University of Alberta

The Supplicant Superpower: Reexamining the Soviet-Egyptian Relationship from 1965 to 1975

by

Frederick Victor Howard Mills

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Masters of Arts in History

Department of History and Classics

1 Frederick Victor Howard Mills Fall, 2009 Edmonton, Alberta

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1*1 Canada Oral Examining Committee

Committee Chair & Examiner Academic Rank Department Dr. Heather Coleman Associate Professor History & Classics

Supervisor Academic Rank Department Dr. David Marples University Professor History & Classics

Committee Member Academic Rank Department Dr. Guy Thompson Associate Professor History & Classics Dr. W. Andy Knight Professor Political Science Dedicated to my family: Frederick William, Anne Marie, Chelsa Marie and Axle Abstract

From 1965-1975, the Soviet-Egyptian relationship was the cornerstone of

Moscow's policy in the Middle East. The Kremlin's alignment with the epicenter of the

Arab world permitted the articulation of military, political and economic objectives designed to enhance its own power and prestige, while erode that of the United States.

This research demonstrates that the Moscow-Cairo nexus was of greater scope than hitherto recognized by the scholarly community. Certainly, political and military acrimony between the Arabs and the Israelis provided the Kremlin a timely entree into regional affairs. Yet, to frame Soviet-Egyptian relations by this variable has limited both our understanding of and the benefits accrued to Moscow from its relationship with

Cairo. Ultimately, the scholarly community views the Soviet Union under Brezhnev as a conservative and status-quo global actor infected with gerontocratic malaise. This thesis reveals that the Brezhnevian Politburo was far from conservative; rather, it was opportunistic and aggressive. Acknowledgments

The work involved in completing a Master's Thesis was once described to me as,

"reading a couple books and writing a couple pages." Let me assure you, it is slightly more consuming than that. So, I would like to first acknowledge me, Frederick Mills, for all the hard work and dedication that were involved in the completion of this thesis.

Jest aside, I would like to recognize my supervisor Dr. David R. Marples. His patience, helpful advice, and commentary (see above) were appreciated every step of the way. I would like to thank the Department of History and Classics at the University for

Alberta. Its financial assistance and travel grants were indispensable to the completion of this thesis. I would also like to thank the Russian, East European and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Its summer research laboratory gave me access to its extensive Slavic collections and its librarians helped me to locate important sources.

To my parents, the room and board was certainly a plus! So too was your unwavering love and support. I would be remised if I failed to thank my friends. The cups of coffee, the pints of beer and the casual conversations made for an enjoyable and unforgettable experience. H 1-12 will always feel like a second home. I want to thank particularly those who took the time to provide insightful comments on the thesis: Alice

Chelich - my wonderful grandmother, Alexander Dimitroff, Justine Gill, Rylan Kafara and Fred Senior. Of course, any errors that remain in this document are entirely their fault. Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Egypt's role in the Kremlin's Pursuit of Global Military and Strategic Objectives 17

Chapter Two: The Soviet-Egyptian Relationship and the Kremlin's Objectives in the Third World 48

Chapter Three: The Collapse of the Soviet-Egyptian Relationship and Moscow's Policy Shifts 80

Conclusion 112

Bibliography 116 1

Introduction

On 14 March 1976, President Mohamed Anwar El Sadat called upon the Egyptian

People's Assembly to abrogate unilaterally the Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and

Cooperation, and to expel Soviet scientific, technical and military advisers. Two days

later, in an interview with the Cairene daily Al Ahram, El Sadat stated that, "Egypt has benefited little from our 20 year relationship with the Soviet Union."2 Soviet cultural

emissaries and exchanges were denied entry into Egypt, Egyptian students studying in

Soviet academic institutions were recalled, Moscow's naval concessions were revoked

and Soviet citizens not affiliated with the diplomatic corps were expelled. Moscow's immediate response to El Sadat's action was silence. It was not until 20 March 1976, when a small article appeared in the back pages of Pravda, that the Soviet Politburo acknowledged its eviction from the banks of the Nile. "Reactionary, imperialist forces," opined Observer, "infiltrated Egyptian politics, slowed the advance of progressive elements and set back the advancement of common interests." This reading seems to have been widely accepted, yet, accepting ideological dissonance as the principal factor in the collapse of this relationship prevents an understanding of the common interests upon which the Soviet-Egyptian association was constructed. Contradictions between

Soviet and Egyptian objectives ultimately formed the foundation of discord upon which the relationship disintegrated. The collapse of the partnership signaled much more than the nadir of the Kremlin's influence in the Middle East during the Cold War. Moscow's

The Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed on 27 May 1972 between Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny and Mohamed Anwar El Sadat. 2 Mohamed Heikal, "Al Infifar [The Explosion]," Al Ahram, 16 March 1976. Observer, "Lozhnye pokazaniia weli v zabluzhdenie Egipetskuiu politsiiu [Wrong evidence misguides Egypt],"Pravda, 20 March 1976. In Soviet press organs, articles authored by Observer are generally understood to reflect the official opinion of the Politburo. 2

AINaqsa necessitated a reevaluation of global and regional strategic objectives and

military doctrine. The collapse of the relationship obliged the Kremlin to reassess its

foreign policy and influence building tactics in the Third World. For Moscow, events

were not supposed to have happened this way.

Moscow's attempts to build influence in the decade after the 1955 Czechoslovak-

Egyptian arms deal focused on granting Egypt access to Moscow's financial, economic

and military largesse.5 Concomitantly, in "appreciation" of Soviet support, General

Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev

expected Jamel Abdel Nasser's regime to delineate foreign and domestic policy

objectives similar to those enunciated by Moscow.6 In particular, this implied the

adoption of Communist ideology and the centrality of anti-Western proclivities. When

Egypt proved less pliable than Moscow had hoped, particularly concerning domestic reforms, polemical attacks against each other became staple features in both national press organs. For example, a 13 May 1961 Pravda article denounced Egyptian nationalism claiming "that it was not the zenith of happiness and that Egypt will turn to

communism of its own free will." A Pravda article, penned by Observer, reminded the

Q

Arabs of the adage "cut not the tree that provides shade." In response, Radio Cairo vehemently declared that, "we treat Russia as a bank. The bank which grants me a loan In Arabic Al Naqsa means 'the setback.' In Egypt, the term specifically refers to the social, economic and military implications that stemmed from its defeat by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967. The Czechoslovak-Egyptian arms deal was actually a Soviet-Egyptian arms deal, one where Moscow relied on Prague as a midwife for arms delivery. Contradictory reports on the content of Soviet arms shipments abound. The difference in estimates stems from the fact that not one, but two arms pacts were concluded between Egypt and the Soviet Union before the Suez conflict. Nasser disclosed the second pact in 1966 and stated that the total value of the exchange amounted to $336 million. In a May 1961 speech to a visiting Egyptian delegation, Khrushchev bemoaned, "the misguided choices of [the Egyptian regime] in all areas of domestic politics." 7 P. Demchenko, "Arabskii vostok v trudnyi chas [The Arab East in difficult times]," Pravda, 13 May 1961. Observer, Pravda, 25 May 1961, cited in Mohammed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East (New York: Harper, 1979), 35. 3 has no right to interfere in my own affairs." Yet, between the hot retorts of discord and the cold embraces of necessity, the similarity of their regional objectives and national interests maintained a primarily close, productive relationship.

This thesis will explore and analyze the Soviet-Egyptian relationship from 1965 to 1975 and its role in shaping Soviet foreign policy. To that end, let us examine the historiographical foundations of this inter-state dynamic. Scholarly opinion surrounding this relationship cleaves along two fault lines. The first is temporal. A scholarly assemblage emerged in the late 1960s, the 1970s and the early 1980s that dealt with

Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East and the Soviet-Egyptian relationship. This collective tends to focus on Soviet efforts at promoting instability in the Middle East, both for its own benefit as well as that of its clients. The second body emerged in the late

1990s, penned principally by Israeli scholars. It tends to focus exclusively on Moscow's role in fomenting and perpetuating Arab-Israeli discord from 1967 to 1973.11 The temporal differences between the two bodies of literature inform their scholarship in a number of ways. Most pertinently, the two bodies are divided by the end of the Cold

War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As such, the first group tends to focus on trends in Soviet-Egyptian and Soviet-Middle Eastern relations, with an eye to predicting future Soviet actions and refining notions on regional Soviet objectives. Scholarship written before El Sadat temporarily expelled Soviet military advisors in 1972 explores the

9 Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar, 36. 10 Examples of scholarship written in this time period include: Robert O. Freedman, Soviet Policy Towards the Middle East since 1970 (Westport: Praeger Security International, 1982), Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile: The Soviet — Egyptian Influence Relationship since the June War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), and Yaccov Ro'i, From Encroachment to Involvement: A Documentary Study of Soviet Policy in the Middle East, 1945-1973 (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House Jerusalem Ltd., 1975). 11 The most recent examples of this scholarship include The Soviet Union and the June 1967 War, edited by Yaccov Ro'i and Boris Morozov (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008) and Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Foxbats over Dimona (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 4 various consequences that stemmed from Moscow's increased involvement in the region.

Principally, the debate gravitates towards explaining and predicting the impact of Soviet regional penetration on American and Israeli interests. In these debates, Egypt is viewed as little more than an instrument of Soviet global machinations, willing to acquiesce a limited degree of sovereignty in return for arms and financial assistance. The implicit argument is that Egypt could be extracted from the Soviet orbit by American incentives and American mediation vis-a-vis Egypt's grievances with Israel. Soviet objectives are viewed parochially and are related to the state's security needs and Russia's long-term desire to expand south beyond the Caucasus to obtain warm-water ports.13 This scholarship's understanding of Soviet objectives is limited to those that paint the Soviet

Union as adversarial and combative with the West. As such, it focuses on a Soviet desire to influence the growth of anti-Western political posturing in states and regions where

Moscow was previously a non-factor.

The scholarship written after the abrogation of the Treaty, still part of the first collective, while necessarily better informed on the state of Soviet-Egyptian relations, tends to focus on the factors that resulted in the collapse of the relationship. These arguments are problematic for a host of reasons. In more detail, Alvin Rubenstein opined that, "the Kremlin was never able to understand the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict in influencing [Egyptian] actions."1 Mohamed Heikal wrote that, "the Soviets never fully appreciated the domestic pressures [in Egypt] to recover the lands lost to Israel in

12 See, for example, Kemp Tolley, "The Bear that Swims Like a Fish." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings Vol. 70. no.6. (June 1971): 41-45. Tolley, seemingly arbitrarily, mentions that it would take American aid in excess of 25 to 30 percent of that of the Soviets to court Egypt successfully. 13 Much is made of the desire of the Russian and later Soviet leadership to obtain a warm water port. The Russian navy, much as its predecessor the Soviet fleet, has long yearned for such a port to compensate for the long winter months when Baltic harbors freeze over 14 Rubenstein, Red Star on the Nile, 18. 5

1967."15 It was a Cold War 'Soviets are from Mars, Egyptians are from Venus' scenario, where an inability to comprehend grievances that were allegedly alleviated by Marxism, which led to discord and the eventual dismemberment of the relationship. Scholarship produced in the late 1970s agrees that the Soviet Union perpetuated a state of "no peace- no war" between the Arab states and Israel in order to either retain the need-based relationship of its regional clients or to maintain its relevance in a strategically vital region.1 Ultimately, this scholarship considers the Soviet-Egyptian dynamic as a traditional patron-client relationship. "The USSR was simply unable to comprehend," wrote Malcolm Kerr, "why Egypt, with its colonial history, socialist development and

1 7 international grievances would reject Soviet assistance and support." This rationale implies that the relationship collapsed because Cairo was not satisfied with the degree of

Soviet assistance. Yet, it also denies Egypt's political elite agency in the determination of its relationship with the Soviet Union. As such, El Sadat's 1972 decision to expel Soviet military advisors has been interpreted as Egypt's attempt to reverse Soviet policies that resonated poorly in Cairo. Few scholars have explored how the Soviet expulsion was a tactic designed to facilitate Cairo's pursuit of its own objectives.

Furthermore, these same scholars have embraced the contradictory notion that

Soviet foreign policy shed its ideological ethos post-Stalin, while attributing the collapse of the relationship to Moscow's inability to gauge Egyptian and Middle Eastern developments due to ideologically inspired lacunae.18 These lacunae allegedly blinded

15 Mohammed Heikal, Nasser— The Cairo Documents (London: The New English Library, 1972), 41. This is a commonly held notion present in a multitude of works on the subject. 17 Malcolm H. Kerr, Soviet Influence in Egypt, 1967-1973 (New York: Praeger, 1975), 20. 1 For example see: Robbin F. Laird, Perceptions and Behavior in Soviet Foreign Policy (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981) and Jack Snyder, Science and Sovietology: Soviet Foreign Policy Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 6 the Soviets to the importance of Arab nationalism, political Islam and the degree to which

Egyptian ethnic and territorial grievances regarding Israel embodied a modus operandi in

Cairo. Historians have tended to discuss the role of ideology in shaping Soviet foreign policy as a zero-sum game. Either ideology was the principal factor defining policy articulation or it was irrelevant.

There are several concerns with the erosion of ideology argument as it relates to

Soviet foreign policy in general, and to Egypt specifically. This argument is simply unsupported by historical evidence. No Soviet leader's foreign policy was more pragmatic or flexible than that of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Josef Vissarionovich Stalin was equally as pragmatic. His decision to ally the Soviet Union with the United States during the Second World War was a realistic response to necessity, but he was no more or less ideological for it. The Allied victory did not erode the Soviet belief in the irreconcilability of the socialist and capitalist camps. Ideological erosion and increasing pragmatism were myths borne of American wishful thinking that if the Soviets were less ideological they would be both less threatening and easier to deal with. There is no evidence of increasing pragmatism and eroding ideology in Soviet foreign policy because it was always pragmatically ideological. While the Egyptian Communist Party was under attack by domestic political and military forces, first Khrushchev and later Leonid Ilyich

Brezhnev took steps to strengthen Soviet-Egyptian ties. El Sadat's purge of the pro-

Soviet Ali Sabri group in 1971 was met, seventeen days later, by a $75 million loan for the construction of a third iron foundry at Helwan.19 In the same vein, Brezhnev encouraged Nasser to hasten the nationalization of Egyptian financial institutions and

19 Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 149. 7 industrial enterprises during a state visit to Moscow in October 1969, even though the

Egyptian economy was on the verge of collapse.

Moreover, the "erosion of ideology" argument tends to conflate ideological change with ideological erosion. It only makes sense to equate change with erosion if one begins with the false premise that there exists a body of immutable Marxist-Leninist principles that, if altered, signifies the end of ideologically motivated behavior.

However, flexibility and change are signs of virility and not demise. Only when ideology becomes dogmatic and fails to adapt to changing realities, does it lose its relevance and eventually erode. Soviet foreign policy in the post-war world was cognizant of, and adaptable to, a changing international dynamic. The British and French victories over the fascist troika in the Second World War were Pyrrhic ones that facilitated de-colonization movements on a global scale. After having successfully cracked the American chrysalis of containment, Khrushchev proposed foreign policy objectives that sought to exploit this decolonization. Soviet foreign policy nurtured burgeoning relations with revolutionary democracies and national liberation movements. Marxist-Leninist ideology, particularly the triumphalist notions of historical materialism, provided an intellectual framework that justified close ties with non-socialist but progressive regimes.

The second body of scholarship that emerged in the late 1990s focused attention on the Soviet-Egyptian relationship in the context of Arab-Israeli conflicts, particularly

20 After 1964, the growth in Egyptian GDP fell from a high of 8.6% in 1964 to -1.9% in 1968. In 1956, Egypt's foreign exchange reserves stood at $467 million. By April 1966 consumption had so outpaced production that, taxed by the double burden of a growing trade deficit and a correspondingly huge foreign debt, Egypt possessed no more than $31 million. As a result, income tax rose roughly 50%, taxes on commodities such as a sugar and tobacco 10 to 20%, and excise taxes rose by almost 45% on goods imported from the West. Statistics taken from V. G. Solodovnikov's, Torgovye sviazi SSSR s razvivauishimsia stranami [Soviet trade connections with developing countries,] (Moscow: Economics and Politics, 1982) and Mohrez Mahmoud El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations 1945-1985 (London: Macmillan Press, 1987). 8 the Six Day War. Generally, this scholarship views the Soviet-Egyptian relationship as a focal point through which aggressive and confrontational Soviet foreign policy objectives manifested themselves. This stands in contrast to the scholarship written during the waning years of the Cold War, which characterizes the governing principles of

91

Brezhnev's Kremlin as nuclear parity and super power detente. Regarding the Six Day

War, previous scholarship has tended to agree that the Soviet Union did not desire full- scale hostilities in the Middle East, and once this appeared as a possibility, it attempted to prevent such a development by restraining its Arab clients. Although Moscow supported

Arab states with threats of military intervention against Israel, it is generally accepted that it neither planned nor implemented any military participation in the war. Contentiously,

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez assert that these historiographical assumptions are faulty. "The Soviets prepared a marine landing with air support on Israeli shores," argue

Ginor and Remez, "readied bombers and nuclear armed naval forces and even committed 99 their most advanced air craft for reconnaissance sorties." Additionally, they assert, the

Soviet Union knowingly transmitted disinformation to their Arab allies in order to incite conflict. On 15 May 1967, the Kremlin informed Cairo that Israel was massing ten divisions on its border with Syria, even though the entire active duty Israeli Defense

Force contained only six divisions.23

Ginor and Remez maintain that the Kremlin was intimately involved in Egyptian military planning, citing the congruencies between the Amer Plan and Soviet military

21 See Joseph L. Nogee and Robert H. Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II (New York: Pergamon Press, 1989). 22 Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Foxbats over Dimona (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 33. 23 Ibid., 45. 9

doctrine. Captured copies of the Plan were written in both Arabic and Russian,

implying direct Soviet participation in its development. The two authors argue that

Soviet willingness to promote and engage in Middle Eastern conflict stemmed from

Moscow's intimate knowledge of the Israeli nuclear program and the belief that Israel

would be capable of testing an atomic warhead no later than spring 1968. They

conclude that the Soviet military did not actively engage the IDF simply due to Israel's

rapid victory over the Arab armies.

Ginor and Remez, however, do not engage the question of why Moscow would

want to start a conflict and promote regional instability. Petr Ivashutin, head of the GRU, wrote to the Central Committee regarding the military weakness of Egypt and the

"military superiority of Israel over any single or prospective combination of Arab

countries." So, if the Kremlin knew of the deficiencies of the Arab armies, why would

Moscow want to provoke war? Some scholars have argued that an Arab defeat would make these countries even more dependent on the Soviet Union. Yet, if the Arabs lost,

Soviet prestige and influence in the Arab world would plunge, while political changes in the Egyptian and Syrian leadership could not be excluded. Another hypothesis contends that Moscow passed faulty information to Cairo and Damascus in order to raise regional

The Amer-Grechko Plan was formed between 22 and 25 November 1966. At this point in his career, Andrei Antonovich Grechko was the Commander in Chief of the Warsaw Pact forces. He created similar military strategies with his corollaries in Eastern Europe. The Plan drew considerably on Soviet military doctrine and served as the blue print upon which military action against Israel would proceed. 25 Ginor and Remez, Foxbats, 49. 26 Ibid., 101. 7 V.A. Zolotarev, Rossiia (SSSR) v lokal'nykh i vooruzhennykh konfliktakh vtoroipoloviny veka [Russia(USSR) in local and armed conflict during the second half of the century,] (Moscow: Kuchovo pole, 2000), 182. GRU is the acronym for Glavnoie Razvedyvatel'noie Upravlenie, which is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the Red Army General Staff of the Soviet Union. 10 tensions without the aim of starting a war. Accordingly, Soviet leaders anticipated that after receiving the information on Israeli troop concentrations on its border with Syria,

Nasser would move his troops into the Sinai. This would induce the following: first, it would involve Nasser more profoundly in the confrontation with Israel, thus deepening his dependency on the USSR and simultaneously strengthening his military ties with

Syria, ensuring its security and raising Nasser's prestige in the Arab world. Second, it would deter Israel with the threat of a two front war and thus force Tel Aviv to reevaluate the prudence of aggression. Finally, it would obtain several political objectives for the

USSR: the consolidation of pro Soviet Arab forces and the further exposure of

Washington as the mainstay of support for Israel. Alexander Bovin, a member of KGB chief Iurii Andropov's inner circle, recalled that, "about the middle of 1966 there began to ripen within the Soviet leadership an intent to scare the Americans and put them in their proper place." The new situation would thus enhance Soviet political influence in both openly pro-Soviet and pro-American Arab countries as the consistent defender of

Arab interests.

Moscow believed that Egypt would never undertake military action without consultation. When military action was deemed acceptable, the Kremlin thought it could temper and influence Egyptian actions. At the same time, the Soviet Union believed that Washington would restrain Israel and prevent war. Moscow thought that the

United States was too preoccupied with Vietnam to become involved in a war in the

28 Mikhail Monokov, "The Soviet Naval Presence in the Mediterranean at the Time of the Six Day War," in The Soviet Union and the June 1967 War, eds. Yaccov Ro'i and Boris Morozov (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008), 156. 29 Ibid., 67. Vitaly V. Naumkin, Blizhnevostochnyi konflikt, iz dokumentov arkhiva vnyeshney politiki Rossiyskoi Federatsii [The Middle Eastern conflict, from documents of the Foreign Policy archive of the Russian Federation] (Moscow: Materik, 2003), 129. 11

Middle East and assumed that Israel would never start a war on its own without

American permission. Ultimately, though, Moscow fell victim to its own disinformation.

Cairo went much further in provoking the Israelis than originally intended and Israel was not as dependent on American support as believed.

