Winning Back the Peace: The George H.W. Bush Administration and the Creation of Operation Southern Watch, August 1992

Abstract

In August 1992 the George H.W. Bush administration-led ‘Permanent Three’ (P3) coalition of the United States, Britain, and France announced the creation of a no-fly zone over southern Iraq, south of the 32nd parallel north. Operation Southern Watch (OSW), as the zone was called, prevented Iraqi aircraft from flying over the region in question, was justified on humanitarian grounds by President Bush and his coalition partners, and was a key moment in the emergence of the no-fly zone as a foreign policy tool. Yet while no-fly zones have gone on to become a frequently controversial presence in recent debates over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, historians have yet to properly excavate their origins in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. Using extensive archival sources from both the United States and Britain, this article thus seeks to shed light on a key moment in the history of no-fly zones. It argues that ultimately the creation of OSW was not spurred by a humanitarian crisis, as the Bush administration claimed, but by the gradual erosion of George H.W. Bush’s “clean” Gulf War victory, and by his worsening political standing at home in the United States.