The Real History of the Forever Wars | Prof. D. Gibbs & Col. L. Wilkerson

## The Gulf War as a Signal: Power Display and the Post–Cold War Pivot What emerges from the conversation is a striking re-reading of the first Gulf War as a pivotal moment in the reconfiguration of American power after the Cold War. Rather than a narrowly reactive campaign to repel an act of aggression, the discussion frames the deployment to the Persian Gulf as fulfilling several strategic and symbolic functions at once: reasserting military primacy, giving the United Nations a moment of effectiveness, and setting the tone for how the United States would manage a unipolar moment. The exchange insists that this was not merely a tactical reaction to an invasion but a broader choice about what kind of international actor the United States would be once the bipolar order dissolved. Participants recall the abrupt transition from talk of sanctions to full-scale force as revealing. Initial signals from the administration, as described in the conversation, suggested sanctions were the preferred route—an attempt to punish and deter without large-scale combat. Yet within days, authoritative voices shifted the calculus toward military action, and a massive multinational force was assembled. Two interpretations sit side by side in the account: one emphasizing a leader’s desire to demonstrate that international institutions could work if backed by decisive action; the other reading the decision as a performative showcase, proving that despite the end of the Cold War the United States remained ready and able to use overwhelming force. Both interpretations matter because they help explain why the Gulf campaign would be remembered not as an isolated intervention but as the template for later operations—quick, technologically dominant, multilateral in appearance, yet unconstrained in execution. ## Decision-Making and Institutional Rivalries The conversation places as much weight on institutional dynamics as on individual motives. What mattered, by this telling, was not a single conspiratorial plan but the interaction among various centers of power: the White House, the national security apparatus, the Pentagon, and Congress. The shift from sanctions to force is described as the product of a rapid inter-agency realignment once leaders concluded a more muscular response was necessary. That alignment was often improvised and messy; the transcript captures confusion, surprise briefings, and last-minute pivots that reveal how policy sometimes emerges from institutional friction rather than from a pre-ordained masterplan. This institutional perspective also reframes questions of accountability and transparency. Congressional actors, for instance, were kept in varying degrees of the loop; some were publicly advocating one policy and privately blindsided by a course correction. Military staffs became engines of rapid planning once an order to prepare for combat arrived—a testament to reforms that centralized planning capacities within the armed forces. The exchange underlines a paradox: reforms that made joint planning more efficient also concentrated power within professional military structures, elevating their role in shaping policy outcomes. In short, the conversation paints a picture of statecraft in which bureaucratic actors, doctrinal preferences, and inter-service reforms are as decisive as any single leader’s intent. ## Law, Legitimacy, and the United Nations A recurring theme in the discussion is the quest for international legitimacy. One line of interpretation presented in the exchange argues that part of the administration’s motivation was normative: to show that multilateral institutions—when used correctly—could produce effective outcomes. That aspiration helped explain the effort to secure U.N. Security Council resolutions authorizing force and the emphasis on building a broad coalition. The Gulf deployment therefore served double duty: it was a demonstration of military prowess and, simultaneously, an experiment in restoring or reconfirming the authority of international law and collective security. Yet the conversation is candid about the limits of that legitimacy. Even as actors sought U.N. endorsement, they were aware that international law is often contingent upon power. The point is not only cynical realism—the observation that legal authority tends to follow force—but also a more subtle recognition of a strategic narrative: using the U.N. stamp conferred diplomatic advantages, constrained domestic dissent, and made coalition-building easier. The broader implication is consequential: once the United States conditioned the use of force on both legal endorsement and decisive military capability, it set a precedent in which legality and power became mutually reinforcing tools of foreign policy rather than separate checks on state behavior. ## NATO, Russia, and a Lost Security Partnership Another core thread is the account of early post-Cold War diplomacy with the erstwhile rival. The conversation reconstructs a period in which European security was being renegotiated and where possibilities existed for a genuine partnership that included the former adversary. At the time, there were high-level assurances—porous perhaps, informal perhaps—about the limited geographic expansion of Western security arrangements. Participants portray these commitments as part of a broader effort to shepherd a peaceful transition in Europe, reassuring leaders who feared unilateral expansion of military blocs. What emerges from the exchange is a sense of missed opportunity and unintended consequence. The discussion suggests that political promises—some framed as “gentlemen’s agreements”—were meant to smooth a delicate moment of surrender and reunification. Those promises, however, were not codified into durable arrangements that could survive changing political winds. As a result, the later wave of expansion and the incremental extension of security ties were experienced by many in the former rival states as betrayals of an earlier compact. The conversation implies that the policy choices and the failure to institutionalize a cooperative security framework contributed directly to mistrust and to the strategic estrangement that followed. ## The Rise of a Dominant Strategy: Neoconservatism, Doctrine, and the Military-Industrial Nexus The discussion turns from diplomacy to doctrine: the rise of intellectual and bureaucratic currents that advocated for a strategy of sustained American dominance. One school of thought highlighted in the exchange pushed for a global posture that would prevent any peer competitor from reemerging, using a mix of military presence, alliances, and