From Newsgroup: alt.history.what-if

In 1988, the Iran-Iraq war came to an end with a stalemate, leaving Iraq in
a financial mess unlike before; after 8 years of conflict, the economy was destroyed and Baghdad was facing an issue of dropping oil prices. Due to the multi-million dollar debt, the Iraqi government couldn't recover and hence
the Kuwaiti government was requested to forgive the debt Iraq had accrued
over the war to defend itself from revolutionary Iranian forces.

However, in our timeline, they refused and hence Iraq invaded Kuwait, establishing the Republic of Kuwait shortly before annexing Kuwait and
facing the Gulf war. What if the Kuwaiti government forgave the Iraqi government's debt? Given the fact that the Iraqi government only accused
Kuwait of slanted drilling due to the fact that debt wasn't forgiven, could this perhaps stop Saddam's thrist for land? Or perhaps, would he simply
invade under another justification that would still spark the Gulf war?

Given how a part of the justification of the 2003 Iraq War was that WMDs
from the Iran-Iraq war were still there (despite the confirmation that they
had no longer access to WMDs) as western governments were still outraged at Iraq for their betrayal shortly after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, there is always the chance that perhaps Iraq could still be under a Ba'athist
government if Kuwait had simply forgiven their large debt? As somebody who tends to research Saddamist Iraq, I've been curious on whether this would
make a large impact on the state Iraq is in today.
--
very british
slrn | idiot
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