American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

In the early morning hours of August 2, 1990, three armored di- visions of Saddam Hussein's elite Iraqi Republican Guard crossed the Kuwaiti border and sped toward the city of Kuwait. The several bri- gades and potpourri of military equipment of the hapless Kuwaiti Army, already disorganized by special operations attacks, proved no match for this assault. Within days most Kuwaitis had surrendered or fled to Saudi Arabia, the Republican Guard divisions had closed to the Saudi border, and Iraqi follow-on forces had fanned out to secure the oil fields and commercial wealth of the small, yet prosperous country. Iraq had long coveted oil-rich Kuwait, characterizing it as a nineteenth province the British had purloined during the colonial era. This ambi- tion became aggravated during the prolonged, desultory Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). Saddam Hussein had accrued enormous debts fighting the Iranians, leaving him with a large and battle-hardened army but an economy in disarray. The wealth of Kuwait could fix this problem.

Saddam Hussein's army had grown tenfold during the war with Iran. When fully mobilized, it numbered over a million soldiers. Per- haps more important, it was well equipped by huge purchases from international arms markets. Although most of this equipment was of Soviet design and a generation behind its American counterparts, the sheer numbers of tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery pieces, and small arms of all types made it seem formidable indeed. In the years before, the Soviets had parlayed their role as arms supplier to the Iraqis into a species of proxy control; but that discipline of course had broken down as the Soviet Union collapsed. Russian and Ukrainian arms sup- pliers became desperate to turn inventories into cash, and the oil-rich Iraqis diversified their sources of supply in a buyers' market. Despite the brazen aggression, Hussein could count on support among the most disaffected in the Arab world. Many viewed Kuwait as an American dependent and its seizure as a righteous act of defiance against America.