There were two possibilities for Saddam: that the USA would back down or that it would not. If the first occurred, his victory would be immediate. But he counted on the fact that, even if the second occurred, he would gain over the longer run. Thus far, history has not proven his calculation wrong. The USA of course, did mobilize the necessary military force to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait and to place Iraq under severe international constraints after that. But the price for the USAwas high. It demonstrated that it could not afford financially to conduct such operations. The entire military bill of the USA was borne by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Japan and Germany. And it demonstrated that it could not remove Saddam inside Iraq because the USAwas unwilling to send troops into the interior of Iraq. The two constraints – financial and military – of the USA were both dictated by US public opinion, which was ready to applaud nationalist victory, provided it cost no money and no lives. This is the basic explanation of how Saddam has been able to survive ever since, and why the efforts to limit Iraq’s maintenance of weapons of mass destruction have been so ineffectual.