Hitler's Shadow: Historical Analogies and the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait

Leaders often turn to history for guidance. Margaret Thatcher and George Bush were no exception when they responded to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Bush and Thatcher used analogies to the 1930s, the Vietnam War and the Falklands War to frame the crisis, which significantly influenced their policies. They argued that Saddam Hussein was another Adolf Hitler and were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the Western response to the Axis in the 1930s or of the Vietnam War. There would be no 1930s-style appeasement of Iraq, and no slow escalation as had occurred in Vietnam. The prompt use of overwhelming force in the Gulf would succeed, Bush and Thatcher believed, just as the use of force had succeeded in the Falklands crisis, and just as such a policy, they believed, would have deterred the Axis in the early 1930s.