This paper relies on research in Iraqi and American archives to investigate the role of the 1990-1 Gulf War, as well as the sanctions regime that ensued, in shaping global politics following the Cold War. George H. W. Bush announced a “New World Order” for the post-Cold War international system in a speech outlining the American policy to remove Iraq from Kuwait. Following the war, Iraq became a test-case for methods of coercion and containment short of conventional war. The idea of using internationally backed sanctions, no-fly-zones, and embargoes in place of war gained traction during the World Wars. However, throughout the Cold War one superpower or the other had almost always vetoed them at the United Nations. Only with the end of a bi-polar international system was the United Nations able to employ these tools in Iraq. Yet, as this paper will argue, U.S. overreach and its callousness to Iraqi suffering created opportunities for the regime in Baghdad to transform Iraqi plight into a political tool. Baghdad used the dire humanitarian situation in Iraq to divide and undermine the American-led coalition at the United Nations. In doing so, the Ba‘thist regime not only challenged the United States, but also delegitimized American efforts to build a robust post-Cold War order. Placing Iraq within this global context destabilizes narratives that contrast the “bad war” in 2003 with the “good war” in 1991. In such narratives, the 1991 Gulf War quickly and neatly achieved American objectives. In fact, the damage and suffering that the Gulf War caused in Iraq became political tools to undermine the more strategically important American efforts to build a New World Order. As such, this paper will position 1990s Iraq within debates about the post-Cold War international order in a more forceful manner than has been done thus far.