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The Spring 2025 Colloquium in International Security Studies continues with a presentation by Henry Chauncey ‘57 Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Chardell. A historian specializing in the history of U.S. foreign relations, the Cold War, and the Middle East, Chardell will present “Occupied with Linkage: Making and Breaking Bonds between Kuwait and Palestine.”

Chardell’s chapter recovers how the U.S.-led campaign to reverse the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait became entangled in, and altered the trajectory of, the longer-standing debate over the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Shortly after invading Kuwait in August 1990, an embattled Saddam Hussein accused the United States and the UN Security Council of double standards: they raced to punish Iraq for seizing oil-rich Kuwait, but for twenty-three years had failed to hold Israel to account for its occupation and creeping annexation of the Palestinian territories. In this context, Saddam unveiled “linkage,” a proposal to resolve the Kuwaiti and Palestinian questions in conjunction. Despite the George H. W. Bush administration’s best efforts, the concept of linkage gained traction on the world stage, fueling an increasingly divisive—and, in the Middle East, an increasingly violent—debate about whose claims to statehood were legitimate, and whose were expendable.

This event is open to the Yale community; lunch will be provided. Please email kaete.oconnell@yale.edu to receive the reading materials for this colloquium.