1990 Reports

The Gulf Crisis and the Future of Gorbachev’s Foreign Policy Revolution

Legvold, Robert

Few doubted history had tacked a new direction when with one voice the Americans and Soviets instantly and angrily condemned Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, and called for a world-wide arms embargo of his country. But even the most credulous individual would have had trouble imagining the partnership to follow, and the hopes of a new world that would spring from it. Vast changes, of course, had already occurred in Soviet foreign policy by the time Hussein moved against Kuwait, changes fundamentally altering the nature of the superpower relationship, changes that at their most stunning undid the Coldwar European order. But the Gulf crisis carried the revolution in Soviet foreign policy across another threshold — and, along the way, altered the Bush Administration’s view of the Soviet Union more than almost anything that had come before.