The Kuwait Crisis of 1961 and its Consequences for Great Britain's Persian Gulf Policy

Abstract

On 1 July 1961, the British Government under Prime Minister Harold Macmillan launched a major military intervention in the emirate of Kuwait, the largest mobilization of British forces in the Middle East after the Suez crisis. The operation – code-named Vantage – was designed to prevent an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which had only recently obtained independence from British control. This article analyzes the Kuwait crisis and its consequences from the perspective of the British Government. It argues that the lessons the British learned from the Kuwait crisis had far-reaching consequences for Great Britain’s military and political involvement in the entire Persian Gulf area.1 The Kuwait crisis convinced the British Government that the security of the Persian Gulf was above all endangered by the President of Iraq, Abd al-Karim Qasim. As a result, a new defense plan for Kuwait was endorsed by the British Cabinet in October 1961. This plan – code-named Sodabread – had significant consequences for the scale of