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"Es gäbe genug Geld, genug Arbeit, genug zu essen, wenn wir die Reichtümer der Welt richtig verteilen würden, statt uns zu Sklaven starrer Wirtschaftsdoktrinen oder -traditionen zu machen. Vor allem aber dürfen wir nicht zulassen, daß unsere Gedanken und Bemühungen von konstruktiver Arbeit abgehalten und für die Vorbereitung eines neuen Krieges mißbraucht werden. Ich bin der gleichen Meinung wie der große Amerikaner Benjamin Franklin, der sagte: es hat niemals einen guten Krieg und niemals einen schlechten Frieden gegeben."
Albert Einstein
II.) Introduction
During the last century, the Middle East has developed to a melting pot of people and states with totally different religions and beliefs. Because of this fact many conflicts, like the Iran - Iraq war and the crises which concerned Israel, ended up in violence and destroyed all visions of a peaceful coexistence in this region. Although there have been quite a number of Middle East internal conflicts none of them required the rest of the world to take part as much as the Gulf war in 1991 did.
This war, which took place from January until March 1991, was fought between Iraq and the allies with the USA as their leader. Like a lot of other conflicts in the Gulf region before, this one has also been based on religious differences between the states, although the economic intentions behind the war were obvious. Saddam Hussein, Iraq`s Head of State, was always supporting the idea of rising the oil prices, an idea which wasn't accepted by the highly industrialised nations in the so called "West". In this case nearly the whole industrialised world would have entered a new energy-crises like some of us already experienced
them in 1973 and 1979. Then the oil price multiplied itself by four within a
few months. This had lasting effects on the world economy, especially on the oil-based economy of the West. In Saddam´s view the United States together with the so called "West" are using the Middle East as a cheap and easy to be controlled source of unlimited energy.
Although the United Nations succeeded with their peace process and helped to end the 8 years of war between Iran and Iraq, they did not manage to solve the middle east conflict at all. One of the main conflicts in the gulf region is the matter depending the oil fields and connected with that the often heard accusation of oil overproduction. In case of oil overproduction the oil-prize would go down, and as the export of oil is the biggest and most important source of money for nearly each country in the middle east, this would ruin many of the poorer and less industrialised nations like Iraq. Kuwait, a small but very rich country at Iraq's southern border is still not accepted by many countries in this region because of its wealthy and "west-orientated" citizens. On July 17th 1990 Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait of oil overproduction and theft of oil from the Rumailia Oil Field, an oil field which is located on Saddam´s ground. That was nothing special, nobody in the world cared very much about the made accusations. April Glaspie, US Ambassador, 25th of July: "The Iraq/Kuwait dispute is an Arab matter, not one that affects the United States." It is still not clear why exactly the following actions took place, but perhaps this comment was one of the initialising phrases that reasoned Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait on August 2nd.
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