Robert Brenner

About the Author: Robert Brenner is a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. The following article was written shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in the Persian Gulf.

Why is the United States at war with Iraq? It is a lot easier to say what are not the reasons for US intervention in the Gulf than to provide a fully satisfactory account of its presence there. According to the Bush administration, the USA is fighting Iraq because Saddam Hussein is a ruthless tyrant who has carried out an unjust invasion of Kuwait. In the pompous rhetoric of the President's State of the Union address, 'What is at stake is ... a new world order—where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of...