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This article examines how the US victory in the 1991 Persian Gulf War could change American foreign and military policy by placing more importance on air power, which is conventionally considered the deciding factor in that military success. The author uses detailed analysis of the ground forces campaign to conclude that air power was not necessary or sufficient in defeating Iraqi forces and that its role has been misunderstood and overemphasized, and asserts that the lopsided outcome of events was determined by the superiority of American and British forces and the poor timing of the Iraqi invasion.

Why was the Coalition loss rate in the Gulf War so extraordinarily low? In 'Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict,' I argued that [...]

Stephen Biddle raises some important issues in his article 'Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict.'(1) His emphasis on the need to incorporate judgments [...]

The dramatic victory of the allied forces over the Iraqi army is eroding into questions of battlefield errors, misinformation, and administration interference that limited victory. These missed opportunities have permitted Iraq to maintain their elite Republican Guard, a force that continues to threaten Kuwait. This study explores the battlefield strategy of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf and uses as a basis of comparison the principles of Frederick Taylor's theory of Scientific Management.

The standard explanations of the Gulf War's outcome are wrong. The orthodox view explains the war's one-sidedness in terms of the Coalition's strengths, especially its advanced technology, which is often [...]

Analysis of escalation of commitment is used to highlight the differences between two paradigms in the study of decision making. The rational paradigm proposes that escalation is a dysfunctioinal response to failure (Staw and Ross 1987). A single-option paradigm, developed in this paper, proposes that it is a necessary response to uncertainty which may, but not necessarily, result in failure. Analysis of the decision-making process of President Bush prior to Operation Desert Storm highlights the differences between the two paradigms and demonstrates how they provide different interpretations and evaluations of a given decision process. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.), Introduction Escalation of commitment is the re-investment of resources in a certain course of action despite information that it is failing. This phenomenon attracted considerable attention, in part because it [...]

The Arab Gulf region has gone through two tragic wars in nearly one decade. The first war, between Iran and Iraq which began in September 1980, lasted for eight long [...]

Put quite simply, what the american people learned from the Gulf War is that it's a helluva lot easier and a helluva lot more fun to 'kick ass' in the [...]

This article attempts to explain the decision to use force against Iraq using a noncompensatory theory of decision making. Rather than choosing an alternative that maximizes utility on the basis of a holistic comparison process as suggested by the expected utility model, or selecting an alternative that 'satisfices' a certain criterion as predicted by the cybernetic model, the noncompensatory theory suggests that decisions on the use of force are often made based on the rejection of undesirable alternatives on the basis of one, or at most a few, criteria.

Future enemies of the US can use the latter's performance in the Gulf War to adopt an effective military campaign. Adversaries can either employ propaganda tactics to prevent US involvement or hinder US access to their region. If these are not effective, they can engage in combat tactics that would degrade US morale and use weapons that could target the US' military weaknesses. With these possibilities in mind, the government should plan countermeasures that would assure military supremacy in future conflicts.

DESPITE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MANY UNPRECEDENTED and lasting historical transformations, the Twentieth Century may well be remembered for two epoch-making milestones that are now seemingly close to their final stages. [...]

The 1991 Persian Gulf War can best be understood in the context of socio-economic forces in the United States with interests in military conflict. With the Soviet threat having disappeared, actual fighting was seen as needed to demonstrate the unpredictability of the changed order, and justify military spending. The military also needs to demonstrate apparent increased productivity in terms of fatalities or potential fatalaties per unit of capital, in order to compete for funds at a time of tighter budgetary constraints. Military operations are defined in terms of the needs of the miltary hardware market, rather than the market being geared to strictly military needs.

Regional security relations in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War were analyzed. While international intervention was necessary to end Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, some Arab countries continue to question the western-led intervention. The Gulf War resulted in Iraq's expulsion from Kuwait but Saddam Hussein continues to rule in Iraq. Regional security in the region can be maintained if Iran and Iraq are prevented from becoming threats to their neighbors and if Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council states continue to be stable.

In late August of 1990, the United States began deploying large numbers of combat troops to the Persian Gulf. In order to deliver, equip, and sustain these forces, the military [...]

The analogy between World War II and the 1991 Persian Gulf crisis led people to construct a coherent system of roles for the participants in the Gulf crisis. The Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine (ACME), a model of analogical mapping by constraint satisfaction (Holyoak & Thagard, 1989), makes predictions about the types of correspondences people are likely to draw between the people and countries in these analogs. Both a survey (Experiment 1) and an experimental study (Experiment 2) revealed clear evidence that people have a strong tendency to generate mappings that honor certain basic coherence constraints. In Experiment 3, with science-fiction materials, further evidence for the generality of these constraints was obtained. Computer simulations of Experiments 2 and 3 using ACME yielded mappings similar to those generated by Ss. General models of analogical reasoning may have implications for everyday understanding of complex systems of social roles.

The high public rating of mass media performance in the Persian Gulf War may have been conditioned by the language used in media coverage. Media served US military intentions by using words and phrases that depicted the US, its allies and Kuwait as good, and Iraq as evil. This was facilitated by media dependence on military reports, since journalists' field work was strictly limited. Media objectivity was questionable in view of their dependence for reports, limited efforts to further diplomatic efforts and the lack of substantial information on anti-war movements and historical foundations.

The uniqueness of the 1991 Persian Gulf War provides a number of lessons for US foreign relations. By studying the past and the future of the Persian Gulf War, the limits and opportunities of US international relations become more evident. The Gulf War has either exposed the weakness of American diplomacy because of its failure to prevent the war or confirmed US unrivaled superpower status in its ability to build a multinational war coalition against Iraq. Lessons that can be derived from the prewar, war and post-war periods are discussed.

Jean Baudrillard is a post-structuralist, postmodernist thinker who would have us believe that we live in a world of purely fictive appearances and that truth and similar values are obsolete ideas. The media are also master simulators to him and all of this is extrapolated to the idea that the 1991 Persian Gulf War was a product of mass media simulation. To Baudrillard we live in a world of free-floating language games where there are no valid arguments against what the media or government information sources would have us believe.

Pres George Bush has demonstrated conflicting foreign policy objections in seeking international stability while advocating the spread of democracy. His combined hesitancy and assertiveness in decisions could lead to chaos for the US in foreign affairs.

Pres George Bush's competency in foreign affairs is well-established. He failed, however, to keep international priorities in order when he allowed the 1991 Persian Gulf war to overshadow political developments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

An important part of the story about the 1991 Persian Gulf War was the state of US foreign policy towards Iraq prior to its invasion of Kuwait. Pres Bush has supported military solutions through continued US supply of conventional weapons to the Middle East region. Political and economic solutions were harder to find as was seen in the lingering Iraqi-Iranian conflict. The US had no choice but to invade Iraq because there was no foundation for effective economic sanctions. Bush now has to deal with the consequences of letting Iraq challenge US power in the Persian Gulf region and must create more specific policies for a Middle East peace settlement.