This emergent scholarship paints the Soviet Union as calculating, aggressive and confrontational in the context of its Egyptian and Middle Eastern policy. Recent revisionist scholarship has emerged that also paints the Soviet Union as aggressive during the War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel in 1969.31 One scholar concludes that it will only be a matter of time until this new lens focuses on Soviet action before and during the Yom Kippur War. This revisionist school has buttressed its arguments by conducting interviews with former Red Army personnel, through accessing Russian archives in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union and by engaging with post-Soviet Russian scholarly material. However, the broader scholarly community has not undertaken a re-examination of Soviet foreign policy during the

Brezhnev era in light of this new evidence and newly formed conclusions. Was aggressive Soviet posturing limited to Soviet Middle Eastern policy, of which Egypt was its principal surrogate? What role did the Soviet-Egyptian relationship play in determining Soviet objectives on a global scale? How did the deterioration of the relationship alter Soviet foreign policy?

31 See Dima Adamsky '"Zero-Hour for the Bears': Inquiring into the Soviet Decision to Intervene in the Egyptian Israeli War of Attrition, 1969-1970," Cold War History 6, no. 1 (Feb. 2006): 113-136 and Isabella Ginor, '"Under the Yellow Arab Helmet Gleamed Blue Russian Eyes': Operation Kavkaz and the War of Attrition, 1969-1970." Cold War History Vol. 3, no. 1 (October 2002): 127-156. 32 Dima Adamsky, "The 'Seventh Day' of the Six Day War: The Soviet Intervention in the War of Attrition," The Soviet Union and the June 1967 War, edited by Yaccov Ro'i and Boris Morozov (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008), 198-251. This thesis will explore and analyze the Soviet-Egyptian relationship from 1965 to 1975 and its effects on the Kremlin's creation of foreign policy. It is postulated that the relationship played a key role in the creation and refinement of the Kremlin's objectives, and that the historiographical assumptions of the Moscow-Cairo nexus need to be re­ examined in the post Cold War era. Most works on the Soviet-Egyptian relationship tend to focus on Egypt-Israeli relations, Middle East peace, and the military dimension of the

Kremlin's involvement in the region. Other aspects of the relationship have been largely ignored. This thesis will explore these often-overlooked intersections of Soviet-Egyptian discourse. By 1970, Egypt occupied a central role in Soviet military and geo-strategic planning that influenced not only Soviet relations with the United States, but with China as well. Soviet strategy and objectives in the Indian Ocean basin region were intimately tied to its relationship with Egypt; a relationship that, according to the Soviet-Egyptian

Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, was secure for twenty years.

Using its relationship with Cairo as a template, the Kremlin vigorously pursued closer ties with other states of the Third World. Moreover, Moscow hoped to capitalize on its friendship with Egypt; the largest, most powerful Arab state and a key member of the non-aligned movement, to develop better relations with the aforementioned groups.

Yet, the ascendancy of El Sadat to the throne of Egyptian politics and his increasingly anti-Soviet bombast, threatened to jeopardize the Soviet gains of the Nasser years.

Consequently, in an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of Soviet influence, by late 1972 the Kremlin was willing to acquiesce to El Sadat's demands for increased economic and military aid. In fact, as early as 1971, the increasing demands placed on Moscow by El

Sadat served to complicate the attainment of other Soviet policy objectives. Ultimately, 13 an overriding desire to hold onto the benefits that accrued from the relationship resulted in the Soviet Union being held hostage by Egyptian aims.

The first chapter of this work will examine the global objectives of the Kremlin that were created or facilitated by the Soviet-Egyptian relationship. These goals vis-a-vis

Egypt go beyond inculcating anti-American sentiment in Arab countries by highlighting

Washington's support for Israel. Egypt played a critical role in the development of Soviet non-nuclear military strategy and Soviet naval policy in the Mediterranean and the Indian

Ocean. In 1968, Soviet military doctrine underwent a dramatic revision. It shifted from assuming the inevitability of a nuclear attack on Soviet soil in the event of a world war, to developing a tactical non-nuclear doctrine. In the same vein, the Soviet Navy, under

Admiral Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov, was radically transformed in terms of its size, types of ships, operational principles and power projection capabilities. These reforms were undertaken with the assumption that Egypt would not only passively serve as a stable forward operating base from which the Soviet military could function, but also that the two militaries would function under a unified command with similar objectives.

The revolution in Soviet military doctrine, it is hypothesized, enhanced Soviet capabilities and permitted the articulation of a host of new global objectives. These objectives focused on the further development and enhancement of Indo-Soviet relations, of particular importance given the American support for Pakistan. Egypt's strategic location was utilized in order to counter the emergent Chinese threat to the security of the

Soviet Union. Despite the eventual collapse of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship, Soviet

Michael MccGwire, Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy (New York: Brookings Institute Press, 2005) 44. 34 Ibid., 67. 14 global objectives from 1965-1975 were constructed under the assumption that a stable and long-lasting friendship between Moscow and Cairo would prevail.

Chapter Two re-conceptualizes Soviet objectives in the Third World and explores how the Soviet-Egyptian relationship facilitated their pursuit. The scholarly consensus contends that Soviet involvement with the Third World failed to achieve its prime objective, which was the aggrandizement of its own power and influence. This stemmed from the inability of the socialist paradigm to cope with decolonized political and economic realities. I contend that the principal objective of Soviet foreign policy in the

Third World was not to increase its own power, but to weaken and impede the growth of

American influence. The failure of the socialist model to make inroads in the Third

World is not sufficient reason to write-off Moscow's attempts to build influence, nor should it be used as the sole rubric from which to gauge its success. Moscow's considerable economic and financial inputs to the Third World, coupled with its position as a global superpower, rendered the Soviet Union a friend and ally to many decolonized states.

Soviet penetration of the Third World greatly leveraged the Soviet-Egyptian relationship. Tactically, this included diplomatic normalization with the new nations of the Third World, strategic denial aimed at preventing the acquisition and exploitation of military, political and economic opportunities by hostile states, and the establishment of footholds in heretofore indifferent environments. In situations where achieving diplomatic traction proved problematic, the Kremlin leveraged its relationship with Cairo.

More importantly, the decline of the relationship fundamentally altered Moscow's approach to the Third World. The shift from a broad spectrum of financial, political and 15 military assistance to an overwhelming focus on military support was indebted to and the consequence of the decline of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship. The shift towards military assistance facilitated the objective of weakening American power and marginalizing

Washington's influence in the Third World. Largely, this tactical shift drew upon the lessons of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship.

Chapter Three will examine the Soviet-Egyptian relationship from September

1970 to Egypt's abrogation of the friendship Treaty in March 1976. It is hypothesized that during this period, El Sadat took measures that radically altered the patron-client dynamic that existed under Nasser, and by spring 1971, the traditional dynamic decidedly collapsed. In its place rose a new unequal partnership. This dynamic rested upon El

Sadat's manipulation of the Soviet Union to assist Cairo in the pursuit of its objectives, principally, the rectification of Egypt's military weakness vis-a-vis Israel. El Sadat threatened, bluffed and influenced the Kremlin into making decisions that either were contrary to previously articulated positions or ran counter to the best interests of the

Soviet Union. As early as July 1971, El Sadat was placing demands on Moscow that impeded its relations with the United States. Although Soviet choices did not raze East-

West detente, Washington responded with trepidation and hesitancy regarding future overtures from Moscow. In the same vein, this perspective requires a reinterpretation of the various factors that led to the collapse of the relationship.

In conclusion, this thesis will tie these three vital elements together to discuss why the Soviet Union allowed the objectives of a client state to modify Kremlin policy.

Egypt became fully integrated into Moscow's pursuit of global and regional objectives; to the extent that Cairo's importance paralleled and even surpassed those states of the 16

Warsaw Pact. The Soviet-Egyptian relationship is an anomaly in Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War. With no other state did Moscow permit the interests of a client to supersede its own objectives. By 1975, Egypt represented a significant investment of economic, financial, military and geo-political capital. El Sadat's decision to terminate

Moscow's presence was a serious blow to Soviet interests and a demonstrable failure of

Soviet foreign policy. The concept of the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev as a conservative, reactionary and status-quo global actor needs to be re-examined. This critical reassessment of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship from 1965 to 1975 questions these tacit assumptions of Soviet behavior, while contributing new insights in our understanding of Soviet foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. 17

Chapter One: Egypt's role in the Kremlin's Pursuit of Global Military and Strategic Objectives

During the Cold War, no region outside of Europe rivaled the Middle East for geo-strategic importance. Within the Middle East, no state mirrored the economic, military and strategic significance of Egypt. Moscow and Cairo's convergence of political interests enabled the Kremlin to obtain a foothold in the Middle East and reflected the Politburo's intention to pursue an active policy in the Arab world. In light of Cairo's strengths, Egypt was the principal target of Moscow's foreign policy in the

Third World. Egypt was a strong regional actor that could facilitate the Kremlin's infiltration of the region. Yet, some scholars tend to treat Soviet penetration of Egypt as an end in itself. Moscow, they allege, simply desired to establish a Red presence on the

Nile to influence favorably regional affairs and to marginalize Washington's regional standing. Historians and political scientists have investigated possible motivating factors behind Soviet behavior. They have explored the implications and consequences of this active foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict and superpower relations.3 They have

In 1965, Egypt was the most populous Arab and Middle Eastern country, with slightly more than 32 million people. Egypt possessed the largest and most diversified economy in the Middle East. Its first five- year plan, modeled after that of the Soviet Union, emphasized heavy industry, light manufacturing, resource exploitation and electricity production. Between 1960 and 1965, Soviet engineers and technicians assisted in the construction of over 34 industrial enterprises, ranging from the colossal iron and steel works at Helwan and the Aswan High Dam to more modest concerns flanking the length of the Nile. Militarily, Cairo possessed the largest army, air force and navy in the Middle East. By 1965, it could field 350,000 troops, with an additional 200,000 strong reserve and paramilitary force. Strategically, Egypt's trump card was its possession of the Suez Canal: the conduit through which flowed more than 75% of the trade between Europe and Asia. Egypt's 2900 kilometers of coastline on the Red and Mediterranean Seas, numerous natural and deepwater harbors and developed road, rail and air transport infrastructure further underscored the state's strategic utility. 2 In addition to the sources listed in the Introduction, see also Dina Spechler, "Soviet Policy in the Middle East: The Crucial Change," Superpower Involvement in the Middle East, eds. Paul Marantz and Blema S. Steinberg (Boulder: Westview Press Inc, 1985), 133-175. and Fred Wehling, Irresolute Princes: Kremlin Decision Making in the Middle East Crises, 1967-1973 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997). 3 See Jonathan Alford, "Soviet American Rivalry in the Middle East: The Military Dimension," The USSR in the Middle East, eds. Karen Dawisha and Adeed Dawisha (Toronto: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 18 examined Soviet actions, Egyptian reactions and the expectations of both actors vis-a-vis the other. Yet, the objectives of Soviet foreign policy that motivated this interstate rapprochement are framed rather parochially. The Soviet Union's leaders may have been acting locally, but they were thinking globally.

This chapter will examine the role of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship in the promulgation of the Kremlin's global military and strategic objectives. Egypt, as both a geographic entity and an active diplomatic partner, facilitated the creation of Soviet strategic ambitions designed to enhance its security. In turn, this implies that the

Kremlin's abilities to confront emerging and established obstacles to Soviet authority and influence were enhanced by the Moscow-Cairo relationship. The entrenchment of the

Soviet position in Egypt and the growth of their relationship coincided with various debates within the Soviet Military Command and the GRU regarding the reformulation of

Soviet military doctrine. Scholars have treated these two narratives in isolation from each other. It is hypothesized that Soviet cognizance of the possible geo-strategic benefits obtained from a closer relationship with Egypt paralleled and informed the reformulation of Soviet military strategy. As Soviet diplomacy strengthened its position in Egypt, the latter came to occupy a more prominent role in the Kremlin's offensive and defensive calculus. While military planners envisioned new roles and new possibilities for Egypt in

Soviet military strategy, it became the role of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and

Defense to ensure Egypt's willingness to participate. It should be noted that Egypt was never as accommodating or participative in the Kremlin's military strategy as desired by

1982), 134-147, and Galia Golan, "The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Soviet-US Relations," The Limits of Power, ed. Yaccov R'oi (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1979), 7-32. 19

Moscow. Nonetheless, proposals rejected by Egypt still serve as valuable evidence of the role Moscow envisioned for Egypt in Soviet geo-strategy.

Proceeding from the reevaluation of Soviet military doctrine, Admiral of the

Soviet Fleet Sergei Gorshkov articulated plans for a Soviet Navy radically transformed in terms of its size, ship types, operational principles and power projection capabilities.4 It is postulated that the Soviet-Egyptian relationship played a central role in the manifestation of a re-conceptualized Soviet naval strategy and hence to the development of Soviet global objectives. From Egypt, the Kremlin secured the use of naval bases and harbor facilities at Alexandria, Port Said and Marsa Matruha, as well as from Berenice on the

Red Sea. Moscow also secured the unfettered use of two aerodromes in the metropolitan

Cairo area, as well as in Sidi Abdel Raman and Berenice. These facilities advanced the enunciation of Soviet global security objectives. Moscow was able to increase dramatically the number of ship days for its Mediterranean squadron. This allowed the

Soviet Union to establish itself as a naval power, able to counter the strength of the

American Sixth Fleet, increase the range of intelligence gathering operations, and diversify the capabilities of its Mediterranean armada. In the same way as the Soviet

Union ensconced itself in the Mediterranean, the Soviet Fleet was able to increase activity in the Indian Ocean basin region. Lying south of the weak underbelly of the

Soviet Union, the fruits of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship afforded Moscow a secure location from which to counter an Anglo-American military presence, and its substantial array of ballistic-missile submarines. Moreover, the Navy's enhanced power-projection

4 Gorshkov was Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy from 1956 until his death in 1985. His views on a host of issues, including the utility of a Soviet blue-water navy, were published in a series of articles titled, "Voenno-morskie floty v voynakh i v mimoe vremya [Navies in war and peacetime,]" Morskoy sbornik, nos. 1-6 (February - June 1972); and nos. 8-12 (August - December 1972). 20 capabilities served as a demonstrable reminder of Soviet power to the estranged and hostile Chinese and enhanced Moscow's military and diplomatic efforts in the Indian

Ocean littoral.

The year 1968 was a watershed for Soviet military doctrine: the effects on Soviet military strategy were revolutionary. The restructuring of Soviet global objectives was necessitated by a change in doctrine about the nature of a future war and the way it would be fought. At first glance, the change was quite subtle. The Soviets moved from the prevailing assumption that a world war would inevitably escalate to an intercontinental nuclear exchange, to the new assumption that it might be possible to avoid such an exchange. In reality, this doctrinal shift had immense consequences on Soviet geo- strategy, ranging from naval building programs to the relative priority of air defense, from the number of divisions facing China to Soviet interests in the Indian Ocean, and from arms control policy to the role of force in the Third World. A less obvious implication of this doctrinal shift was that in the event of conflict, even if Moscow defeated NATO forces in Europe and evicted American forces from the Continent,

Washington would still carry on the war. In turn, the Kremlin had to plan for a two-phase war: the first short and sharp; the second protracted and total. The possibility of a prolonged non-nuclear confrontation between the superpower-aligned blocs granted

Egypt an important position in Soviet military planning. Let us examine how the

5 Changes in Soviet military doctrine necessitated changes to Soviet military strategy. Starting in 1955, Soviet military doctrine tacitly accepted the role of nuclear weapons in a future world war and embraced the notion that a nuclear war, although devastating, was winnable. Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, doctrinal changes embraced non-nuclear military strategy and military planning accepted this new reality. In the event of war, the Soviet Union would not be the first state to use nuclear weapons. The implications of changing military doctrine on military strategy can best be seen in the three iterations of Marshall Vasilii Danilovich Sokolovskii's, Voennaia strategiia [Military strategy] (Moscow: Military Publishing House), published in 1960, 1963 and 1968. 21 strengthening of Soviet-Egyptian ties influenced the development of Soviet military strategy.

As the Soviet position became further entrenched and definite on the Nile, Egypt assumed a larger role in Soviet military strategy. In the 1963 edition of Voennaia

Strategiia, Egypt was excluded almost entirely. Sokolovskii made passing mention of the need "to ensure the continuation of cooperative ties with influential non-aligned regimes." Yet, specific mention of Egypt's strategic utility is eschewed in favor of generalizations about the need to enhance relations with the Third World. This is indicative of both the nascent state of the reevaluation of Soviet military strategy and tensions in the Soviet-Egyptian relationship. An 18 July 1962 article in Pravda condemned the arrest of the leader of the Egyptian Communist Party Ahmed Rahim.7 The

Soviet memorandum of a 21 August 1962 conversation between Soviet ambassador D.S.

Solod and Nasser claimed that, "[Nasser's] unpredictable behavior and failure to fully

Q appreciate Soviet support... are obstacles to the deepening of ties." Articles in major

Egyptian press organs also adopted a less than sanguine perspective on the Soviet-

Egyptian relationship.9 Yet, discord and latent acrimony could not conceal the potential strategic value of a strong Soviet-Egyptian relationship. An article in the December 1962 edition ofAziia iAfrika Segodnia noted the Suez Canal as one of the major arteries of western trade and theorized on the injurious consequences for the capitalist world if the

6 V.D. Sokolovskii, Voennaia Strategiia, 2nd ed. [Military strategy] (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1963), 180. 7 Yu. Popov, O nekotorykh chertakh rabochego dvizheniia v Afrike [On certain characteristics of the worker's movement in Africa], Pravda, 18 July 1962. Cold War International History Project - Tales of the Cheka, "On Egyptian Politics [O Egipetskoi politike,]" www.CWIHP.org. (accessed on 1 November 2008) V.A. Zolotarev, Rossiia (SSSR) v lokal'nykh i vooruzhennykh konfliktakh vtoroipoloviny veka [Russia(USSR) in local and armed conflicts during the second half of the 20th century] (Moscow: Kuchovo pole, 2000), 65. 22

Canal was unavailable for its use. In 1964, political developments stemming from a water crisis in the Middle East witnessed the alignment of Soviet and Egyptian interests, and provided the basis for the amelioration of bilateral tension and the integration of

Egypt into Soviet military strategy.

Thirty-four days after the resolution of the water crisis, a high-ranking Soviet delegation, including Minister of Defense Dmitrii Fedorovich Ustinov and the Minister of

Foreign Affairs Andrei Andreevich Gromyko, departed for Cairo. At the top of their agenda was the procurement of harbor services in Port Said and Alexandria and storage facilities for military material and spare parts. Moscow pursued the politics of the purse, and offered a $110 million loan and an increase in the quantity of MiG-22 fighters and T-

62 tanks, as agreed in a 1963 arms deal.12 Egypt rejected the Soviet proposal. Between

March 1964 and January 1967, the Soviets made at least three official requests to have unfettered and unscheduled access to Egyptian harbor facilities. The optimal situation for

Moscow, in the words of an Egyptian naval officer was to acquire in Alexandria a naval base with storage for fuel, ammunition and spare parts, access to the shipyard and to

B. Aleksandrov, "Antiimperialisticheskoi i antifeodal'noi bor'by [Anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles,]" Aziia iAfrika Segodnia (December 1962): 17. 11 The water dispute between Israel and the Arab states focused on the questions of who had the right to exploit the waters of the Jordan River and its three tributaries. Israel, starting in 1959, developed a National Water Carrier, which envisaged both increased agricultural yields as well as the provision of a secure water supply to a growing population. Syria, acting on the Arab League's carte blanche support, broke ground on counter diversion canals in March 1964. Washington, however, claimed that as long as Israel observed national quotas, they would oppose any Arab act that could be loosely construed as aggressive and which served to undermine the long-term security of Israel. The implicit American support of the Israeli water carrier, coupled with President John F. Kennedy's sale of Hawk surface-to-air missiles to Israel in February 1963, greatly antagonized radical and moderate Arab regimes. The Arab perception regarding the inability of the White House to serve as an honest broker in settling the water dispute, led to the first joint Soviet- Egyptian diplomatic action in the United Nations. An Egyptian resolution called for international arbitration to establish equitable water quotas and to censor Israel because of its air strikes. The United States vetoed the resolution, enflaming Arab sentiment and further alienating those already hostile Arab regimes. 12 Mohrez Mahmoud El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations 1945-1985 (London: Macmillian Press, 1987), 212. 23 move their ships in and out of Egypt's harbors without prior permission from Egyptian authorities.13 Though these requests were summarily rejected, they indicated several major shifts in Soviet military thinking. Specifically, they signified the value of expanding Soviet operational capabilities beyond the USSR's geographic littoral, the decline of the European theatre as the singularly important military battleground and the importance of a blue-water navy as a diplomatic and military instrument.

The second edition of Voennaia Strategiia divided the world into five teatr voennykh deystviy (theatres of military operations), the Western, the Southwestern, the

Northwestern, the Far Eastern and the Southern. Egypt was primarily positioned in the

Southwestern TVD, which included the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the North African littoral east of Morocco and even the Ukrainian Black Sea coast.15 In the event of world war, the principal Soviet objective in this theatre was to expel the American and NATO navies from the Mediterranean and then to establish the means to prevent their return.

This would have resulted in a clear political and military advantage over Greece and

Turkey, which could then be leveraged to secure the unfettered transport of Soviet maritime elements through the Dardanelles, the Bosporus, and the straits between the

Hellenic islands. Moreover, Soviet control over the Mediterranean would enable the

Soviet Navy to contemplate an amphibious operation against Italy, assuming its belligerency.17 This would forego the unsavory task of violating the neutrality of Austria

13 Ibid., 227. Sokolovskii, Voennaia Strategiia, 2n ed, 15. 15 Ibid., 17. 16 Ibid., 210-228. The objective and importance of dislodging NATO navies from the Mediterranean is a constant theme in all three editions of Voennaia Strategiia. However, the operational means to make this a reality did not emerge until after the third edition was published in 1968. 17 MM. Khamzatov, "Molnienosnaia voina novogo pokoleniia: vozmozhnye stsenarii [The new generation of lightning war: possible scenarios,]" Voennaia Mysl' (April 1964): 87. The journal Military Thought (Voennaia Mysl') was a semi-classified publication produced by officers within the Soviet Armed Forces. 24 or Yugoslavia, which would be unavoidable in a land campaign. Soviet requests for naval and material storage facilities underlie the centrality of Egypt in the Southwestern TVD.

