Aside from Iraq, Kuwait, the United States, and Saudi Arabia, many other actors have played important roles in the crisis. The most significant include the United Nations, the Soviet Union, U.S. European allies, Japan, Egypt, Syria, the PLO, Jordan, and Israel. The UN Security Council condemned the Iraqi aggression and resolutely demanded withdrawal. Even as oil prices shot upward, the Security Council, led by the United States, voted without dissent to embargo all trade to Iraq and to allow an appropriate show of strength to endorse it. The UN decision was prefigured by the unusual degree of Soviet-American cooperation.
Secretary of State James Baker happened to be in Siberia with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. They quickly agreed on a common stand; the Soviet Union announced a cessation (although some sources claim this has not been upheld) of all weapons deliveries to Iraq, and the next day an unprecedented U.S. Soviet joint statement made from Moscow led the way to international action.
This made the Kuwait crisis the first post-Cold War test of the new Soviet-American relationship, and the relationship appeared to have passed the test. The Soviets have interests both in pleasing Washington and in helping avoid an international recession, which would doom Soviet hopes of massive Western economic help, and in remaining on good terms with Iraq.
Current Soviet policy has made the Kuwait crisis the first Middle East crisis since 1956 that has not also become a superpower crisis. The seeds of escalation to global nuclear war inherent in the Middle East crises of 1958, 1967, 1970, and 1973 are absent in this one, and that endows U.S. policy with enormous flexibility in risk-taking, absent from previous crises. On the other hand, in Cold War times, this crisis would never have broken out. Superpower client relations were tighter and independent action more constrained all around, and Iraq was utterly dependent on Soviet arms supplies. By August 1990 this was no longer the case. Indeed, the end of the Cold War promises fewer apocalyptical international crises, but probably more violence and tenacious regional ones. Suddenly, the many Americans waiting for their “peace dividend” woke up to the realization that the world was still a dangerous place.
America's NATO allies and Japan (after an initial hesitation) were reasonably cooperative toward the beginning of the crisis. Some followed American financial moves, such as freezing Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets and others voted with Washington in the United Nations. Some did both. France, which had for years obstructed allied cooperation both within NATO and in out-of-area issues, for the first time agreed that NATO counsels ought to be invoked over this crisis. On the other hand, France had, more than any other country in NATO, provided Iraq with weapons, war materiel, credits, and technical aid, and so contrition was fitting. Emphasizing that the new role was not intended as a move from peace to war, French Defense Minister Jean Pierre Chevenement told reporters that the French Gulf ante was not going to be upped from embargo to blockade. The French bottom line, however, was drawn to protect some 80 nationals who had suddenly been reclassified from technicians to hostages. West Germany was cooperative, but self-absorbed. Britain found the crisis an excellent opportunity to restore the specialness to the Anglo-American relationship after a season of doubt that had Britons worrying over the migration of U.S. attentions to Germany.
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