Margin of Victory by Douglas MacGregor

Author:Douglas MacGregor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612519975
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2016-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

LOST VICTORY

Desert Storm and the Battle of 73 Easting, 1991

On 2 August 1990, Iraq’s armed forces invaded the small, oil-rich state of Kuwait. Just as the Israelis had been taken by surprise on 6 October 1973, Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait caught the White House flat-footed. Intelligence reports concerning the Iraqi troop buildup in southern Iraq had reached the White House, but the size and suddenness of the Iraqi offensive were totally unexpected.1 Without any significant forces in the region, not even a regional forward command post, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA, Central Command (CENTCOM) commander-in-chief, had few immediate options.2

Fortunately for the United States, Saddam Hussein did not exploit his victory in Kuwait and continue his attack to seize Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. His profound strategic error put time on the side of the United States, and when the buildup of American and coalition military power began in Saudi Arabia, Saddam’s failure to launch preemptive strikes with the substantial theater ballistic missiles and aircraft at his command was fatal.

American military power resides primarily in the continental United States, from which it must launch thousands of miles to reach opponents. In 1990, America’s unchallenged maritime supremacy permitted the United States to marshal its capabilities and those of its allies to create a massive local superiority in forces and matériel. By November 1991, the buildup of forces in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf encouraged Schwarzkopf to tell his generals before the attack to “pin [the Iraqi Republican Guard] with their backs against the sea, then, go in and wipe them out. . . . Once they’re gone be prepared to continue the attack to Baghdad [emphasis in original].”3

From the moment the U.S. Air Force obliterated Iraq’s air defenses and established unchallenged U.S. and coalition air supremacy over the Kuwait theater of operations, the outcome of the 1991 Persian Gulf War was decided. From 20 January onward, a U.S.-led ground offensive around the open desert flank of Iraq’s static defenses in Kuwait was unstoppable. Any Iraqi attempt to maneuver or concentrate ground forces risked immediate and shattering air attack, but the United States ignored this critical strategic advantage.

Instead, each service—Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps—was allowed to fight its own war, attacking the way it preferred to fight.4 In contrast to what Japanese, German, Russian, and Israeli commanders would have done—violently exploit unchallenged air supremacy—Schwarzkopf and his commanders mimicked the World War I British offensive on the Somme in November 1916, a lengthy, concentrated artillery bombardment of the enemy’s defenses followed by a slow, deliberate attack by Army, Marine, British, and coalition forces on line.

American and coalition casualties were negligible, but when the shooting stopped, 700 tanks and 1,430 armored fighting vehicles of Iraq’s force in Kuwait and southern Iraq along with most of the 80,000 troops in the Republican Guard Corps had already escaped destruction.5 America’s undeclared war with Iraq dragged on.

Nevertheless, the 1991 Gulf War provided a fleeting glimpse of twenty-first-century warfare; Schwarzkopf directed global military power

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