Publication: A Re-examination of the First Persian Gulf War and United States Foreign Policy towards Iraq: An Analysis of How Missed Dialogue and Missed Opportunities Changed the Fate of a Region
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2020-03-17
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Coronado, Daniel Elias. 2020. A Re-examination of the First Persian Gulf War and United States Foreign Policy towards Iraq: An Analysis of How Missed Dialogue and Missed Opportunities Changed the Fate of a Region. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School.
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Abstract
There have been a number of theories pertaining to the First Persian Gulf War (PGWI) including why or how the war started between Iraq and the United States (US) and the subsequent policy fallout in the Middle East. Some historians and scholars lay the blame at the feet of the US for missing several social and regional economic indicators that should have signaled to the West there was something amiss in Baghdad. Others insist it was the despotic military aspirations of Saddam Hussein who ultimately wanted to expand Iraqi influence upon the Arab states and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the region. This work reexamines how Hussein may have believed Iraq should be the prime state shaping policy in the region, rather than Western Governments. Comparatively in 1990, there was a stark realization that US foreign policy in the Middle East had become reactive rather than proactive. Such actions became a catalyst toward expediting a destabilizing US foreign policy in the Middle East over the next several decades.
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CW (Chemical Weapons) – mainly used by Iraq prior to the First Persian Gulf War, IR (International Relations) − the study of the interconnectedness of politics, economics, and the law at a global level, IRG (Iraqi Republican Guard – approximately established in 1964-2003), SIRG (Special Iraqi Republican Guard – approximately established 1992/1995-2003), IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran – approximately established in 1979 to present), ISIS/ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), NEA (Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs aka: Bureau of Near East Asian Affairs), ODSd (Operation Desert Shield – From: August 1990–January 1991), ODSm (Operation Desert Storm – From: January 1991–February 1991), PGWI (First Persian Gulf War – From: August 1990–February 1991), PGWII (Second Persian Gulf War – From: March 2003–December 2011), UN / UNSC (United Nations and/or United Nations Security Council), USSFRC (US Senate Foreign Relations Committee)
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