a case study in crisis management during detente...sadat was at a kind of strategic crossroads. to...

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS VOL. 50 OCTOBER 1974 No. 4

THE OCTOBER MIDDLE EAST WAR

A CASE STUDY IN CRISIS MANAGEMENT DURING DETENTE *

Coral Bell T nHE climate of detente affects many relationships, and none more than that between the dominant powers and their respective clients in crisis situations. This article will explore that observation as it

was exemplified in the Middle East war of October 1973. The war had, of course, many other significant facets. The fighting itself, the political repercussions in Israel and the Arab world, the strategic-technological revolution in weaponry that it demonstrated-all these were no doubt of great interest, although they will not be explored here. I will be concerned with the war seen primarily as a problem in larger and longer- term diplomatic calculations by decision-makers in America, Russia and Western Europe, as well as in Israel and the Arab world.

Most of the press comment at the time, insofar as it related the war to the detente at all, was to the effect that it illustrated the bad faith of the Russians, or the fragility and illusoriness of detente as a concept. This view seems to me to have been quite mistaken, and demonstrably so in retrospect. I shall argue that, on the contrary, the progress and upshot of events showed the strength of the detente, in that it sustained the frictions of the war with no visible wear and tear. I shall also argue that Dr. Kissinger was able during its course to ' spell out' further some of the conditions of the detente, and that these conditions appear to have been acquiesced in by the Russians.

The logical point at which to begin consideration of this process is, I think, the Nixon-Brezhnev communique of May 1972, after the Moscow summit meeting. The affairs of the Middle East were discussed in this communique in a brief and non-committal paragraph: the Arab leadership was not given any consoling or promising words to induce the belief that their great and powerful friends in the Kremlin were inclined to press the case of their Arab allies in any way that would jeopardise the detente with America. President Sadat has since made it clear how much this increased the burden of irritation he already felt against the Russians. In effect it seems to have been for him the moment

* This article is a slightly modified version of a chapter in Professor Bell's forthcoming book The Politics of Detenite (Oxford University Press for Chatham House).

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532 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

of resolve that he must press the situation to a new crisis in order to force the dominant powers into a crisis-intervention which would in the upshot serve Arab (or at least Egyptian) national interests. President Sadat was at a kind of strategic crossroads. To undo the consequences of the 1967 war (the advance of Israeli frontiers) he had theoretically two options: military action or diplomatic leverage. Military action depended on maintaining his connection with the Soviet Union, since it was only from that source that he could hope to get the advanced weapons he would need to dislodge the Israelis from actual territory. On the other hand, the difficulty and uncertainty of translating military resources into effective pressure on Israel had already been demonstrated. Only the Americans, in fact, could put effective pressure on the Israelis; theoretically, the Russians might be induced to put pressure on the Americans to secure concessions from the Israelis, but, in fact, in conditions of detente they were clearly not going to do so-at least not at the beginning of the crisis.

There remained the possibility of a more direct diplomatic rapproche- ment with the Americans, a repair of the almost total breach that had followed the 1967 war, in the hope of securing a more even-handed (from the Arab point of view) American policy in the Middle East. The Arabs had had some indirect encouragement from Dr. Kissinger to hopes of this kind. With the rather unnerving candour he sometimes uses, he had indicated the American interest eighteen months earlier:

We are trying to get a [Middle East] settlement in such a way that the moderate regimes are strengthened, and not the radical regimes. We are trying to expel the Soviet military presence-not so much the advisers but the combat pilots and the combat personnel-before they become firmly established. . . . But we certainly have to keep in mind that the Russians will judge us by the general purposefulness of our performance everywhere. What they are doing in the Middle East poses the gravest threats in the long term for Western Europe and Japan and therefore for us.1

To summarise, one might say that the strategic problem confronting President Sadat at this point was so to manage the situation that he could first use the military leverage given him by the Russians to upset the existing 'no war-no peace.' situation, which actually suited the Russians themselves rather well, since it maximised Arab dependence upon them. Then he had to use the resulting crisis to induce Russian pressure on the Americans to secure from the Israelis a territorial settlement more acceptable to the Arabs. Comparing his course of action in this crisis with that of President Nasser in the 1967 crisis, one is struck by the greater subtlety of his understanding of diplomatic manoeuvre.

