Although now twenty years in the past, the events surrounding the invasion of Kuwait by the forces of Saddam Hussein in August 1990 and the subsequent U.S.-led coalition that ejected the Iraqis from that small nation are key to understanding today’s situation in the Middle East. For the first time, the United States was directly and openly involved in sending major land forces to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region. For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. Army, which had trained to fight Soviet forces in Central Europe, moved a large portion of those forces to engage in open warfare in a completely different theater against a former Soviet client state. The overwhelming success of those endeavors, Operations Desert shield and Desert storm, renewed the confidence and assertiveness of the United States in its foreign policy in the Near East and throughout the world.
Other elements of what later became known as the first Gulf War also remain with us. American troops stayed in the region for over two decades, first containing a resurgent Saddam Hussein and then dealing with his aftermath. Equally important, the coalition partnerships cemented in that initial operation and in the regional peacekeeping operations that followed provided the basis for a growing series of multinational efforts that have characterized the post–Cold War environment. Finally, the growing interoperability of U.S. air, sea, and land forces coupled with the extensive employment of more sophisticated weapons based on advanced electronic technologies, first showcased in Desert storm, have become the hallmark of American military operations and the standard that other nations strive to meet.
This pamphlet, prepared by the Center’s Chief Historian, Dr. Richard Stewart, is based primarily on two works. The first is the Center’s The Whirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations Desert shielD and Desert storm, Frank N. Schubert and Theresa L. Kraus, general editors, prepared about a year after the events in question. The second is a chapter written by Brig. Gen. John Sloan Brown (former Chief of Military History, now retired) in the Center’s comprehensive history of the U.S. Army, American Military History, vol. 2, The United States Army in a Global Era, 1917–2008. I hope that soldiers of all ranks will enjoy this short account of a conflict that twenty years ago captured the attention of the world as the first test of the U.S. Army since the Vietnam War and its first large-scale armor engagement since World War II.
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