Moreover, after the Soviet Navy's eviction from its moorings in Vlone Albania in 1961, the USSR lacked a naval base on the Mediterranean. Complicating matters, the Black Sea

Fleet lacked the necessary oil tankers and re-supply ships to support the deployment of a naval flotilla, regardless of size, for a prolonged period. Maintaining a Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean was an expensive and cumbersome proposition. The warships had to stay close to the few existing supply and equipment vessels, munitions stocks and repair facilities, and lengthy stints of duty without rest were severely adverse to the operational capabilities of Soviet sailors, in particular, the submariners. In addition, naval traffic rules under the Montreux Convention required the Soviet Union to serve notice in any case of transfer of naval forces, including submarines, to and from the Black Sea. For this reason, the convention rales diminished Soviet ability to employ surprise and to augment quickly its forces in the theatre. For most of the sixties, Moscow was at a decided strategic disadvantage in this TVD. This was about to change.

During the Six Day War, the Israeli Defense Forces decimated Egypt's armed forces. Cairo suffered over 10,000 casualties, lost 80% of its armor, self-propelled guns and armored personal carriers, and 95% of its fighter aircraft. Moreover, Israeli air

It is interesting how the aims of Soviet military strategy outstripped its resources. When this article was published, the Soviet Navy not only lacked assets in terms of supply and support capabilities, but also landing ships and amphibious support docks to contemplate such an exercise. 1 Edward Brown, Soviet Naval Developments since World War II (New York: Praeger Special Publications, 1985), 148. 19 The 1936 Montreux Convention gave Turkey control of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus and regulated military activity in the region. Signed on 20 July 1936 it permitted Turkey to remilitarize the Straits and imposed new restrictions on the passage of combat vessels. 20 Jon Glassman, Arms for the Arabs (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 33-40. Although Egypt's casualties represented only 2.4% of its regular and reserve forces, over 40,000 Egyptian 25 strikes wrought considerable damage to Egypt's military and non-military infrastructure.

Politically, Nasser's regime was dealt a significant blow. Protests, strikes and riots marred the streets of major Egyptian cities. The estimated cost of reconstruction approached $1.5 billion; only the Soviet Union possessed the financial and military capital, as well as the willingness, to extricate Egypt from the consequences of its military debacle.21 Egypt's military misfortune, however, was a boon for the Soviet

Union and served to cement Moscow's position in Egypt. The communique issued after a

21-27 June 1967 meeting between Nasser and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme

Soviet Nikolai Viktorovich Podgornyi in Cairo highlighted "[the Soviet] commitment to aiding Egypt in reconstruction and in rectifying the consequences of Zionist aggression." In turn, Egypt acknowledged and appreciated "the insoluble friendship of the Soviet Union" and in a demonstrable break from proceeding years, ".. .reaffirmed

[Egypt's] commitment to socialist development." Specifically, the Soviet Union offered its usual package of military and financial aid. However, the Soviets also invited two-thousand prominent Egyptians to Moscow for a film festival, Ukrainian literati

Evgenii Alexandrovich Evtushenko was commissioned to edit a poetry reader extolling the virtues of the Nile, and a joint commission was established to investigate further

Soviet-Egyptian nuclear cooperation. Scholars have frequently pointed out that Soviet entrenchment post-1967 stems more from Egypt's need for Soviet largesse than an honest troops surrendered to the Israelis. Although at the end of the Six Day War Egypt could still field a sizeable deployment, it lacked the mechanized equipment necessary for twentieth century warfare. 21 Ibid., 42. 22 SSSR i Blizhnevostochnoe uregulirovanie: dokumenty i materialy [The USSR and a Middle East settlement: documents and materials] (Moscow: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, 1989), 78. 23 Ibid., 78. 24 See George Breslauer, Soviet Strategy in the Middle East (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990),85-88 for a discussion of Soviet cultural diplomacy in Egypt. For information of Soviet-Egyptian nuclear cooperation, see Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Foxbats over Dimona (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 24-26 and 187-190. 26 commitment to better ties with Moscow. Whether their friendship was genuine and warm or pragmatic and contextual misses the point. Soviet foreign policy endeavored to improve relations with Cairo and in turn Soviet military strategy benefited from the

Kremlin's inroads.

In the aftermath of its decisive defeat in the June War, Egypt granted the Soviet

Union the most extensive and important naval support facilities that it ever acquired on foreign shores. By the fall of 1967, the USSR obtained routine access to Egyptian port facilities, which was formalized by a five-year agreement signed in March 1968. This stands in stark contrast to Nasser's previous position, which drew a clear distinction between anchoring rights, which he exploited as a means to influence the Soviets and deter the Israelis, and permanent bases, which he considered an untenable infringement on Egyptian sovereignty. Ashore, the Soviets were permitted to establish a command post, repair workshops, warehouses and barracks. By early 1969, Soviet warships began to make use of the repair and maintenance facilities at the Al Gabbari shipyard in

Alexandria, then being expanded with Soviet assistance, and by the spring of 1970, the

Soviets were beginning to use these facilities for major overhauls of diesel and nuclear

96 submarines. These bases were critical to the Soviet ability to confront the American

Sixth Fleet and resulted in the creation of the Soviet Navy's Fifth Operational Squadron 97 for Permanent Combat Duty in the Mediterranean. An article in Voennaia Mysl'

25 Nasser's speech on Radio Cairo domestic service. 8 August 1966. Cited in G.S. Dragnich, "The Soviet Union's quest for access to naval facilities in Egypt prior to the June War," Soviet Naval Policy: Objectives and Constraints, eds. K. Booth and J. McDonnell (New York: Praeger, 1975), 256. Geoffrey Williams, "The Soviet Naval Challenge," The Australian Journal of History and Politics Vol. 27, no. 3 (April 2008): 368-370. 27 The initial composition of this squadron included three cruisers, a brigade of twelve submarines, a submarine depot ship, eight anti-submarine ships, destroyers, deep-sea minesweepers, two intelligence gathering ships and a division of seven support vessels. Cited in Mikhail Monakov, "The Soviet Naval Presence in the Mediterranean at the Time of the Six Day War," The Soviet Union and the June 1967 War, 27 stressed the importance of clearing the American naval presence from the Mediterranean in order to isolate Greece and Turkey. This served to mitigate a potential NATO attack, striking north from Hellenic Thrace and the Turkish provinces of Edirne and Kirklareli.

Moreover, Soviet naval superiority in the Mediterranean would prevent American naval and amphibious operations along the Black Sea coast, while permitting the Soviet Navy to outflank NATO's land based defenses in Central Europe.

Shortly after the commencement of hostilities, Soviet non-nuclear military strategy in Central Europe arranged for an amphibious operation in Southern France, similar to the Second World War's Operation Dragoon. Without its bases in Egypt, the

Soviet Mediterranean Squadron would have lacked the ability either to evict American naval formations or conduct amphibious operations. A memo prepared by Gerhard

Schroder, the West German Minister of Defense, was equally cognizant of this fact. He wrote that a powerful formation of "Soviet war ships in the Mediterranean will contribute to militarily checking uncontrolled domination ... by the navies of the Western

Powers." Additionally, if the Soviet navy could restrict NATO forces from using the

Mediterranean, this would afford the leaders of North African states confidence in Soviet power, drawing them deeper into the Soviet sphere of influence, while simultaneously eroding Greek and Turkish loyalty to the Atlantic alliance by questioning its eds Yaccov Ro'i and Boris Morozov (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008), 167. Although the agreement to obtain bases on Egyptian soil was signed in March 1968, Grechko approved both the formation of the Fifth Eskadra from elements of the Thirteenth/Fourteenth Combined Squadron and received Gorshkov's requested squadron roster on the day after the cessation of military operations in June 1967. M.R. Bakhrov, "Voina protiv Severoatlanticheskii Soyuz: Chto den' griadushchii gotovit [The War Against NATO: What the future will bring,]" Voennaia Mysl" (October 1967): 87. 29 Ibid., 89. Again, as with Khamzatov's article, the Kremlin's military strategy outpaced the operational abilities of the Soviet armed forces. The Soviet Naval Infantry was not formed until 1961 and at its peak only numbered 18,000 troops. The Allied forces involved with operation Dragoon numbered about 200,000. 30 Cited in Walter Laqueur, The Soviet Union and the Middle East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 193. 28 effectiveness. A strong Soviet naval presence in the Mediterranean thus served two masters: the military, for whom it was an instrument of power, and the Foreign Ministry, for whom it was an instrument of coercion.

Let us now look a little closer at how these bases facilitated Soviet military strategy in the Southwestern TVD and enabled a dramatic increase in the yearly number of days deployed in the open water. In the fifties and sixties, the first problem that the

Soviet Navy encountered in high sea operations was a shortage of supply ships. As a result, in 1960, Gorshkov commissioned the construction of five oil-supertankers and appropriated three refrigerator vessels that were built for the Ministry of the Maritime.31

These modest logistical gains were insufficient. One author contends that the American

Sixth Fleet had a greater re-supply and replenishing capability than the Soviet Black and

Arctic Fleets combined. In 1960, the Black Sea Fleet logged only 1,267 ships days in the Mediterranean. Even the Italian fleet recorded a comparable figure of 1,151 ship days.

In 1965, due to increased supply capabilities this figure rose to 2,821. In late 1968, after

Moscow achieved unfettered access to Egyptian ports, Soviet ships days more than trebled to 8,099 in 1968, and peaked at 20,694 in 1974.33 In 1968, Soviet naval privileges enabled the formation of an independent Mediterranean Fleet, called the Fifth Eskadra.

It consisted of a broad array of surface and sub-surface ships, charged with a number of strategic objectives. In peacetime, they carried out close-in surveillance, referred to in the

West as "tattletales." They served the function of informing Soviet command authorities

Robert Whitten, "Soviet Sea Power in Retrospect: Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei G. Gorshkov and the Rise and Fall of the Soviet Navy," The Journal of Slavic Military Studies Vol. 11, no.2. (June 1998): 53. 32 Ibid., 54. Sergei Chernyavskii, "The Era of Gorshkov: Triumph and Contradictions," The Journal of Strategic Studies Vol. 28, no. 2 (April 2005): 289. For information on ship-days of western European navies, see Jen Veldmen, West European Navies and the Future (Den Helder: Royal Netherlands Naval College, 1980). The factoid regarding the Italian Navy was taken from page 79. 29 of Western force movements. During war, the ships would provide targeting information for Soviet naval and air units. Given the offensive capabilities of American carrier formations, information on their movements had enormous strategic value; an importance that was magnified considering that the Soviet Union did not launch its first western style aircraft carrier until 1980. Furthermore, movements of American naval formations provided insight into American intentions during international crises. During the Yom

Kippur War, the American Sixth Fleet remained well removed from the Levantine littoral. Even during the opening seventy-two hours of the conflict, when it appeared that

Israel might be defeated, the bulk of the American Mediterranean Squadron remained within a fifty-mile radius of their moorings in Crete and Cyprus. From the actions of the Sixth Fleet, the Politburo inferred that direct American intervention was unlikely.

The Egyptian bases permitted the replacement of Soviet auxiliaries by combat ships in the tattletale role. Until 1965, the Soviet Navy at times relied on unarmed merchant ships and fishing trawlers to shadow American and British naval forces in the

Mediterranean. Strategically, this made it less likely that the shadowed unit could elude pursuing ships through evasive high speed maneuvering, it increased the immediate military threat to the unit and it expressed Soviet interest in the force being shadowed.

Furthermore, the repair and storage facilities permitted the diversification of the types of ships deployed to the Mediterranean. The first Krivak class anti-submarine destroyer,

34 In 1969 the Soviet Moskva class helicopter carriers appeared, followed by the first of four aircraft carriers of the Kiev class in 1973. Both of these classes were capable only of operating helicopters and V/STOL aircraft (vertical/short take off and landing — similar to the British made BAE Harrier jump-jet and the Soviet equivalent Yak-38 Forger.) They lacked the deck length and design specifications to permit the take­ off and landing of fixed wing aircraft. 35 Georgiy Mirsky, "The Soviet Perception of the U.S. Threat," The Middle East and the United States, ed David W. Lesch (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 408. 36 Michael MccGwire, Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy (New York: Brookings Institute Press, 2005), 106. 30

Bditel'nyi (Watchful) deployed to the region in 1970. Guided missile cruisers of the

Kirov and Slava class followed in 1971 and 1972 respectively. Both Kirov and Slava class missile cruisers had operating ranges of approximately 2 000 kilometers.

Operating from the Black Sea Headquarters at Sevastopol, the maximum operational range of these warships would be slightly west of the Dardanelles. Without Egyptian facilities, these advanced ship-to-ship missile cruisers (SSM) would not have been able to operate in a strategically significant manner for a meaningful duration of time outside of the Black Sea. In the same vein, the first helicopter carrier, the Moskva, based in

Alexandria, was assigned to the Fifth Eskadra in 1969 and served as the flagship of the

First Soviet Mediterranean Anti-Submarine Warfare Squadron. The Moskva's 18

Kamov Ka-25 helicopters provided the Mediterranean Fleet advanced anti-submarine warfare capabilities, including radar, dipping sonar and magnetic anomaly detectors.

This was an important augmentation for Soviet strategic defense capabilities, whose aggrandizement appreciated further by Soviet efforts at oceanography. Again, Moscow's influence in Cairo proved pivotal.

In the early sixties, the Moscow-based P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanography undertook the ambitious exercise of mapping the geography and geology of the ocean floor. According to Institute Chairman Konstantin Federov, the purpose of the multi-year expedition was to enhance understanding of plate tectonics, oceanic dynamics, the interaction of the ocean and the atmosphere, marine optics and hydro acoustics. The

37 Raymond V.B. Blackburn, Navies of the World - Jane's Fighting Ships (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973), 376. Raymond V.B. Blackburn, Navies of the World - Jane's Fighting Ships (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967), 452. 39 Ibid., 461. George L. Pickard, Descriptive Physical Oceanography — Second Edition (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1975), 44. 31 mission was a success. In 1973, the Institute published its model of the structure of oceanic lithospheric plates, which soon thereafter was adopted by scientists around the world.41 However laudable the Soviet scientific advances, they significantly ameliorated a critical lacuna in Soviet strategic defense; Soviet ocean floor maps were outdated and inaccurate, and posed a number of concerns for the Soviet Navy. For example, inaccurate maps of ocean floor topography posed a danger to Soviet submarines. More importantly,

Moscow's lack of knowledge about the contours of the ocean floor permitted blind spots in which American, British, and French submarines could operate with a reduced fear of detection. In the same vein, the Soviet submarine flotilla could hardly attempt to evade detection in geological formations that it did not know existed.

Egypt played a considerable role in facilitating Soviet oceanographic efforts. In

December 1966, the Soviet oceanographic vessel Lenin started to map the contours of the

Mediterranean floor. The information gleaned dramatically altered Soviet cartography.

De-classified CIA reports claim that Soviet maps dramatically under-estimated the depths of the Levantine and Ionian Basins by as much as 1500 feet, as well as over estimated the depth of the Tyrrhenian Basin by as much as one-third. As Soviet oceanographic exercises advanced into the western Mediterranean, they encountered strenuous objections from Paris. In an interview with La Monde, President Charles de Gaulle claimed that such activities posed a grave risk to the security of the French Republic and stated that, "peaceful and productive relations between our two states are jeopardized by

Ibid., 45. The lithosphere includes the crust and the upper mantle, which constitute the rigid outer layer of the planet. The lithosphere is fragmented into tectonic plates that move independently of each other, causing earthquakes. 42 Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence. The Threat of Increased Soviet Naval Activity. December 1969, 8. 32

[Soviet] actions." Glibly, de Gaulle queried, "why is knowledge of the depth of the sea around Marseilles vital to the Soviet Union?" In response to this Parisian protest,

Moscow temporarily halted oceanographic activity in the western Mediterranean. A compromise proposal approved by French and Soviet delegates at a midlevel conference in January 1968 permitted Egyptian oceanographic vessels to conduct the remainder of the sea floor scanning in the Mediterranean, on the condition that the information would be shared with both the Soviet Union and France. Moscow simply leased the equipment, the crew and the vessel to the Egyptian government, and the enterprise continued as planned. In this example, Cairo served as an acceptable surrogate for both parties, providing critical knowledge for Soviet submariners and enhancing Soviet strategic abilities.

Although Soviet military doctrine accepted the notion of a non-nuclear super power confrontation, the Politburo was not naive about the possibility that a conventional war could turn nuclear. Sokolovskii's third edition of Voennaia Strategiia opined that,

"political and military developments now make nuclear war unlikely, but our capabilities must be able to deter any potential threat."46 The Soviet-Egyptian relationship afforded the Kremlin an enhanced deterrent capability; the bases enabled Moscow to confront the residual strike capability of American Polaris and Trident nuclear missile submarines

43 Cited in Jean-Claude Lattes, Les Relations Franco-Sovietiques: 1945-1975 (Paris: Payot Publishing, 1999), 163. For a concise survey of Soviet foreign policy with western European countries, see Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II: Imperial and Global (New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 1992). 44 Ibid, 163. 45 "Franco-Soviet Meeting a Success", The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Eastview Information Services, 21 January 1968. Moscow's sensitivity to French concerns is probably indicative of the Kremlin's desire to capitalize on French animosity towards NATO and the United States, which resulted in de Gaulle's decision to withdraw Paris from NATO's defense structure. V.D. Sokolovskii, Voennaia strategiia, 3' Edition [Military strategy] (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1968), 8. 33 stationed in the Mediterranean. Enhanced Soviet intelligence gathering operations and forward operating bases suggest that American submarines could no longer operate with relative impunity in the Mediterranean. From 1968 to 1976, Soviet naval bases in Egypt were key rest, re-supply and refurbishing stops for the recently deployed Yankee

Strategic Submarine Ballistic Nuclear fleet. CIA estimates approximated the deployment often to twelve Yankee-class submarines in the Mediterranean, out of a total seventy known units that existed in 1969. As the Yankee carried missiles with an initial range of

1,350 nautical miles, subsequently extended to 1,600 nautical miles, the Mediterranean squadron was simply too far removed to launch at targets on the eastern seaboard.49

Thus, the Yankee deployment in the Mediterranean served to destroy American nuclear submarines, but also to deter British and French SSBN forces from launching their missiles at targets within the Soviet Union. On land, the Soviet military operated under the assumption that a short and finite operation would end with Soviet control over

Europe, and the United States without a viable foothold on the Continent. Through either diplomatic suasion or the preponderance of military force, NATO European capitals would adopt a genial attitude towards the Soviet Union. Soviet military strategy assumed that its enhanced ability to confront the British and French SSBN forces, coupled with the rapid disintegration of European land-based resistance, reduced the possibility that

Soviet military strategy assumed that the United States would not launch its nuclear missiles in order to save its European allies. The French and British land based nuclear forces would be neutralized by air borne operations and conventional missile attacks. Soviet military planners assumed a degree of rationality and morality in British and French politicians: if faced with imminent defeat London and Paris would be unwilling to launch missiles at either the advancing Red Army or targets in the Soviet Union. Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence. The Threat of Increased Soviet Naval Activity. December 1969, 17. At this time, the Yankee was the most advanced Soviet submarine. That 17% of Yankee submarines were located in a body of water the size of Argentina, speaks to the strategic importance of the Mediterranean Sea. 4 Blackburn, Navies of the World - Jane's Fighting Ships 1967, 476. The distance from Gibraltar, the most western operating point of the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet, to New York City is 3,163 nautical miles - too great a range for the Yankee's missiles. 34

London or Paris would launch its nuclear arsenal at the Soviet Union. The enhanced abilities of Soviet reconnaissance allowed for an increased ability to locate, track, and in the event of conflict, destroy enemy submarines.

Admiral Gorshkov argued that the forward deployment of Soviet naval forces actually defended the homeland against the threat of attack by sea and land based delivery systems.5 Moscow's enhanced capability served the dual function of deterrence and strategic defense. As such, the role of the Soviet Navy was no longer limited to coastal protection. In a 1972 article in Morskoi Sbornik, Gorshkov articulated naval operations, permitted by initial Soviet military success in a world war, which were facilitated by the Egyptian bases.5 The first was defense against seaborne invasion and the need to attack such forces from the moment of their initial assembly. The other was the blockade of North America. The United States would not give up the struggle and retire to sulk in the Western Hemisphere. Washington's military-industrial base would be undamaged and NATO's navies could regroup in American ports. That the Egyptian bases enabled the initial forward deployment of Soviet naval squadrons was critical to the

Kremlin's military strategy. Although their role in subsequent military encounters, such as a blockade of the eastern seaboard, would be negligible, the potential for such an enterprise would be non-existent if not for Egyptian cooperation. Although Soviet military doctrine assumed that a nuclear strike on Soviet soil was unlikely, Soviet military strategy remained cognizant of the need to deter and destroy the potential threat.

50 This argument is expanded upon in his final article in "Voenno-morskie floty v voynakh i v mirnoe vremya [Navies in wars and in peacetime,]" Morskoy sbornik, no. 12 (Dec 1972): 44. 51 Admrial Sergei Gorshkov "Voenno-morskie floty v voynakh i v mirnoe vremya no. 12 [Navies in wars and peacetime,]" Morskoy sbornik, no. 9 (Sept 1972): 6-9. Although Gorshkov does not make specific reference to Egypt, it is difficult to see how the Soviet Union would have successfully evicted NATO forces from the Mediterranean if not for its bases in Egypt. Moreover, it would have been unthinkable to attempt to blockade the Eastern Seaboard if residual NATO elements remained in Soviet coastal zones. 35

The strategic benefits accrued to Moscow from the Soviet-Egyptian relationship enhanced its ability to do both.

The crucible of conflict further facilitated Soviet-Egyptian rapprochement.

