Impact of Ambassador Glaspie telling Saddam to stay out of Kuwait

[Admiral Beez]

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990 to convey the United States' position on Kuwait. Saddam invaded just a few days later, on August 2.

Glaspie gets unfairly blamed, A Bum Rap for April Glaspie — Saddam and the Start of the Iraq War – Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training

But what if President Bush had made the US position clear, that the US was guaranteeing Kuwait's security and that the US expects Iraq to stand down or else face US military action, or such?

How are regional and global geopolitics impacted?

 

[GreenKnight121]

There would still be the fact that Bush (who should have known better) was sending a "harsh message" to an Arab leader via a woman.

No getting around the "women are less than men" part of the Arab culture, which automatically downgraded the impact of anything she said (or may alternatively have said) to Saddam.

 

[ARTESH]

No idea about global impacts, but surely Iran's occupants [the Akhunds and their "so called" Islamic republic regime] would send their ultimatum to US and west, by several explosions with tons of casualties. The US and West, would do nothing in return, as they did not.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

The mealy-mouthed script she was reading from was probably to blame. Even being a woman, had the message concluded with a promise of American military support of Kuwait, things may have turned out different.

 

[Admiral Beez]

There would still be the fact that Bush (who should have known better) was sending a "harsh message" to an Arab leader via a woman.

No getting around the "women are less than men" part of the Arab culture, which automatically downgraded the impact of anything she said (or may alternatively have said) to Saddam.

I was thinking back to this question this morning as I walked the dog. Had Bush sent a male to successfully convince Saddam not to attack Kuwait, how does this impact the Russo-Ukraine War of today? With no GW1, no 9/11, no GW2 and no invasion and longterm occupations of Afghanistan or Iraq, along with the collapse of the USSR and a supposed peace dividend in Europe, what does the US military and its stockpiles look like by Feb 2022? Does Washington have the will and means to provide for Ukraine?

No idea about global impacts, but surely Iran's occupants [the Akhunds and their "so called" Islamic republic regime] would send their ultimatum to US and west, by several explosions with tons of casualties. The US and West, would do nothing in return, as they did not.

A US-led invasion of Iran instead of Iraq/Afghanistan would likely benefit everyone, including the Arabs. Heck, the Iraqis would have fought alongside the US Army.

 

[GreenKnight121]

The problem with your alternate is that since the USSR had invaded Afghanistan, and the US had funded and equipped the tribal resistance there into an organized larger-scale group, that the Taliban (and its support for radical Islamic organizations such as Al Qaeda) would still be there.

While probably there is less anti-US support for the radicals from the less-radical (if large-scale US forces are not present in Saudi Arabia), I fully expect there would still be some, and at least the operations in Sudan and Afghanistan would likely go ahead, as lower-scale terrorist activity would still conducted by AQ. Remember, 9-11 was not the first time that AQ had tried to collapse the WTC.

I do expect that the Iraq invasion would not go ahead, thus the US would have all of its attention on Afghanistan, which might well mean that is handled better and more-thoroughly.