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When Iraq invaded Kuwait… | blogjou

Mark Galeotti

The Weaponisation of Everything

p. 54
09 Apr 2023

When Iraq invaded Kuwait...


Scaling up, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and neighbours such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE feared they might be next, they were happy to see the US-led multinational coalition deal with the problem. Doubly so, as many of these countries either lacked the forces to make substantial contribution or - as in Saudi Arabia’s case - the desire to do any fighting. So instead the stumped up direct payments of $84 billion to the US, Britain and France, who did the lion’s share of the fighting, and extra support to cover bases and logistics. No one would suggest that the combatant countries actually made a profit on the war, or that they were motivated by the payments. Nonetheless, the way that rich but militarily weak of self-indulgent nations could simply outsource the violence - and the dying - to foreigners is a pattern that Macchiavelli would have recognised from the days when mercenary captains fought Italian city-states’ wars for them.