In January 1991, the world’s eyes were fixated on Kuwait. The United States led over half a million of its troops to the Persian Gulf to expel Iraq from Kuwait. CNN, Fox, and the BBC were all covering the war that commenced over a country that is 80 percent the size of New Jersey. A country that held 10% of the world's oil reserves in 1991. Its deserts became the focal point of world politics. The Gulf War, or as the United States called it, Operation Desert Storm, had begun. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was not a one-off decision, but a continuation of Iraqi claims that go back to the 19th century.
Kuwait’s sovereignty had always been tied to British maritime interests. From the 1820s, when Britain started chipping away at the Ottoman Empire’s territories, nowhere was this more noticeable than in the Gulf. The Ottomans' control over the hinterlands of the Arabian Peninsula was loose, as they left their affairs to tribal heads. During those years, Britain came in and established control over the Gulf, including through its relationship with the Sheikhs of Kuwait, a small gulf town at the time.
Great Britain's first treaty with the sheikhs of Kuwait was in 1899, where the sheikh found himself between a declining empire and a rising one. On one side stood the Ottomans, under whose influence Kuwait naturally fell. On the other stood Great Britain, whose ships and influence dominated the shores of the Gulf. In that agreement, the Sheikh “pledged himself and his heirs and successors to not to receive the Agent or Representative of any Power or Government at Kowiet...without the previous sanction of the British Government.”
The agreement tied Kuwait’s external affairs to British policy at a time when Kuwait had acknowledged Ottoman suzerainty, defended its shores, and raised the Ottoman flag. Between 1899 and 1914, a number of agreements were struck between the British government and the Sheikh of Kuwait. These agreements saw the British government dominate decision-making over land sales, mortgages, concessions granted to foreign powers, and pearl and fishing businesses, placing them in the hands of London policymakers.
By 1914, the Ottomans saw their dominance over much of the coast of the Arabian Peninsula erased. Great Britain was gradually dismantling Ottoman authority along the Gulf territories, a process that would only increase with the start of the First World War. Yet British maritime control over Kuwait and much of the Persian Gulf would be formalized in the Anglo-Turkish agreement of 1913. Great Britain informally controlled the territory in Kuwait as a protectorate in practice, but on paper, Kuwait was an independent Kaza1 under the Ottoman Empire. The agreement helped the Ottomans save face, as the Sheikh of Kuwait was considered an Ottoman official. In reality, however, the agreement gave Britain control on the ground.
With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, its suzerainty over Kuwait was over. From then on, Kuwait's independence relied fully on Great Britain’s support and Kuwait's alignment with British policy.
A telling communication from His Majesty’s government to Sheikh Salim of Kuwait showed the dynamic between Britain and its Gulf protectorate, “They hope your Excellency will fully realise your responsibility as the ruler of Koweit towards Government under whose protection and friendship Koweit has so greatly prospered in the past, and will understand that prosperity depends entirely on preservation of true friendship, both in word and deed, with Government.”
The question of what Kuwait provided to earn British protection remained behind closed doors in London. Why was Kuwait important enough to be kept out of Ibn Saud’s expansion and Iraq’s absorption. The answer was Kuwait’s strategic position in the Gulf. A 1928 confidential British correspondence by the Bushire political resident corroborated that
view when saying,
“The desirability, at the same time, of securing that the Sheikh shall not escape absorption by Ibn Saud only to end by absorption in an Iraq, no longer under British mandate, and the increased importance which his Principality, situated at the head of the Gulf, will assume as British control decreases in Iraq, cannot be overlooked in considering the general policy to be adopted in the Principality by His Majesty’s Government.”
With Iraq under British mandate, there was no fear that Iraq would absorb Kuwait. Yet all of that would change as Iraq would inherit the Ottomans’ claim of Kuwait. From Faisal I of Iraq to Saddam Hussein, successive Iraqi administrations would refuse to demarcate their borders with Kuwait. Some would be more aggressive in their claims, and some more subtle. In the 1930s, the pressure on Kuwait was not merely diplomatic. A confidential British dispatch from Bushire plainly described the mood on the street, saying, “It has been common talk in the bazaars of Basrah in the past that Kuwait must join up either with Ibn Saud, with Iraq or Great Britain.”
The inevitability the British officers saw did not derive from Iraq's military strength or a secret ace, but from a cultural weapon and a psychological tendency. A confidential correspondence from the British Bushire Resident described the source of that inclination: “Such tendencies result not from direct action but from psychological factors, from the
dependence of the Sheikh of Kuwait upon Iraq for assistance, from the appointment of Iraq officers to Kuwait during the raids, and from the common interests of peoples alike in race and religion, dependent upon the same market centres and in constant daily communication."
What decided Kuwait’s fate was not its right to exist, but its value to British interests in the Middle East. Britain’s interests were seen as twofold. One was strategic: with the Mandate over Iraq ending, its interests there were no longer guaranteed, and Kuwait could serve as a suitable port. Britain also saw the potential for Kuwait to become an oil hub.
Saddam Hussein might’ve been the first Iraqi leader to invade, but he would only follow his predecessors, such as King Ghazi of Iraq, who actively campaigned to annex Kuwait decades before. Kuwait’s survival would continue to rely on external forces. In the years leading up to the Gulf War, the protector would change. The strategic value would remain. Iraq’s claims would not go away.
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