Starting in 1969, Nasser attempted to rectify Egypt's strategic and military deficiencies vis-a-vis Israel. According to Mohammed Heikal, Ahmed Hassan Fiqi, Egypt's Assistant

Defense Minister, proposed a protracted, medium intensity bombardment of Israeli military positions on the east bank of the Suez Canal. The principal objective was to inflict incrementally greater casualties on the IDF, which would compel them to evacuate their positions. The Kremlin, publicly urged restraint, but privately praised Egypt's efforts. In response to an Israeli raid on the Red Sea port of Ras Zafrana on 9 September

1969, Grechko implored Egypt's Minister of Information Mohammed Faik to "be more daring ... and to strike at Israeli rear positions."53 The chief of the KGB mission in Cairo,

Vadim Kurpachenko, wrote to the Politburo on 14 September that, "now is the time to take advantage of [Egypt's] initiative and to increase our commitment... to [its] success."54 However, by mid-November the Egyptian offensive stalled, Israeli aircraft razed Egypt's SAM air-defense system and struck with impunity at rear military positions and industrial infrastructure. As Egypt's fortunes waned, Moscow did in fact increase its commitment to Cairo's success. By 30 January 1970, the first Soviet contingents of

Operation Kavkas arrived on Egyptian soil. However, Soviet munificence was not without a price.

Mohammed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East (New York: Harper, 1979), 71. 5 Zolotarev, Rossiia, 214. 54 Ibid., 278. 36

In exchange for Operation Kavkas, Nasser's government was presented with proposals that, in the event of world war, intertwined Soviet and Egyptian military operations. Soviet Vice Chief of the General Staff Evgenii Iaronodov proposed that, "the

Egyptian Armed Forces should function in concert with [the Soviet Army] to attain first- priority regional strategic goals."55 Although he abstained from defining these first- priority goals, he explained that, "a joint military command structure would allow for efficient and coordinated action." Nasser agreed to this request. Egyptian battle plans versus the Israelis were written in Arabic and Russian. Egyptian military divisions were reorganized along Soviet operating lines, which stressed the importance of combined operations. By 1971, 20,000 Soviet military advisors were scattered across the country.

Ostensibly, they operated the Egyptian SAM shield. In actuality, Soviet advisors were embedded in Egyptian military formations down to the platoon level. This not only heightened Cairo's military effectiveness, but also ensured a harmonized standard of training and uniform tactical principles that would facilitate military cooperation in times of war. Although specific elements of inter-army cooperation remained ill defined, in his final meeting with Nasser, Gorshkov proposed a broad program for inter-navy cooperation. He proposed that in the event of war, the Egyptian navy, which by 1970 was larger than all but four NATO country navies, aid the Soviet Mediterranean squadron in

CO clearing the eastern region of the Sea. This cooperation implied an Egyptian role in

V.V. Naumkin ed., Blizhnevostochnyi konflikt: Iz dokumentov arkhiva vneshneipolitiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii [The Middle East conflict: Documents from the archive of the foreign ministry of the Russian Federation] (Moscow: The Insitute of Military History of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, 1999), 341. 56 Ibid., 342. 57 Amnon Sella, Soviet Political and Military Conduct in the Middle East (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), 60. 58 El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 92. By 1970, the Egyptian Navy contained 52 ships of varying sizes and abilities. Most of them were SSM boats designed for coastal defense and interdiction. In terms of 37 confronting residual NATO naval elements, the sequestration and neutralization of the

Israeli Navy depending on its state of belligerency, the interdiction of merchant marine elements from hostile states and the protection of Warsaw Pact shipping. Although

Nasser agreed to Gorshkov's proposal in principle and requested "time to consult with his cabinet," his death twenty-eight days later prevented a serious discussion. Nonetheless, the evolution of Soviet military strategy assumed Egypt's willing participation in a global conflict and allocated to the Egyptian Armed Forces definitive tasks, which promoted the security of the Soviet Union.

After the deployment of Operation Kavkas, the Soviet military took a more prominent role in advocating for stronger Soviet-Egyptian ties. In fact, a senior KGB official who defected to the west in 1977 noted that in the late 1960s and early 1970s his associates termed Egypt a Soviet republic due to the extent of Soviet involvement and its military presence.5 Moscow desired to maintain current naval concessions but also to obtain aerodromes with exclusive use privileges. Moreover, objectives included strengthening the Soviet naval presence in the Indian Ocean and its littoral zones in order to counter the Anglo-American presence, and to render more efficiently diplomatic and military support to India. A strong naval presence in the Indian Ocean would secure maritime routes to the Soviet Far East and would serve as a reminder to the Chinese of growing Soviet strength. Finally, in the event of hostilities, a Soviet naval presence in the

Indian Ocean would permit the navy to monitor and interdict oil shipments destined for

Western Europe and Japan from the Gulf States.

NATO countries, the Egyptian Navy was smaller only than the American, British, French and Italian navies. Christopher Andrew, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 1990), 86. 38

As we have seen, the acquisition of naval facilities was a paramount concern for the Soviet Navy. However, Gorshkov appreciated that in the near future he would not have the ships that were vital for the formation of western style tactical fleet formations, namely aircraft carriers.60 To that end, it was imperative to seek agreements on the allocation of airfields in Egypt for the deployment of intelligence gathering and anti­ submarine aviation, as well as for the defense of vulnerable surface naval formations.

"Modern navies," wrote Gorshkov, "are strategically vulnerable and limited in their capabilities without land or sea based air cover."61 If Nasser was hesitant about leasing naval facilities, he was vehemently opposed to granting unlimited Soviet access to aerodromes. In an interview with El Akhbar, given twenty-two days after the formalization of Soviet naval rights in Egypt, Nasser stated that, "granting the Soviets further concessions on our soil is an expression of [their] dominance that infringes on

[our] independence and sovereignty." However, a 20 May 1968 visit to Cairo by

Gorshkov and Lieutenant General Petr Lashchenko convinced Nasser to change his mind.

The Kremlin secured unlimited access to Cairo-West airfield, including exclusive use guarantees and storage facilities for 15,000 tons of jet fuel. The reasons for Nasser's about face remain unclear; however, it was probably linked to Soviet promises of increased military supplies. Podgornyi, in a November 1968 visit, implicitly sought a quid pro quo that granted Egypt arms, military supplies and fifteen state-of-the-art MiG

60 Gorshkov expands upon the importance of aircraft carriers to military and diplomatic efforts of modern states in "Voenno-morskie floty v voynakh i v mirnoe vremya [Navies in wars and in peacetime,]" Morskoy sbornik, no. 3 (May 1971): 17. 61 Sergei Gorshkov, "Voenno-morskie floty v voynakh i v mirnoe vremya [Navies in wars and in peacetime,]" Morskoy sbornik, no. 8 (August 1972), 44. 62 Mahmoud El Hamza, "Egypt Stands Firm," El Akhbar, 2 November 1967, cited in El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 193. Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 43. 39

25 Foxbats, in return for what amounted to Soviet de-facto sovereignty over naval bases and the Cairo-West airfield.64 This was a fateful request, as Cairo-West would later serve as the center of a combined air regiment of naval aviation, which included Tupolev Tu-16 planes in both attack and intelligence configurations, Beriev Be-12 anti-sub hydroplanes and Antonov An-12 transports. By mid-1969, the Soviet request had been satisfied.

Soviet officials monitored access to their facilities in Egypt; visitors who requested to enter obligatorily produced Soviet issued documentation.

By the late 1960's the Soviet Union awoke to the realization that the Indian Ocean was "the headquarters of American imperialism in the southern hemisphere." 5 One

Soviet estimate forecast the routine deployment of over twenty-five Polaris and Trident- missile submarines in the Indian Ocean basin region.66 As a result of Moscow's 'late- entry' into the Indian Ocean and the difficulty of establishing a tangible presence, Soviet ambassador to the UN Yakov Alexandravich Malik proposed the creation of a nuclear- free zone from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Malacca. Moscow's proposal was entirely self-serving. The United States and Great Britain unreservedly rejected its suggestion. In June 1968, Mikhail D. Sytenko, the Director of the Department of the

Middle East for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, opined in a memorandum to Soviet

Ambassador to the United States Anatolii F. Dobrynin that, "[we] face two problems to building influence in the Indian Ocean: Israel's closure of the Suez Canal and the conservative monarchies of the Gulf." Coupled with Sytenko's pessimistic

Nikolai Podgomyi, Selected Speeches and Writings (Toronto: Pergamon Press, 1980), 33. Podgornyi stated in a speech to the Egyptian National Assembly that, "we are all brothers in the fight against imperialist aggression. We ask for the capability to ensure our mutual protection." 5 Leonid Brezhnev, "Speech in the Kremlin in Honor of President Nasser," in Leonid Brezhnev: Rechi i stat'i (Moscow: The Publishing House of Political Literature, 1970), 173. 66 B. Zabirov, "Aden: Chto dal'she [Aden: What's next]" Aziia iAfrika Segodnia, May (1968): 13. 67 Zolotarev, Rossiia, 154. 40 perspectives, the Kremlin also suffered from a lack of historical presence, and what one

CIA intelligence report termed, "a cultural insensitivity bordering on hubris." Yet, no more than two years after Sytenko's memo, the Soviet Union established itself as a naval power in the Indian Ocean and forged links with regional actors that lasted until the fall of the Soviet state. This process was facilitated by military-strategic gains accrued to

Soviet policy makers from the Soviet-Egyptian relationship, which were pressed for by the Soviet military. Moreover, Soviet penetration into the Indian Ocean indicated the continued evolution of Soviet non-nuclear military strategy. Let us first examine Soviet military strategy in the Indian Ocean.

The Indian Ocean basin region is encompassed in the Southern TVD, whose character differed fundamentally from that of the others. In both the European and Far

Eastern TVDs, the Soviets were faced by the in-place military capabilities of potential enemies. In the Far East, the Kremlin's main objective was to counter the threat of

Chinese territorial aggression. In Europe, the threat was more complex, but the Soviets had to seize substantial tracts of NATO territory in the early stages of a general war if they were to avoid ultimate defeat. None of these circumstances pertained to the Southern

TVD. The USSR was not faced by an in-place threat of territorial aggression across its southern borders. Nonetheless, in the event of world war, what were Soviet objectives in the region and what role did Egypt play in their facilitation?

Egypt was unique in Soviet military plans, as it is the only country, besides the

Soviet Union, allocated to two TVDs - the Southwestern and the Southern.69 Although it

Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence. The Growth of the Soviet Commitment in the Middle East. January 1971, 1. Sokolovskii, Voennaia Strategiia, 3r ed., 16. It is only in the final edition of Sokolovskii's opus that Egypt is positioned in both the Southwestern and Southern TVD. 41 played a much larger role in the former, its role in the latter was primarily as a base of naval and aeronautical operations. Principally, the Soviets wanted to secure an alternate line of communication with the Far Eastern TVD. The only transportation route to the region, the Trans-Siberian railway, was vulnerable to disruption. Prior to the 1969 Sino-

Soviet border conflict along the Ussuri River, CIA estimates contend that the Soviet

Union had only a four-week stockpile of ammunition and fuel in the region. Air transport may have been feasible to replenish certain goods. However, in 1970 the Soviet

Union was estimated to have 650 transport aircraft, the majority of those being the

Ilyushin 11-76 Candid with a payload of approximately 40 tons.71 The CIA estimated that given the size of the Far Eastern military deployment, it would require more than 5,000 tons of supplies per day. Given the needs of the military deployment, the quantity and payload capacity of the transport aircraft and the paucity of available land transport routes, maritime transport was the only feasible option to equip this TVD.

In the event of world war, Soviet military planners assumed that the Suez Canal would be unavoidably damaged and as such, started to press the Egyptian government for expanded naval privileges at Berenice, their sole Red Sea base. Heikal reports that First

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vasilii V. Kuznetsov, raised the issue with El Sadat in an 11 March 1971 visit to Cairo.73 El Sadat's principal demand, having recently forfeited American food shipments over military assistance to the Palestinian Liberation

70 Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence. The Consequences of the Sino-Soviet Split. February 1972, 2. 71 Glassman, Arms for the Arabs, 178. This footnote refers to the quantity of transport aircraft in the Soviet Armed Forces. For general information on the Ilyushin 11-76 Candid see, Canadian American Strategic Review, "Background: Airlifter Comparisons," http://www.casr.ca/bg-airlift-il76.htm. accessed on 8 March 2009. 72Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence. The Consequences of the Sino-Soviet Split. February 1972, 4. 73 Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar, 104. 42

Organization, was the guarantee of 1.5 million tons of wheat per year for the next three years. Kuznetsov vacillated, and claimed that such a request would depend on the vicissitudes of the Politburo and Mother Nature. Upon communication with Grechko, El

Sadat's request was approved, even though the Soviet Union was experiencing wheat shortages averaging 8.7 million tons per year from 1965 to 1975.74 The expanded naval privileges included priority access to enhanced repair facilities, a dredged harbor capable of handling ships of an increased tonnage and storage facilities in excess of 750,000 tons. These harbor facilities transformed Berenice into a storage and transport hub.

Coupled with previously granted aerodromes and taking advantage of existing rail and road infrastructure, the closure of the Suez Canal would not prevent the transport of goods from its facilities on the Mediterranean coast to those on the Red Sea. From there, the supplies could be transported to Soviet harbors in the Far East, principally

Vladivostok.

The Soviet military position in the Indian Ocean was further enhanced by an

Egyptian military debacle; not the Six Day War, but Egypt's involvement in the Yemeni

Civil War. By 1967, Nasser's escalated commitment to the Republican leader Abdullah

El Sallal, against the guerrilla forces of the Saudi-supported Mutawakilite monarch Imam

El Badr, exhausted Cairo's military and placed further strain on a quickly shrinking treasury. In order to salvage Egypt's premier position in the Arab world, Moscow decided to underwrite the continued deployment of over 70,000 Egyptian troops to

Yemen. At first, Soviet interest in the civil war was principally concerned with delivering

74 Ibid., 105. 75 El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 111. Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile: The Soviet - Egyptian Influence Relationship since the June War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 82. 43 a tangible success to Nasser's battered regime. Egypt's abject military failure prompted

11 the deployment, in late 1969, of 3,000 Soviet military advisors to the fledging Republic.

In turn, both Egyptian and Soviet officials pressured El Sallal's regime to grant the

Kremlin naval concessions on the strategically vital islands of Perim and Socotra. On

31 January 1970, these bases became a reality and a 1971 CIA intelligence report claimed that Moscow had de-facto sovereignty over the 3,796 square kilometers of both islands.

This enabled the construction of a very low frequency communication facility on Socotra, which implied contact with submerged submarines. Moreover, the location of the facility could only mean that the Soviet Navy wished to communicate with units operating in the

Indian Ocean.

From these facilities, Moscow ensconced itself as a regional power in the Indian

Ocean basin. This was a boon for Soviet foreign policy in the area, as the Kremlin was better able to support diplomatically and militarily its key local client, India. India's initial relations with the Soviet Union were ambivalent, guided by Nehru's decision to remain non-aligned and his government's active participation in the Commonwealth of

Nations. However, in February 1954, the Eisenhower administration announced the provision of arms to Pakistan, followed a month later by its entry into the South East

" Rubinstein, Red Star, 87. 78 Ibid., 87-88. Socotra is a small archipelago of four islands located approximately 250 kilometers east from the Horn of Africa. It is strategically located at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden. Perim is a small volcanic island with a natural harbor strategically located in the Strait of Mandeb at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. 79 Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence. The Growth of the Soviet Commitment in the Middle East (January 1971), 8. 80 Previously, the Australian government announced on 17 May 1963 that it had signed an agreement with the United States to build a similar facility on the North West Cape of Australia. Moreover, in December 1965, a joint Anglo-American fifty-year agreement for the use of Diego Garcia was signed; the island and the surrounding Chagos archipelago having been hived off from Mauritius before it was granted independence. A second VLF facility was built on Diego Garcia. Ol

Asian Treaty Organization and, subsequently, the Baghdad Pact. These agreements ensured Pakistan a supply of sophisticated military hardware and economic assistance.

The developing situation alarmed New Delhi and since Pakistan also bordered the Soviet

Union, it granted Moscow the necessity as well as the opportunity to develop its relations with India. It was in this context, in April 1959, that India and the Soviet Union first exchanged military attaches. Moscow also supported India's position vis-a-vis Portugal on Goa, which was reintegrated as an Indian union territory in December 1961. Yet, it was in the context of the June 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict that diplomatic relations reached new heights of cordiality. The Soviet Union's declared neutrality simultaneously exacerbated relations with the Chinese while improved those with India.

However, Moscow's benevolent neutrality excluded India's access to Soviet military largesse. This was primarily indicative of the embryonic state of the Sino-Soviet split and a genuine Soviet desire to ameliorate their differences in the near future.

However, even if Moscow wanted to supply India, such ambitions were problematic.

Moscow was denied use of Pakistani and Afghani airspace to shuttle even medical supplies and cold weather clothing, let alone ammunition and spare parts, to the Indian

Army. The Kremlin also lacked the necessary maritime fleet to launch a supply effort of Of any consequence. In fact, trade with India actually decreased during 1962. However, as the Sino-Soviet split widened in the 1960s, Moscow became more amenable to engendering better relations with New Delhi. This process involved arms sales totaling SEATO, created in February 1955, was a hastily contrived smorgasbord of countries, including the United States, Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan, with its raison d'etre similar to that of NATO. 82 Rao Chandrashekhar, "Indo-Soviet Economic Relations." Asian Survey, Vol. 13, No. 8. (Aug 1973): 794. 83 Raymond Kasatkin, Unlikely Allies: Indo-Soviet Relations from 1955-1975 (London: Black Bird Press, 1980), 67. 84 Ibid., 69. 85 Chandrashekhar Indo-Soviet Economic Relations, 795. 45

$950 million and $210 million in low interest long-term loans. The Soviet Union offered India new avenues of trade and economic assistance. By 1965, Moscow was the second largest investor in India's economy. In appreciation, India granted the Soviet navy up to three yearly scheduled visits at its Eastern Naval Command centre in

Vishakhapatnam, as well as docking privileges in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

However, it was within the context of the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War where Soviet diplomatic and military activity vis-a-vis India was most active and beneficial. The

Soviet ability to render this support was greatly facilitated by its enhanced presence in the region, made possible by its bases in Egypt. American State Department records contend that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union stockpiled as much as one-quarter of its yearly production of war material in bases on foreign soil. This served two purposes. In the event of world war, it ensured that if supply depots and their means of replenishment were destroyed within the Soviet Union, there was a strategic reserve of war material.

Western countries would be loath to strike at facilities, albeit Soviet ones, in third party non-Warsaw Pact countries. In the case of Egypt, such an attack could have deleterious effects on relations with Muslim nations. More pertinent, Soviet military caches enabled the Kremlin's rapid response to regional crises. During the lead-up to the 1971 Indo-

Pakistani War, one estimate contends that more than half of Soviet aid to India came from stockpiles in Egypt.90 Much to Cairo's dismay, the Soviet Union even transferred

R.T. Sharma, The Soviet Union and India: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship (London: Pergamon Publishing, 1988), 107. 87 Chandrashekhar Indo-Soviet Economic Relations, 795. Sharma, The Soviet Union and India, 75. 89 Department of State Publications 11355, Volume XXXIX: European Security, 1969-1976, Document 197. 90 Sharma, The Soviet Union and India, 107. 46 the fifteen Strella SAM-3 batteries surrounding the Aswan High Dam to New Delhi.91 In

1989, Moscow created the Council of Veterans of the War in Egypt. One sailor, stationed at Berenice testified to the Council that in the weeks before the conflict "entire days involved the transfer of spare parts, ammunition, machinery and medical supplies onto large freighters. We did not know where they were going, but we thought to India or

Vietnam."92 Afghani airspace was still closed to Soviet military flights. Soviet requests to Tehran asking for the over-land transit of goods to Chahabar and Bandar Abbas on the

Arabian Sea were rebuffed. Egypt served as the only large-scale supply and transit point from which to supply India. These supplies were critical to New Delhi's success.

Because American Congressional sanctions against Pakistan prevented any consequential

American aid from reaching Islamabad, in merely thirteen days the Indian Army managed to secure the unconditional surrender of over 400,000 members of the Pakistani armed forces.

The early years of the Brezhnev era saw a shift from a wartime strategy founded on intercontinental nuclear preemption, to one designed to forgo NATO's use of nuclear weapons and hence avoid the nuclear devastation of the Soviet Union. The re- conceptualization of Soviet military doctrine necessitated the reevaluation and re- articulation of Soviet military and strategic objectives on a global scale. Egypt, as both a geographic entity and an active diplomatic partner, became linked to Moscow's creation of geo-strategic objectives designed to enhance the security of the Soviet Union. After the

91 Robert O. Friedman, Soviet Policy Towards the Middle East since 1970. (Westport: Praeger Security International, 1982), 88. V. Safonov, ed., Grif sekretno sniat. Kniga ob uchastii Sovetskikh Voennosluzhashikh vArabo- Israelskom konflikte [Security classification removed: A book about the participation of the Soviet military in the Arab-Israeli Conflict], (Moscow: The operations of Soviet veterans in Egypt, 1988), 153. 93 Friedman, Soviet Policy, 93. 47

Six Day War, the Kremlin obtained unrestricted access and de-facto sovereignty over facilities in Egypt; the Soviet leadership was able to implement plans for the creation of an immediate counterweight to American military might in the Southwestern and

Southern TVDs. From this point, the Soviet-Egyptian relationship approached a military- colonial dynamic, where the influx of Soviet weapon systems, armed personnel, spare parts and war material professedly served Egypt's interests vis-a-vis Israel. However, the boon to Moscow's pursuit of global strategic and military objectives was unmistakable.

The fruits of the Moscow-Cairo nexus permitted the creation of an independent

Soviet naval squadron. This greatly ameliorated the strategic deficiencies faced by

Moscow in light of the broad array of capabilities possessed by the American Sixth Fleet.

