560 { China’s Quest
publicly say this) were using it as a pretext to expand their military presence
in the Gulf.
The deterioration of PRC-US relations after 6-4 greatly increased the dan-
gers to China posed by stronger US control over Gulf oil. The prospect of such
strengthened US control was raised on August 2, 1990, when Iraqi military
forces seized Kuwait and annexed that territory as a claimed nineteenth prov-
ince of Iraq. The United States quickly condemned Iraq’s action, began mobi-
lizing UN sanctions punishing Iraq’s move, and deploying military forces to
the Gulf to protect Saudi Arabia, a US ally threatened by the Iraqi seizure
of Kuwait. US deployments to Saudi Arabia also put in place the potential
for further military action to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty should that become
necessary.
Beijing condemned both Iraq’s action and US military moves. Li Peng in
a report to the NPC Standing Committee on August 28 (several weeks after
Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait) declared that China was firmly opposed both to
Iraq’s move and to the military involvement of the big powers. The crisis, Li
said, was an indication of the imbalanced global pattern of relations following
the relaxation of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.^4 In
plain language, Li was saying that the United States would not have dared to
move against Iraq, a country allied with Moscow since 1972, if the USSR had
been prepared, as Gorbachev was not, to stand behind Iraq. As for resolution
of the dispute, Li said that it should be resolved by peaceful means among
the Arab countries, utilizing the UN mediation role to the fullest—in other
words, not by the United States or via the use of US military force. China, Li
said, was opposed to military involvement by the big powers because such
involvement would do “nothing but complicate and intensify the situation.”
Chinese leaders were convinced that the United States would use the op-
portunity afforded by Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait to advance US hegemony over
the Gulf region. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait provided the United States an ex-
cellent opportunity to meddle in Middle Eastern affairs and in the domestic
affairs of Middle Eastern countries, said a Renmin ribao article shortly after
the Iraqi invasion.^5 With Soviet resolve evaporating, the United States “had
nothing to fear” and was moving toward military intervention, the article
said. According to a leading MFA Middle East analyst, Li Guofu, the Gulf cri-
sis was an indication of an unbalanced global pattern following the relaxation
of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.^6
The considerations that US leaders said (and still say) loomed large in
the US decision to undo Iraq’s move—not allowing violent, illegal aggres-
sion to stand, which would undermine a stable and peaceful international
order—simply did not figure in Chinese analyses of US motives. There is a
vast gulf between Chinese and American judgments about why the United
States resorted to force in 1991.^7 The objective of US military intervention
in the Iraq-Kuwait “dispute,” Chinese analysts quickly concluded, was to