American_Military_presence_in_the_Persian_Gulf

American Military presence in the Persian Gulf American Military Presence in the Persian Gulf Even prior to the Gulf War, the U.S. had thrown its immense military, diplomatic, and economic weight behind the monarchies of the Persian Gulf like Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Though they rule over less than 10% of the world’s total population, these countries control most of its petroleum wealth (64% of the worlds oil reserves). Prior to the war, it was difficult for the U.S. to engage in military exercises or even arrange a port call without asking for permission months in advance. However, because the Gulf nations have accepted acceptance of the balance it now brings, there is an effective, permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf. Still, in spite of, and sometimes because of this presence, the region’s instability continues. Most Persian Gulf Arabs and their leaders felt threatened after Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait and were grateful for the strong U.S. leadership in the 1991 war against Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, for some, there is an enormous amount of cynicism regarding U.S. motives in waging that war. Many Arabs in the Gulf cannot shake the sense that the war was not fought for international law, gulf, presence, security, persian, iraqi, war, kurdish, military, threat, region, though, states, kurds, internal, turkish, turkey, protect, oil, iran, even, economic, defense, concerned, attacks, southern, saudi, saddam’s, repression, kuwait, iraq’s, iraq, human, greater, been, arabia, american, air, against, access, virtually, un, troops, terrorism, support, rights, regional, regimes, people, own, over