In peacetime, the squadron benefited from heightened intelligence gathering abilities that allowed for the tracking and targeting of NATO naval elements. In wartime, the presence of a larger, self-sustaining squadron increased the potency of Soviet maritime activity, and permitted the development of operational strategies separate from the Eurasian theatre. Soviet involvement in Egypt's Yemeni debacle allowed for the sustainable and long-term penetration of the Indian Ocean basin region. This facilitated Soviet diplomatic activity in the area, resulting in a durable and beneficial relationship with India that culminated in the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. Certainly,

Moscow's relationship with Egypt facilitated the expression of a number of global military and strategic objectives. As we shall see in the next chapter, the Moscow-Cairo nexus also facilitated the expression of Soviet objectives in the Third World. 48

Chapter Two: The Soviet-Egyptian Relationship and the Kremlin's Objectives in the Third World

Elements of the scholarly community regard Soviet relations with the Third

World a considerable failure. Import-substitution industrialization and mega-project construction, the foci of Soviet economic development, were calamities for developing economies. As such, the socialist model lost political and economic capital as post- independence euphoria gave way to atrophy and instability. Moscow's heavy involvement in the Third World, save Vietnam and Cuba, resulted in few tangible successes. Yet, even these few triumphs placed a considerable financial burden on the

Soviet system. During the waning years of the Cold War, Donald Page claimed that opinions and perceptions of the Soviet Union, and socialism as a political and economic system in the decolonized arena would have benefited had the Kremlin simply chosen to remain aloof from regional affairs.2 The Soviet Union had, however, a long-term impact in rendering military assistance. Moscow supported militarily, with few reservations, any regime that was anti-imperialist and especially if privileged access was provided to the

Soviet Union.

By the mid-seventies, Soviet relations with the Third World hinged on Moscow's ability to provide vast quantities of war material. There were fewer ribbons to be cut at

Soviet financed industrial mega-projects and queues of Third World diplomats no longer waited for photo-ops with visiting Soviet plenipotentiaries. In spite of this, notions that

1 Written during the Cold War, the following titles provide a survey of this historiographical stream: Duncan W. Raymond, Soviet Policy in Developing Countries (Waltham: Ginn-Blaisdell, 1970), Andrezj Korbonski and Francis Fukuyama, The Soviet Union and the Third World: The Last Three Decades (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), Elizabeth Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World: An Economic Bind (New York: Praeger, 1983) and Michael Radu, The USSR and Africa: Soviet Power Compromised (Coral Gables: Advanced International Studies Centre, 1980). 2 Donald Page, Soviet Foreign Policy and the Third World (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1986), 45- 67. 49

Soviet-Third World relations were a failure are suspect and misconstrue Moscow's overarching aim in the region. Roland Aiders claimed that Moscow's Third World strategy foremost endeavored to increase its own power.3 As such, the unwillingness of the Third World to embrace socialist political and economic paradigms, and a lack of reliable, steadfast clients was tantamount to Moscow's failure. Yet, there are two concerns with this rationale. First, Moscow's overarching objective in the Third World was not to increase its influence in decolonized capitals. Rather, it was to weaken

American influence and to prevent Pax Americana. During the late sixties and early seventies, Moscow's Third World tactics shifted from a multi-pronged approach grounded in economic, political and military support, to a policy firmly, though not exclusively, cemented in arms sales. Moscow realized that considerable economic and political inputs into the Third World failed to produce commensurate reductions in

American influence. A tactical shift in the pursuit of Soviet objectives should not be conflated with the failure of Moscow's policy. Rather, it indicates refinement and increased efficiency in the pursuit of pre-existing objectives.

Second, long term Soviet military assistance resulted in the militarization of Third

World politics, which was the single greatest variable in the marginalization of American power and influence. The path to weakening American power and strengthening Soviet security in the Third World lay not through steel mills and high dams, but through small arms and ammunition. Washington endured a $686 billion indemnity over its

3 Roland Aiders, Soviet Objectives in the Third World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981), 9. 4 This line of reasoning has been adopted by a post-Cold War revisionist school, most clearly articulated by the likes of Richard Remneck, Reinterpreting Soviet-Third World Relations (Boulder: Westview, 1996) and Bruce Porter, The Soviet Union and Africa: Brezhnev's African Policy (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1999). 50 involvement in Vietnam.5 Though estimates vary, Moscow's support of North Vietnam cost a comparatively meager $6 billion.6 Moreover, Washington's pursuit of its vital interests had to be interpreted more restrictively, in a way that largely precluded the use of military means to cause a political change of alignment or an improvement in the political-military situation of a pro-American client regime. This sharply narrowed strategic outlook was a consequence of increased domestic pressures that arose out of the

Vietnam experience; an experience largely shaped by Soviet arms shipments to the North

Vietnamese. The fear of involvement in another Vietnam and the presence of Soviet arms altered the ability of the United States to act forcefully in ambiguous and complex political situations. The Soviet role in the militarization of the Third World did more to advance its regional objectives than financing the construction of a dozen Aswan High

Dams. Moscow realized that, with comparatively modest outlays, the Soviet Union could alter the international environment in ways that weakened American power and strengthened Soviet security.

As measured by its ability to marginalize American influence and weaken

American power, Soviet foreign policy in the Third World was far from a demonstrable failure. Although military assistance became the largest head of the Soviet hydra, the

Kremlin's courtship of the Third World involved a host of tactics, singularly aimed at weakening American strength and increasing Soviet security. The pursuit of these tactics greatly leveraged the Soviet-Egyptian relationship. These included diplomatic

5 Stephen Daggett, CRS Report to Congress: Cost of Major U.S. Wars (Washington: Foreign Press Centre U.S. Department of State, 24 July 2008), 2, Robins Edmonds, Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1983), 65. 7 The USSR's reputation for credibility as an arms dealer is based on a demonstrable record of dependability, consistency and capability. It was a reliable patron and protector, openly supportive of major clients who request assistance against external attack, against internal threats, and against pressure from Washington backed regional adversaries. 51 normalization with the new nations of the Third World, strategic denial aimed at preventing the acquisition and exploitation of military, political and economic opportunities by hostile states, and the establishment of footholds in heretofore indifferent environments. In the same vein, Egypt played a critical role in assisting Soviet diplomatic, military and economic relations with the states of the Third World. In situations where achieving diplomatic traction proved problematic, the Kremlin leveraged its relationship with Cairo. In many cases, Egyptian officials actually accompanied Soviet diplomats as they established various linkages in decolonized capitals. In many cases,

Soviet economic access depended upon Egyptian diplomatic assistance. Although the benefits of Soviet economic support were dubious, Soviet aid often endeavored to develop key strategic resources that were either underdeveloped or nonexistent, with the aim of preventing American access. By the end of the Khrushchev era, there was a greater appreciation of the enormous and long-term character of the barriers to the socio- economic transformation of states committed to non-capitalist development. Many western observers opined that the costs of Soviet involvement in the Third World far outweighed any potential returns on their investment; thus predicting a general Soviet retreat from the decolonized world. Yet, the pattern of Moscow's involvement in the

Third World revealed a deepening commitment, a course of action enhanced by

Moscow's ties with Cairo.

G. Kim, "Sovetskii Soyuz v natsionalno-osvoboditelnoe dvizheniye [The Soviet Union in national liberation movements]. Mirovaia ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniye, No. 9 (1965): 25-26. 9 Gloria Yodfat, The Soviet Union and the Third World (London: Croom Helm, 1966), 186-205. Yodfat predicted a general Soviet retreat in the decolonized world due to the costs of involvement, the risks of super-power military confrontation and the distraction that the Third World posed to the maintenance of Soviet suzerainty over Eastern Europe. 52

Although the Soviet-Egyptian relationship eventually disintegrated in a fury of accusations and recriminations, the decline of the relationship from 1972 to 1975 fundamentally altered Moscow's approach to the Third World. The shift from economic to military assistance was indebted to changing Soviet attitudes regarding the utility of large-scale economic and political aid. From 1955 to 1975, Moscow dispensed billions of dollars to Cairo, yet Egypt's compliance and cordiality were not guaranteed. As bilateral tensions started to mount, particularly after El Sadat expelled Soviet advisors in July

1972, the Kremlin reevaluated its Third World tactics. Egypt, one of the largest beneficiaries of Soviet economic largesse, adopted contrarian positions and policies that spurred Moscow's shift towards lower risk and less involved tactics in the Third World.

The shift towards military assistance facilitated the objective of weakening American power and marginalizing Washington's influence in developing countries. Largely, this tactical shift drew upon the lessons of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship.

However, before the Kremlin could implement a change of tactics in its relations with the Third World, it first needed to establish a diplomatic presence. Let us begin by examining how Moscow's Cairo nexus facilitated political normalization with recently decolonized countries. Egypt was one of the founding and most active states of the non- aligned movement. Throughout the fifties and sixties, it acquired considerable political capital throughout the Third World. At the second non-aligned conference in Cairo, 5 to

10 October 1964, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah lauded Nasser as "a great

For a general scholarly survey of the non-aligned movement see Peter Willetts, The Non-Aligned Movement: The Origins of a Third World Alliance (New York: Nicholas Publishing, 1978). For specific treatment of Egypt and the non-aligned movement, see Y. Etinger, Nasser, Nehru and Tito: The Founders of Non-Alignment (New York: Praeger, 1973), 24-98 specifically. 53 statesmen who [demonstrated] the viability of a third-way in global politics."11 Soviet diplomats took advantage of the increased third party presence in Cairo, which stemmed from its preeminent non-aligned position, to establish relations and conduct negotiations with other states. For example, in the weeks before Malian President Modibo Keita withdrew his country from the French Community in August 1962, Gabriel Traore, Chief of Staff of the Malian military, met with Soviet military attache to Egypt Anton A.

Kolovskii on two separate occasions. In October 1962, surplus Soviet military equipment as well as four dozen Soviet military advisors arrived in Bamako.13

Cairo was used frequently as a meeting place for a number of reasons. It served as neutral third-party territory to test diplomatic waters without the commitment of sending representatives to respective capitals. This, in turn, enabled recently de-colonized countries to avoid the potential complication of being seen cavorting with the Soviet

Union, and thus troubling already tense relations with former colonial masters. Although independence was relished and celebrated in decolonized capitals, the former British colonies, for example, were still largely dependent on financial assistance and economic expertise provided by their former colonial power. In the case of Guinea, the first African nation under French suzerainty to gain its independence on 2 October 1958, an agreement to exchange ambassadors between Conakry and Moscow was signed at a reception in

Cairo. As Guinea's declaration of independence was met with the immediate cessation of

11 Cited in Willetts, The Non-Aligned Movement, 87. 1 Robert Dolve, Soviet Policy in West Africa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 109. 13 Ibid., 110. 54

French financial assistance, the rapprochement proved timely as the Soviet Union intervened to support the completion of a copper mine in Mamou province.

As the decolonization process hastened in the sixties, Moscow signed over 45 treaties in Cairo of various scope and magnitude with decolonized countries.15 For example, in October 1965 Moscow signed an 'Agreement on Agro-Technical

Cooperation' with Algeria and an 'Agreement on Telecommunications and Radio

Cooperation' with Niger.16 An integral, though often overlooked aspect of the Kremlin's attempt to build influence in the Third World, was the establishment of an overwhelming diplomatic presence in decolonized capitals. After Eyadema Gnassingbe's 13 January

1967 bloodless coup d'etat of the Togolese government, Moscow started to flood Lome with Soviet diplomats. By the end of 1967, there was one Soviet diplomat for every 250

Togolese citizens.17 Here too, Egypt facilitated Soviet efforts to construct relationships.

During Nasser's leadership of the Organization of African Unity from 17 July 1964 to 21

October 1965, the Soviet Union was the only non-African nation invited to the 1964 and

1965 OAU summits. During the 1964 summit, the Soviet Union agreed to exchange ambassadors with the newly independent Malawi, provide technical assistance to complete the final phase of Ghana's Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam, and offer agricultural and technical specialists to N'Djamena in order to construct an irrigation system centered on Lake Chad.18

G.I. Mirskii, Tretii mir: Obshchestvo, vlast', armiia [The Third World: society, power, army] (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 77. 15 Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile: The Soviet-Egyptian Influence Relationship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 172. 16 Ibid., 174. 17 In 1967 there were roughly 8,800 Soviet diplomats working in Togo, which had a population of just over 2.2 million people. 18 Djibril Tamsir Niane and J. Suret-Canale, Histoire de I'Afrique Occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), 38-67. 55

However, Soviet entree into Third World capitals was not always so simple. The first President of the Ivory Coast, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, twice turned down Moscow's request to exchange ambassadors, and in early 1961 rejected Soviet financial assistance to aid in the mechanization of Yamoussoukro's highly profitable cocoa industry.19

Bilateral relations stalled, due in large part to Houphouet-Boigny's palpable disdain of socialism, and available financial assistance from the United States. A 1962 article in

Aziia i Afrika Segodnia denounced the exploitation of Ivory Coast's coffee and cocoa

90 plantation workers at the hands of monopo-capitalists. Bilateral relations were non­ existent. However, during the 1966 OAU summit in Addis Ababa, Gamsy El Hussani,

Nasser's Minister for African Affairs, facilitated the completion of a 'Memorandum of 9 i

Understanding for Future Relations' between the Soviet Union and the Ivory Coast.

Nine months later, the first Soviet consulate opened in Abidjan, the economic centre of the country. Although the relationship was largely inconsequential in terms of benefits for either state, it serves as a tangible example of Egypt's role as an intermediary in aiding Moscow's foreign policy agenda.

Cairo played a considerable role in advancing Moscow's economic interests in the

Third World. To be sure, Soviet economic assistance, with or without Egyptian 99 mediation, was generally costly, inefficient and went unappreciated by recipient states.

There were simply too many complications: cement that caked in tropical rain on the 1 Ibid., 54. The name Ivory Coast was the official name of the country from independence until 1985 when it was officially change to Cote d'lvoire. 20 V.S. Rudnev, "Bereg Slonovoi Kosti i Amerikanskaia imperiia [The Ivory Coast and American imperialism,]" Aziia i Afrika Segodnia (October 1962): 33-36. 21 Mohrez Mahmoud El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations 1945-1985 (London: Macmillian Press, 1987), 158. 22 For discussions about the efficacy and effectiveness of Soviet economic assistance, see Alvin Rubinstein, Moscow's Third World Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 59-79 and Guan-fu Gu, "Soviet Aid to the Third World: An Analysis of Its Strategy," Soviet Studies 35, no. 1 (January 1983): 71- 89. 56 docks of Burma and Guinea; a pharmaceutical plant in India that produced obsolete antibiotics; heavy machinery that arrived months before factories had actually been constructed; and plants that were too complicated to operate efficiently. On 18 February

1963, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, a military band, hundreds of invited guests and Georgi Rodionov, the newly appointed Soviet ambassador to Accra, aligned themselves on an airport runway, and eagerly awaited the arrival of the first shipment of

Soviet heavy machinery. Much to the chagrin of the gathered dignitaries, the shipment consisted primarily of snowplows.23 The dilatory and ineffective nature of Soviet economic assistance belied the gravity and scope of Soviet economic interests in the

Third World, particularly concerning Soviet access to, and American exclusion from, the vital reservoir of the Third World's strategic mineral resources. The developing world, particularly Africa, is cursed with an abundance of strategic mineral reserves vital to industrialized economies. Let us examine Egypt's role in facilitating Soviet access to supplies of two mineral resources, in particular manganese and titanium.

In 1963, the United Arab Mineralogical Association (UAMA), headquartered in

Cairo, began prospecting for manganese deposits in the eastern highlands of the Republic of Upper Volta. In early 1964, the expedition reported that it had discovered the world's largest viable deposit of the metallic ore.25 For a host of reasons, this generated considerable intrigue. First, in the sixties, as today, the world's largest manganese

23 E.J. Feuchtwanger, The Soviet Union and the Third World (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), 154- 155. 4 On 4 August 1984, President Thomas Sankara officially changed the country's name from the Republic of Upper Volta to Burkina Faso. To avoid anachronistic usage, the country shall be referred to by the name that it had during the period under investigation. Manganese dioxide is an important compound used to manufacture ferroalloys and dry battery cells, while manganese sulfate functions as a chemical intermediate and micronutrient in animal feed and plant fertilizers. Of particular concern is the role of manganese in the production of steel; the element increases the tensile strength and durability of steel products. Manganese is vital to the production of everything from I-beams and railway ties to tank armor and ovens. 5 Dobell Moore, Strategic Mineral Reserves and the Cold War (New York: Praeger, 1970), 263. 57 deposits are located in South Africa and the (former) Soviet Union. By 1958, the United

States relied on South African imports for almost 100% of its industrial use. Second, a

1962 report from the International Strategic Minerals Inventory claimed that South

African manganese mines in North Eastern Limpopo province had reached their maximum productive capacity and that outputs would begin to decline in the near future. A twentieth century 'scramble for Africa' was underway. This time global powers were not concerned with borders and boundaries; rather, of paramount concern was access to critical and finite resources. However, during the Cold War there was no

Berlin Conference to divide equitably the continent.

The Soviet Union had little need for increased access to manganese. Its mines in

Ukraine produced 1.2 million metric tons annually, more than enough to satiate domestic demand of 750,000 metric tons. Yet, Moscow's actions underscore its desire to deny

Washington access to this resource. In early 1965, Egypt applied to Ouagadougou for

OQ exclusive access rights and permission to begin mining in Tapoa province. It appears that this was done at Moscow's urging. A communique issued after a 19 January 1965 meeting between Nasser and Solod stated Moscow's desire for "the riches of the African continent [to be] denied to the imperialists" and that, "they [the riches] should be used to advance the cause of liberation... for the African peoples."30 Although this is not conclusive evidence, consider the following. Egypt really had no need for exclusive access to manganese deposits of this magnitude; the Egyptian steel industry was nascent, 26 Ibid., 265. 7 Colin Barker, The International Strategic Minerals Inventory: A Review of an International Cooperative Effort to Take Inventory of the World's Strategic Minerals (Reston: US Geological Survey, 1962), 11. 28 Moore, Strategic Mineral Reserves, 266. 29 Ibid., 270. V.A. Zolotarev, Rossiia (SSSR) v lokal'nykh i vooruzhennykh konfliktakh vtoroipoloviny veka [Russia(USSR) in local and regional conflict during the second half of the century] (Moscow: Kuchovo pole, 2000), 116. 58 and was more of a showpiece of the socialist model of economic development than an integral part of the economy. In addition, the Soviet Union was capable of meeting

Egypt's demand from its own surplus production. Furthermore, Cairo's request for exclusive development rights would undoubtedly have angered Paris, Upper Volta's former colonial master. As France was the only Western European country willing to sell

Egypt arms, this risked the loss of political leverage over the Soviet Union. Also, in

December 1964, Nasser expelled Lucius Battle, Washington's ambassador in Cairo.

Soviet publications explained that the expulsion stemmed from the CIA's attempts to destabilize Nasser's regime. This decision represented the further deterioration of

American-Egyptian relations, which limited Nasser's ability to maneuver between the superpowers. In late 1965, the Soviet Union provided the UAMA with labor and mining equipment to begin taping the manganese seam.32 Unfortunately, it was a canard. The manganese ore was of neither the quantity nor quality envisioned by the UAMA and reports on the inevitability of a decrease in South Africa's production proved overly pessimistic. Nonetheless, through Egypt, Moscow managed to restrict American access to what was thought to be a large quantity of a vital and scarce strategic resource.

The roles were reversed when it came to titanium reserves. Here the Soviet Union was disadvantaged. In 1970, the CIA estimated that within fifteen years the Soviet Union would experience acute shortages of titanium.33 Throughout the Cold War, American access to titanium reserves were secure, as Canada and Australia accounted for more than

31 R.M. Avakov, "TsRU v Afrike [The CIA in Africa]," Narody Azii i Afriki (February 1965): 69. Moore, Strategic Mineral Reserves, 267. 33 Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence. Prospects for Soviet Strategic Resource Development (May 1970), 21. 95% of the global supplies of titanium ores are used in the production of goods ranging from paints and pigments to toothpaste and deodorant. However, it is of vital importance to the defense industry. Due to its high tensile strength, high corrosion resistance, and ability to withstand high temperatures, titanium alloys are used in aircraft, armor plating, naval ships, space craft and missiles. 59 one-half of the world's production.34 Soviet reserves, which consisted of approximately one-fifth of global supply, were principally located in the Ukraine. Yet, Ukraine's titanium ore reserves were largely the ilmenite form, which functions as a base in paint, paper and plastic applications, not the rutile form coveted by defense industries. For this reason, the Soviet Union was keenly interested by the discovery in Sierra Leone, in

January 1971, of a large rutile deposit in Bonthe district. At this time, however, Moscow had yet to establish an embassy in Freetown from which to lobby for access. With

Egypt's assistance, this was about to change.

In June 1971, the recently elected Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, Sorie Ibrahim

Koroma, traveled to Cairo to conduct negotiations on trade and development. El Sadat entertained Koroma with tea at the Presidential Palace, a tour of the Pyramids at Giza and an evening reception at Egypt's Natural History Museum. 6 Heikal recorded that on the same day, 18 June, Vinogradov also met with El Sadat to discuss "urgent affairs." A memorandum from Vinogradov to Grechko, dated 21 June, stated that he recently had

"frank and productive discussions," with El Sadat, which appears to confirm Heikal's account.37 On 12 August, a small Soviet embassy opened in Freetown.

It is likely that during Koroma's visit to Cairo, Vinogradov directly or El Sadat by proxy lobbied to permit the Soviet Union to open an embassy in Freetown. This is in line with previous Egyptian actions that benefited the Soviet Union. In Soviet parlance, the term "frank and productive" implies contentious and combative. Pedro Ramet contends

Geoffrey Pullman, The International Strategic Minerals Inventory: A Review of an International Cooperative Effort to Take Inventory of the World' Strategic Minerals (Reston: US Geological Survey, 1971), 6. is CIA, Prospects, 28. 6 Muhammad Awda, Egypt's Foreign Policy in Africa (London: Ithaca Press, 1980), 232. 37 Zolotarev, Rossiia, 182. 60 that during spring 1971, Soviet-Egyptian discord stemmed from the Politburo's hesitancy to provide offensive weaponry, particularly the Tupolev Tu-22 supersonic medium bomber and the Kitchen air-to-surface missile. At the end of June, however, El Sadat announced in an interview with ElAkhbar that, "our Soviet friends [have agreed] to provide us with all the weaponry we will need." Possibly El Sadat presented Moscow with a quid pro quo, which the Russians accepted; provide us with offensive weaponry and Egypt, among other things, will lobby Freetown on your behalf. Little else could explain the Soviet change in position.

