Abstract
The past three US administrations have all faced their toughest foreign policy tests in the Gulf. None has escaped serious embarrassment and failure. President Carter’s Iran crisis consumed the end of his presidency. President Reagan, in the mid-1980s tilted to Iraq, while allowing NSC officials to explore avenues to Iran on traditional anti-Soviet grounds. The administration then tilted back to Iraq with a vengeance in the face of serious embarrassment over the Iran-Contra scandal. President Bush led the country through a successful war, but a war that only dramatized the magnitude of the political and strategic failure of his Middle East policies. A massive application of military force was necessary to salvage US security policy in the Gulf and to put the Bush-Baker approach to Middle East peace back on track.
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Notes
See Richard Cottam, Iran and the United States, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988).
Also see Barry Rubin, Paved With Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
Mark Gasiorowski, ‘Security Relations between the United States and Iran’, in N. Keddie and M. Gasiorowski (eds), Iran, the Soviet Union and the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) pp. 145–65.
See Imam Khomeini, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations, trans. by Hamid Algar (London: Mizan Press, 1981).
Also see R.K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988) pp. 19–31.
Fred Halliday, ‘Iranian Foreign Policy Since 1979: Internationalism and Nationalism in the Islamic Revolution’, in Juan Cole and N. Keddie (eds), Shi’ism and Social Protest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) pp. 88–107.
See Charles Kupchan, The Persian Gulf and the West: The Dilemmas of Security (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987) pp. 68–125.
Also see Robert Haffa, The Half War: Planning U.S. Rapid Deployment Forces to Meet a Limited Contingency, 1960–1983 (Boulder: Westview, 1984).
See Joshua Epstein, Strategy and Force Planning: The Case of the Persian Gulf (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1987).
Thomas McNaugher, Arms and Oil: U.S. Military Strategy and the Persian Gulf (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1985).
Jeffrey Record, The Rapid Deployment Force and U.S. Military Intervention in the Persian Gulf (Cambridge, Mass.: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1981).
Also see Dennis Ross, ‘Considering Soviet Threats to the Persian Gulf’, International Security 6 (1981) pp. 160–80.
For a discussion of the non-negative aspects of the war see Alvin Rubinstein, ‘Perspectives on the Iran-Iraq War’, Orhis 29 (1985) pp. 597–608.
See Richard Cottam, ‘Levels of Conflict in Middle East’, in J. Coffey and G. Bonvicini, The Atlantic Alliance and the Middle East (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989) pp. 17–72, 30–41.
Patrick Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) pp. 312–14,354–65.
See Alan Taylor, The Arab Balance of Power (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982) pp. 73–96.
See The National Security Archive, The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras (New York: Warner Books, 1987).
John Tower, Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcrofl, The Tower Commission Report (New York: Bantam Books, 1987).
On reflagging, see International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey, 1987–1988 (London: IISS, 1988) pp. 75, 127–32.
Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York: Warner Books, 1990) pp. 389–91.
See Daniel Pipes, ‘Why the U.S. Should Bolster Iraq’, New York Times (31 May 1987).
Daniel Pipes and Laurie Mylroie, ‘Back Iraq’, New Republic (27 April 1987) pp. 14–15.
Laurie Mylroie, ‘After the Guns Fell Silent: Iraq in the Middle East’, Middle East Journal 43 (1989) pp. 51–67.
See Christine Moss Helms, Iraq, Eastern Flank of the Arab World (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1984).
See Frederick Axelgard, A New Iraq? The Gulf War and Implications for U.S. Policy (Boulder: Westview, 1988).
See US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1989 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1990) pp. 1411–22.
US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1990 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1991) pp. 1457–67.
For arguments advocating the coincidence of US-Iraqi interests see Laurie Mylroie, ‘The Baghdad Alternative’, Orbis 32 (1988) pp. 339–54.
Adeed Dawisha, ‘Iraq: the West’s Opportunity’, Foreign Policy 41 (1980/81) pp. 134–53.
See Richard Herrmann, Perceptions and Behavior in Soviet Foreign Policy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), pp. 98–101,142–54.
See Robert Freedman, ‘Soviet Policy Toward Ba’athist Iraq, 1968–1979’, in Robert Donaldson (ed.) The Soviet Union in the Third World: Successes and Failures (Boulder: Westview, 1981) pp. 161–91.
See Stephen Pelletiere, Douglas Johnson II and Leif Rosenberger, Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: US Army War College, 1990).
See M. Kondracke, ‘Saddamnation, ‘New Republic 202 (7 May 1990) pp. 9–10, J. Hoagland, ‘Soft on Saddam’, and ‘Turning a Blind Eye to Baghdad’, both in Washington Post (10 April 1990) and (5 July 1990), and William Safìre, ‘A Dangerous Thing’, and ‘Country of Concern’, both in New York Tunes (19 March 1990) and (9 April 1990).
See for example Les Aspin, ‘Iran: Containing the Zealots’, Congressional Record (14 October 1987) pp. E3996–98.
For the chronicle of trips and signals see Don Oberdorfer, ‘Missed Signals in the Middle East’, Washington Post Magazine (17 March 1991).
See Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), pp. 254–62.
For an example of this argument see Jerrold Post, ‘Saddam Hussein of Iraq: A Political Psychology Profile’, Political Psychology 12 (1991) pp. 279–89.
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Herrmann, R.K. (1994). US Policy in the Conflict. In: Danchev, A., Keohane, D. (eds) International Perspectives on the Gulf Conflict, 1990–91. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23231-4_5
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