In January 1991, nearly eleven months prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, the administration of Bush-41 unveiled a military operation within the context of what would become the Persian-Gulf War. The mission, dubbed “Operation Desert Storm,” aimed to curb Iraqi influence and expel the occupying forces which had invaded the nation of Kuwait on the western coast of the Arabian peninsula. By this point, a US led coalition of nations placed roughly nine hundred thousand troops in the region in preparation should the Iraqi forces not heed to the United Nations Security Council’s ultimatum of retreat — the UNSC had authorized the use of “all means necessary” to remove Saddam Hussein’s forces come the midnight deadline on January 16. Having no pullback, the coalition forces launched a bombardment campaign on the control and command of the opposing forces.
By March, US General Norman Schwarzkopf, acting for the Bush Administration and accompanied by officers from Great Britain, France, and Saudi Arabia, celebrated the cease-fire agreement at the Safran airbase — a notable win for the US. As noted in the introduction of his book “Mission Failure: America and The World In The Post Cold-War Era,” Michael Mandelbaum beautifully provides insight into the significance of the Persian-Gulf War:
“The Gulf War, in turn, marked the end of a longer, larger, far more important American conflict: the four-decades-long political, economic, and military struggle with the Soviet Union, its allies and clients, and it’s ideology, Marxism-Leninism. The end of that conflict, the Cold-War, had set the course of the Gulf War. For the first time since 1945, the Soviet Union did not oppose a major American international initiative. The United States was able to assemble a broad international coalition to attack the army of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein…Although Saddam’s Iraq had been a Soviet client and although Soviet officials did attempt to mediate between the Iraqi and American governments, in the end, for the first time since World War II, Moscow sided with Washington.”
The International Review 