British National Interests Research Articles

Post-colonial Relations of Britain with India and Pakistan, 1947–71

Abstract The decolonization process of Britain in India was completed with the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. Because of the long colonial history in that area, it was natural that creating bilateral relations between Britain and the two former colonized parties (India and Pakistan) would be challenging and not free of issues. Furthermore, the two colonized parties were in a bitter relationship with each other. The major concern of this paper is to present the post-colonial bilateral relations of Britain with each country, India and Pakistan, between 1947 and 1971. It argues that multiple factors led Britain to maintain a balanced relationship with its former colony. These are: 1) British trade interests, 2) cold war relations, 3) wars between India and Pakistan, 4) Commonwealth issues, and above all, 5) British national interests in that region.

The Discussion of the Tendences and Evolution of the European Security Issues in the British Parliament (1990-2010)

The article is devoted to the discussion of European security issues in the British Parliament in the post-bipolar period. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the British establishment had to revise the foreign policy doctrine of the United Kingdom to adapt it to the demands of the post-bipolar age. During this period, parliamentarians discussed the future role of NATO after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. The political establishment has continued to define NATO as the foundation of the Euroatlantic system of collective security. After the direct military threat from the USSR vanished, the British elites had difficulties formulating the strategic goal of the North Atlantic alliance's existence. Another important topic was the creation of the European Union, its future enlargement in Central-Eastern Europe, and the search for the best approach to British European policy under new circumstances. There was an agreement that the idea of the “Europe of Nations” was best suited to British national interests. The British government also deterred attempts by France and Germany to transform the European Union into a federal superstate. The Balkan crisis also became a central topic that caused heated debates in Parliament in an attempt to find a path to a peaceful settlement. In the case of military interventions in local conflicts, the British establishment tried to evade direct intervention in the Balkan crisis but was forced to reconsider its position under growing pressure from allies, who began to experience economic and reputational damage. The humanitarian intervention in Kosovo created a precedent that was used to justify interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Additionally, the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Georgia were also discussed.

Keeping the Technological Edge: The Space Arms Race and Anglo-American Relations in the 1980s

ABSTRACT In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan established the Strategic Defence Initiative [SDI], a research effort to develop the technologies for land- and space-based missile defence. This programme quickly unleashed anxieties about an arms race in space. Superpower military space activities were of significant concern to Britain because they had direct bearing on two key areas of its national security: space-based intelligence collection and the credibility of its nuclear deterrent. This analysis argues that the uses of space for military and intelligence purposes was an essential, though often invisible, aspect of the Anglo-American relationship during the Cold War. Despite the opposition of her senior advisors to SDI, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher maintained that the programme was necessary to stay ahead of the Soviet Union in an intensifying high-technology competition. Rather than opposing the expanded militarisation of space, she believed it required careful management to further British national security interests.

Was the Great Irish Famine a Colonial Famine?

This article reviews the historical debate on the colonial causation and dimensions of the Great Irish Famine of 1845-50. It does so by briefly reviewing the evolution of the colonial relationship between Great Britain and Ireland before focusing on a number of specific fields of debate relating to the coloniality of the Irish famine. These include the economic structures and dynamics developing over the century before 1845 and the vulnerability of Irish society, the vector of the potato blight and its impact on food availability, and, most extensively, the motivations for and characteristics of British state response to the catastrophe. The variant interpretations of these factors in the nationalist, revisionist, post-revisionist, and post-colonial historiography are reviewed. The author concludes by drawing on his own primary research to suggest that, while shaped by colonial stereotypes and a preoccupation with social engineering, the British state and public response to the Irish crisis was varied and not intentionally genocidal, although ultimately subordinating humanitarianism to perceived British national interest. Critical British contemporaries drew negative parallels between the neglect of Ireland and the prioritization of imperial expansion overseas, while Irish nationalists concluded that the mortality of the famine demonstrated the bankruptcy of the British-Irish Union of 1800.

