Hollow Victory (H)

by Jeffrey Record

In this text, defence analyst Jeffrey Record targets the conventional view of the Gulf War victory. In his characteristically provocative style, he answers controversial political, military and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0028810465
• ISBN13: 9780028810461
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Potomac Books
• Length: 186 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Overall a worthwhile book

Hollow Victory is a well-written book that provides a fair and informative glimpse into the underlying motivations and implications of the Persian Gulf War. However, Record has unfortunately left out some important issues that would have made his argument even more thorough and conclusive than it already is. America's remarkable shift from its apathy towards Iraq's human rights abuses to its "noble" mission to rid the world of this "new Hitler" is most perplexing about the events leading up to the Persian Gulf War. Record fails to account for this radical change in foreign policy and it hurts the effectiveness of his argument. Record failed to mention the influential Zionist lobby that would not tolerate a powerful Iraq in the Middle East and the incredible domestic pressure they placed on the Bush administration to attack Iraq. The American media placed, in addition, enormous amounts of pressure on President Bush to bring down Hussein. Bush could not vacillate on the issue of American military intervention in the Persian Gulf after the media convinced the American public that it was the right thing to do. Another impetus for American involvement that Record did not include was the urging of Britain's prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Britain carved the countries of the Middle East, including Iraq, and created a potentially explosive situation. The borders of Iraq were purposefully drawn so as not to allow it to have substantial access to the Gulf and this has soured Iraqi-British relations since. Thatcher argued that Iraq had a factitious and tribal country and she encouraged Bush to crush it. Record still succeeds in presenting an honest assessment of the choices of all the parties involved and sheds new light on their reasons for choosing the options they did.