In retrospect, Moscow had little chance of obtaining access to Sierra Leone's titanium reserves. Freetown was an active member of the Commonwealth of Nations and was heavily dependent on foreign aid from the United States and Western Europe. Yet, that did not prevent Moscow's attempt. In fact, it highlights the degree to which Soviet foreign policy attempted to deny strategic resources to Washington. From 1971 to 1975, elements of the Soviet Arctic and Black Sea Fleets made six scheduled stops in the ports of Sierra Leone.40 The West African CIA headquarters, located in Dakar, issued a report in April 1972 noting "...a rapid increase of Soviet activity in Sierra Leone."41 Of particular urgency was the Soviet use of titanium in their Delta-class submarines, first launched in 1973. While submerged, their titanium alloy hulls resulted in a faster top- speed and permitted a greater diving depth. However, the United States managed to

38 Pedro Ramet, Sadat and the Kremlin (Santa Monica: California Seminar on Arms Control and Foreign Policy, 1980), 81. Cited in Ramet, Sadat and the Kremlin, 87. 4 V.M. Kulish, Voennaia sila i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia [Military power and international relations] (Moscow: International Relations Publishing House, 1979), 137. 41 Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence. Increased Soviet Activity in West Africa, April 1972,2. 42 Compiled and Edited by Raymond V.B. Blackburn, Navies of the World - Jane's Fighting Ships (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1974), 424. 61 outmaneuver the Soviet Union. In early 1979, Sierra Rutile Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the American firm Nord Resources, began mining operations.

Within the Middle East, Egypt played a critical role in permitting the Soviet

Union to exploit political developments that fueled the growth of anti-Western sentiment.

Soviet failures elsewhere in the Third World sharpened the Soviet drive into the Middle

East. The fall of Kusno Sukarno's regime in Indonesia in October 1965, a regime in which the USSR had invested nearly $2 billion in military and economic aid, was a setback to Moscow. Four months later, in February 1966, the fall of Nkrumah's regime in Ghana, cost the Soviet Union its investment of nearly $500 million in military and economic aid.44 Pro-Western governments replaced both pro-Soviet regimes. However, before Moscow could fully exploit the potential of anti-Western sentiment, Brezhnev's administration had to resolve two dilemmas that remained from the Khrushchev era.

First, Soviet policy grappled with the role that the Communist parties of the Middle East were to play in the political and economic life of the countries in which they operated.

While Khrushchev's policies advocated Communist inclusion, the Brezhnev-Kosygin duumvirate adopted a clearer position. 5 They no longer believed that regional

Communist parties could seize power. Indeed, confronted by a hostile Communist China,

Moscow must have contemplated the wisdom of having any more countries taken over by independent Communist parties. Communism, in fact, was vilified in the Middle East.

Pravda pointedly lamented that, "all who do not agree with [Arab nationalism] are

Korbonski and Fukuyama, The Soviet Union and the Third World, 85. 44 Ibid., 85. 45 Amnon Sella, Soviet Political and Military Conduct in the Middle East (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), 21-68. 62 denounced as Zionists, Communists and enemies of the Arab people."46 By minimizing support for Middle Eastern Communist movements, Moscow removed a substantial barrier to developing regional relationships.

In addition to deemphasizing the importance of Middle Eastern Communist parties and attempting to develop close ties with the nationalist parties of radical Arab states, there was another policy change under Brezhnev. This involved a revised estimate of the desirability of Arab unity. While Khrushchev was ambivalent on the issue and occasionally opposed it because he feared that it would be a barrier to the spread of

Communist influence, Brezhnev gave it a strong endorsement.47 The reason for this change in policy lay in the fact that Moscow tried to forge an alliance of the anti- imperialist forces of the Middle East under Soviet leadership. Yet, the only issue on which all Arabs agreed was their opposition to Israel. As such, the USSR attempted to brand itself as the anti-imperialist wedge in the Middle East and endeavored to link the

Arab struggle against Israel with Moscow's struggle against imperialism. As such, the

Kremlin attempted to limit the internecine conflict amongst Arab nations, which was as endemic to the Middle East as the Arab-Israeli conflict itself. These reassessments in

Soviet policy took advantage of Egypt's own diplomacy and enabled Moscow to make considerable inroads with the progressive nationalist regimes of the Middle East.

In late 1970, the Soviet Union supported Egypt's efforts at promoting Arab unity and confronting American imperialism. Pravda correspondent Yuri Glukhov wrote on 17

October that, "the period following Nasser's death witnessed the development of bitter

46 Cited in Aryeh Yodfat, Arab Politics in the Soviet Mirror (Jerusalem: Israel University Press, 1973), 211. 7 Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War: From Stalin to Gorbachev (Durham: UNC Press, 2002), 143-148. 63 psychological warfare by Western propaganda, which hoped to revitalize the forces of domestic reaction, foment internal crisis and drive a wedge between Egypt and its friends."48 In Soviet eyes, the proposed federation of Egypt, Libya and Sudan, launched in December 1969 and joined by Syria in November 1970, functioned against American efforts.49 As such, the Kremlin moved quickly to support the federation as an anti- imperialist force in the Arab world. An article in Pravda on 11 November 1970 described a meeting in which the leaders of Libya, Sudan and Egypt refined plans for the

Federation, commenting that, "this event is concrete evidence of the Arab people's will toward unity, so that they can oppose imperialist plans to divide, fragment and weaken the national liberation movement in the Middle East."50 During Syrian President Hafez El

Assad's trip to Moscow in December 1970, Kosygin stated that, ".. .imperialism has placed its stakes on the lack of unity in the Arab world." In early 1971, in an effort to advance the process of multi-state rapprochement and increase its own standing in the region, Moscow announced generous financial assistance to the four Arab states. On 16

March 1971, the Soviet Union agreed to provide Egypt a $215 million loan to be used for rural electrification and desert reclamation. In the same month, Moscow signed a $124 million loan with Tripoli for the construction of an oil refinery, and a $25 million loan with Damascus to complete the final phase of the Euphrates Dam. On 25 April, the

Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press 22, no. 42:15. 49 Peter Bechtold, "New Attempts at Arab Cooperation: The Federation of Arab Republics 1971-?" Middle East Journal 27, no. 2 (Spring 1973): 153. 50 Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press 22, no. 45: 17-18. V.V. Naumkin ed., Blizhnevostochnyi konflikt: Iz dokumentov arkiva vneshneipolitiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii [The Middle East conflict: Documents from the archive of the foreign ministry of the Russian Federation] (Moscow: The Institute of Military History of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, 1999), 339. 52 Alan Smith, "The Influence of Trade on Soviet Relations with the Middle East." In The Soviet Union in the Middle East, edited by Karen Dawisha and Adeed Dawisha (Toronto: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd,1982), 111-114. 64

Soviet leaders made it even clearer that they hoped to use the federation as a device to weaken American influence. An article in Izvestiia stated that, "the creation of the

Federation has been received with alarm in Washington and Tel-Aviv because it strengthened the anti-imperialist front in the Middle East."

As the Soviet supported Arab federation reached its final stages on 12 April 1971, complications arose. Addul Mahgoub, head of the Sudanese Communist Party, came out strongly against the Federation. Sudanese premier Jaafar Nimeri was forced to leave the talks in Cairo and fly to Moscow in an effort to elicit Soviet support to pressure the

Sudanese Communists, whose members occupied important posts in the government and trade unions, into giving up their opposition to joining the federation. Brezhnev issued a strong rebuke to the Sudanese communists stating that the federation is ".. .a step towards the unity of the Arab states and a further strengthening of the battle front against the forces of Zionism and neo-colonialism in the Middle East."54 Moscow abandoned the largest and most well-organized Communist party in the Middle East in order to ensure the formation of an international united front directed against the United States.

However, was this Federation truly anti-American, as the Soviet Union desired?

Alternatively, were Soviet press organs overly optimistic about the temperament of this new association? That the member states exhibited a palpable disdain of Israel is hardly a banner headline. That a few of them took steps to undermine American influence and prevent American regional inroads is more intriguing. It should be noted that these regimes were never particularly pro-American, but at Soviet insistence became markedly anti-American. Brezhnev claimed that the United States directly threatened "...the

Current Digest of the Soviet Press 22, no. 45: 18. 5 SSSR i Blizhnevostochnoe uregulirovanie: Dokumenty i materialy [The USSR and a Middle East settlement] (Moscow: The Ministry of International Relations of the USSR, 1989), 92. 65 security of all progressive regimes and desired a return to the colonial system of exploitation and enslavement." Soviet rhetoric and economic assistance resonated in

Arab capitals. On 5 May 1971, American Secretary of State William Rogers launched a tour of Middle Eastern capitals to illicit support for an interim peace plan. Nimeri strongly condemned the tour and was quoted in the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar stating that,

"American diplomatic efforts are set against Arab countries.. .and can only aggravate the situation in the Middle East."56 In June 1971, Shaari Gomaa, head of the Sudanese secret police, ordered Mark Jefferson, American Charge d'Affaires, expelled from the country.

No official reason was provided. Damascus denied the request of the chairman of New

York's Chase Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller, to meet with prominent Syrian business and political elites. In late 1972, Libyan President Muammar Qadhdhafi agreed to funnel Soviet arms through Tripoli, and onto Biafran rebels fighting the Anglo-

American supported Nigerian army.57 These countries took active measures to prevent

American regional encroachment. At the very least, they cloaked themselves in the rhetoric of anti-Americanism, satisfying Moscow's immediate need to prevent

Washington's further entrenchment into regional affairs.

In addition to diminishing American influence in the Third World, the historiography contends that the Soviet Union aimed to limit Chinese diplomatic, economic and military access. Western scholarship reflects the fact Moscow had a

55 The Policy of the Soviet Union in the Arab World: A Short Collection of Foreign Policy Documents (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), 149. 56 Cited in Robert Freedman, Soviet Policy Towards the Middle East since 1970 (Westport: Praeger Security International, 1982), 135. 57 Ibid., 141. 581 do not consider China to be part of the Third World. Its size, population, and status as a nuclear power exclude it from this group. Its experience with imperialism was also very different from that of the Third World. Though victimized for little more than a century before revolution brought the communists to power in 1949, it was never a colony, conquered or colonized. 66 serious China problem. However, few would go so far as Edward Luttwak in his contention that, in the sixties and seventies, the Soviet Union regarded China, not the

United States, as the main enemy.59 This analysis places too much emphasis on 'the

China factor' as a key driver in influencing Soviet Third World policy. Western scholars writing during the Cold War over-relied on Soviet military writings, which conveyed the image of a militarily aggressive and dangerous China. Writing in Krasnaiia Zvezda,

General Evgenii Zhukov opined that a "reactionary and nuclear China has aligned itself with the imperialists and.. .is plotting against us." In a speech given at the 24* Party

Congress in 1971, Gromyko stated that, "China has joined the imperialist plotters... and is threatening the security of all peace-loving states." ' Soviet authors were certainly not averse to exacerbating their atavistic fears of Beijing. Illana Kass argues that during the

Brezhnev era the growth of western-style interest groups cleaved the politics of the

Politburo. The Soviet military, like any interest group, desired an ever-larger share of state resources. By accentuating, and perhaps embellishing the 'China threat,' the Soviet military created an urgency that ensured the stability of funding to the armed forces.

Western scholars have conflated the writings of the Soviet military concerning the concrete 'China threat' on its immediate geographic boundaries with an ephemeral and overblown 'China threat' to Soviet interests in the Third World. China lacked the

Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), 90-101. He argues that since the United States had not shown itself implacable in opposing Soviet aims, the Soviets regarded the United States as a manageable diplomatic adversary. Evgenii Zhukov, "Vymysel i pravda o Kitai [Fiction and truth about China]," Krasnaiia Zvezda, 27 January 1971. 61 Andrei Gromyko, "National Liberation Wars in the Modern Age," Only for Peace (Toronto: Pergamon Press, 1979), 82. 62 liana Kass, Soviet Involvement in the Middle East: Policy Formulation, 1966-1973 (Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1979), 118-125 and 164-180. 67 capabilities and resources to launch a concrete challenge to Soviet positions in the decolonized world.

Although Western historiography exaggerated the China threat as a source of

Soviet Third World policy, the Soviet Union took active steps to prevent or limit Chinese penetration of the Third World. In this, they were aided by Egypt. In July 1973, Beijing requested that Houari Boumedienne, then President of Algeria and the General Secretary of the Non-Aligned Movement, retract Moscow's invitation to the Fourth Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, scheduled from 5 to 9 September 1973 in Algiers. At the same time, Beijing promised a $95 million loan to facilitate oil exploration efforts in

Tamanghasset and Illizi in the southeast of the country.64 As Algeria and the Soviet

Union recently experienced a cooling period over differences of opinion in the Mid-East peace process, Moscow was concerned about the potential efficacy of Beijing's diplomacy.65 From 27 to 29 July 1973, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammad Hasan El

Zayyat was in Moscow for negotiations regarding Middle East Peace. It was during this meeting that Victor Israelyan, Director of the Department of International Organizations, contended that Brezhnev asked El Zayyat to put pressure on Algeria to resist China's request.66 In mid-August, Egypt offered Algiers a matching loan for oil exploration and agreed to sell MiG-22 fighters to Algeria. As Egypt was experiencing a hard currency reserve shortfall and tensions with Israel were still high, it is likely that the loan and military equipment were provided by Moscow. Ultimately, Boumedienne did not rescind

63 This story has been recounted in many works including Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 136. Jordan, The Soviet Union and China in Africa, 183. 65 Ibid., 192. Algeria specifically rejected point four of the 1970 Roger's Plan which called for direct negotiations between Israel and Arab States. 66 Victor Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin During the Yom Kippur War (University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1999), 12. 68 the Soviet invitation, China was unable to score a propaganda victory, and Algeria reaped the economic and military benefits.

During August 1967, Arab states met in Khartoum to discuss a united Arab response to Israeli aggression. Point six of the Khartoum Resolution issued on 1

September 1967 stated that, "the participants agreed on the need to adopt the necessary measures to strengthen military preparation to face all eventualities." The day after, the

Chinese Department of West African and North African Affairs issued a statement claiming that, "we are ready to provide whatever assistance is required to our Arab brothers to alleviate the consequences of imperialism." Although vague, assistance most likely implied military help, and more to the point, weaponry. Certainly, Beijing wanted to position itself as an ally to the Arab states. Yet, in spite of generous financing terms, not a single Arab signatory to the Khartoum Resolution purchased or accepted Chinese military equipment. Why were the Chinese rebuffed?

Certainly, China had a number of strikes against it. It was largely an unknown in the Arab World, it was fiercely Communist and it was rhetorically very bellicose. Yet, the Chinese also suffered from a combined Soviet-Egyptian effort to exclude them from

Middle Eastern affairs. One scholar estimates that from 1965 to 1975, Egypt alone rejected over $300 million in loans and economic assistance from China. A host of reasons motivated Egypt's actions. Principally, on a number of occasions Moscow threatened to terminate all military assistance to Egypt if China was permitted to increase its presence in the country. During Nasser's 10 July 1968 trip to Moscow, Heikal

7 "The Khartoum Resolution," Arab-Israeli Conflict and Conciliation: A Documentary History. Ed. Bernard Reich (London: Greenwood Press, 1985), 23-24. 68 Cited in Yitzhak Shichor, The Middle East in China's Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 154-155. 69 Ibid., 152. 69 contends that the Egyptian President was told to reject Chinese advances or the Soviet

Union would delay a forthcoming shipment of armored vehicles and publicly support

U.N. Security Council Resolution 242.70

Moreover, the Middle East already suffered from 'too many cooks in the kitchen.'

Besides its own internal divisions, the unity of Arab states languished in a bipolar international environment. Clear cleavages existed between states aligned with either the

United States or the Soviet Union. A Chinese option would serve only to fracture further a divided Middle East. During the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent Arab oil embargo, for example, the Chinese requested to purchase more oil from the Gulf States.

El Sadat convinced Saudi King Faisal to deny the Chinese request and to sell instead

71 some of the surplus to the Soviet Union. Throughout the late sixties and early seventies,

Cairo interfered with Chinese efforts to court Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation

Organization. On one such occasion, in January 1968, Nasser grounded a Chinese plane in Cairo that was ferrying Foreign Minister Chen Yi to a meeting with Arafat in Tunis.

The plane was prohibited from taking off from a Cairene airport, due allegedly to Israeli airplanes in the region.72 Yet, the Israeli Air Force had been in the region since the first

US arms sale in 1953, which hardly prevented diplomatic or commercial air traffic from frequenting Egypt's airfields. Moreover, Israel had not bombed Cairo since the Six Day

War. Such action could have jeopardized American military support and politically alienated Western Europe. Nasser's hesitancy stems from the fact that the Chinese

70 Mohammed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (London: Collins, 1975), 12. Resolution 242 emphasized the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and acknowledged the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the Middle East and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries. El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 239. Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization: An Uneasy Alliance (New York: Praeger, 1980), 37. 70 wanted to sell the PLO arms, which could have provoked a serious response from Israel against Egypt. "The Palestinian resistance," stated Nasser, "cannot possibly play a decisive part and is not a substitute for a final armed confrontation - army pitted against

•7 7 army, fleet against fleet, air force against air force." At this time, Egypt was simply not prepared to pit army against army, and any action that would increase Israeli militancy while simultaneously eroding Egyptian strength was discouraged.

To this point, we have seen how the political, economic and military tactics of

Soviet foreign policy in the Third World benefited from the Soviet-Egyptian relationship and endeavored to marginalize American and, to a lesser degree, Chinese influence.

However, as tensions in the relationship morphed into open disagreement and subsequent disintegration, a tactical shift occurred in the Kremlin's Third World strategy. During the

Cold War, Egypt was the second largest non-Warsaw Pact recipient of Soviet economic, financial and military assistance. Yet, for reasons that will be explored in the next chapter, Soviet influence was transient and ephemeral. It is postulated that Moscow's experience in Egypt was a critical factor in the realignment of Soviet-Third World tactics.

The Kremlin's economic, financial and cultural instruments produced mixed results, and failed to weaken demonstrably American influence or heighten Soviet security. As an arms merchant, however, the Soviet Union discovered a low-risk, high-impact approach to confronting and weakening Washington. The following section will address three questions. First, it will establish this tactical shift in Soviet-Third World relations.

Second, it will link the tactical change to the Soviet experience in Egypt, and third, it will

Cited in Mohammed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar, 11. 74 Elizabeth Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World: An Economic Bind (New York: Praeger, 1983), 42. 71 explore the efficacy of this shift in weakening American power and influence in the Third

World.

During the Khrushchev era, the Soviet Union offered approximately $3.4 billion in economic assistance to developing countries. Throughout the first years of the

Brezhnev era Soviet economic outlays rose, and by 1970 they approximated $7 to $9 billion annually.75 By 1971, almost seventy developing countries received Soviet economic assistance, though the bulk went to a favored few: Cuba, Egypt, India and

Vietnam. Although these are princely sums, as a percentage of Soviet GNP, or in comparison with the West, Soviet economic assistance was not impressive. In 1970, the

Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development calculated that Soviet aid

"shows a 0.15 ratio to GNP, equal to that of the lowest performing OECD member."

Moscow disputed such assessments and comparisons. At a 1972 conference of the UN

Industrial Development Organization, the Soviet representative insisted that Moscow's development assistance ratio, the amount of aid as a percentage of GNP, was 1.3%, far surpassing that of the highest performing Western country.77 Throughout the 1970s,

Soviet sources continued to highlight impressive outlays of economic assistance. In 1980, at a UN Conference on Trade and Development, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade,

Boris Aristov, stated that the Soviet Union provided $43 billion or 1.3% of GNP in economic assistance in 1979. This implies that the Soviet GNP was $3,307 trillion.

Marilee Lawrence, The Cost of the Soviet Empire (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1983), 50. Cited in Emilio Gasparani, "East-South Economic Relations: Growing Burdens of Communist Client States," NATO Review 25, no. 4 (August 1977): 25. 77 A. Levkovckii, "O vneshnei torgovle v tret'em mire [On foreign trade with the Third World,]" Narody Azii iAfriki (December 1972): 59. 7 Cited in Orah Cooper, "Soviet Economic Aid to the Third World," in Soviet Economy in a New Perspective: A Compendium of Papers, U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, 94 Congress, 2n Session (Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1980), 190. 72

Soviet statistics are highly suspect. In 1980, western estimates place Soviet GNP between $1.7 and $2.2 trillion, far below the implied Soviet figure. One scholar's attempts to reconcile Soviet claims with available Soviet information resulted in the calculation that the net output of Soviet economic aid for the period amounted to 0.29% of GNP.79 This amounts to yearly economic outlays between $4.93 to $6.38 billion, considerably below the rates from the sixties. Soviet economic assistance decreased throughout the seventies. Military assistance, however, increased dramatically. During the Khrushchev era, economic assistance slightly exceeded military aid. By the early seventies, military assistance came to predominate, and by the end of the seventies, it did so by a factor of three or four. From 1970 to 1979, military credits amounted to $47.3 billion, compared to $18 billion in economic credits. However, only $8.2 billion or 45% of economic credits were utilized by Third World nations, compared with $42.5 billion or

90% of military credits, increasing the variance by a factor of five. ' Like all statistics for

Soviet assistance, these figures are estimates, but they do give some idea of the growing disparity in Soviet commitments between military and economic assistance. The emergent pattern clearly points to a switch in tactical priorities when assisting the Third

World. This shift may have already been in progress during the early seventies, but was hastened by the collapse of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship.

Soviet views on the declining efficacy of economic assistance and an increased commitment to military outlays are difficult to pinpoint. Commentaries in press organs,

79 Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World: An Economic Bind, 246-247. 80 Stephen Hosmer, Soviet Policy and Practice toward Third World Conflicts (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1983), 18. 81 Ibid., 148. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that in 1971 to 1985, Third World countries imported $286 billion worth of conventional major arms. Of the total, the Soviet Union accounted for 36.6% of total deliveries, or about $105 billion. Hosmer, Soviet Policy and Practice toward Third World Conflicts, 1. 73 transcripts of speeches, and diplomatic correspondences are cloaked in propagandistic generalizations and are short on systemic specifics. Attempting to establish a cause and effect relationship in Soviet policy is difficult. One must locate moments of tension in the

Soviet-Egyptian relationship and investigate alterations to Soviet-Third World policy.