1 Background press briefing, San Clemente August 24, 1970. Quoted in David Landau Kissinger: the uises of power (London: Robson. 1974.)



THlE OCTOBER MIDDLE EAST WAR 533

Indeed, Sadat's policies might be regarded as an object lesson in how to negotiate from a situation of relative diplomatic weakness. This relative diplomatic weakness arose from the fact that he was a rather marginal ally for the Soviet Union, and the Russians had made this brutally clear. It is true that the connection with the Soviet Union had since 1955 secured for Egypt a large quantity of economic and especially military aid, but this was an index of Egyptian dependence on the connection, not necessarily of Soviet valuation of it. No doubt there were differing views of its usefulness in Moscow; the Soviet naval chiefs ought logically to have been the most enthusiastic in its favour. Even this group, however, had a clear countervailing motive against undue identification with Egyptian strategic interests, since they obviously had to seek the re-opening of the Suez Canal, which could only be secured by American and Israeli consent as well as Egyptian.

The ambivalence of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship shows clearly through the events that followed. The first development was the Egyptian expulsion of Russian advisers (15,000 according to President Sadat) from Cairo in July 1972. Some surprise was expressed by Western analysts at the time that the Russians should have accepted this with calm, not to say indifference. One might even say that they had appeared to provoke it, by treating the Egyptian army's pride too roughly; their reply to Egyptian complaints about arms supplies had implied that the arms the Soviet Union had already sent were quite all right-as had been shown, for instance, when they were in the hands of the Vietnamese-and that what was doubtful was Egyptian ability to use them correctly. This standard of diplomatic ham-fistedness, or deliberate toughness, on the part of the Soviet Union in its relations with Egypt seems to have been renewed in the aftermath of the crisis, as for instance in the refusal of a visit by the Egyptian foreign minister in July 1974.

The fifteen months between the expulsion of the Russian advisers in July 1972 and the actual Egyptian strike at Israel in October 1973 offer a neat historical puzzle in what I shall call ambiguous signalling, resulting in successful strategic surprise. President Sadat had proclaimed 1971 as the ' year of decision' in relations with Israel. It turned out not to be so, and his explanations of delay had seemed lame. The impression of infirmity of political or military purpose was reinforced when the same proved to be the case in 1972.2 Therefore, when he again told the Egyptian armed forces in December 1972 to be ready for war in six montlhs, neither the Israelis nor the Americans nor perhaps even the Russians seem to have taken the declaration entirely seriously. In effect,

2 The Arabs explained the delay, rather embarrassedly, as due to Soviet pressure. See Mohammed Heykal in Survival, Sept.-Oct. 1972.




the stance of one ' willing to wound but afraid to strike ' seems to have provided a successful camouflage for the actual seriousness of Sadat's intentions as they developed in 1973. The Egyptian contingency plans are said to have been known to the US intelligence community from April, and presumably also to the Israelis, since there are close connections. The increased supply of advanced Soviet weapons as from about Feb- ruary 1973 was also well known: President Sadat himself proclaimed how well satisfied he was with it in an interview in April with an American journalist.3

Yet despite all this, the actual attack achieved a remarkable degree of strategic surprise. Dr. Kissinger received no warning until the morming it was launched.4 American intelligence may have been unduly influ- enced by Israeli estimates, which did not conclude that an attack was imminent until October 5, and then got the time of launching wrong by four hours.' The Russians were allegedly told the date of the attack on September 22, but they did not put up their observation satellites or pull out their dependents until about October 3, so perhaps they also felt a certain scepticism until the last moment. One has to conclude that the unfulfilled threats of the previous two years had left a pervasive impression of military irresolution, and that this operated as a conscious or unconscious ruse de guerre for the Egyptians, concealing their intentions.

