Right intention is but one of the requirements that must be met for a war to be just, according to the Just War tradition. To treat it in isolation, as a basis for analysing the motives of the multi-national coalition which confronted Iraq in the Gulf war, requires isolating and dissecting certain elements of a complex whole, which may distort more than it reveals. That said, the exercise does provide a way of exploring one aspect of the war which was, and remains, the subject of speculation in the Middle East, if not elsewhere.

Both before and during the Gulf war there was much discussion, some of it covered in the Western media, on the war aims of the coalition. Speculation focused on the possibility that the members of the coalition had certain objectives in addition to those publicly professed by the various governments concerned. Any evaluation of the intentions of the coalition members must thus take into account not only what they said their aims were, but also the objectives implied by the strategy they adopted and the terms on which they were prepared to end hostilities. Actions, presumably, reveal as much as words.

Here the emphasis will be on defining the war aims of the coalition, both implicit and explicit, short and long term, so that they may be examined in the light of the requirement, of the Just War tradition, that the intentions of the combatants be just. As a reference point, some assumptions about the meaning of ‘right intention’ will be offered at the outset.