Gulf War Essay, Research Paper

The attack of Iraqi military forces to a small Arab state called Kuwait on orders from president Saddam Hussein caused The US to interfere with the situation resulting in a war called The Gulf War of 1991 starting in January 16 ending in February 28. The military campaign against Iraq had two phase: The Air War and the Ground War . The aim of the air war was to destroy the stratecigally important places and the ground war was for reinforcement of the air war.

There were a number of reasons that caused the war in addition to the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi Military Forces; these reasons were: Iraq; publicly decrying the US naval presence in the Persian Gulf and making increasingly belligerent threats against Kuwait and The United Arab Emirates whom they accused of breaking agreements limiting oil production and thereby severely depressing world oil prices and costing Iraq billions of dollars in annual revenue.

The Gulf war resulted in ?Kuwait? having great amount of economic loss and in addition to great economic loss a continuous sanction and embargo to Iraq by the United Nations. In contrary US gained a great amount of prestige in the international area by showing that they are the only superpower and found clients to its new technology weapons which US used in the Gulf War.

The Us is a militarist country and the US government is justified in attacking Iraq, however there are arguements against this evaluation. These arguements can be refuted by arguements supporting the militarist theory.

Firstly, as a contrary argument it is said that states role is not to define rights but to defend rights, in other words, rights are not given by the states they are given naturally, but it can be said that in reality states define the notion of property, therefore, the US can define rights of people even in Iraq because they have taken the power from the Iraq government by applying force.

Secondly, people against militarism state that strength does not mean the aggressor should behave aggressively because war is an expensive solution to a problem in terms of both money and people?s lives. The reality is that the country holding the power can define the rights. The strong always wins against the weak. Therefore the US is justified because in every field they are stronger than Iraq nobody has the power to stop the US. Then the US can invade Iraq whenever they want as they did in the Gulf War. Aggressiveness is sometimes needed especially when there are conflicts between states.Lastly, it can be said that it is necessary to defend weak countries because today Kuwait would have been a city of Iraq unless US

had stopped Iraq; this can refute the argument against militarism saying that weak countries do not want the US to protect them.

In conclusion, the US is a militarist country and justified in attacking Iraq. Militarism is not a negative theory because living in a world containing some militarist countries is better than living in a world in which there is no balancing powers.