Actually, if this had not been so-if, that is, there had been a longer period when war was clearly seen to be impending, and preparations for it were known to and obviously aided by the Russians-the wear and tear on the detente might have been greater. For the Russians ought theoretically (under the 1973 agreement with America) to have warned the United States of any such threat to the peace. But given the general surprise, Dr. Kissinger could shrug off this dereliction, if it was one, philosophically: 'In an ideal world, one would expect closer con- sultation, but given the particular volatility of the Middle East, it would have been a heavy responsibility to make known certain advance infor- mation.' 6

The impression of Russian ambivalence, to the last, as to whether the Egyptians really meant it this time, and whether, if so, they were going to do any better than on earlier occasions, seems the only explanation for what was, according to Sadat, a Russian attempt to deceive or

3 Newsweek April 9, 1973. 4 Press conference, Oct. 25, 1973. 5 The Israeli government set up a commission after the war to ascertain the reasons for

this intelligence failure. Its interim report in mid-April 1974 blamed the Israeli Chief of Staff (Gen. Elazar) and Chief of Intelligence (Maj.Gen. Zeira) rather than the Defence Minister, Gen. Dayan. Nevertheless Dayan's political standing seems to have been much damaged, at least for a time.

6 Press conference of Oct. 25, 1973.



THE OCTOBER MIDDLE EAST WAR 535

pressure him into calling off the war in its first couple of days. He has said that the Russian ambassador went so far in argument with him as to allege that the Syrians had already asked for a ceasefire, when he knew this to be a lie.7 One may put this down either to Russian fear of another Arab disaster like 1967, or to apprehension about what the war might do to the detente, or a combination of the two. Presumably, however, this mood passed off during the first week of the war, when it became clear that the Egyptian military performance offered prospects of considerable success.

The restoration of peace only returned as an urgent objective of Soviet policy with the turn of the military tide back towards the Israelis in the second week of the war.

It was this which seems to have precipitated the urgent invitation to Dr. Kissinger to come to Moscow on October 20. Although one must, of course, ascribe this more to a desire to put a stopper on further Israeli success in the drive into Egypt, it also seems to indicate concern to maintain the detente, and especially to use it as a basis for joint crisis-management. And this element in Soviet expectation is even more prominent in the next phase of the crisis, which I would describe as a Russian bid for, and an American refusal of, the idea of condominium.

Russia's bid for condominium This is, I think, the most interesting aspect of the crisis, seen as an

exercise in the politics of detente, since it seems to have involved Dr. Kissinger in spelling-out the message that detente could not be parleyed into condominium. The possibility that it could, and indeed the alleged probability that it would, have provided some interesting nightmares for assorted European and Asian policy-makers and analysts. The notion of condominium-an agreed sharing of effective power only with America in a kind of permanent and somewhat institutionalised version of the power-balance as at the end of the Second World War-has deep roots in the Soviet view of the world and of the 'international class struggle'. One could call it congenial and familiar to the Russians from the Stalinist period on.

This would-be collusive element in the Soviet weltanschaung, rather than the competitive or adversary side of the relation with America, may be regarded as having precipitated the brief 'confrontation' phase of the crisis, from about October 23 to October 26. It began with the Israeli breach of the first ceasefire, and the drive of the forces commanded by General Sharon to surround the Egyptian Third Army. This military success for the Israelis confronted the Russians with the apparent pros-

7 Interview of March 29, 1974, with a Lebanese journalist.




pect of an unacceptable level of defeat for their Egyptian allies, and a danger that they would be obliged, in effect, to choose between sacri- ficing the detente or accepting a serious loss of face as protectors. The Egyptians met the military reverse by asking (presumably after con- sulting the Russians) that a joint Soviet-American force should be sent to the Middle East. Mr. Brezhnev indicated, in a letter which has not been published but which was apparently forceful, that the United States must either accept this proposal, or risk seeing the Russians acting alone and sending their own troops to the Middle East. At the same time the Soviet High Command made visible various rather ostentatious preparations which conveyed the possibility that they might be intending an air-lift of combat forces to Egypt.

