Hawk, thanks for the links. The original complaint by Iraq was that Kuwait was doing sideways drilling, draining Iraqi reservoirs, which is of course quite annoying.
I suppose that when the USA ambassador gave him the green light to go ahead and sort it out by annexation of that area, things got a little out of hand.
I'm sure she consulted HQ - that's the ambassador's job and especially so on very important issues. Attending a tea party in Helengrad might not merit consulting HQ, but agreeing for Saddam to annex a chunk of Kuwait would require some comment.
Which makes it a bit interesting because how much of a chunk is okay? Saddam, as with the USA when it was rolling towards Baghdad, must have had to make the decision, once his victory was obvious, what to do having easily nabbed the oil fields. He concluded that he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and gobble up the whole of Kuwait, which actually makes good sense to me [the oil would be better spread over the larger population - though not just to go to Saddam's coffers].
The USA likewise, having approved a breach of UN rules by allowing that a land/oil grab was okay, then had to react to the suddenly revised bigger acquisition. Then had to decide whether to roll all the way to Baghdad and occupy Iraq.
While all the drama played out, there was no geopolitical problem because having Iraqi oil off the market was no bad thing at all - it helped return oil prices to a level more desirable to USA and UK interests [such as BP Oil which has expensive North Sea and North Slope oil]. Over the decade, BP's share price and profits have been super duper wonderful - it's great news having a competitor's oil out of business. USA oil companies such as Exxon haven't been too unhappy either.
It's notoriously difficult for people to act in an unbiased way when their interests lie in a certain direction. We are all subject to the influence of self-interest, albeit on a subconscious level. Judges know they can't be judicious if conducting a trial involving the murder of their daughter - so they would recuse themselves from proceedings. Same with other professions, politicians etc - it's important to keep self-interest separate from decision-making people representing broader interests.
My guess is that the 'con' of Saddam was more in the nature of blundering than a Deep Blue chess plan. Blundering is the most common activity I see on the global stage [be it in business or politics]. Conspiracy is popular, but blundering is more easily achieved.
Politicians love being manipulative and I think in this instance, they manipulated themselves into a big mess. Meanwhile, the profits continue to come rolling into the bottom line of oil companies.
It was interesting that Saddam asked when sanctions would come off if he withdrew from Kuwait. I thought that if he simply withdrew, things would go back to normal and was puzzled by his question. But he obviously saw the real game, which was bigger than getting him out of Kuwait. It was to get sanctions on and keep them on.
Mqurice |
