War in the Persian Gulf: Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm August 1990–March 1991

Although now twenty years in the past, the events surrounding the invasion of Kuwait by the forces of Saddam Hussein in August 1990 and the subsequent U.S.-led coalition that ejected the Iraqis from that small nation are key to understanding today’s situation in the Middle East. For the first time, the United States was directly and openly involved in sending major land forces to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region. For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. Army, which had trained to fight Soviet forces in Central Europe, moved a large portion of those forces to engage in open warfare in a completely different theater against a former Soviet client state. The overwhelming success of those
endeavors, Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, renewed the confidence and assertiveness of the United States in its foreign policy in the Near East and throughout the world.

Enjoy this short account of a conflict that twenty years ago captured the attention of the world as the first test of the U.S. Army since the Vietnam War and its first large-scale armor engagement since World War II.