Two moments of tension, in particular, appear to have had serious consequences on

Moscow's policy. The first was the expulsion of Soviet military advisors in July 1972.

The communique on the Soviet exodus, printed in Pravda was terse:

The Soviet military personnel in Egypt have now fulfilled their mission. In consideration of this fact, it has been deemed expedient to bring back to the Soviet Union those military personnel who were assigned to Egypt for a limited period. These personnel will return [to the Soviet Union] in the near future.82

Such detached prose belied the gravity of the situation and Soviet displeasure. On

23 July 1972, an article in Izvestiia warned that Egypt's right-wing reactionary forces were trying to undermine Soviet-Arab friendship. This was underscored by Egypt's rejection of a note from Brezhnev to El Sadat requesting a high-level meeting. On 13

August 1972, El Sadat told the Egyptian People's Assembly "there were many things to be settled before a Soviet-Egyptian summit meeting," and that, "he rejected the language, contents and type" of the message.84 The editor of the Cairene daily El Akhbar, Abdul

Koddous, a close friend of El Sadat, charged the Soviet Union with expansionist designs in Egypt, a failure to supply the needed weaponry and dividing the Middle East into spheres of influence with the United States in a new Yalta agreement. On August 29,

Izvestiia struck back, stating that:

820bserver, "Arabskaia Respublika Egipet [The Arab Republic of Egypt,]" Pravda, 20 July 1972. Even the innocuous title of the article conveys a distant and seemingly unconcerned message. 83 Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press 24, no. 24:18. 84 Y. Potomov, "Middle East Alliance against Progress," New Times, no. 34 (1972): 5. 85 Cited in P. Demchenko, Blizhnii Vostok mezhdu voinoi i mirom [The Middle East between war and peace] (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1976), 94. 74

The editor-in-chief of El Akhbar dares to slander the USSR. This absurd allegation may gladden the imperialists and Israeli rulers, but is capable of only harming the Egyptian people and their just struggle to eliminate the consequences of Israeli expansion.86

It was during August and September, the height of discord, where the tactics of

Soviet Third World policy were altered. Soviet relations with Iraq improved in the late sixties and early seventies and a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed on 9

April 1972. ' The relationship was underpinned, almost exclusively, by large-scale economic assistance to modernize and develop Iraqi oilfields. Military assistance was minimal. One commentator seemed almost bewildered by Soviet parsimony, and indeed, it appears to be an anomaly of Soviet foreign policy. It was not that Iraq was a bastion of tranquility. Baghdad had been combating a Kurdish insurgency since 1961, and Iran and Iraq had been entertaining each other with military raids and artillery bombardments for a decade. Iraq was decidedly anti-American and had troubled relations with the conservative Arab monarchies. Yet, in the fall of 1972, the Soviet

Union shifted overwhelmingly to military assistance. Although such a tactic invited covert American military support to the Kurds, beforehand Washington had remained aloof from Kurdish territorial aspirations.90 It appears that this tactical alteration in Soviet foreign policy was divorced from Iraq's internal developments, regional politics, and

V. Kurdryavtsev, "Druz'ia iz TsRU na Srednem Vostoke [Friends of the CIA in the Middle East,]" Izestiia, 29 August 1972. 7 Uriel Dann, Iraq under El Bakr (New York: Praeger, 1979), 12. This was a follow-up work to his previous book titled Iraq under Kassem (New York: Praeger, 1970). O.M. Gorbatov, Sotrudnichestvo SSSR so stranami Arabskogo Vostoka iAfriki [Soviet cooperation with the countries of the Arab East and Africa] (Moscow: Science, 1975), 55. In Gorbatov's chapter on economic and financial cooperation, the development of Iraqi oil fields is given prominence. However, in his chapter on military assistance, little information is provided. 89 Dann, Iraq under El Bakr, 45-71. 90 Matti Golan, The Secret Conversations of Henry Kissinger (New York: Quadrangle, 1976) 164-171, explores Kissinger's efforts to increase funding for paramilitary insurgencies directed against weakening Soviet client regimes in the Middle East. 75 superpower relations. It can be attributed to Moscow's realization that expensive economic investments in client states ensured neither their cooperation nor their assistance. Soviet arms, however, whether they precipitated or simply prolonged a conflict were indispensable.

Scholarship is divided as to the implications and consequences of the Yom Kippur

War. What is clear is that the Soviet Union was. almost universally praised by Arab States at the 1 to 6 December 1973 post-war Arab Summit in Algiers. Algerian President

Boumedienne praised "the political and military assistance that the Soviet Union and the other socialist states rendered to the Arab countries."91 The one country conspicuously silent was Egypt. In an effort to ameliorate Soviet-Egyptian discord, Brezhnev at the 25 to 31 October 1973 World Congress of Peace Forum stated that, "the Soviet Union will take it upon itself to help to repair the consequences of imperialist aggression in the

Middle East."92 By mid-November, Soviet weaponry, ammunition, and spare parts infused the Egyptian military and replaced one-quarter of its wartime losses. The Soviet

Union even offered $755 million worth of financing to assist in economic and infrastructure reconstruction.94 However, on 9 December, El Sadat made a decision that resulted in the temporary cessation of military and economic assistance. While the Soviet

Union was lauded at the Algiers conference, Egypt announced its decision to award the

1 Bernard Reich ed., Arab-Israeli Conflict and Conciliation: A Documentary History (London: Greenwood Press, 1985), 192. 92 Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin, 73. 93 Andrew McGregor, A Military History of Modern Egypt: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Ramadan War (London: Praeger Security International, 2006), 296. 94 V Makarevskii, "Po opytu Arabo-Izrail'skoi voiny 1973g [The experience of the Arab-Israeli war of 1973]" Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal Vol. 21, no. 10 (October 1985): 76-78. 76

American Bechtel Company the contract to build the Suez to Mediterranean oil pipeline.

From Moscow's perspective, this was an act of betrayal and it appears to have had immediate repercussions on Soviet economic assistance to the Third World. In the following months, Moscow cancelled a $45 million loan to Afghanistan, $92 million in economic assistance to Mali and $113 million worth of credits to Laos.96 Soviet economic agreements incorporated a newfound aura of austerity. Generous Soviet repayment schedules and criminally low interest rates were also casualties of Egyptian truculence. Yet, in terms of accomplishing the objective of weakening American influence, the realization that economic assistance paled in comparison to military assistance was forged in the decline of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship.

At the Twenty-Third Congress of the CPSU, Brezhnev declared that, "there can be no peaceful coexistence when it comes to the internal process of the national liberation struggle."97 The Egyptian experience taught the Soviet Union that no amount of financial, economic and diplomatic assistance could ensure a client's compliance, and that this form of assistance did little to propel the national liberation process. Although

Moscow did not create Third World rivalries or internal tensions, it was partially responsible for the frequency with which they erupted into local wars. According to

Dimitri Volskiy, "attempts to hinder the natural, law-governed course of events in the

Third World create[d] hotbeds of tension, fraught with the danger of local and global

Freedman, Soviet Policy in the Middle East, 207. 96 Walter Laqueur, "Soviet Dilemmas in the Middle East and Second Thoughts on the Third World," The USSR and the Middle East, eds. Michael Confino and Shimon Shamir (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1975), 117-119. 97 Transcript of Brezhnev's speech printed in Pravda, 30 March 1966. 77 war." Arguably, it was the intrusion of vast quantities of Soviet weaponry to clients whose purposes were clearly aggressive that was the single most salient catalyst of local wars in the Third World. Undoubtedly, the United States had to respond to Soviet intrusion, though a Soviet presence hindered Washington's ability to act forcefully in complex political situations.

An illustrative case is that of Lebanon. In July 1958, American marines landed in response to a Lebanese request for protection against pro-Nasserite groups determined to seize power. The mission was a success. Khrushchev lacked power projection capabilities and simply denounced the United States and threatened unspecified responses. However, in the summer of 1982, shortly after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the American position and its available options were very different. This time the United States was outmaneuvered by Soviet-backed Syrian power, bloodied, and forced to pull out of

Lebanon in February 1984. Not even the deployment of four carrier task-force groups could compensate for the egregious misfit between objectives and constraints, the latter including the fractious situation in Lebanon, growing opposition at home, and a looming

Soviet involvement should matters escalate to open conflict between Israel and Syria. It was clear that Moscow's military presence frustrated Washington. The most telling

Soviet blows were struck through the Syrians. Hafez El Assad, re-supplied with arms and protected by a Soviet-manned air defense system, unleashed his proxies and allies to assault American positions in Lebanon. Yuri Glukhov stated that, "we are witnessing the

Dmitri Volskiy, "Local Conflicts and International Security," New Times, no. 5 (28 January 1983), 5. 78 collapse of Washington's Near East strategy elaborated at Camp David and later updated as the'Reagan Plan.'"99

Soviet intrusiveness raised American costs of maintaining commitments and interests in the Third World. Lebanon, a minor country, proved an expensive proposition.

So too did Nicaragua. Subsidized by the Soviet bloc, it drained American political assets and resources in an area of intrinsic indifference to the Kremlin. Considering Moscow's modest expenditures, aid to Nicaragua was extremely cost effective. As the Soviet

Union continued its role as an arms merchant, the United States was forced to follow suit and increase defense spending on conventional forces and aid packages to clients.

Between 1983 and 1986, tiny El Salvador received more than $1 billion of economic assistance and upwards of $500 million in military aid, ranking it the fourth largest recipient of American aid. Moscow used military assistance to force Washington into extensive outlays of resources in Third World areas. Indecisive American responses served to drain American resources, increase anti-Americanism, and position the Soviet

Union as a steadfast and reliable patron.

Above all else, the Kremlin aspired to weaken American power and influence in the Third World. From the mid-fifties to the early-seventies, the Soviet Union adopted a multi-pronged strategy that focused on providing diplomatic, economic, financial and military assistance to developing countries. The pursuit of these objectives leveraged the

Soviet-Egyptian relationship. In many circumstances, Cairo facilitated Soviet entree into the Third World and helped to establish diplomatic relations. In the two cases analyzed,

99 Cited in Lawrence S. Eagleburger, "Unacceptable Intervention: Soviet Active Measures," NATO Review 31, no. 1 (1983), 4. 100 Estimates vary, but $1 billion in aid between 1980 and 1985 is a generally cited figure. 101 U.S. Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to the Congress: Fiscal Year 1985 (Washington: Superintendent of Documents, 1984), 36-37. Cairo furthered Moscow's objective to exclude American access to strategic minerals vital to industrial economies. Within the Middle East, Moscow utilized Egypt's diplomatic initiatives to create an anti-imperialist front, aimed at excluding the United

States. Once Communist multi-centrism became a fixture of the Cold War, the Soviet

Union and Egypt acted in concert to limit Chinese penetration of the Third World.

Although the collapse of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship was a setback for Soviet policy in the Middle East, the tone and tenor of the relationship in its waning years was one of the key factors that forced a reevaluation of Soviet tactics in the Third World. This reappraisal witnessed the rise of military assistance as the key Soviet vehicle to building influence and maintaining its relevancy in the decolonized arena. Moreover, it was through military assistance, not the construction of industrial mega-projects, where the

Soviet Union was best able to weaken American power and influence.

The first two chapters of this investigation have explored a number of ways in which the objectives of Soviet foreign policy benefited from its Cario nexus. Having established Egypt's importance in Moscow's pursuit of global and regional objectives, the final chapter will investigate factors that resulted in the relationship's collapse. 80

Chapter Three: The Collapse of the Soviet-Egyptian Relationship and Moscow's Policy Shifts

Soviet-Egyptian relations, from Moscow's entree to the death of Nasser in

September 1970, were firmly rooted in a traditional patron-client dynamic. As is the case with these relationships, the client accrues from its patron the means to ameliorate significantly a broad array of shortcomings, whether they are financial, economic or military-strategic in nature. In exchange, the client abdicates a certain degree of sovereignty and forfeits complete independence of action in the international arena. As explored in the first two chapters, the exceptional character of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship lies in the sheer importance of the benefits accrued to the patron from its involvement with the client state. Mohamed Anwar El Sadat's ascension to the Egyptian presidency altered this dynamic. El Sadat not only lacked his predecessor's ideological proclivities, but also his charismatic authority and preoccupation with Egypt's role in the

Arab world. He was a devout Muslim, anti-socialist, fiercely nationalistic and determined to pursue an independent line in foreign policy. Most importantly, he realized that the Soviet Union benefited as much if not more from its position in Egypt, than Cairo benefited from its relationship with Moscow. As a result, a seismic shift occurred in

Soviet-Egyptian relations.

By summer 1972, the patron-client relationship had decidedly collapsed. In its place rose a new unequal partnership. This dynamic rested upon El Sadat's manipulation of the Soviet Union to assist Cairo in the pursuit of its objectives, principally, the rectification of Egypt's military weakness vis-a-vis Israel. El Sadat threatened, bluffed and influenced the Kremlin into making decisions that were contrary to previously 81 articulated positions or ran counter to the best interests of the Soviet Union. It is postulated that Moscow adopted policies that, while beneficial for Cairo, were detrimental to the Kremlin. That the needs and objectives of an alleged client superseded those of the patron was unique during the Cold War. In an attempt to maintain its position on the Nile, Soviet foreign policy appeased El Sadat and acquiesced to his demands. Ultimately, appeasement failed. When El Sadat felt that Moscow could no longer facilitate Egypt's national interests, he terminated its position on the Nile. This chapter will examine Soviet policy changes that were a direct result of El Sadat's coercive diplomacy. It will periodize the relationship into three phases. The first phase, from September 1970 to July 1972, explores the period from Nasser's death to the expulsion of Soviet advisors. This phase is characterized by Egypt's growing reticence and impatience with the Soviet Union. The second phase, from July 1972 to November

1973, covers the period from the expulsion of Soviet advisors to the end of the Yom

Kippur War. During this phase, El Sadat manipulated Soviet capabilities to act almost singularly in Cairo's favor. During the final phase, from November 1973 to March 1976,

El Sadat actively distanced Egypt from the Soviet Union and gravitated towards the

United States.

However, before we can examine El Sadat's coercive diplomacy, the factors that resulted in the collapse of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship need to be explored. Why did

El Sadat decide to break ties with the Soviet Union? Conversely, why was Moscow unable to maintain its position given Egypt's overwhelming need for Soviet arms and eighteen years of shared history? El Sadat's ascension to the Egyptian presidency was a salient factor in the collapse of the Soviet-Egyptian relationship. Pierre Rondot argued 82 that during his first six months in office his regime took concrete measures to undo many of Nasser's reforms.1 El Sadat was vehemently anti-Communist and viewed Islam as incompatible with Marxist-Leninist doctrine. During a speech at the Alexandria shipyard, he stated that, "Egypt never was, and will never be a socialist country." During the

Second World War, El Sadat was a Nazi sympathizer, who collaborated with an Axis spy ring in Cairo. He was a member of the pro-German political movement, Hizb Misr El

Fatah, and when El Sadat came to power, Cairo financed its anti-socialist weekly El

Hurriyya? By the end of 1970, El Sadat had issued a series of presidential decrees, which signaled clearly his anti-socialist political postures and willingness for reform. Large- scale private agricultural holdings were permitted, compensation was paid to the owners of banks and industries nationalized under Nasser, and greater freedom was given to the role of private capital.

However, a strong dislike of socialism seems a foolhardy reason to jettison Soviet support. In winter 1970 and spring 1971, Moscow committed a costly error that strained

Soviet-Egyptian relations. One author contends that this event was the direct cause of the

Kremlin's loss of influence. Although this appears to be an overstatement, it aggravated relations and further soured El Sadat on the Soviet Union. Almost immediately after coming to power, El Sadat became embroiled in a power struggle with an opposing faction of the Arab Socialist Union, Egypt's governing political party. The struggle concerned the role of socialism in the Middle East, the relationship between the

1 Pierre Rondot, "Anouar As Sadat: Un Style Nouveau pour L'Egypte [Anwar El Sadat: A New Style for Egypt,]" La Revue Defense Nationale (July 1971): 1156. 2 Anwar El Sadat, Speeches by President Anwar El Sadat: April-December 1971 (Cairo: State Information Services, 1980), 230. 3 Paul Eidelberg, Sadat's Strategy (Dollard des Ormeaux: Dawn Publishing Company Ltd, 1979), 283. El Hurriyya should not be confused with the eponymous Palestinian political newspaper affiliated with the Marxist-Leninist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 4 Eidelberg, Sadat's Strategy, 43. 83 presidency and the ASU, and the role of the super powers in the regional affairs.5 In

December 1970 and January 1971, the Soviet Union and Egypt exchanged three high- level delegations. In December, Boris Nikolaevich Ponomarev, chief of the International

Department of the Central Committee, headed a Soviet delegation for talks on ways to strengthen the links between the CPSU and the ASU. At the same time, Ali Sabri,

Egypt's Vice President, was in the Soviet Union concluding arrangements on economic cooperation, and in January, Podgorniy went to Egypt to officially open the Aswan High

Dam and assess Egypt's views on future relations between the two states. On these occasions, El Sadat's statements were guarded, while the most vociferous statements of friendship emanated from members of a group who were beginning to coalesce around

Ali Sabri.6 During his December visit to Moscow, Podgorniy referred to him as "our man in Cairo."

The Soviet Union was simply not satisfied with Ali Sabry as 'their man in Cairo.'

Rather, Moscow desired him to be 'the man in Cairo.' El Sadat's anti-socialist tendencies and western orientations threatened Moscow's position. Podgorniy who hosted Sabri during his visit to Moscow in December 1970, claimed that Moscow encouraged Sabri to launch a campaign challenging El Sadat's leadership of the ASU.7 "Though [Moscow] can not be involved in such a campaign," wrote Podgorniy, "we would take steps to immediately legitimate the new regime." El Sadat was certainly aware of the Kremlin's preference and was most likely attuned to Moscow's willingness to support regime

5 Arnold Hottinger, "Der Machtkampf in Agypten nach dem Tode Nassers [The Power Struggle in Egypt after the Death of Nasser,]" Europa-Archiv Vol. 5, no 1 (May 1971): 565. 6 P.J. Vatikiotis, "Two Years After Nasser: The Chance of a New Beginning," New Middle East, no. 48 (September 1972): 8. 7 V.A. Zolotarev, Rossiia (SSSR) v lokal'nykh i vooruzhennykh konfliktakh vtoroi poloviny veka [Russia(USSR) in local and armed conflict during the second half of the century] (Moscow: Kuchovo pole, 2000), 85-86. 8 Ibid., 86. change. Heikal claims that in April 1971, El Sadat, without consulting the ASU, revoked a series of socialist reforms enacted by Nasser to flush out his political opposition.1 In response, Sabri rallied his supporters, instigated demonstrations and prevented El Sadat from addressing the ASU Central Committee. On May 2, El Sadat dismissed Sabri, and two weeks later his followers, who included most of the ASU Executive Committee, and the ministers responsible for information, intelligence and the armed forces, resigned en masse. However, their strategy failed because the government did not collapse. Relying on loyal troops and officials, El Sadat accepted their resignations, appointed a new government, and eventually tried them on charges of conspiring against the state. In response, Podgornyi flew to Egypt and attempted to persuade El Sadat to release and reinstate Sabri and his clique. He stated, "everyone in the Soviet Union greatly admires

Ali Sabri." Sadat countered, "everyone in Egypt greatly admires Nikita Khrushchev."11

Though the Sabri affair exacerbated ties, it was not the key factor that influenced

El Sadat's decision to turn away from the Soviet Union. The divergence of objectives between Cairo and Moscow had the largest impact on El Sadat's decision-making process. Egypt's national objectives under El Sadat included the retrieval of the Sinai, peace and political moderation. Soviet national objectives included the preservation of instability, in the context of the peace process, the growth of political radicalism and the exclusion of the United States. Soviet interests in the Middle East simply did not mesh

John Barron, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1974), 94. Barron goes so far as to claim that Sabri was a KGB operative. This claim appears to be unfounded as it is not explored in the historiography and lacks available supporting evidence. 10 Mohammed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (New York: Quadrangle, 1975), 84. 11 Anthony McDermott, "Sadat and the Soviet Union," The World Today: The Royal Institute of International Affairs Vol. 28, no. 9 (September 1972): 406. 85 with those of El Sadat's Egypt. Heikal in Al-Ahram pointed this out shortly before the

Soviet exodus. According to Heikal:

There is a point of view in the Arab world that says the Soviet Union is interested in the preservation of the state of no peace-no war... Continuation of this makes the area more dependent on the Soviet Union... and Egypt has no interest in the 17

continuation of this state.

Soviet and Egyptian interests conflicted both at the general and specific level. Egypt wanted to internationalize its conflict with Israel, drawing in as many Arab allies as possible. The Soviets sought to contain it. El Sadat desired an end to Middle Eastern conflict. The Soviet Union feared that this implied its regional irrelevancy. Cairo sought to promote consensus and moderation in Arab politics, Moscow sought to promote radicalism and polarization.

El Sadat's moderation, both in domestic and foreign policy was a source of irritation to the Soviets. His visions for Egyptian society and the international environment were too at-odds with Soviet desires to be acceptable. From early in his term, he encouraged western investment, stimulated private enterprise and cancelled various Nasser-era programs. In January 1973, he suppressed Egypt's only leftist newspaper, Al-Ahaly. However, the Kremlin demonstrated a willingness to reach a modus vivendi with anti-communist regimes, if they adhered to Soviet foreign policy guidelines. Yet, in his efforts to succor politically moderate regimes, El Sadat systemically opposed the moves of Soviet clients in the area, and thwarted Soviet foreign policy initiatives. The previous chapter mentioned head of the Sudanese Communist

Party Addul Mahgoub's opposition to the Arab Federation. In July 1971, Mahgoub seized power in Khartoum. Moscow tacitly endorsed the coup and pressed El Sadat to recognize 1 Mohammed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East (New York: Harper, 1979), 163. 86 the new regime. Instead, he joined the Libyans, and helped Nimeiry to regain power. El

Sadat told a closed session of the ASU on 24 July that Egypt would never recognize an

Arab Communist government. In January 1972, Cairo and Khartoum signed a mutual defense agreement, forging, in effect, an Egyptian-Sudanese axis. When Soviet client

Libya invaded Sudan in July 1973, Egypt immediately airlifted supplies to Nimeiry.