Arnold J. Toynbee, the Colonial Question, and ‘Peaceful Change’

While most scholarship on appeasement focuses on its later stages in Europe – culminating in the Munich Agreement – policymakers and public intellectuals throughout the early and mid-1930s were exercised by appeasement in a different context. These prominent Britons, concerned by increasing international tensions and conscious of the resentments engendered by having a globe-spanning empire, sought to contrive some way to appease the revisionist powers without betraying their liberal internationalist principles or harming British national interests. At the center of these debates was Arnold J. Toynbee, director of studies at Chatham House. A devoted liberal internationalist, Toynbee was convinced that a durable peace could be built on appeasement in the context of ‘the colonial question’. This version of appeasement claimed that German interests and honour could be satisfied by finding some way to return Germany to Africa as an imperial power. But the debates over ‘the colonial question’ revealed the extent to which British and German conceptions of the issue diverged. They also demonstrated the inability of liberal internationalists to reconcile their commitment to changing an unsatisfactory status quo with their commitment to preventing the forceful revision of that same status quo; ‘peaceful change’ was therefore elusive.

소련·핀란드 겨울전쟁과 영국의 정책

Before the outbreak of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War on 30 November 1939, the Northern Department of the British Foreign Office argued positively the intervention of the Finnish problem. Though the Northern Department estimated that the Finnish intransigence towards the Soviet Union was folly, it inspired Finnish resistance for British national interest. Besides on 28 November, Churchill suggested to the War Cabinet the torpedo of the Russian ice-breaker. The French Prime Minister Daladier held the initiative in Allied policy towards Finland by Finnish strong resistance and expelling the Soviet Union from the League of Nations on 14 December. The Geneva resolution of the League of Nations intensified the British intervention towards the Soviet-Finnish War. In these circumstances. the British Chiefs of Staff that have opposed the intervention towards Finland before the Winter War endorsed the Scandinavian expedition at the cost of war with the Soviet Union by the end of December. Ironside influenced strongly a change of attitude of the Chiefs of Staff. But the influence of Churchill and Daladier was decisive. In the course of the development of British anti-Soviet intervention plans, Ling’s Report in the middle of January was the turning point of British intervention policy towards Finland. The middle of January thus must be regarded as the turning-point of the Winter War. The War Cabinet began to regard the assistance to Finland as an end. Furthermore, Daladier that suggested a plan of an expedition to Petsamo argued to expand the anti-Soviet front through an attack on Baku and Batum. Also, Churchill argued the strong anti-Soviet line through the speech of the light of freedom on 20 January. Thus by late January Churchill and Daladier began to see the Soviet Union as the main enemy. In the circumstances of the reinforcement of British intervention, on 29 January 1940, the Soviet Union responded to the peace fellers of the Ryti-Tanner government. In particular, on 12 February the Mannerheim Line was broken for the first time in the war. As a result, the Finnish military situation was aggravated severely. In the face of aggravated military situation and Finnish peace feelers, the Supreme War Council decided to send the allied regular army on 5 February. After this decision, in view of the comprehensive anti- Soviet plan Churchill pursued the military intervention to Finland at the risk of the war with the Soviet Union. Even Churchill suggested the military operation in Baku and the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Furthermore, the appeasers of France argued to change the declared but unfought war with Germany into an undeclared but fighting against the Soviet Union. But on 29 February the Finnish government accepted in principle the peace terms of the Soviet Union. In the face of this situation, Churchill and Daladier tried to coerce the appeal of the aid of Finland through a threat of aid in order to prevent the termination of the Winter War. (Korea University / kssgh@hanmail.net)

A critical examination of the British municipal court rulings on cases of international immunity: Revisiting the imperatives of politics of international law

AbstractThe interpretation or ruling on international immunity cases are often surrounded by controversies, sometimes leading to inconsistencies. The British municipal court rulings on international immunity cases are not exception, and in fact are embodiments of inconsistencies. The judgements have been consistently inconsistent. The rulings are not just characterized by controversies; they swim in controversies. Perhaps, these inconsistencies have not been more visible than in cases involving granting of sovereign immunity to political subdivisions or federating units. This was the case in the municipal court decision to deny a serving Governor of a state in Nigeria immunity from jurisdiction. The contention of this paper is that these inconsistencies are, primarily or fundamentally, due to susceptibility of British municipal courts to British national interest, and thus, not primarily due to controversial nature of international law. The paper therefore interrogates the interface between international ...