It is these signals which I would describe as the bid for condominium, though with reservations as to how seriously it was initended. Dr. Kissinger was emphatic in refusal:

The United States does not favour and will not approve the sending of a joint Soviet-United States force into the Middle East. It is inconceivable that we should transplant the great-power rivalry into the Middle East or, alternatively, that we should impose a military condominium by the United States and the Soviet Union. It would be a disaster if the Middle East, already so torn by local rivalries, would now become, as a result of a UN decision, a legitimised theatre for the competition of the military forces of the great powers. And therefore it seemed to us that the political purposes would be best served if any international force that were introduced were composed of countries that have themselves no possibility of being drawn into rivalry as a result of being there. . . . The plan for a joint US-Soviet military force in the Middle East was never broached to us either publicly or privately until yesterday. And we immediately made clear that we would not participate in such a force and that we would oppose any unilateral moves. . . . The measures we took and which the President ordered were precautionary in nature.... We are not talking of threats that have been made against each other. We are not talking of a missile-crisis-type situation. . . . We are attempting to preserve the peace in very difficult circumstances.... The alert that has been ordered is of a precautionary nature and is not in any sense irrevocable. It is what seemed to be indicated by the situation.8

The ' alert of a precautionary nature ' authorised by the President was that called 'Defcon Three', a standby alert for troops, includingo, strategic nuclear forces, to await further orders. It was cancelled by the

8 Press conference, Oct. 25, 1974. Though I have put Dr. Kissinger's words into the form of a continuous answer, they are actually excerpts from individual answers to particular questions. The omission of the journalists' questions does not, I think, in any way change the meaning. The text may be found in Survival January- February 1974. Elsewhere in the press conference Dr. Kissinger restated the American assumptions on detente, 'The United States and the Soviet Union are of course ideological and to some extent political adversaries. But the United States and the Soviet Union also have a very special responsibility. We possess-each of




26th, and Mr. Brezhnev made a rather conciliatory speech on the same day; I think therefore that the 'confrontation ' period may be reason- ably regarded as confined to those three days or less.

These exchanges were variously reported in the headlines as cracking ' or ' splitting ' or ' shaking ' the detente. And some of the

reported comments of Senator Jackson and President Nixon might be taken as indicating that there had been an approach of sorts to a nuclear brink. But Senator Jackson is no friend to the notion of detente, and President Nixon had his reasons for underlining alleged dangers that might seem to imply his own indispensability. There is nothing in the press conferences of Kissinger or of James Schlesinger, the Defence Secretary, to endorse an alarmist view of these events.

Some rather loud signalling To my mind it is more reasonable to regard the American strategic

alert and the Russian moves which evoked it as an exchange of rather loud signals-excessively loud, one might hold, and thus unnecessarily abrasive for the nerves of the world. But they probably needed to be loud, in order to carry over certain background noises and to reach other ears than those of the American and Russian policy-makers concerned, who are, of course, perfectly well able to communicate in whispers, unless it is useful that others should hear. Who were the others whom it was intended should listen to the messages in this case? Primarily, in my view, the allies of the two dominant powers: the Egyptians, the Israelis, the Europeans.

Let us take first the Russian signals, the letter which Senator Jackson described as ' brutal ' and the ostentatious military indicators. These apparently consisted of the alerting of airborne forces (50,000 men) and the phasing-down of the resupply operation in such a way as to suggest that the transport planes used in it were being diverted to lift the airborne troops to Egypt or Syria. It is quite difficult to believe that these indicators corresponded to a serious military intention, unless it could have been one that had clearly been given a green light by the Ameri- cans. But President Sadat's demand for action to make the Israelis return to the ceasefire lines of October 22 had obviously put the Russians in a situation in which they were obliged to make some demarche. If by any chance the Americans had agreed to a con-

us-nuclear arsenals capable of annihilating humanity. We--both of us-have a special duty to see that confrontations are kept within bounds that do not threaten civilized life.... We will oppose the use of threat by any country to achieve a position of predominance, either globally or regionally . .. we would resist any attempt to exploit a policy of detente to weaken our alliances ... we would react if the relaxation of tensions were used as a cover to exacerbate conflicts in international trouble spots ... humanity cannot stand the eternal conflict of those who have capacity to destroy it.'




dominium arrangement in the Middle East (as a number of Western journalists were timidly suggesting) it would have provided the Russians with an enormous bonus from the crisis. For the Americans, as against the Russians, it could be neither attractive in power-political terms (since it would disrupt all sorts of alliances and other relationships) nor in my view morally acceptable to the present policy-maker or the electorate. A modus vivendi is not a conspiracy-at least it need not be.

