Although in the cycle of 13 poems that make up “An Atlas of the Difficult World” Rich visits some of more troubling moments in American history, Rich conceived the poem as a response to US efforts spearheading the international military coalition that challenged Iraq’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Kuwait in August 1990. 

Perceived as a bald attempt to seize Kuwait’s lucrative oil fields, the Iraqi incursion into its neighbor ignited international protest. By January 1991, a coalition of more than a dozen Western countries began military operations to remove Iraq from Kuwait. After several months of fighting, the counteroffensive known as Operation Desert Storm liberated Kuwait and moved into Iraq itself, ultimately deposing its long-standing dictator Saddam Hussein. 

Rich’s generation grew up absorbing the cultural mythos surrounding US military failures in Vietnam during the Vietnam War of 1965-1973. For them, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait looked essentially like a regional dispute; US involvement thus seemed like an overreach of American power. There was also a sense that the war was less a military necessity and more a way for US President George H. W. Bush to distract the country from its precipitous economic woes and the government’s failure to respond to domestic crises, including climate change, the rising cost of living, healthcare, and public education.