Great Britain in the Commonwealth of Nations

The article is devoted to an analysis of the role of the Commonwealth of Nations in British history and politics. Having emerged at the end of the XIX c. as an informal association of Britain and dominions within the British Empire it has developed into an independent institute that includes almost all former British territories. Even though nowadays the Commonwealth is a free association of countries and manifests democratic values, this distinctive representation of imperialists stood at its origins, and at times the term itself signified the empire, though in a more progressive, democratic and human form. The author argues that for many decades the main reason for this evolution was British politicians'desire to deter regions from breaking away from within the British sphere of influence. Indeed, the Commonwealth countries belonged to one of the three most important and traditional circles of British political and economic interests, as formulated by W. Churchill, while its importance has been constantly emphasized in numerous election manifestos and government statements. However, with the weakening of Britain and growing independence within the organization, as well as because of contradictions between British national interests and the Commonwealth's founding ideals and principles, Britain has become less and less capable of impacting the organization, and its significance has declined, while some British leaders have even openly sabotaged it. Nevertheless, voices that appeal to reanimate the institution, as well as Britain's role in it, are still heard in the British political arena.

British national interest in the Gulf: rediscovering a role?

The British government is in the process of re-energizing its relations with the Gulf states. A new Gulf strategy involving a range of activities including more frequent elite bilateral visits and proposals sometimes touted as Britain's military ‘return to east of Suez’ are two key elements of the overarching strategy. Such polices are designed to fall in line with British national interest as identified by the government-authored 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS), which emphasizes the importance of security, trade, and promoting and expanding British values and influence as perennial British raisons d'etat. In the short term, the Gulf initiatives reflect and compliment these core interests, partly based on Britain's historical role in the region, but mostly thanks to modern day trade interdependencies and mutually beneficial security-based cooperation. However, there is yet to emerge a coherent understanding of Britain's longer-term national interest in the region. Instead, government-led, party-political priorities, at the expense of thorough apolitical analysis of long-term interests, appear to be unduly influential on the origins of both the Gulf proposals and the NSS conclusions themselves. Without a clear strategic, neutral grounding, both the Gulf prioritization and the NSS itself are weakened and their longevity undermined.

The uncertain merger of values and interests in UK foreign policy

How should ethics and values relate to the British national interest? The idea that ethical commitments to distant non-citizens should occupy a position within British foreign policy was a controversial element of Labour's foreign policy during the early part of their 1997–2010 tenure. Rather than undermining traditional national interest concerns, one of the defining themes within Labour's foreign policy was that values and national interests were becoming increasingly merged in a globalized world. The post-2010 coalition government has made distinct efforts to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, crafting a more pragmatic and national interest-based foreign policy approach. Despite this, significant continuities with Labour's ‘ethical dimension’ are evident and many associated policies and practices have survived the transition. Moreover, the suggestion that British values and interests are interrelated and mutually reinforcing has been re-asserted, with renewed vigour, by coalition policy-makers. The article traces the ways in which values and interests have become increasingly merged in the language of recent British foreign policy and examines the implications for our understanding of the UK's national interest. It argues that the idea of an almost symbiotic relationship between values and interests is fundamentally unhelpful and makes the case for greater disaggregation of the two. Although a zero–sum game need not exist between core national interests and ethical obligations abroad, the suggestion that they are mutually reinforcing obscures the tensions that frequently arise between these different realms of obligation. Using the examples of failed state stabilization and UK arms trade regulation, the article demonstrates how uncritical acceptance of the values–interests merger risks producing unstable policy formulations.

