Why didn't Saddam Hussein back down before the Gulf War?

So in late 1990, Iraq decided to roll into Kuwait and just straight-up annex it. Naturally, the rest of the world wasn’t too thrilled about that move. Even the USA and the USSR—who didn’t agree on much—agreed that Iraq had to pull out or face the heat.

Over the next five months, Iraq got hit with diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, and saw a massive military buildup right on its doorstep. And during all that time? Saddam and his crew didn’t flinch. Which makes you wonder—why? Why didn’t Iraq just back down before things blew up?

Well, to understand that, we’ve got to rewind a bit. Iraq’s relationship with Kuwait was already a dumpster fire by mid-1990. After the brutal war with Iran, Iraq was buried in debt, and guess who they owed a chunk of it to? Yep—Kuwait. On top of that, oil prices were super low, which was not helping the Iraqi economy one bit.

And to make matters worse, Iraq accused Kuwait of straight-up stealing its oil through some sneaky drilling. So Saddam made the call—on August 2nd, the Iraqi army marched in and took over Kuwait in a flash.

Naturally, the world freaked out. But Saddam? Not exactly losing sleep. He figured that if the U.S. tried anything, the Soviets would just veto it at the UN. Except… plot twist. The USSR was kind of falling apart at the time, and their leader Gorbachev was trying to keep things chill with the West.

You know, in case he needed a little help surviving coups and chaos back home.

With the Soviets out, there was always China, right? Well, no—China was still licking its wounds from the Tiananmen Square fallout and wasn’t about to back a random oil-grabbing dictator. So yeah… no luck there either.

Still, Saddam was feeling confident. Why? Because of the Iran-Iraq War. That war had been a messy, drawn-out stalemate, but since Iraq was so much smaller than Iran, Saddam spun it as a win.

He came out of it with a giant army full of battle-hardened soldiers and figured they could take on anyone. Plus, the war had boosted his image in the Arab world. Saddam had cast himself as the guy standing between Sunni nations and Shia Iran, and a bunch of his neighbors respected that. He thought they owed him—like, “Hey, I protected you, now let me have this one little annexation, okay?”

Except… that didn’t happen. Saudi Arabia took one look at what Saddam did and thought, “Yeah, we’re next.” So they gave Kuwait’s government a safe place to run to and started calling for real intervention.

Alright, so the Soviets, the Chinese, and the Arab world had all let Saddam down. His next move? Wait it out. The Iraqi leadership believed that if they just dug in and held Kuwait long enough, everyone else would lose interest and go home.

But the only thing that actually moved was the growing number of troops from all over the world setting up in Saudi Arabia. So, time for plan E: make friends. Saddam thought a great way to ease international pressure would be to take hostages. Yes, really.

Baghdad banned foreigners from leaving Iraq, hoping that their home countries would back off rather than risk their citizens getting hurt. Shocker—this didn’t exactly win hearts and minds. If anything, it made the intervention a sure thing.

So now, surely Saddam would tap out, right? Nope. He had more “brilliant” plans up his sleeve. The next one? Just win the war. Not by steamrolling through Saudi Arabia or anything—that wasn’t realistic—but by inflicting so many casualties on the coalition that they’d just give up.

See, in the Iran-Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of people died. Saddam figured he could stomach those losses again, but thought the coalition countries wouldn’t be able to.

He figured that once the body count got high enough, the U.S. and friends would start looking for a way out, and then he could play the magnanimous guy and offer to return part of Kuwait—just not the oil-rich part, of course. So the coalition launched its bombing campaign in January 1991, and as things went south, Saddam tried one last desperate move: