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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE the Role Of CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE The Role of Misperception in Decisions to Go to War: A Case Study on the First Gulf War A graduate project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science By Humoud Aladwani December, 2020 The graduate project of Humoud Aladwani is approved: _________________________________________ ______________ Dr. Tyler Hughes Date _________________________________________ ______________ Dr. Jennifer De Maio Date _________________________________________ ______________ Dr. Keiko Hirata, Chair Date California State University, Northridge ii Acknowledgement I am grateful to my committee members for assisting me throughout this journey. Special thanks to Professor Keiko Hirata for helping me with my project and for believing in my potential as a graduate student. I really appreciate your patience and time. Also, thanks to Professor Jennifer DeMaio for participating in my committee and introducing the theory of perception and misperception. Also, thanks to Professor Tyler Hughes for participating with enthusiasm in my committee. Thank you all for joining my committee! Last and least, my faith helped me achieve the impossible as started writing this project in May, 2020. I would like also to thank my family for supporting me throughout this journey. Thanks to Aunt Khlood Doshan Al Shammari for helping me and understanding my goals. Also, Thanks to my cousin Mubarak Shaab Al Shammari who throughout the six-year period helped and motivated me toward success. Thank you all! iii Table of Contents Signatures ii Acknowledgement iii Abstract v Introduction 1 Literature Review 3 Methodology 12 A Case Study of Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait 13 Discussion 25 Conclusion 28 Bibliography 30 iv Abstract The Role of Misperception in Decisions to go to War: A Case Study on the First Gulf War By Humoud Aladwani Master of Arts in Political Science This paper examines the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It asks what led Iraq to invade Kuwait. The paper first compares four major approaches in International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis, namely Realism, the bureaucratic politics model, rational choice theory, and psychological perspectives. The paper argues that the psychological perspectives best explain Iraq’s decision to invade Kuwait. v This paper highlights the major role of human psychology in foreign policymaking. The paper focuses on how an individual's cognitive factors shape foreign policy decisions. Through a process-tracing method to analyze the cause and effect relationship of the Iraqi invasion, the paper argues that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s biases and misperceptions affected his decision to invade Kuwait. The paper further argues that his personal characteristics, such as narcissism and paranoia in particular, and his past experiences shaped his biased beliefs and prevented him from predicting a possible war with the United States and its coalition allies. vi . Introduction For centuries, scholars have sought to understand the main causes of War. Wars are costly and risky, so why do states go to war rather than settling disputes through peaceful matter? What motivates states to attack another state when the prospect of success appears remote? Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and caused an uproar throughout the world. The Iraqi invasion infringed on the sovereignty of Kuwait and violated international law. In 1990, Iraq had just emerged from a debilitating war with Iran that had lasted eight years. The war left Iraq worse off than when it started, causing economic turmoil and tremendous loss of life. Why did Iraq start another costly war shortly after the previous one had ended? What were the Iraqi motivations for starting a war with Kuwait? The Iraq invasion was an important historic event that led to the U.S-led Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, also known as the First Gulf War (January - February 1991). The coalition consisted of troops from 35 allies and involved the largest deployment of U.S troops since the Vietnam War (Miller 1998). Furthermore, the Iraqi invasion and the subsequent Gulf War was an important precursor to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which led to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait marked a significant turning point in international politics and helped to solidify a U.S. dominated unipolar world system in the post-Cold War era. 1 This study examines why Iraq invaded Kuwait. It analyzes different theoretical approaches in International Relations., including realism, the bureaucratic politics model, rational-choice theory, and psychological perspectives. The study argues that the psychological perspectives account best for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Furthermore, it contends that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein misperceived U.S. intentions on Iraq, and miscalculated the outcome of the invasion of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein’s miscalculation of the international response was costly. Iraq was defeated decidedly by the U.S-led coalition forces and forced to withdraw its troops from Kuwait on February 24, 1991. Through the use of case study and close reading of primary and secondary sources, this study argues that Saddam Hussain’s personality and biases contributed to his miscalculation of the U.S. response to the invasion. This paper first analyzes four competing approaches in International Relations: Realism, the bureaucratic politics model, rational-choice theory, and psychological perspectives. The paper then discusses the methodology of the study, followed by a case-study analysis. This section examines major events in Iraq from the 1950s through the 1980s as well as the process that led to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Finally, the paper analyzes how Saddam's personality traits and biases affected Iraq’s war decision. 2 Literature Review International Relations (IR) scholars use various perspectives to examine state behavior. Some IR scholars analyze how structural forces shape state behavior. Others focus on actors at the organizational or individual level and examine how their interests, goals, or beliefs affect state behavior. This paper analyzes four major approaches in IR and discusses which one best explains the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. These approaches are realism, the bureaucratic politics model, rational choice theory, and psychological perspectives. Realism focuses on how international structural forces shape state behavior. The bureaucratic politics model, rational choice theory, and psychological perspectives fall in the subfield of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) in IR. FPA scholarship examines how domestic interests are reflected in state behavior at the international level. FPA focuses on specific actors and analyzes the process, strategies, and outcomes of foreign policy decision-making (Hudson 2013). Realism Realism is one of the main system-level theories in International Relations. Realism assumes that states pursue power by practicing realpolitik. Realist ideas trace back to the writings of historical scholars, such as Thucydides (Peloponnesian War), and Renaissance philosopher’s such as Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince) and Thomas Hobbs (Leviathan). Realism emerged in the 20th century as a critique of idealism, which assumes that states seek to cooperate through international institutions to maintain peace and stability. 3 Realism has several key assumptions. First, realism assumes that the international system is anarchic without central authority above sovereign states. Realism assumes that due to anarchy, states operate in a self-help system. Second, realism is state-centric and regards states as the primary actors in international politics (Kauppi and Viotti 2020). Third, realism regards states as unitary actors. It does not pay attention to domestic actors or domestic forces affecting foreign policy. Instead, realism assumes that systemic factors contribute to state behavior. Fourth, in the realist view, states are rational-actors who pursue their relative self-interests. Fifth, Realism assumes the ultimate goal of each state is to ensure security (Kauppi and Viotti 2020). Sixth, Realism argues that if a state becomes powerful and threatens other states, those states usually form a balancing coalition to counter the rising power (Nobel 1995). Hanish (2013) applies Realism to his analysis of the Iraq-Kuwait war and argues that Iraq invaded Kuwait to gain power by amassing resources in the country. Iraq had accumulated a debt of $250 billion during the Iraq-Iran war and had been on the brink of economic collapse. The neighboring Gulf States supported Iraq during the war, but after the war ended, they demanded that Iraq repay its debt to them. Iraq faced great difficulties in repaying those debts. Realism stresses that states seek power to survive (Hanish 2013). From the Realist perspective, Iraq decided to invade Kuwait to survive. Iraq accused Kuwait of deliberately increasing its oil production to 1.5 million barrels a day in 1989 to destroy Iraq’s economy (Nasrawai 1990). From a realist lens, the main purpose of the invasion was to annex the entire state of Kuwait. Iraq also brought up its old claim that Kuwait was an integral part of Iraq. In the Gulf States’ views, Iraq was a revisionist state in the Arab world, and other states in the Gulf region such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, 4 Kuwait, and Bahrain wanted to contain the rising influence of Iraq, thus balancing power against it (Hanish 2013). The major
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