The Kennedy Administration and Arms Transfers to Ba‘thist Iraq

Abstract

From June until November of 1963, Iraq’s first Ba‘thist regime conducted a ruthless war of pacification against an insurrection of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in the country’s mountainous north. The regime perpetrated large-scale human rights violations against Kurdish fighters and non-combatants, including summary executions, crop destruction, abuse of prisoners, and ethnic cleansing. The U.S. defense, intelligence, and diplomatic establishments during the presidential administration of John F. Kennedy were fully aware of the regime’s war crimes. Despite that fact, the administration transferred to the Iraqi government military equipment, parts, ammunition, and weapons that it required for the prosecution of its war. American officials displayed a remarkably uniform consensus of opinion about the utility of arming the Ba‘thist regime. Yet, the questions of what specific goals the United States could accomplish in supplying weapons and what weapons should be supplied divided policy makers in the Defense and State Departments, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council (NSC). Their differences were sharpened because the Kennedy administration thoroughly enmeshed its global Cold War strategies with its economic strategies directed at the U.S. balance of payments deficit and because the administration institutionalized a partnership between the Pentagon and the American defense industry.