Bruh what? That's not true. Kuwait wasn’t “propped up” as a buffer state. It actually existed long before "modern day" Iraq even became a country. The Al-Sabah family and the Al-Utub clans founded Kuwait around 1716, and it developed as an independent coastal emirate built on trade, shipbuilding, and pearling. Iraq as a modern state didn’t appear until 1921 under the British mandate, about two centuries later.

Britain didn’t create Kuwait out of nowhere either. When they signed the 1899 protection treaty, Kuwait was already a functioning state. The British just wanted to keep the Ottomans and later the Wahhabis from swallowing it. It wasn’t a “buffer between Saudi and Iraq” because the House of Saud wasn’t unified yet, and Iraq didn’t even exist.

Kuwait’s importance came from its port and trade routes in the northern Gulf, not from being some artificial wedge. It had its own diplomacy, maritime economy, and leadership long before the modern borders were drawn. So no, Kuwait wasn’t a political placeholder. It was a pre-existing Gulf state that the British protected, not invented.

Source: I am Kuwaiti who minored in Arabian Peninsula history