The Gulf War: Its Origins, History and Consequences

By John Bulloch and Harvey Morris

Book Overview

After a million deaths and twice that number injured, after the destruction of much of the infrastructure of Iran and Iraq, disruption of trade throughout the Gulf and the involvement of the USA and USSR, was the Gulf War a pointless exercise, a futile conflict which achieved nothing and left the combatants at the end of it all back in exactly the same position from which they started in 1980? In this book, first published in 1989, the authors argue that the lack of territorial gain was irrelevant: the real advantages won by each side were far more important, intangible though they were. For Iran, the channelling of the energies of her people away from domestic concerns meant the continuation of the Islamic revolution and ensured the stability of the mullahs. In Iraq, the war propped up the increasingly shaky regime of Saddam Hussein. The outside world, especially the superpowers, was terrified of the spread of Muslim fundamentalism, so made no effort to prevent Iraq from trying to halt this spread. But Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the oil states also had vested interests in promoting the continuation of the war.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1138671029
• ISBN13: 9781138671027
• Release Date: October 2017
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 346 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

thirteen years later and no conclusion

One of the greatest revisionisms of the contemporary Middle Eastern history has been the readoption of the term "GULF WAR" for refering to the conflict to expel Saddam's forces from Kuwait. As noted by many experts, this conflict was neither a war nor was it fought in the Persian Gulf. It was mainly a one-sided air campaign fought over the skies of Iraq-- very much like the officially declared "non-war" against Serbia in Spring of 1999.We read about the real gulf war (80-87 Iran-Irq war) in this classic by Bulloch & Morris. Written before August 1990, we read this book knowing the ending better than the authors. And this makes the fast-paced read gain an eery beat. What were the Americans thinking when they established friendly relations with Iraq as Saddam's troops lobbed mustard gas on Iranians-- or when US provided the satellite info which was used to launch the most horrific of the battles, the nerve gasing of the Iranians at Fao? The same goes with the rest of the "liberal" West who help strengthen the monsterous war machine which has been only contained at the price of the Iraqi people's suffering. The Iran-Iraq war changed two nations-- and the strategic and historic center of the world-- forever. Iran is married to its religious rulers not because of any fanatic obsession, but because of the images of the young boys who sacrificed themselves in the marshes around Shatt-ol-Arab. It's like a mother wearing only black because of her dead children's memory. And Arab nationalism's death as a political movement happened in Iraq, not because of any courntry's peace deal with Israel.I said we know the conclusion better than the authors-- but we really don't. All we know is that there have been a couple more chapters and that the real conclusion takes place sometime in post-Saddam Iraq and post-Fahd Saudi Arabia. And how it turns out, as in the Iran Iraq War, will depend a lot on where the US-Iranian relations will be then.