait provide funding but when Iraq’s
major port, Basra, was destroyed in fighting, Kuwait allowed the Iraqi government to use its
ports as well to export its oil. When Iraq’s war with Iran had concluded, the countries returned
to their pre-conflict borders and Iraq knowing full well that it could not pay back the substantial
loan asked Kuwait for loan forgiveness (Pariona, 2019). The reasoning Iraq gave was that the
war between Iraq and Iran was also beneficial to Kuwait herself, therefor, the debt should be
wiped clean. Kuwait did not see it that way and refused. Loan officers from both sides tried to
reach common ground but to no avail. What was already a strained relationship, had now
become tenuous.
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To counter Kuwait’s own financial woes, she ramped up oil production to the point
where they were overproducing and flooding the market with cheap oil. Iraq did not like this
because that meant they could not put extra oil on the market to meet their financial woes. Also,
Iraq saw this move as an act of aggression against Iraq by Kuwait. Since they could not settle
their national debts via selling their own oil, they decided that the only other alternative was to
invade Kuwait, which they did in the early morning hours of August 2, 1990.
The United States got roped into removing Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait via a
United Nations. The U.S. eventually led a coalition of nations against Iraq to not just remove
them from Kuwait but to also prevent them from invading other Arab nations as well. Overall,
this was a resounding military success for the United States but as with any armed conflict there
are lessons to be learned no matter how vanquished the enemy may be.
Observations
Just like with any exercise, operation, or military conflict, there are lessons that can be
learned not just from failures that occurred but also from successes. Leading up to Iraq’s
invasion, intelligence agencies were able to accurately track the buildup of man and material
along the border with Kuwait but were not able to provide an accurate number of soldiers that
were preparing to invade (Russel, 2002).
Failures
In a matter of days following the U.N. Security Council’s resolution condemning the in-
vasion and Saddam’s refusal to withdraw his troops (he actually increased the number of troops
to 300,000), Central Command began a rapid build-up of ground forces to counter the threat that
the Iraqi government posed to Saudi Arabia. While this does make a lot of sense, what was lost
in this rapid buildup was the need for intelligence on the state and location of Iraqi forces. This
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kind of got put on the back burner while the United States rushed men and material to Saudi Ara-
bia.
The reason that this is a failure is because no commander wants to send their men into
harm’s way without having an accurate picture of what the battle space looks like. Going in
there blindly without any intelligence whatsoever is a recipe for disaster and almost a death sen-
tence for those doing the fighting.
Now we have to remember, this was taking place back in 1990, almost 30 years ago. The
infrastructure was not set up yet for analysts at the NSA, NGA, and CIA to be pouring over sig-
nals collections, intelligence reports, and satellite images. They had to be in theater in order to
look at the intelligence in almost real time but in order to do that, there needed to be deployed
tactical collection systems so that SIGINT could be collected, analyzed, and disseminated and in
some cases be coupled with the imager that was provided by overhead satellites. This would
have painted a much clearer picture. This is not a failure of the intelligence apparatus but one
that falls on the decision makers. The absence of these critical systems caused major delays in
battle damage assessments (BDA) and even worse far inaccurate BDA’s where the successes
were often exaggerated by over 100% (Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, 1993).
Conclusion
Despite the shortcomings of the intelligence apparatus during Operation Desert Storm,
the primary mission as previously stated was a resounding success. The failures that were in-
curred could have led to higher losses in personnel and equipment on the coalition’s side but the
outcome was never in doubt. The intelligence failures weren’t so much on the intelligence com-
munity but also on the decision makers as well. Decision makers must put an emphasis on intel-
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Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, Intelligence Successes and Failures in Operations
Desert Shield/Storm, 103d Congress, 1st sess., 1993, HR Rep. No. 5
Pariona, Amber. “Why Did Iraq Invade Kuwait In 1990?” Why Did Iraq Invade Kuwait in 1990?
WorldAtlas, April 1, 2019. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/invasion-of-kuwait-why-
did-iraq-invade-kuwait.html.
Russell, Richard L. "CIA's Strategic Intelligence in Iraq." Political Science Quarterly 117, no. 2
(2002): 191-207. doi:10.2307/798180.
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ligence gathering, analysis, and accurate reporting. Excelling in this will only pay dividends in the
future.
References
