George Bush and the Gulf War Term Paper

1990 Gulf War, but, given the subsequent perspective of the U.S. external policy during the following years, the actions that followed, the current war in Iraq, with its own justifications, bring a new light into the Middle East problem and the U.S. involvement in the entire region.

In 1990, George Bush had an excellent justification for an intervention in a region that had been, until then, an area of Soviet influence during the Cold War. Indeed, the Soviet support for Arab actions against Israel, the only American ally in the region, was notorious. With the Iraqi invasion in Kuwait in 1990, consequent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States could finally be involved in a region that determines the trend of the global economy, given the largest oil reserves present here. In the beginning, as we can see from George Bush's speech, the involvement reduced itself to a moderating role: the United States contacted and moderated with the most important international organizations, with the European states and the Soviet Union, but also with the Arab League.The approach is interesting enough here: the aggression of an Arab state by another Arab state gave the United States the unexpected possibility to act as a moderator in a region where it would have had otherwise, at the respective moment, no significant powers.

However, the peaceful negotiations had no chances to succeed, and the United States already knew this, given Saddam Hussein's character, known to the Americans from the support they had provided for him during the Iran -- Iraq war. Following the leading role as a moderator in the conflict, the United States could now assume the military leading role, by leading a coalition that had a tremendous international support (George Bush mentions that there are five continents involved in taking military action….....