Documenting Scottish Architectural Cast Iron in Argentina

This article will consider the process of documenting cast iron pieces and products located in Argentina, but manufactured by three of Scotland’s most important foundries: Carron Company, Saracen (Macfarlane) and Lion. It draws on work done mainly in Scottish archives, and is part of a more extensive project being undertaken at the University of Edinburgh in conjunction with Historic Scotland, entitled “Trading Nations: Architecture, Informal Empire, and the Scottish Cast Iron Industry in Argentina.”Argentina underwent its most intense period of population growth between 1880 and 1930. Owing mainly to European immigration, this drastic demographic change was accompanied by the most intensive urbanization process in the country’s history. Many of the buildings erected between the 1850s and 1930s used iron, especially prefabricated cast iron, for whole buildings, structural parts, or ornamentation. The cast iron elements, sold via trade catalogues, had been widely used in Europe, but were virtually unknown in Argentina. Cast iron became crucial to the process of modernization.At the time, Scotland enjoyed a commanding position in the pre-fabricated ironwork industry. In Latin America, Argentina’s rapid industrialization, increased wealth, and strategic importance to British national interests made the country a significant market for Scottish ironwork.Some of these cast iron elements manufactured in Scotland and shipped to Argentina still survive, and are part of a transnational architecture that today represents a shared heritage yet to be fully revealed. This paper identifies some of the products made at the Carron, Saracen, and Lion foundries, among the most important iron foundries in architectural cast iron development in Scotland.

“The High Priest of Deterrence”: Sir Michael Quinlan, Nuclear Weapons, and the Just War Tradition

THE 1950s AND EARLY 1960s have been called the Golden Age of Nuclear Strategy, an era in which civilian scholars and practitioners, principally Americans but French theorists as well, dominated strategic thought. These theorists--physicists, military officers, economists, and political scientists--defined nuclear strategy and the potentiality for Armageddon with a detached, cold calculus, granting negligible consideration to the moral implications of such a war. Ostensibly, the argument over nuclear strategy and its abstract constructs ceased when the four nuclear powers adapted to mutual assured destruction as an established element of the Cold War environment. Nearly two decades later, however, after President Jimmy Carter withdrew the SALT II Treaty from U.S. Senate ratification, and President Ronald Reagan announced plans to introduce intermediate-range nuclear weapons into Western Europe, the debate was revitalized. It gathered energy from the dissenting voices of the European nuclear freeze and disarmament movements, but also from the U.S. Catholic bishops' 1983 Pastoral Letter on War and Peace. In this document, the bishops examined the key issues of modern warfare, including nuclear weapons and deterrence. It is at this point that Michael Quinlan, a Jesuit-educated, senior British defense official entered the public discussion. He would remain a potent elucidator of the logic of nuclear weapons as it related to British national interests throughout his tenure as permanent secretary, the highest civil service rank, at the Ministry of Defence under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and continuing until his death in 2009. This article explores Quinlan's role as a significant thinker on nuclear strategy and international security by examining his arguments for the possession and potential use of nuclear weapons within the just war tradition. Some critics contend that Quinlan entered the civic contest primarily to uphold British defense policy by arguing that its nuclear weapons provided a second centre of (in addition to the United States) that deterred the Soviet leadership from believing it could risk a nuclear attack on Europe without prompting U.S. retaliation. However, such a narrow perspective removes an important impetus to Quinlan's actions: the tension that existed in his conscience. For Quinlan, the argument was not solely about nuclear strategy, the employment of these weapons, and the ethical norms associated with targeting. As a member of British strategic culture, he also needed to reduce the conflict between his temporal identity as a senior civil servant (defender of the realm) and his spiritual identity as a devout Roman Catholic. Moreover, his profound identification with these two cultures, while recognized but not fully examined, (1) accounts for his decision to act as a bridge between them through his personal correspondence as well as his writings and speeches to various public audiences. Thus, Quinlan stands astride British strategic culture and Catholicism. To interpret his thinking on the role of the state, deterrence, and the morality of nuclear weapons first requires an understanding of these two cultures. Cultures and Tradition C.P. Snow, the British scientist and novelist who served in several high-ranking civil service positions, declared in his 1959 Rede lecture the existence of two prominent cultures in modern society, science and humanities, and lamented the communication barrier that existed between them. He argued that this obstruction diminished both sides and impeded efforts to solve the problems of the world. (2) Quinlan, who represented a new generation of intellectuals, decried the strains between two other cultures of which he was part, ones more venerable and ancient than the ones Snow identified: the temporal and the spiritual or more specifically, that of the political order and Christianity. Quinlan considered the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as his home, and his 1981 transfer to the treasury after nearly three decades of service in the defense establishment resulted in considerable vexation; he characterized the reassignment as a deportation. …

The Official History of Britain and the European Community, Volume II: From Rejection to Referendum, 1963-1975. By Stephen Wall

