404 • 20 THE GULF WAR AND THE PEACE PROCESStheir people's opposition to Saudi and US policies. Other governments,
such as Jordan and Yemen, backed Saddam because of their economic ties
with Iraq, at the risk of offending their other neighbors. Almost every
Arab regime feels insecure about its own legitimacy. In a crisis, most will
resort to some form of coercion to ensure their citizens' obedience. With¬
out a system of collective security, all are vulnerable to invasion. If wealthy
Saudi Arabia needed Operation Desert Shield for defense against invasion
(though Iraq never threatened to occupy the Saudi kingdom), how was its
government viewed by its own subjects, who had no constitutional means
of supporting or opposing its policies? WTiat had the Saudis done with the
costly arms it had already bought from the US and Britain? Until August
1990 the Saudi government could protect its own subjects and also main¬
tain its legitimacy by guarding the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. By
January 1991 the whole country was guarded by a half-million foreign
troops—most of them not even Muslim. Iraq had no foreign troops on
its soil.
OPERATION DESERT STORMSaddam's rejection of the twelve Security Council resolutions demanding
his unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait, combined with Bush's refusal
to compromise with Iraq, led to the outbreak of war on 17 January 1991.
Operation Desert Storm, as the allied coalition renamed its campaign, be¬
gan with massive aerial bombardments of Iraq's military facilities, and
many civilian targets as well. After an initially weak response, Iraq
launched Scud missile attacks on Israel (which was not part of the allied
coalition), hoping to draw Jerusalem into the war. Saddam hoped that, if
Israel retaliated against Iraq, the armies of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria
would desert the alliance. Under heavy US pressure not to retaliate, Israel
complied but reserved the right to strike back at some future date, lest the
Palestinians and other Arabs assume that Jerusalem was weak and had to
hide behind a battery of Patriot missiles hastily set up by the Americans.
Iraqi Scud attacks went on throughout the war, hitting Saudi Arabia as
well as Israel, but they had no strategic value.
Some of Iraq's other ripostes to the allied air strikes, which soon num¬
bered in the thousands, were more damaging. Saddam ordered the
Kuwaiti oil taps opened, spilling millions of gallons of crude petroleum
into the Gulf, threatening beaches, wildlife, and even water desalination
plants, as well as deterring an amphibious assault on Kuwait City. Allied
pilots whom Iraq had shot down and captured were tortured and made to