On July 31 1990, at an open session of the House International Relations Committee, U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton asked Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly whether the U.S. had a mutual defense pact with Kuwait. Cornered by such a direct question, Kelly had to give an accurate response: “We don’t have any defense treaty with the Gulf States.” Kelly went on to qualify his answer, pointing out that the U.S. expected disputes to be resolved by negotiation if possible.
But those words were enough to give Saddam Hussein the excuse he needed to invade Kuwait. Any failure in negotiation could now be interpreted as a “green light” for a military solution.
Saddam had been looking for such an excuse, given that Iraq owed Kuwait $18 billion, which it had no way of paying back (it’s a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the short form). Sure enough, one month later, right after the next round of financial negotiations failed, Iraq invaded Kuwait.
To Saddam’s surprise, the U.S. then went to war against Iraq in Kuwait’s defense. Sure, there was no defense treaty, but the U.S. still had plenty of reasons to defend Kuwait, one of its main economic allies in the region.
The current situation in Syria seems to have some of the same flavor. The Trump administration made a point recently of softening the U.S. position on Assad, presumably to distinguish itself from the previous administration.
As Sean Spicer described Trump’s policy in a late March news conference:
“With respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept, The United States has profound priorities in Syria and Iraq, and we’ve made it clear that counterterrorism, particularly the defeat of ISIS, is foremost among those priorities.”
Assad apparently interpreted that as a green light to resume his usual methods of keeping down an unruly populace. This included his horrific use of chemical weapons against civilians, to which the U.S. promptly responded with military force.
The lesson is clear: When you are the United States government, words matter, and you need to be careful what you say on the world stage. Megalomaniac dictators are eager for you to give them a “green light” to do their thing. And they are clearly not too smart about thinking through the consequences.
I’m very concerned about the way the current President tends to shoot from the hip, seemingly saying whatever comes into his head when it comes to foreign policy. Today’s world is a potentially explosive tinderbox, with lots of petty dictators just looking for an excuse to flex their muscles. If that tinderbox goes off, we are all in trouble.