Dr. Kissinger's press conference on October 25 spelled out emphatic- ally, though not in mild enough words, the refusal of any such condominium, and the strategic alert which may have only lasted twenty-four hours, added the message ' nor unilateral initiatives either '. As I said, it might be called too loud a signal for the occasion. On the other hand, it had to be strong enough to carry through the domestic noise of Watergate, which might have misled the Russians into believing the United States government incapable of action, and the noise of the intramural crisis in Nato, which also might have been interpreted as inhibiting action. It had to reach the Egyptians, to convey the excuses of the Russians for not acting. It had to startle the Israelis, to convey the dangers of uninhibited military success even to characters like General Sharon or General Dayan. And it had to reach the Europeans, to convey the ' refusal of condominium' message, since that vision is one of their standard nightmares. So altogether there was a very fair case for loudness.

Looking at the episode as an example of crisis-management techniques in general, I should classify it as the use of an emphatic, entirely unambiguous, signal in reply to ambiguous signalling. Ought one to take what I have called the ' bid for condominium ' from the Russian side any more seriously than the ostensible threat of unilateral action? On the whole I think one should, since this is clearly one of the possibilities (or, according to your point of view, dangers) of the detente relationship as it develops. And success in such a bid would be seen as an enormous enhancement of both status and power-advantage by the Russians. A less wary American policy-maker than Dr. Kissinger, in a tighter corner than this actually was, might see such an arrangement as necessary, or even desirable.

(One might liken the detente at its present stage of development to one of those dual-control cars that driving schools use-except that the vehicle is an enormous bus with the rest of the society of states willy-nilly in the passenger seats, though not sitting quietly. The two powers that share the driver's seat are agreed that they want the brakes and steering to work, and that they should keep the bus away from the precipice, but they are not agreeed about much else, certainly not about the direction in which the bus should go. And the passengers in the back are all intent on diverting it down roads that lead to their respective




national destinations. Many of them are in a position to grab the arm or chew the ear of one of the drivers, to get where they want to go. They are practically all conscious that too great a level of agreement between the drivers will permit them to overawe their fellow travellers and make the choices for them. Thus-to return from the back of the bus to the world scene-the members of the society of states need continuously to balance what they have to hope from detente against what they may fear from condominium.)

Before I move on to the resolution phase of the crisis, I want to look at one of its side-effects, which I shall call the intramural crisis within Nato. It was produced chiefly by the Arabs' belated discovery of how powerful a weapon oil could be, but was reinforced by the American strategic alert. The crunch came in the second week of the war, over the American resupply operation to Israel. One could certainly say that the Europeans put more obstacles in the way of this effort than either the Russians or the Arabs.9 The Americans had first to ask the Spanish government for loading and refuelling rights at Spanish airfields. They were refused even passage through Spanish airspace. Portugal permitted refuelling stops at Lajes air-base in the Azores, but forbade any mention of it in Portuguese newspapers. Willy Brandt's government in Germany not only demanded a halt in the resupply of Israel from American dumps in Germany, but announced in a foreign ministry press release that it had done so, which the Americans regarded as a particularly gratuitous slap in the face. Mr. Heath's govemment in Britain put an immediate ban on arms shipments to the Middle East, which was damaging exclusively to Israel, since it cut off the supply of spare parts and ammunition for the Centurion tanks whose survival was most vital to the battle. The British delegation at the United Nations also made an inexplicable hash of Dr. Kissinger's request, in the first few days of the war, that they should introduce a ceasefire motion in the Security Council-inexplicable unless one bears in mind the traditional viewpoint of the 'Arab Legion' at the Foreign Office. Britain failed to present the resolution apparently on the discovery that the Egyptians did not at that moment want a ceasefire: not unnaturally, Dr. Kissinger was enraged by this and is said to have conveyed his feelings pretty sharply to the then ambassador, Lord Cromer. Perhaps this is why he also reacted explosively to Mr. Heath's demand that if the Cyprus base was used for reconnaissance flights, the planes should be provided with an unbreakable 'cover story'. And if the rest of Nato (with the honourable exception of the Netherlands) exhibited a panic anxiety to dissociate themselves from any connection with American aid to Israel, the French (in M. Jobert's time) seem to

9 One story has it that Dr. Schlesinger also did a good deal of foot-dragging on this, though the accusation has been denied.



