American strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski searched for a new role for NATO now that the principal target of the alliance, the Soviet Union, was gone. The German and Japanese economies were booming. Would they come up trumps in the new global power distribution? The word ‘Axis’ reared its head in the minds of the allies. To forestall such outcomes, a coalition of the willing was forged after Saddam Hussein’s dubious occupation of Kuwait. There was a view that US Ambassador April Gillespie in her last meeting with Saddam Hussein had virtually set him up—she signalled that the US would not
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