Word: conquests
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tremor from Kuwait has shaken the fixtures of Saudi society, one of the world's most conservative realms. For the first time since the visionary warrior-statesman Abdul Aziz, generally known as Ibn Saud, proclaimed his kingdom in 1932, Saudi Arabia has been confronted by the alarming threat of conquest. In coping with that challenge, the country and its 14.5 million inhabitants find themselves poised on the sword edge of change. The modernization and enrichment of Saudi life produced by the oil- price boom of the 1970s and '80s may one day look like a mere twitch compared with...
With control over the Middle East (through intimidation if not outright conquest), Saddam Hussein would exert a powerful influence over the West, possibly holding our economies hostage as he does our citizens...
...instead to negotiate. And Saddam could find that very appealing. "I don't think the Iraqis are looking for it now," says a U.S. official. "But what they might be after, as pressure begins to take effect, is a solution that preserves as many gains as possible from their conquest of Kuwait." Some experts, like Richard Murphy, a senior fellow at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, think that if such a point is reached, both sides will acquiesce. "Money will be paid to an aggressor, or land," he says, in a deal arranged by Saddam's Arab neighbors...
According to a perverse law of international politics, hard-liners on opposing sides tend to reinforce each other's stubbornness and influence, especially in times of tension. Consider the interaction between Baghdad and Jerusalem. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's Likud government is hoping that Iraq's conquest of Kuwait will make it easier for Israel to retain possession of the West Bank and Gaza Strip...
...Saddam is not easily intimidated. He is convinced that no nation has the nerve to take him on. His conquest might have been deterred, but undoing it now will be nigh impossible. Baghdad radio warned that Iraq would "make Kuwait a graveyard for those who launch any aggression." The feckless international response to his muscle flexing during the past decade has nourished his belief that he has little to fear if he misbehaves. A loner, he has rarely if ever been told no -- probably because the few who tried to do so tended to wind up dead...