technological superiority. The conversation suggests this agenda became influential in think tanks, defense circles, and parts of the Pentagon, eventually reshaping strategic planning and budget priorities. Closely linked to this doctrinal turn is the role of the arms and defense industries. The conversation does not depict a conspiratorial "military-industrial complex" pulling all the strings, but it does point to a structural alignment of incentives: an outward-looking, interventionist posture sustained demand for sophisticated weaponry and large defense budgets. Institutional actors, seeing continued instability as both a security problem and a justification for resources, found themselves moving in a similar direction. The upshot, as the participants argue, was the normalization of an approach to global affairs in which military options were not merely one tool among many but the central instrument for shaping outcomes across regions. ## Yugoslavia, European Agency, and the Limits of American Leadership The exchange also revisits Europe’s own initiatives at keeping the peace during the violent breakup of states in the Balkans. In those moments, the conversation suggests, there was a greater role for regional diplomacy and peacekeeping than is often acknowledged. European actors tried to cr

The Real History of the Forever Wars | Prof. D. Gibbs & Col. L. Wilkerson Col. Lawrence Wilkerson joins Prof. David Gibbs and Pascal Lottaz to examine major American decisions after the Cold War. Drawing on his work with Colin Powell, Wilkerson recalls the Gulf War, George H. W. Bush’s diplomacy, and proposals to integrate Russia into European security. Gibbs questions the motives behind NATO expansion and intervention in Yugoslavia. Their discussion explores competing interpretations, the rise of neoconservative strategy, institutional rivalries, and the military industry’s influence over the direction of United States foreign policy. David and Lawrence's Links: David Gibbs — University of Arizona: https://dgibbs.arizona.edu Lawrence Wilkerson — Quincy Institute: https://quincyinst.org/author/lawrence-wilkerson Neutrality Studies Links: Neutrality Studies Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Support Neutrality Studies: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Neutrality Studies shop: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Time Stamps 00:00 An oral history of American power 01:51 The Gulf War and April Glaspie’s meeting 05:02 Powell, sanctions, and the decision for war 11:36 Bush’s motives and the United Nations 16:36 Russia, NATO, and a lost security partnership 32:10 Wolfowitz and the strategy of global dominance 43:56 Yugoslavia and European peace efforts 56:02 NATO expansion and the arms industry #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today, with the second part of an oral history series called "What Really Happened in the Balkans," I've got with me Professor David Gibbs of Arizona University and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former Chief of Staff to the United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Larry, David, welcome. Thank you for having me, for hosting this. Well, thank you for doing this. David, I'm going to hand it over to you because you actually prepared a couple of questions that are unanswered, I think, to the historians out there. Please take it away. #David Gibbs Well, thank you again, Pascal. Colonel Wilkerson, I've never met you actually, virtually or in person, but I've heard your podcasts many times, and I really appreciate your commentary on contemporary issues. But as a historian, I'd like to go into your involvement in some key historical events, notably the ending of the Cold War. During the period 1989 to 1993, you were a top aide, I believe chief of staff, if I'm not mistaken, to Colin Powell, who was chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U. S. top military officer at that time. And so you had a somewhat unique perspective on what was going on. -- 1 of 18 -- And I think I'd like to be—I mean, I have a number of areas I'd like to explore on that—but I'd like to begin with the first Gulf War, the U.S. involvement in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm during 1990-91. This was, of course, the largest deployment of U.S. regular military forces since at least Vietnam. And it was a major event, obviously, in defining the post-Cold War era. Now, an important aspect of that war was that 10 days before Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait, there was a very strange and never adequately explained meeting that took place between the U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein had summoned Ambassador Glaspie to his office, again, just before he attacked Kuwait. And we now have the transcript of that meeting, or at least parts of it. And he basically said to Ambassador Glaspie, "I'm thinking of attacking Kuwait. How does the United States feel about that idea?" And bear in mind that the U.S. at that time had relatively businesslike relations with Iraq, which was not yet a defined enemy. April Glaspie responded—I'm pretty closely paraphrasing here— "We do not have any opinion on these inter-Arab conflicts." Which I, as a historian, would take as, if not a green light, at least a yellow light. I would take that as an instance of Saddam Hussein, in effect, asking permission. And it would at least be speaking on behalf of the U.S. government that Saddam Hussein has America's permission to go ahead with this operation. I know this has been discussed many times, and there have been many efforts to explain this event, but I myself don't find any of them really adequate. I'm wondering, how do you see this event? Let me just be very frank here. Let me frame it. I wonder—and again, this is a question mark, not a statement—I wonder if there was an effort by the United States to trick Saddam Hussein into war, into an invasion, and thus give the U.S. a pretext to engage in a war it otherwise wanted to do anyway, as an advertisement for American power after the end of the Cold War. Your thoughts? Yes. #Lawrence Wilkerson That's a lot to unpack. Yes. Let me say, first of all, that my position with Powell was not as his chief of staff. I would have been very, very busy at that, doing administrative, as we used to say. What I was was a fresh-caught lieutenant colonel, just out of the Naval War College, having finished their senior course as well as their junior course, the best war college in the entire panoply of U.S. war colleges at that time, much better than National and far better than any of the service ones. And so I was primed to be a strategic advisor