540 INTERNATIONAI, AFFAIRS

have been positively mischievous, encouraging the Syrians to remain intransigent towards the American effort to secure a ceasefire and disengagement on that front.

It is difficult to interpret these European attitudes except as the effect of a single-minded and craven determination to appease the Arabs by any degree of abasement in order to avert the threat to European oil supplies. In this objective they were more or less successful, but at a very heavy cost. For though an actual oil blockade was averted, the Arabs were taught how much they could with impunity exact, either politically or economically, from the industrialised world by the threat of cutting oil production, and they have since used that knowledge to set oil prices at a level which faces the Europeans with enormous balance-of-payments deficits for the foreseeable future, or possibly even a world slump on the pattern of the 1930s.

Nemesis seems to have been working overtime on the decision-makers responsible for this policy-shambles. M. Jobert, Herr Brandt, Mr. Heath are all out of office, at least temporarily. In the British case, the then ambassadors in Washington and at the United Nations have also vanished from those posts, the latter amidst some controversy. This clean sweep, by electoral and other means, of those responsible for the original policies no doubt helped the relatively rapid recovery of European-American relationships. The complaints-on the American side, that the Europeans had 'acted as if Nato did not exist ' and on the European side, that Dr. Kissinger had failed to consult them about the strategic alert-probably helped to conduce the more carefully maintained alliance relationship of the next crisis, that over Cyprus in .July 1974. (Unfortunately for the Greeks, the Nato strategic interest marches rather with Turkey.)

As far as the detente is concerned, I think one has to regard all this as an exemplification of the tendency for the links of alliance to be loosened in such a period. One might also note in passing that it appears to indicate that ' Europe ' at the moment is less than the sum of its parts: its members have not yet learned to act as an ensemble, but have lost their old capacity to act uninhibitedly as sovereign states. If one com- pares the reactions of Britain and France to the 1973 threat to their oil supplies, with their reaction in 1956 to a much lesser threat to oil supplies which were themselves then of much less economic importance, one must regard the contrast as a case study in the progressive enfeeble- ment of political will. Deplorable and disastrous as the Suez adventure no doubt was, it showed some degree of initiative and capacity to act quite lacking 17 years later, by which time not even a little ambiguous signalling on the possibility of retaliatory action could be dared.




How much does Russia value detente? Finally, let us look at how the detente has survived in the resolution

phase of the crisis, so far as it has yet gone. One may regard the two disengagement agreements, with Egypt and Syria, as having resolved for the time being the immediate 1973 crisis, and what remains to be done-the creation of a legitimate order in the Middle East-as an effort to solve the whole Arab-Israeli imbroglio from 1948 on. The resolution of the 1973 crisis thus far has turned on the changed local military balance, demonstrated rather than created by the October fighting. The Israelis did not exactly suffer a military defeat: on the contrary, after the initial setback resulting from the Egyptian achieve- ment of strategic surprise, their resilience and usual military panache were spectacularly demonstrated. But the almost costless ascendancy of 1967 was clearly gone, and presumably for good. The casualty figures for the Israeli forces were not particularly high by normal expectations of fighting between forces at equivalent levels of competence and arma- ment, but they were traumatic for an electorate and a political elite which had lived by tlle legends of the effortless superiority of 1967. The Egyptian commanders' demonstration of a new military initiative, the Egyptian troops' demonstration of competence in the use of sophisticated Russian weapons, and the weapons themselves, especially the 'plane- killing' missiles which for the first week effectively neutralised the Israeli airforce-the most telling source of its strength in 1967-all those things effectively changed the local military infrastructure which had underlain the diplomatic relationships of 1967-73. Even the most hawk- like segment of the Israeli political elite has had to face the fact that if Israel has to continue to meet Arab armies of relatively equal competence, over the middle and long term, the cost of maintaining the security of the state by its strong military right arm and the 1967 territorial acquisitions will become almost intolerable. Thus the case for an alternative mode of security, by borders more acceptable to the Arabs and some form of international guarantee, has become more attractive- though still not really attractive to some Israeli opinion, especially on the right. A determined long-term military ascendancy and extended bound- aries might remain the most attractive option to a people with as hard a history as the Israelis, if it were believed to be available. And very likely there will always be a sector of the electorate and perhaps of the political leadership who will believe it is available. But for the main- stream leadership, the demonstration of Israel's long-term military vulnerability has apparently been enough to induce reconsideration of other possible modes of security.

