this trust at the top was trust at the military levels below. And so as the military leaders met, there were no hidden agendas. Certainly there are already enough honest differences between air, land, sea, and space approaches to war; suspicions of national agendas could only have made it far more difficult to plan and execute military operations.
For our part, we among the military worked hard to respect the rights of other sovereign nations. Where a nation had concerns and sensitivities, we modified our rules of engagement, our proposed operations, or our tactics to accommodate them.
We also worked hard to develop interpersonal relationships with our Coalition partners. This was not easy, as rank, egos, and the size of each nation’s military contribution could cause divisiveness.
For airmen, fortunately, rank had little importance, and all spoke the common language of aviation, English. But egos were inevitably a problem, especially for United States personnel who have been taught to swagger from the first day of pilot training and have been brought up in a nation that has little experience of international tact. The size of a nation’s contribution could also have led military leaders to conclude that one nation had more combat expertise than another. Yet superior equipment and more personnel did not automatically translate to wisdom. All had to listen to the others, and where there was honest difference of opinion, it had to be resolved by hard-fought, respectful, but honest debate.
Here the United States military was at a disadvantage, as we are so certain of ourselves. Since we are usually the biggest player, without meaning to, we tend to intimidate our partners. Sure, the others want Americans to lead, but they resent it that we act as though we are in charge.
? Being in a coalition means doing business the hard way. It takes time and patience. Ego has to be set aside, as the lives of men and women hang in the balance. You won’t have all the answers, and mistakes will be made. But if you build a relationship of trust and openness, respect and acceptance, then you can work through the difficult times.
The immediate success of the Gulf War was the liberation of Kuwait. Perhaps the more enduring success was the working together of the Coalition nations.
In the future, the United States will face many national security challenges that will require military operations ranging from humanitarian aid to war. We already see the United States in a NATO-led coalition doing housekeeping (technically termed “out-of-area operations”) in the former Yugoslavia. It is likely that similar combined military operations will be the pattern for the future — ad hoc coalitions that provide room for many nations to be united in a common cause, with the United States providing leadership but not necessarily in charge.
We were lucky in the Gulf. We had a history of working with the Gulf nations and our NATO partners. But how will we prepare for the future?
Coalition operations are not easy. Command arrangements can be difficult. So can communications (radio equipment is often incompatible, even when the language is common). Intelligence must be shared (the United States often classifies for “U.S. eyes only” even the most obvious details about an enemy). Yet the last remaining superpower needs international partners. We not only gain valuable insights from our compatriots about what needs to be done and how to do it, but we are inhibited from making stupid mistakes. Our combined efforts gain legitimacy because they come from many nations, not just one. Therefore, we need to prepare in peacetime to undertake combined operations during a crisis.
This has begun to happen. Already, United States military forces train with the men and women of other nations. Blue Flag exercises at Hurlburt Field bring together the Gulf War nations to plan and execute air operations, should they be needed in that part of the world. As our focus turns from the Cold War to a more complex new world of ethnic violence, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, and peacekeeping operations, U.S. forces in Europe work with new partners from Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, and Russia.
Annually, our airmen, sailors, soldiers, and marines deploy to Korea, the Middle East, and Africa to train alongside our friends around the world, and our sale of American equipment to other nations ensures we will be capable of operating side by side.
The only question that remains is this: Will our future political leadership have the wisdom and training to form a coalition like the magnificent team that fought in the Gulf? Or will we repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?
16
Beyond Iraqi Freedom
A little over a decade after Operation Desert Storm (1991), when Coalition forces liberated Kuwait following the 1990 Iraqi invasion, General Tommy Franks and his air boss Lieutenant General Michael (Buzz) Mosley, initiated Operation Iraqi Freedom; this time to liberate the Iraqi people from the rule of fear imposed by Saddam Hussein. This action, often referred to as Gulf War II, was undertaken for a number of reasons and envisaged a number of goals.
The immediate causes for the new war included a firm belief that Saddam had reinitiated his efforts to produce — or at least acquire — Weapons of Mass Destruction: Defecting Iraqi scientists had outlined his efforts to create mobile laboratories capable of growing spores for anthrax. There was evidence that he was acquiring equipment needed to produce weapons-grade radioactive materials. Large amounts of his pre-1991 war poison gas stockpile had not been accounted for by the United Nations inspection teams. And during the years following 1991, the Iraqi dictator had cunningly thwarted the efforts of the UN weapons inspection teams, sent to Iraq in accordance with the agreements that ended the Desert Storm conflict.
The longer-term causes go back to Desert Storm itself and its aftermath.
We can start with the widespread opinion, which grew up after Desert Storm, that we had halted the operation short of its necessary goal, the removal of Saddam Hussein and his criminal cronies… a view stated publicly by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other world leaders. Given the terrorist atrocities of 2001 and later, they may well have been right.
But history has twenty-twenty hindsight.
At the end of February 1991, we had achieved our stated goal in Desert Storm, the liberation of occupied Kuwait. Though the total liberation of Iraq was always an obvious option, we rejected that option in our military councils. There we had discussed the difficulty we would incur fighting an Iraqi enemy defending his home as opposed to one who was pillaging and raping a fellow Arab nation. We were also concerned about adding the severe problems of administering aid to a large and complex country like Iraq to the already daunting problems of assisting current refugees and those ravaged by war in Kuwait.
It must also be understood that the liberation of Kuwait was achieved by a coalition of military forces, not by a single force under a single, unified command. In 1991 ours was a “coalition of the willing,” who were united in the goal of liberating Kuwait, but far less unified in the approach to handling the source of the problem, Saddam’s Iraq. Many of our Coalition allies — most notably our Arab allies, who played a major role in the conflict and were eager to help overturn the occupation of Arab Kuwait — would have had reservations about taking the ground war to Baghdad. Most did not want to be seen as aggressors against an equally Arab Iraq, while some would have objected to a large non-Arab, non-Islamic occupation force in Iraq, with its many historic shrines and Muslim holy places. Some also viewed an evil Saddam more acceptable than a weak Iraq that could not prevent the political/ military force of Iran from encroaching on the borders of the Gulf Arab states. Some members of the Coalition may even have abhorred the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, yet had strong commercial ties to the leadership in Baghdad and wanted a tamed Saddam to remain in power. These were issues for the political, not the military, leadership to sort out.
If our failing in Desert Storm was stopping too soon — and I don’t know that to be the case — the failing came about in part because we did not understand our enemy: Saddam Hussein. Those of us who grew up in the United States, England, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all came from diverse cultures, but none of us had experienced or understood life under the rule of Saddam and his Baath party colleagues.
