Collective Security and Defensive Concepts: the 1990–91 Gulf War

Abstract

Iraq’s 1990 invasion and annexation of Kuwait caught the European non-provocative defence community off guard. Defensive theorists had not given much thought to how their concepts would apply beyond Europe and to how to handle a flagrant and unambiguous act of aggression. In particular, no serious or sustained effort had been made to understand how defensive concepts might be reconciled with collective security requiring offensive military power. And while defensive theorists had closely examined ‘war prevention’ and ‘war fighting’, at least in Europe, they (like most others) had neglected the problem of how to settle a war defensively.¹