It was this change in the local military and psychological balance which provided the basis for Dr. Kissinger's resourceful personal diplo-



542 INTFERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

macy in the creation of the two disengagement agreements, and the prospect of a settlement. And this in turn allowed what might seem the most surprising upshot of the crisis as a whole: the way in which it enabled Dr. Kissinger to repair the damage of earlier history to American standing in the Arab world. The restoration of diplomatic relations witlh Egypt, Syria and Algeria, the package deal of economic agreements with Saudi Arabia and the organisation of Mr. Nixon's triumphal tour of Middle East capitals are all indicators of a situation in which American influence and standing in the Middle East have been restored, not merely to a better level than before 1967, but probably to their most potent level ever. It really does seem a feat of diplomatic legerdemain to go into a crisis in which one is obliged to sustain an ally and protege by a resupply operation in the middle of a war, and come out of it as the proclaimed and trusted friend of the other side.

So the most notable power-advantage from the crisis was undoubtedly to the American national interest, thanks to the virtuoso diplomacy of Dr. Kissinger. The Russians, by contrast, have considerable wounds to lick. Their optimum gain would have been the condominium arrangement mentioned earlier. They did not get it. Next best would have been an increase in Russian influence in the Arab world or the Middle East generally. In view of the amount of expensive weaponry they provided for the war, they might well have expected as much as that. But this also did not result: one could certainly not say that the Russians' diplomatic leverage appears stronger in September 1974 than in September 1973. On the contrary, they have failed even to maintain their earlier dominant position in Egypt and Syria. They can at best be said to have been given a consolation prize for these setbacks: the prospect of the reopening of the Suez Canal.

It is clear from the amount of grumbling in the Soviet press that the Russians did not much enjoy the sight of Dr. Kissinger making the running in the disengagement phase of the crisis, and restoring American influence at the same time. But they did not make any real effort to block it, and this again one must, I think, put down to their reluctance to jeopardise the detente. The juxtaposition of Mr. Nixon's Middle East trip with the Moscow summit meeting might be said to underline this almost cruelly.

To sum up, looking at the three phases of the crisis-development, confrontation and resolution-one may say that in each of them care for the detente appears to have been of more importance to the Russians than care for their local interests in the Middle East or care for the interests of their local allies, Egypt and Syria. One could not, on the other hand, say this of the United States: the detente was undoubtedly



TIH1E OCTOBLR MIDDLE EAST WAR 543

cherished with great care and subtlety by Dr. Kissinger,'" but during the confrontation phase at least, the vital interests (not all the interests) of the local ally, Israel, were accorded a higher priority. These differing priorities with regard to the detente undoubtedly reflected the fact that it is more useful and valuable to the Russians than to the Americans. Some critics of detente speak as if this were one of its disadvantages. On the contrary, it is the reason why it provides such diplomatic leverage for America. The more valuable the central relationship of detente is to the Russians, the less they can afford to put it at risk by ' pushing their luck' in crises in peripheral areas. And by these standards even the Middle East is a peripheral area of interest. This order of Russia's priorities seems clearly illustrated by its policies in the Middle East war, but the point might be regarded as confirmed by their policy (or quiescence) in the Cyprus crisis of 1974. A few years ago either the deposition of the Archbishop or the Turkish invasion would undoubtedly have inspired strenuous Soviet activity, with the objective of damaging Nato, preferably by evicting Britain from the sovereign bases. In 1974 the Russians managed only mild gestures of harassment in the United Nations.