In 2002, Alan Milward published the first volume of the official history of Britain’s relations with the European Community, covering the period from 1945 to 1963. Taking sides in a rich historiographical debate on whether Britain had missed an opportunity by failing to join from the start, Milward developed the thesis that Britain had actually followed a consistent and essentially rational national strategy in her European policy, which he then traced from the end of the Second World War up to Britain’s first application to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961–3. In so doing, Milward digested his scrupulous primary source research into an academically rigorous interpretative framework for British policy towards Europe; it is likely to remain the leading work on the subject for decades to come. Sir Stephen Wall’s approach to the second volume of the series is markedly different, as his book deliberately offers no basic thesis or central argument (p. 2). Instead, he wants the decision-makers of the time to ‘tell their own story as far as possible’ in their own words (p. 2), relying in his narrative almost entirely on the official government records of the day. Above all, Wall wants to explain why, between 1963 and 1975, ‘three very different Prime Ministers all concluded that, in the British national interest, there was no viable alternative to joining the Common Market’ (p. i).

‘We will not balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world’: Understanding Conservative Party Strategy on International Aid

The decision of the Conservative‐dominated coalition to ring‐fence international development spending has been, given the economic environment, one of most intriguing decisions of the new government. Recognising the relative neglect of academic work on Conservative policy towards international development, the article seeks to provide an explanation for its new‐found prioritisation. In doing so, the article suggests that it can be attributed to four possible influences: that it can be tied to the process of modernisation and brand decontamination of the Conservatives; that it is a consequence of the personal commitment of key elites such as David Cameron, George Osborne and Andrew Mitchell; that it is by‐product of the perceived success of the Department for International Development under New Labour, which made subsuming it within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office a non‐viable (and expensive) option; and that protecting the international aid budget was actually in the British national interest.

The Role of the AFL‐CIO in Regime Change: The Case of Guyana

AbstractThe American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations has been implicated in political interference and/or regime change in many countries, including the Dominican Republic, Chile, South Africa and Nicaragua. While its espoused objective has been to promote democracy and workers' rights, the results in some cases have been the opposite. This study focuses on one such case, Guyana, a small country in South America, which was perceived as a threat to US and British national interests in the 1950s and 1960s. Using archival data and interviews, we trace the nature and consequences of this intervention and discuss lessons for the future.

The British Empire Revisited Through the Lens of the Eastern Question

The Bulgarians are rendered helpless in the rhetoric of the Bulgarian Agitation, a movement in Britain that produced numerous texts in response to the Ottoman massacre of thousands of Bulgarians after their uprising in April 1876. The compassion shown for the Bulgarian victims in the rhetoric of the Agitation is sincere only in moral and humane terms; open and direct political solidarity with the Bulgarians’ strident appeals for independence is missing from it. Even the morally and culturally charged pro-Agitation arguments launched by Gladstone and his followers conformed to British national interests, especially as contrasted to Bulgarian viewpoints.

Goethe and the English-Speaking World: Essays from the Cambridge Symposium for His 250th Anniversary by Nicholas Boyle , John Guthrie (review)

