Conflict Management in the Middle East by Steven L. Spiegel

Author:Steven L. Spiegel [Spiegel, Steven L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Middle Eastern, Social Science, Political Science, World, Regional Studies, General
ISBN: 9780813382180
Google: kC2NDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 1284744
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1992-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Approval for a Military Solution in the Middle East and the May 1972 Summit

While Soviet acceptance of the tacit linkage between their proposals on European issues and NATO’s counter-proposals enabled negotiations with the United States to proceed during 1971, Brezhnev still had not secured the Politburo’s assent to a final U.S.-Soviet accord. In order to close the deal, Brezhnev needed either to find further incentives to offer to an opponent like Podgorny or to reduce Podgorny’s power to object. Policy change during the winter of 1971–1972 on the Middle East suggests how Brezhnev may have compelled Podgorny to endorse the May 1972 summit’s compromise with the United States.

Brezhnev’s sense of the urgency of increasing his leverage on Podgorny would have been reinforced by his expectations about North Vietnamese actions. As Brezhnev planned at the end of summer 1971 for the U.S.-Soviet summit proposed for the spring of 1972, he could anticipate that the summit might prove especially controversial. The talks with the North Vietnamese on arms deliveries could have left no doubt of their intention to stage a large-scale conventional offensive, and even if they did not inform Brezhnev of the exact date of the offensive, the proposed schedule of deliveries would have left little doubt that the offensive would shortly precede the planned summit. Brezhnev could have anticipated that a North Vietnamese offensive might evoke a violent U.S. reaction. Since Politburo opponents of talks with the United States (including formerly Brezhnev himself) had consistently reacted to escalations in Vietnam with demands for a stiffening of the Soviet negotiating position, Brezhnev could anticipate that such demands from his rivals might follow the U.S. reaction to the North Vietnamese offensive. Consequently, it was vital for Brezhnev to prepare the summit by beginning, well in advance, to position himself to reject these demands.

Therefore a political competition theory would expect that the scheduling of the May summit in fall 1971 would have motivated Brezhnev to begin building the requisite position. Sadat’s resentment of Podgorny’s Mideast policy would have given Brezhnev the requisite opportunity to steal the constituency that Podgorny had built over the preceding year. I will make this case first by showing that the evidence is incompatible with the customary alternative explanation of Soviet policy and then by presenting the explanation of how the goal of stealing Podgorny’s constituents would have motivated Brezhnev to endorse Sadat’s plans for war.

The events leading to the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 between Israel and the Arab alliance have received intense scrutiny from scholars, not in the least because the contribution of Soviet weapons to the Egyptian and Syrian attack on a U.S. ally has seemed incongruous with the contemporaneous flowering of détente. Many Western observers agree that the Soviets acted to preserve their competitive advantages against the United States in the Third World. In this explanation, the Politburo increased weapons supplies to Egypt and Syria because Sadat’s expulsion of Soviet advisers and air defense forces from Egypt in July 1972 jeopardized the Soviets’ competitive advantages.

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