Dr. Kissinger's diplomacy is predominantly one of carrots rather than sticks: he seeks and often receives acquiesence in his rearrangements of the world by showing the parties concerned that there is something in it for them: a better territorial settlement, or economic aid, or more acceptance, or a reopened Canal, or a securer flow of oil. In the Middle East crisis he used local inducements of this sort, of course, but in the case of the Russians they might hardly have been enough (considering the level of the Russian loss of local diplomatic advantage) without the more subtle network of inducements constituted by the detente.

n Especially in his choice of language, his readiness to consult the Russians, and his avoidance of imputing disruptive intentions to them.



Article Contentsp. 531p. 532p. 533p. 534p. 535p. 536p. 537p. 538p. 539p. 540p. 541p. 542p. 543

Issue Table of ContentsInternational Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 50, No. 4 (Oct., 1974), pp. i-viii+531-708Front Matter [pp. ]The October Middle East WarA Case Study in Crisis Management During Detente [pp. 531-543]Lessons for UN Peacekeeping [pp. 544-553]

New Light on Abstentions in the UN Security Council [pp. 554-573]Britain's Changing Role [pp. 574-583]Collective Economic Security [pp. 584-598]Resources: The Choices for Importers [pp. 599-611]ReviewsInternational Relations and OrganisationsReview: untitled [pp. 612-614]Review: untitled [pp. 614-615]Review: untitled [pp. 615-616]Review: untitled [pp. 616]Review: untitled [pp. 617-618]

Defence and DisarmamentReview: untitled [pp. 618-619]Review: untitled [pp. 619-620]Review: untitled [pp. 620-622]

Politics, Economics and SocialReview: untitled [pp. 622-624]Review: untitled [pp. 624]Review: untitled [pp. 625-626]Review: untitled [pp. 626-627]Review: untitled [pp. 627-628]Review: untitled [pp. 628-629]

LawReview: untitled [pp. 630-632]Review: untitled [pp. 632-633]Review: untitled [pp. 633-634]Review: untitled [pp. 634-635]Review: untitled [pp. 635-636]

Western EuropeReview: untitled [pp. 636-638]Review: untitled [pp. 638-639]Review: untitled [pp. 639-640]Review: untitled [pp. 640-642]Review: untitled [pp. 642-643]Review: untitled [pp. 643-644]Review: untitled [pp. 644-645]Review: untitled [pp. 645-647]Review: untitled [pp. 647-648]

USSR and Eastern EuropeReview: untitled [pp. 648-651]Review: untitled [pp. 651-654]Review: untitled [pp. 654-656]Review: untitled [pp. 656-657]Review: untitled [pp. 657-658]

Middle EastReview: untitled [pp. 658-659]Review: untitled [pp. 659-660]Review: untitled [pp. 660-661]Review: untitled [pp. 661]Review: untitled [pp. 662-663]Review: untitled [pp. 663]Review: untitled [pp. 664]

AfricaReview: untitled [pp. 664-665]Review: untitled [pp. 665-666]Review: untitled [pp. 666-667]Review: untitled [pp. 668]Review: untitled [pp. 668-669]

Asia and AustralasiaReview: untitled [pp. 669-671]Review: untitled [pp. 671]Review: untitled [pp. 672]Review: untitled [pp. 673]Review: untitled [pp. 673-674]Review: untitled [pp. 674-675]Review: untitled [pp. 675-676]Review: untitled [pp. 676-677]Review: untitled [pp. 677-678]Review: untitled [pp. 678-679]Review: untitled [pp. 679-681]Review: untitled [pp. 681-682]

North AmericaReview: untitled [pp. 682-684]Review: untitled [pp. 684-685]Review: untitled [pp. 685-686]

Latin America and the CaribbeanReview: untitled [pp. 686-687]Review: untitled [pp. 687-688]Review: untitled [pp. 688-689]Review: untitled [pp. 689-690]Review: untitled [pp. 690-691]Review: untitled [pp. 691-692]

General History and MemoirsReview: untitled [pp. 692-693]Review: untitled [pp. 693-694]Review: untitled [pp. 694-695]Review: untitled [pp. 695-696]

Bibliography and Reference[Other Publications] [pp. 696-698]

Other Books Received [pp. 698-704]Correspondence [pp. 705-706]Back Matter [pp. ]

a case study in crisis management during detente...sadat was at a kind of strategic crossroads. to...

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