MLR, 99. i, 2004 247 genuinely fascinated by his subject, Goethe. It is likely to do well in the 'general readership' market forwhich it is intended. University of Edinburgh Sarah Colvin Goethe and theEnglish-Speaking World: Essays from the Cambridge Symposium for his 250th Anniversary. Ed. by Nicholas Boyle and John Guthrie. (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2002. vi + 285pp. ?50; $70. ISBN 1-57113-231-7 (hbk). Goethe's relations with the English-speaking world are described as complex and problematic in Nicholas Boyle's lucid introduction to a multifaceted collection of conference papers. While the fifteenessays included in the volume examine Goethe's connections with Britain, Ireland, and the United States, Boyle's survey concentrates on an examination of the reciprocity and ambivalences in Goethe's relationship with England. Though never visited by him, England provided Goethe with ideas about a differentsocial structure, with new notions of wealth, imperial and industrial expan? sion. At the same time, his literary identity was shaped by a more modest, provincial German background and a philosophy of subjectivity which did not feature to the same extent in the British tradition. As varied as Goethe's attitude towards England was the English reaction to his work. After being associated with impiety and poli? tical Jacobinism, he was turned into a sage by the Victorians, and started to become a victim of German and British national interests and political tensions in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The motif of the English 'knowledge of the world' (p. 124) which can enrich the narrower horizons of Weimar is reiterated in Karl S. Guthke's informative portrayal of English, Irish, and American visitors, including William Makepeace Thackeray, George Bancroft, Joseph Cogswell, Henry Crabb Robinson, and William Swifte. While the discussion of introspective self-cultivation as a 'specifically German aberration ' (p. 136) might have been slightly modified by some mention of Laurence Sterne, Guthke's comprehensive presentation of English-speaking visitors as Goethe's 'pre? ferred "others"' (p. 137) is extremely convincing. Another link between Weimar and London, Johann Christian Hiittner, who supplied not only Goethe but also Duke Carl August with regular information about Britain, is treated in Catherine Proescholdt's well-researched contribution. Goethe's attitude towards the United States is explored in Nicholas Saul's essay, which gives an astute examination ofthe connections between the representation of America in the Wanderjahre and Goethe's positive evaluation of James Fenimore Cooper's novels. Intellectual cross-currents between Goethe's work and British writers, especially in the scientific, philosophical, and religious domain, are another theme permeating English-speaking influences on Goethe. With trenchant skilfulness H. B. Nisbet ex? plains how Goethe justified his rejection of Newtonian physics both on epistemological and on moral grounds. R. H. Stephenson's complex and stringent considerations show how the Scottish Enlightenment, in particular Thomas Reid's introduction of an aesthetic element into his common-sense philosophy, was absorbed by Goethe and Schiller in their own formulation of aesthetic experience and thus helped to shape Weimar Classicism. Faust's 'pendular atheism' is delineated persuasively by Matthew Bell, who, in a more loosely argued manner than Stephenson, relates this phenomenon to the ideas of British thinkers, including Robert Burton, Henry More, John Locke, and David Hume. The second, thematically even more diverse, category of papers included in this collection is devoted to Goethe's impact abroad. In this context theological issues 248 Reviews feature again in E. S. Shaffer's essay, which examines unduly neglected aspects in the bearing of Goethe's writing on Coleridge and shows how the 'Bekenntnisse einer schonen Seele' inspired the ideas about self-exploration and biblical interpretation treated in Coleridge's Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit. Peter Skrine's contribution on the Winkworth sisters is less clearly focused. There can be no doubt about their eminence as mediators of German culture, and the letters relating to their reading of Die Wahlverwandtschaften, which were written in 1853, are fascinating. The fact that Goethe's novel was discussed in Britain before it was translated can, however, be illustrated by earlier and more widely accessible published criticism in the peri? odical press. What...

Still buying insurance? The realism behind Tony Blair's post-September 11 evangelization

The degree of zealousness with which Tony Blair committed himself and Britain to the support of the US campaign following the September 11 terrorist attacks was impressive. In justifying that level of commitment, Blair cited as his principal motivations the punishment of the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks, and the eradication of the injustice, poverty and sufferings that breed terrorism. Though cogent and persuasive, do these constitute the sole or chief motivations for Britain's deep involvement? This article, by recalling the political principles underpinning the British notion of a ‘special relationship’ with the USA, contends that Blair's activism was motivated, equally largely, by the desire to advance British national interest – by reinvigorating a ‘special relationship’ that was purportedly becoming ‘special no more’. And to some extent the post-9/11 anti-terrorist campaign was microcosmic of the Anglo-American (‘special’) relationship.

In Defence of oil: Britain's response to the Iraqi threat towards Kuwait, 1961

This article outlines the United Kingdom Government's response to the perceived Iraqi military threat towards Kuwait in June‐July 1961. It is argued that the decision to take the threat seriously was based on the perception of Kuwait's importance to British national interests coupled with the view that the Iraqis could launch a small‐scale surprise attack. While it has been argued elsewhere that the British military intervention in Kuwait was designed to bolster its prestige in the Middle East this article demonstrates that the policy of intervention was largely based on the fear of the risks entailed by any failure to ward of an Iraqi invasion off Kuwait.