War on the Line: Telephone Diplomacy in the Making and Maintenance of the Desert Storm Coalition

Abstract

President George H.W. Bush’s use of personal diplomacy has been a frequently noted but little studied subject in the scholarly literature. For the first time, this analysis examines the transcripts of telephone conversations between Bush and foreign leaders during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm to determine the nature and purpose of these communications. Bush used these conversations more to build relationships than to persuade. He valued the contributions of the French president, François Mitterrand, over those of the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the assistance provided by the Turkish president, Turgut Özal, over that of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. The tensions of crisis and war did not bring Bush and Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd closer together, and a rupture occurred in his previously close relationship with Jordan’s King Hussein. In this process, public opinion in the United States and abroad remained of paramount concern.