June 9-August 4, 1990: US Wargame Anticipates Looming Gulf War

CENTCOM officials engage in ‘Internal Look’ wargaming in the command center in Doha, Qatar. [Source: GlobalSecurity (.org)]A large military, computer-based exercise called “Internal Look 90,” conducted by US Central Command (CENTCOM), anticipates the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2. The exercise reflects the change in the threat perception by the US military. Since his appointment as commander of CENTCOM in November 1988, General Norman Schwarzkopf has been concerned that the main threat to the Gulf region is no longer a Soviet attack, but an attempt by Iraq to control the region’s energy resources using its large military following the end of the Iraq-Iran war. “With a huge, well-equipped military at loose ends, Schwarzkopf realized that the Iraqis had replaced the Soviets as the most serious threat to the Persian Gulf,” according to the official account of the war published as the book Certain Victory: The US Army in the Gulf War. [Scales, 1998, pp. 43-44] Therefore, CENTCOM’s main command post exercise, Internal Look, which is held every two years, is no longer focused on the Soviet Union, but on the possibility of an Iraqi invasion of the Arabian Peninsula. In July 1990, Internal Look 90 simulates an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia. This scenario will prove prescient: “As the exercise unfolded, the real-world movements of Iraq’s air and ground forces eerily paralleled the scripted scenario of the war game. So closely did actual intelligence reports resemble the fictional exercise messages, the latter had to be prominently stamped ‘Exercise Only,’” according to the website GlobalSecurity.org. [GlobalSecurity, 2008]