The Gulf War was the beginning of the end for American supremacy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/12101906/The-Gulf-War-was-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-American-supremacy.html

For one brief moment it seemed the USA could conquer anywhere in the world. 25 years on, we've learned how wrong that was

By David Blair,  17 Jan 2016

Cruise missiles and laser-guided bombs suddenly became household names exactly 25 years ago on Saturday. As night fell on Jan 16 1991, the mightiest aerial armada in history began the onslaught that would hurl Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait.

A new generation of weapons instantly appeared on the world’s television screens. When millions watched the first live satellite broadcasts from a city under attack, they saw American cruise missiles tracking the street plan of Baghdad and entering buildings through carefully chosen windows.

The campaign to reverse Iraq’s occupation of its neighbour became synonymous with the most advanced military technology.

Yet, with the perspective of a quarter of a century, the Gulf War of 1991 looks very different. Far from being a cutting edge affair, it now seems like one of the most old-fashioned and traditional clashes of arms in Western military history.

Along with countless wars over the centuries beforehand – and very few in the 25 years since – this conflict was fought between states with the aim of controlling territory. The struggle consisted entirely of conventional battles between regular armed forces. Suicide bombers and “improvised explosive devices” were entirely absent.

And no-one can forget the outcome. After 40 days of bombing and a lightning ground offensive lasting only 100 hours, Saddam’s grip on Kuwait was broken.

During the four days of the land campaign, not a single American soldier was killed by enemy fire. Even the shattered French at Agincourt managed to dispatch a few score of their English tormentors; Iraqi soldiers, by contrast, proved utterly helpless in the face of America's military juggernaut.

That central fact helps to explain many recent events. Every adversary of the West – from Osama bin Laden to the Taliban and from Vladimir Putin to the leaders of China – took careful note. The lesson they learnt was abundantly clear: never, never, never take on America in conventional combat. Army against army, air force against air force, the Americans will always win.

"A quarter of a century ago, the US and its allies thought they had reached the zenith of their military strength. But it turned out that the high intensity warfare which they had brought to such devastating perfection would not be needed again"

As a result, the Gulf War of 1991 triggered more than its fair share of unintended consequences. The first was America's enemies revived other methods of combat designed to get around US supremacy. For Mr Putin, that meant perfecting the brand of “hybrid warfare” he turned on Ukraine; for the leaders of China, this meant identifying chinks in America's armour and working out how to exploit them – shooting down satellites, perhaps, ormounting cyber attacks.

As for the world’s Islamist terrorists, they embraced what strategists call “asymmetric conflict” and the world knows as insurgency or guerrilla warfare. When America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban knew that a conventional defence of Kabul would have been as futile as Saddam’s defence of Kuwait.

US troops in Afghanistan Photo: AP

So they fought the occasional battle, but they conserved their strength by melting away into the Hindu Kush and the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, re-emerging to mount a guerrilla campaign. Confronted with a high technology enemy, the Taliban preyed on niche vulnerabilities, using roadside bombs, improvised explosive devices and, of course, suicide attacks.

Their aim was not to defeat America on the battlefield, but to exhaust and wear down the superpower, exploiting the greatest vulnerability of any democracy, namely its unwillingness to fight a protracted struggle.

When the next war in Iraq began in 2003, the Anglo-American invasion of the country and the seizure of Baghdad were the easy bits. The Iraqi army, remembering its fate in 1991, largely avoided pitched battles.

The toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue become of the most powerful symbols of the end of the hated regime's downfall Photo: REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

The real war started after Saddam's downfall: America’s hidden enemies began burying bombs beside highways, raiding military bases wearing suicide belts, or mounting hit-and-run ambushes.

A quarter of a century ago, the US and its allies thought they had reached the zenith of their military strength. But it turned out that the high intensity warfare which they had brought to such devastating perfection would not be needed again.

Blown away: a Snatch Land Rover in Kabul in 2006 after a suicide bombing Photo: Reuters

Future victories would require relearning the painstaking art of counter-insurgency warfare: how to defeat enemies who wear no uniforms, serve in no armies and owe loyalty to no state.

The second unintended consequence was to bring forward some of those enemies. Until the Gulf War in 1991, Osama bin Laden was a respected citizen of Saudi Arabia, admired for his part in the struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It was the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Western troops in the kingdom to wage war on Saddam which turned bin Laden into a fanatical enemy of the House of Saud and then of America.

None of this should cast doubt on the value of the victory that was achieved 25 years ago. If Saddam had been allowed to obliterate Kuwait, the inevitable collapse of international order would have brought far worse consequences than what has actually happened.