"Kuwait was too rich to be left alone and too weak to defend itself."

Chapter 1 - Background To War
The geopolitical problems, border disputes, tribal rivalries, uneven economic growth, and lack of social and political reforms within the Persian Gulf nations are largely the result of developments in Southwest Asia since World War 1. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire during the war and the discovery of oil in the Gulf region created the conditions not only for internal chaos but also for external competition among the world's most powerful nations for control of those immense oil resources. Late twentieth-century developments in the area are the direct result of that big power rivalry and its effect on the political development of the states involved.
Emergence of the Post-World War I Persian Gulf States
With the defeat of the Central Powers during World War I, the Ottoman Empire quickly disintegrated. While the United States watched, the European members of the victorious allied coalition, France and Great Britain, reshaped the pieces into spheres of influence, drew boundaries, and set up dynasties. The years immediately after the war saw the emergence of a spate of new Middle Eastern kingdoms and protectorates.
At least twelve of the new political entities that emerged on the Arabian Peninsula after World War I faced problems regarding acceptance of their borders by native inhabitants as well as neighbors. Many traditional tribal and ethnic areas, including regions crossed by nomads, were disrupted by the post-World War I borders. At least twenty-two boundary disputes developed in the region after the war, with armed conflict arising at least twenty-one times and some disputes being settled only to erupt anew. Overlapping claims to grazing land or water, interfamily rivalries, and assertions of historical rights by aggrieved groups all worked against peaceful negotiations. In Iraq's case, the border with Kuwait was one of a number of areas in dispute. Conflicts over the neutral zone between Iraq and Saudi Arabia lasted until 1975, as did border disputes with Iran. The Iraqi-Jordanian border remained in dispute until 1984
Meanwhile, Kuwait struggled to find a counterbalance to the increasing Iraqi threat. It had a military agreement with Egypt that dated from the last phase of the Iran-Iraq war and even made an overture toward Iran, which might again serve as a potential counter to Iraq. But neither those connections nor the Gulf Cooperation Council had the potential strength to ward off a determined Iraqi attack. Kuwait needed protection, like that provided by Great Britain at the turn of the century and by the United States in 1987. Yet, like Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, Kuwait accepted American construction support and air defense missiles but stopped short of inviting an American presence in support of its own defense. That refusal, grounded in strong feelings of national pride, race, and religion, reflected an unrealistic assessment of its situation. As historian Theodore Draper wrote during the year of the tanker war, in which Kuwaiti oil tankers began to fly American flags, "Kuwait was too rich to be left alone and too weak to defend itself."