Recall pictures of Iraqi women in Baghdad who walk in public spaces with westernized clothes. These pictures, in addition with their Afghan counterparts, are often used in didactic discourses that contrast the “before” and “after” of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq's case, the presence of unveiled women, implicitly yet ahistorically justified Saddam Hussein’s regime. But the “modern Arab women” had occurred prior to Saddam's regime within the specific context of the Cold War. British influence continued in Iraq after the 1958 coup, yet the U.S. also achieved great diplomatic gains in the Cold War. While many studies have explored the state relations, this paper wishes to explore the debates and political movements within Iraq in the context of decolonization and Pan-Arabism. While both the Ba‘ath and Communist Party in Iraq espoused policies of social equality, the fates of people who followed each respective party differed during the tumultuous 1960s. Intense nationalization debates occurred in 1951 in regards to the division of oil royalties and continued to determine the legitimacy of rulers in Iraq afterwards. This paper will argue that the Cold War era from 1958 to 1979, as experienced in Iraq, fostered an Arab modernism. This paper will address: 1) How did the Red Scare in the U.S. distort understandings of Ba‘ath or Communist presence in Iraq? 2) How did different political parties, underground or otherwise, address the issue of oil revenue? And 3) How did associations for women in Iraq establish their presence? Did ideologies of modern feminism align with Iraqi state discourses and interests? Ideologies and intellectual currents of modernism, such as feminism and communism, manifested as meaningful trajectories for the future in Iraq. Yet certain ideas were also co-opted by certain top-down strategic maneuvers. In answering these questions, this paper wishes to challenge the sectarian master narrative that dominates many histories of Iraq. This paper also will explore different meanings of statehood in this time period, which can illuminate the questions of social justice in Iraq in our current day-and-age.

Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration assembled a multinational coalition to levy sanctions against Iraq and to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty by force. In the United States, Operation Desert Storm is widely celebrated as a decisive political and military victory. From the vantage point of many across the Middle East, however, the Gulf War constituted a tragedy that betrayed the longstanding ideal of Arab solidarity and, as in 1967, humiliated the imagined pan-Arab nation. Although Arab leaders were initially unanimous in their condemnation of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the subsequent American intervention—which hinged on the acquiescence and collaboration of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Arab states—fundamentally transformed popular Arab interpretations of the conflict: what had begun as a dispute among Arab neighbors was now perceived as an American war of imperialism. As hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops poured into Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein and his proponents across the Middle East appropriated the rhetoric and symbols of pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism to vindicate the annexation of Kuwait. Meanwhile, anti-American protests erupted in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Morocco—members of the U.S.-led coalition—as well as Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, and the occupied Palestinian territories. Contemporary observers in the United States were quick to dismiss Arab expressions of antiwar sentiment, yet the paper will suggest that these movements are critical to grappling with widespread disillusionment in the Arab state system. More broadly, the Gulf War offers an opportunity to reassess the impact of the end of the Cold War on the Middle East. George H.W. Bush maintained that the Gulf War heralded a New World Order for the post-Cold War era. However, the failure of Arab antiwar movements to effect lasting change, and the swift return to the regional status quo ante bellum thereafter, reflect that, for Arabs, the Gulf War was a thoroughly conservative event.

With the end of the Cold War and the rise of the “War on Terror,” the US-Saudi special relationship—encompassing hundreds of billions of dollars in oil purchases, arms sales and financial investments—stands as one of the few immutable cornerstones of American diplomacy. However, the current state of affairs may overshadow the impressive marginality of Saudi Arabia in U.S. oil trade until the mid-1970s: Saudi Arabian oil accounted for less than 1% of total U.S. oil imports in 1970, as the United States’ main energy partner were Venezuela and Canada. In fact, successive U.S. administrations since Eisenhower had sought to protect U.S. oil consumers from what was perceived to be a very volatile Middle East. It was Richard Nixon who made a radical shift in oil import policies between 1972 and 1973, ending decades of protectionism and opening the country to oil flows from the Persian Gulf, and especially from Saudi Arabia—which would become the United States’ main international energy partner. To understand this momentous decision, we will explore a complex web of geopolitical, economic and financial dynamics connecting distant corners of the globe: the road from Washington to Riyadh goes through Caracas, Tripoli and Ottawa, and it involves myriad actors including U.S. diplomats, oil corporate CEOs, Saudi princes, environmental activists, Arab revolutionaries, and Venezuelan nationalists. Moreover, secret negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the United States in 1972 set the stage not only for the liberalization of U.S. oil imports, but also for the system of petrodollar recycling that would add a new financial layer to an important geostrategic alliance. And yet, this 1972 secret agreement would also enable an effective Arab oil embargo against the U.S. and other Israeli allies during the 1973 Yom Kippur War—exposing the ambiguity and paradoxes of this enduring special relationship.