Almost thirty years after Vantage, the Gulf War – codenamed Operation Granby – occurred in a very different international context. The recent end of the Cold War had changed the security environment and the events of 1990–1 provided an opportunity to establish a new world order. Nonetheless, many lessons from Vantage – due to similarity of geography, culture, enemy and type of intervention – were still relevant and, as a result, Granby offered the chance for learning to be demonstrated in the long term and in the generational sphere. In addition, the lessons identified from Granby itself would become highly significant when an intervention against the same foe would occur thirteen years later.

During the 1980s, the West and Iraq realigned as allies with Britain and the US supporting the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, in his fight against Iran in the prolonged and bitter Iran–Iraq War. The war left Iraq with severe economic difficulties; Iraq's per capita income halved and an estimated $67 billion worth of damage was done to infrastructure and $80 billion was borrowed from other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. By early 1990, foreign debt servicing and defence costs swallowed seven eighths of Iraq's oil export revenue, which was limited by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Iraq's struggling economy, combined with increasing anti-Western propaganda, began to raise suspicions about Saddam Hussein's intentions and by 1990 the JIC had concluded that Iraq had returned to being ‘a potential predatory power, whose victims might be Kuwait or Syria’.

During the summer of 1990, tensions between Kuwait and Iraq rose. Kuwait and the UAE were exceeding their OPEC oil quotas leading to the suppression of petroleum prices and, therefore, Iraq's income. Kuwait was also using this economic advantage to place pressure on Baghdad to repay its war loans and to settle their long-standing border dispute.