to him. That's what I had studied. That's what I had made my end-all and be-all in the military. He made me his speechwriter too, which gave me some real insight into his thinking. On every weekend, virtually, I spent every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, at his quarters at Fort Myer, talking with him about a whole manner of things. Now, let me tell you how that happened in my experience. Here we were sitting in his office one day, and we get a CIA warning that something untoward is happening on the border. We didn't have any information from the State Department -- 2 of 18 -- about a meeting between April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein. Powell may have, but he didn't uncover it to me. If he did, it probably would have been, as you suggested, just an incidental meeting and not all that important. There was no warning from the CIA or anyone else, for that matter, that there was beginning to be a massing of troops for a military operation or for an exercise or whatever. When it came down from the president, it came down in a very mild way to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Remember Goldwater-Nichols? You can talk to the chairman. You don't have to go through the secretary, and the chairman can talk to you, and you don't have to go through the secretary. Now, anybody knows that you back-brief or you simultaneously brief or whatever, because you don't want to get in trouble. But it was a very mild day. Not much was happening. And then all of a sudden, the invasion occurred. Now, whether that was really a surprise to the president and to the secretary of defense—the secretary of defense didn't always share information with Chairman Powell—Richard Cheney, of course, is anybody's guess. Certainly, I don't know. I'm not even sure Powell knew. But the next thing we knew, we were apprised by Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, of the action. And we were told that sanctions were going to be the principal instrument that the president engaged in to punish Saddam Hussein or to check him in some way. Powell then picked up the phone and called the very powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Georgia's Sam Nunn, who himself was contemplating a run for the presidency. Powell knew that and told him, essentially, "Senator, I'm giving you a heads-up." Let me back up for a moment and footnote this. Powell had a very, very powerful and strong interest in fulfilling both of his responsibilities, which often stumped some four-stars. But all of them had this responsibility, particularly the chairman and the service chiefs. They have two bosses. The Constitution says they have two bosses: the president of the United States and Congress. So he was keeping Congress apprised of what was going on. I'm not sure that he had told Dick Cheney he was going to do that, but he did that. #Lawrence Wilkerson So Sam Nunn begins in the Congress to solicit support for sanctions and is caught completely off guard by what is coming next, as was Powell. We are in his office talking about a completely different matter, and we always kept CNN on up in the corner of his office. And he said to me, "Hit the volume. Turn the volume up." And the president was saying, "This invasion will not stand." And Powell looked at me and he said, "I think I just got a different order." Picked up the phone, called Brent Scowcroft. Sure enough, the impression I had was that the president had a long discussion with Brent, that Brent had convinced him that this needed to be different than sanctions. It needed to be force. And so we were going to war. And that's what Powell said to me. He said, "I think we're going to war." He didn't have a chance to pick up the phone and call Nunn. He had to -- 3 of 18 -- get ready for what he was doing, is what he said. I didn't know exactly what he had said to Sam, but I assumed it was something based on the previous interpretation of what the president's decision was. Subsequently, just as a footnote here, Nunn ruins his entire career with that because Nunn is seen, by his immediate advocacy for sanctions, as being against the conflict because he couldn't just then back off sanctions and say, "Okay, I'm for the war now." So he was still pushing the sanctions against the White House's wishes. He was a Democrat, but nonetheless a powerful Democrat. So Sam really fought it, and he was very angry about this later. He was angry at Powell because he thought Powell had tricked him. And when Powell goes up for his second confirmation hearing, for his second two-year term as chairman, it is a very testy hearing. Now, that's another story, but it is very testy. Powell almost quit right there and walked out. But all to say that he was caught by surprise. Certainly Nunn was caught by surprise. The building, the Pentagon, which had been looking at the TV too, was caught by surprise. We were going to war, and we knew it. And so we started war planning at that point. So that's how it happened. And I can't tell you who changed H.W. Bush's mind, except that the indication was strongly that it was Scowcroft. And since I knew Brent a little bit and knew his way of thinking, I suspect that was the major influence on it. It might have been some Cheney influence, too, but I think it was probably mostly Brent. So that's how we got started down the path to conflict rather than sanctions. A really bizarre start. I'll never forget being in the office and, "Turn that up. This aggression will not stand," he said. "That's my marching order now." #David Gibbs Let me give you an interpretation of what you just said, and you can comment on it. One way of looking at what you just said is that initially, the Bush administration, beginning with the president himself, did not see this invasion and occupation of Kuwait as a big deal. Sufficiently so, they did not immediately contemplate military action, but rather sanctions, the milder response, one might say. But then obviously somebody changed Bush's mind, whether it's Scowcroft or Cheney. The mind clearly was changed, and we did go to war. We know that, obviously. The question is, why the change? And here's a theory for you. The theory is that, again, initially it wasn't seen as that big a deal, but there was a need to have some kind of big display of military force at that point in history to demonstrate that despite the ending of the Cold War, the United States was still going to remain a major power. It was not going to have a fundamental change in its strategic stance internationally. And a war in the Persian Gulf, which would be easy to justify on account of this act of aggression later condemned as such by the United N