Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Part I)

Abstract

This two-part historiographical article examines many of the key historical books written in English on military operations in the Persian Gulf from 1990 to 1991. Although increasingly viewed, even by historians, as little more than a historical footnote to the tumultuous events in the region after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003, the events of the Persian Gulf War, often referred to by their U.S. operational names Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, have given us a rich and important literature on its military aspects of the war. The Gulf War was viewed at the time as an important test of U.S. political resolve after the retreat from the wars in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, and an equally important test of the rebirth of the American military. The article begins with a summary of those operations in the Gulf now twenty-five years in the past. It goes on to review the most important military historical books on the dominant subject of air power in the Gulf in part one and follows that in part two with works on ground operations, naval support, key memoirs, professional military analyses of the events, and general or popular works. Part two will be published in ijhm issue 36–2 and contain a comprehensive listing of the major works discussed. In all, some forty-three major books and over twenty additional works are summarized with an analysis of their contributions to the various debates on the planning and preparation for the war and the key elements of its conduct. This was an important operation that led to deeper U.S. and western involvement in the Persian Gulf region and, ultimately, to a second invasion of Iraq with even more dramatic consequences in 2003.