In the Chadian civil war, Egypt and the Soviet Union again backed opposing sides. The civil war started in November 1972 between the Soviet supported Muslim

FROLINATguerrillas in the north and the Egyptian supported Christan-dominated government in the south. At the request of Chadian President Felix Malloum, Egypt supplied physicians, teachers and agricultural specialists, signed agreements for cooperation in the fields of technology, culture, health and tourism, and provided a limited quantity of arms. The Soviet Union, through its Libyan proxy, provided the

FROLINAT guerrillas with a generous supply of small arms, artillery and ammunition. By spring 1973, Soviet-made arms were engaging Soviet-made arms in the desert of central

Chad. The Soviet Union did not chastise Egypt for its attempt to thwart Moscow's international maneuvers, from 1972 to 1974 the Chadian conflict was hardly mentioned in the Soviet-Egyptian diplomatic record. Yet, El Sadat was clearly engaged in supporting the very regime that the Soviet fueled insurgency was combating. All the while, Soviet arms shipments and financial assistance continued to flood Egypt. It was only after the relationship largely collapsed and the Soviet position was already compromised, that Moscow aimed its rhetorical cannon at Cairo over the Chadian civil war. The United States would never have continued large-scale assistance to a client that

1 Anwar El Sadat, Speeches by President Anwar El Sadat: April-December 1971 (Cairo: State Information Services, 1980), 103. 87 was actively working against Washington's foreign policy agenda. That the Soviet Union did exactly that is a testament to the Soviet desire to maintain its position in Egypt.

However, if El Sadat was so vehemently anti-Soviet why did he sign the Soviet-

Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation? The answer to this question lies at the root of Soviet-Egyptian discord, a difference of objectives. In the West, the treaty was generally interpreted as signifying both an increase and institutionalization of Soviet influence in Egypt. Walter Laqueur wrote that, "the treaty constituted a step forward from the Soviet point of view." Articles 7 and 8 of the Treaty confirmed this impression.

Article 7 called for regular consultations "at various levels on all important matters affecting the interests of the two states."15 Article 8 spoke of "cooperation in the military field on the basis of permanent agreements." Moscow hoped that extensive commitments would solidify its position in Egypt and prevent El Sadat from flirting with the United States. That the treaty indicated a major new Soviet commitment in its relationship with Egypt is beyond question. That it signaled a major increase in Soviet influence is problematic, as a close investigation of the circumstances surrounding the conclusion of the agreement confirms.

First, the treaty stemmed from a Soviet and not an Egyptian initiative. The arrival of a large Soviet delegation to Egypt for the negotiation was announced on Cairo Radio a mere two days before its arrival on 25 May.17 Moreover, the provisions of the treaty bore a resemblance to the 14 May 1955 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual

14 Walter Laqueur, The Soviet Union and the Middle East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 23 15 "The Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation" http://www.sadat.umd.edu/archives/correspondence/AAAC%20Egvptian-Soviet%20Friendship%20Treaty %205.27.71.pdf.Last accessed on 5 May 2009. 16 Ibid., "The Soviet Egyptian Treaty." 17 Cited in Robert Stephens, The Egyptian Soviet Quarrel in 1972 (London: Bristol Typesetting Co. Ltd, 1973), 13. 88

Assistance, also known as the Warsaw Pact. This suggests that the Soviet delegation arrived with a prepared text in hand. In addition, the delegation included high-level representation, including President Podgorniy, Foreign Minister Gromyko, Deputy

Defense Minister Ivan Pavlovskii and Party Secretary Ponomarev. They certainly would not have been involved in the laborious process of treaty negotiation. Moscow's insistence on the institutionalization of its relationship with Egypt was due to El Sadat's evolving foreign policy, particularly his musings about the possibility of an interim

Middle East peace plan. If Middle East Peace materialized, Washington would deliver to

Egypt by diplomacy what Moscow's considerable military inputs had not enabled Cairo to attain. Moreover, if Moscow were no longer able to speak for Cairo in discussions with the United States on the future of the Middle East, what function, other than that of quartermaster, would be left for it to play? Principally, Moscow perceived the Treaty as a means to solidify its influence in Cairo, regardless of who governed Egypt. El Sadat's motivations were entirely different. He interpreted the Treaty as Moscow's recognition of his legitimacy, and hence as a Soviet pledge not to interfere in Egypt's internal affairs.

The reaffirmation of Soviet weapons and military advisors undoubtedly pleased the

Egyptian military, upon whose loyalty he depended. Additionally, the formalization and expansion of Soviet commitments could only strengthen his hand in future bargaining with the United States.

However, for El Sadat, the most important implication of the Treaty was the continued supply of Soviet arms. This divergence of objectives is indicated most clearly in comments made after the signing of the Treaty, when Podgorniy stated that, "the treaty

At the outbreak of the Six Day War, the Soviet Union recalled its ambassador to Israel. Throughout this period under investigation, Moscow lacked official diplomatic representation in Tel Aviv. 89 signifies a blow to the plans of international imperialism, which is trying in every possible way to drive a wedge between our countries." El Sadat's reply differed sharply in tone and content, "the most important thing is that with Soviet support we will be able to rectify the consequences of Zionist aggression." Sadat viewed the treaty as a means of continuing Soviet economic and military support. More pointedly, in a speech to the

ASU executive, Sadat stated:

I tell you that... I shall not sleep a wink until I have a complete army fully trained in electronic equipment. Only this can protect our homeland against any new Zionist attack. It was because of this that I insisted on concluding a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the USSR 21

Egypt interpreted the Treaty as Soviet support for its plans against Israel and often claimed that Moscow was acting in contempt of its obligations if it was not forthcoming with military and diplomatic assistance. As such, the Soviet Union found itself obliged to expand its commitments merely to preserve its existing position. Charles de Gaulle famously quipped that, "a treaty is like a rose and a young girl - good as long as they last." For El Sadat, when the Treaty and the Soviet presence no longer served Egypt's interests, he abrogated one and permanently evicted the other.

Bilateral tension climaxed on 18 July 1972 when El Sadat expelled roughly

20,000 Soviet technical, economic and military advisors from Egypt. Let us explore the implications of this pivotal event. El Sadat cited three reasons for the expulsion order:

Soviet refusal to provide Egypt with offensive weapons; delays in weapons deliveries and

Soviet failure to provide the quantities agreed upon; and neglect of Egypt's interests in

Zolotarev, Rossiia, 226. El Sadat, Speeches by President Anwar El Sadat: April-December 1971, 84. 21 Ibid., 93. 90

99 the fostering of a no peace-no war situation. Of these reasons, the second is clearly not a sufficient basis for expulsion. Moreover, the problem of obtaining offensive weapons is but a symptom of the third, the clash of Egyptian and Soviet interests, which underscored the root of Soviet-Egyptian estrangement. Rubinstein rejected the first reason because it was simply false. Though the Egyptians requested an assortment of military technology, such as the MiG 25 and the Tupolev Tu-22 supersonic medium bomber, the Soviets argued that the Egyptian military had reached its absorptive capacity and that the requested weapons were too complicated for Egyptian pilots. Officially, Egypt insisted that they had the defensive arms, but not the necessary offensive weaponry.

Most Western analysts accepted this version of events, which portrayed the exodus of Soviet advisors as the result of a unilateral Egyptian decision. Thus, academics such as Laqueur, Quandt and Smolansky, embraced the view that the withdrawal represented a major setback for the Soviets. Other reasons were proffered in attempts to account for the exodus. Rubinstein speculated that the need to boost his popularity among the Egyptian people with a 'bold strike' may have been an incentive to El Sadat, as well as a prerequisite in his courtship of conservative Saudi Arabia.25 Sadat claimed in March

1974 that he expelled the Soviets to make clear that the coming war was an Arab idea and not a Soviet one. Yet, the presence of Soviet troops did not impede Nasser's War of

Attrition. Israel did not hesitate to attack Soviet manned SAM positions along the west

Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile: The Soviet — Egyptian Influence Relationship since the June War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 271. 23 Ibid., 272. 4 These authors articulate this perspective in the following works: Oles Smolansky, "The Soviet Setback in the Middle East," Current History, vol. 64, no. 377: 286-305, Walter Laqueur, The Soviet Union and the Middle East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979) and William Quandt, The Superpowers in the Middle East (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). 25 Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile, 274. El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 279. 91 bank of the Canal. One finds this reasoning suspect. A revised version of events, set forth by Kerr and Heikal, suggests that the main reason for Sadat's decision to expel the

Soviets was their apparent inability to evict Israel from the Sinai. From this perspective, the stress placed on the Soviet failure to provide offensive armaments, vaunted by El

Sadat as the principal source of friction, mistakes the forest for its trees. The Six Day War made the reacquisition of the Sinai an urgent national issue; land, not arms, was Egypt's primary concern. The latter were important only as means of retrieving the former. Soviet arms may have ameliorated Egypt's strategic weakness, yet they were no guarantee that they would be successful in a conflict with Israel. As such, the collapse of the relationship may be seen as the limitation of armaments to achieve a diplomatic solution to a seemingly intractable political problem. El Sadat may not have been motivated by pursuing peace with Israel in order to regain the Sinai. Yet, after the Yom Kippur War and Egypt's failure to retake the peninsula by force, the road to reacquisition lay through diplomacy, which passed through Washington and not Moscow.

The interpretation that the Soviets placed on the exodus is at odds with the official

Egyptian version. The emphasis in the Soviet press was on the successful accomplishment of a limited mission. "The Soviet media reported departure ceremonies in which the grateful Egyptians bestowed medals on their departing comrades," and, in fact, The New York Times ran a front-page photograph of General Sadek, Egypt's

Minister of War, presenting a medal to Soviet General Vasili V. Okunev, during farewell ceremonies held in Cairo on 3 August. The Soviet version, does not suggest that the exodus stemmed from an Egyptian decision. Rather, it permits the post-facto implication

These authors articulate this perspective in the following monographs: Malcom H. Kerr, Soviet Influence in Egypt, 1967-1973 (New York: Praeger, 1975) and Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar. 28 The New York Times, 4 August 1972, 1. 92 that El Sadat misrepresented relations with the Soviet Union in order to ingratiate itself to the West. Kissinger listed expulsion of the Soviets from Egypt as a major American objective in the Middle East. Thus, the Soviets insisted that they abided by all agreements with Egypt, and that El Sadat intended to ingratiate itself with Washington.

There are several problems with the official Soviet version. It is difficult to account for the absence of a joint communique concurrent to Soviet departure. How is one to explain Moscow's silence until 20 July, five days after the withdrawal began and two days after El Sadat's expulsion speech? Why was there no immediate response to El

Sadat's speech? If indeed the departure stemmed from Soviet decisions, why was it not announced explicitly as such? A more serious problem has to do with the logic of withdrawal. Why would the Soviets want to pull out their troops and dismantle their

SAM sites? Why would they be willing to loose all of the advantages discussed in chapters one and two? A Zionist and Imperialist threat continued to stalk the Middle East.

These considerations make nonsense of the Soviet claim that having strengthened

Egyptian defense, the Soviet contingent had fulfilled its mission.

It can be posited that El Sadat evicted the Soviet Union because he wanted greater

Soviet commitment, not less. He wanted not only sophisticated weaponry, but claimed to want Soviet troops stationed in Egypt under Egyptian command. On 6 June 1972, El

Sadat sent Brezhnev an urgent note requesting that Soviet troops in Egypt be placed under Egyptian command. According to Jon Glassman, Brezhnev had threatened to withdraw Soviet troops on four previous occasions, likely surmising that El Sadat would

29 Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Michael Joseph, 1979), 143. 93 retreat once more.3 He, however, called Brezhnev's bluff. In turn, the Kremlin attempted to force El Sadat into submission by withdrawing far more people than Cairo demanded, including lower-level instructors and operators of the SAM sites. The Soviets even dismantled the radar station in Egypt's Western Desert and most of Egypt's 65

SAM stations. Six squadrons of MiG-23 were withdrawn, as well as some Su-11 aircraft.31 Yet, Moscow's over reaction failed to produce obsequious and submissive behavior in Cairo. Consequently, El Sadat, driven to regain the Sinai and rectify the consequences of Israeli aggression, did not actually expect the Soviet Union to place its troops under Egyptian command authorities. He must have realized that such a situation would have dramatically upset the Middle Eastern strategic balance and heighten the regional arms race. Furthermore, it could have elicited an Israeli preemptive strike and resulted in an increased American commitment to Tel Aviv, leading to a situation of no peace-no war, advantageous for Moscow, but untenable for El Sadat. He also must have known that the Soviet Union would never have permitted its military forces to function under a foreign command. Like any shrewd negotiator, however, El Sadat started with the extreme position. Two months after the Soviet eviction, in another letter to Brezhnev,

El Sadat "regarded it as inconceivable that Soviet units should be stationed in Egyptian territory and [yet] not be [under] Egyptian command." He stressed his alleged displeasure with the situation in order to extract concessions from the Soviet Union, specifically high-tech weaponry and offensive arms. In return, he graciously permitted

Soviet troops, still under Soviet command, to return to their stations in Egypt.

Jon Glassman, Arms for the Arabs (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), 54. 31 Ibid., 60. 2 Cited in El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 183. 94

Certainly, El Sadat's actions and his pursuit of national objectives conflicted with

Moscow's expectations. Yet, the Soviet Union suffered from something far more pervasive and troubling, the failure of its cultural diplomatic instrument. As an instrument of foreign policy, the cultural is defined as the selective presentation by a government of aspects of its social system for transmission to a foreign population.33 From its first entree into Egypt, Moscow actively disseminated and promoted aspects of Soviet culture.

Moreover, the Kremlin attempted to inculcate and promote the replication of the Soviet cultural edifice in an Egyptian context. Let us examine the tactics of the Kremlin's cultural diplomacy and expose the roots of its failure.

Moscow used the cultural instrument primarily to strengthen Egypt's awareness of the USSR's own cultural and political independence from the West. Particular emphasis was placed on the Soviet's ethnic, geographical, and political affinities, which claimed to be in sharp contrast to Western cultural imperialism. In the transmission of these themes, the Soviet Union utilized a wide range of activities, including the performing arts, print media and education. In the field of performing arts, Egypt hosted a number of troupes, orchestras and ensembles, including the Bolshoi ballet, the folkdance companies of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan, the Moscow Orchestra, and the State

Circus.34 In 1958, the Soviet Union was instrumental in the establishment of the first ballet school in Africa and the Middle East. From 1955-1970, Egyptian imports of Soviet print media and films increased by a factor of four, from 640 to 2,712. The writings of

Marx and Lenin were sold openly, Soviet scientific texts were translated and used in

33 Karen Dawsiha, Soviet Foreign Policy Towards Egypt (London: The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1979), 191. 34 I.V. Samilovskiy, Nauchnyye i kul 'turnyye svyazi SSSR so stranami Azii i Afriki [Scientific and cultural connections with the countries of Asia and Africa] (Moscow: Nauka, 1963), 47-53. 35 la. Cherkassiky, Sotrudnichestvo SSSR so stranami Arabskogo Vostoka i Afriki [Soviet cooperation with the countries of the Arab East and Africa] (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 300-306. 95 universities, and the works of Soviet authors were imported, particularly those of Tolstoi and Gorky.

Perhaps the most important prong of the Soviet cultural tool was its assistance in the development and construction of educational and technical training facilities.

Between 1956 and 1975, the Soviet Union constructed and equipped 43 centers from which over 85,000 Egyptians graduated.37 From 1959 to 1973, over 10,000 Egyptian students received a complimentary education at Soviet institutions. Yet, in spite of its efforts, Moscow never made the kind of cultural impact that was envisioned by either the

West or its own personnel. No doubt, ballets, symphonies and puppet shows were important meats of Moscow's cultural stew. Yet, they catered to the elite and privileged.

The price of one ticket at the Cairo Opera Ballet Company was equivalent to the monthly earnings of a Cairene laborer. Although the amount of print material and films exported to Egypt increased dramatically, one must remember that these Soviet productions cost between one-third to one-half of American and British imports.

Moreover, Egypt was not obliged to pay for Soviet goods in hard currency. At any rate, in 1974, the number of imported British and American films outnumbered the Soviet films by almost five to one.41 Even during the height of Soviet influence in 1970, western films outnumbered Soviet imports by almost two to one. In terms of education, Soviet gains were modest as well. Although the total figure for Egyptian students studying in

Soviet and Eastern bloc institutions increased from 1955 to 1973, their numbers relative

36 Dawisha, Soviet Foreign Policy Towards Egypt, 194. 37 Ibid., 195. 38 Ibid. 39 El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 59. 40 Dawisha, Soviet Foreign Policy Towards Egypt, 196. 41 Egypt, Department of Statistics, Annual Statement of Foreign Trade, Cario (various years). 42 Ibid. 96 to students registered at home institutions declined considerably. Moreover, from 1955 to 1975, the number of students registered at Eastern institutions paled in comparison to those educated at their Western counterparts. Even Nasser's own daughter studied at the

American University of Cairo. More importantly, Egypt's political elites chose to be educated at Western institutions. R.H. Dekmejain revealed that from 1952 to 1969, of the

131 Cabinet ministers who held a Bachelor of Arts or higher, not one received a degree from the Soviet Union.44 Consequently, it appears that pro-Western cultural orientations were far more enduring than statements from political elites and various measures taken on diplomatic and economic fronts.

Politically Egypt remained fundamentally nationalist and anti-Communist, following its own blend of socialism and agrarian reform. British, French and American influences dominated Egyptian culture and education. At the primary and secondary level, English and French were the lingue franche but not Russian. There were officially supported newspapers published in English and French, but again not in Russian. The

Soviet Union was distant and strange, understood as a military and diplomatic power, welcomed as a temporary ally, yet alien and abstract as an ideological system. As a people, Russians were unfamiliar. As one Egyptian put it, maji' al tatar, "the coming of the Tatars," was an inevitable consequence of al tamantashar sana, "the 18 years" of

Nasser's rule. Their coming may have been inevitable, but their presence was not welcome.

43 UNESCO, Statistics of Students Abroad, 1955-1975 (Paris: UNESCO, 1977), 58-59. 44 R.H. Dekmejain, Egypt Under Nasir (London: University of London Press, 1971), 187. 45Alford, Jonathan. "Soviet American Rivalry in the Middle East: The Military Dimension." In The USSR in the Middle East, eds. Karen Dawisha and Adeed Dawisha (Toronto: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 1982), 135. 97

In March 1972, the Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies invited

Egyptian and Soviet academics to participate in a seminar fostering bilateral friendship.

The proceedings quickly degenerated. The Egyptians aired a long list of grievances against the Soviet Union, such as Moscow's insistence on finding a peaceful settlement to the Middle East crisis and convergences in American and Soviet international positions.

The Soviet Union was vilified and condemned for its 8 September 1971 decision to permit an increase in emigration from the USSR to Israel from an average of 300 to 3000 per month. The conference, scheduled to last five days, ended halfway through the second when the Soviet delegation abruptly left.

The Soviets did little to help their plight. Soviet citizens working in Egypt tended to live in their own physical and cultural ghettos. Many of them considered Egypt a hard­ ship post. In 1968, the Soviet embassy in Egypt acquired seven square city blocks in downtown Cairo in which to house diplomats, advisors and their families. They rarely ventured outside of this Soviet zone and infrequently interacted with local Egyptians. In

1968, students, concerned with the economy, protested in Alexandria. These protests acquired an anti-Soviet character, which resulted in the destruction of the Soviet consulate. The relationship between the Soviet and Egyptian military establishments was also fraught with tension. At a reception in July 1967, Egyptian General Faud Najar punched Soviet General R.L. Tomashevski for claiming that the Arab loss in the Six Day

46 Robert Freedamn, Soviet Policy Towards the Middle East since 1970 (Westport: Praeger Security International, 1982), 121. V Safonov, Grifsekretno sniat. Kniga ob uchastii sovetskikh voennosluzhashikh v Arabo-Israelskom konflikte [Security classification removed: A book about the participation of the Soviet military in the Arab-Israeli conflict] (Moscow: The operations of Soviet veterans in Egypt, 1988), 49. Egyptian veterans tended to indicate their displeasure with having to serve in the Middle East. Most common complaints included heat, dust and a sense of alienation from the local culture. 48 Fred Wehling, Irresolute Princes: Kremlin Decision Making in the Middle East Crises, 1967-1973 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 39. 98

War stemmed from incompetence and cowardice.49 According to one author, what was most traumatic for the Egyptians was not the inability of the Russians to provide offensive arms in the quantity and quality demanded, but rather the Soviets' patronizing attitude towards, and near racist scorn for the Egyptian military establishment. Soviet civilian and military personnel were generally sullen, unfriendly and kept to themselves.

When Soviet sailors disembarked for shore leave, they rarely interacted with local merchants and seldom went on sightseeing expeditions. One commentator claimed that,

"the arrival of American sailors in 1978 was a boon for the 'hawkers and whores' of

Alexandria who were forced to endure years of Soviet frugality and sullenness."

Although Egypt's elite may have delighted in the pirouettes and plies of Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya, Soviet cultural diplomacy failed to make a lasting impact among the state's political elites.

Among the general population, evidence indicates that the Soviets themselves were not particularly liked, and that their presence was endured simply as a means to an end. Moscow's inability to create a lasting impression among Egypt's population permitted and facilitated El Sadat's truculence towards the Soviet Union. That few in the general population would lament Moscow's loss of position enabled El Sadat to pursue positions that troubled relations with the Soviet Union. By 1972, El Sadat believed that the Kremlin was no longer facilitating the pursuit of Egypt's regional objectives.

However, at this time, he could ill afford to jettison Soviet support and realistically hope

49 Ibid., 40. 50 Dima Adamsky, "The 'Seventh Day' of the Six Day War: The Soviet Intervention in the War of Attrition." In The Soviet Union and the June 1967 War, eds. Yaccov Ro'i and Boris Morozov (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008), 201. 51 Edward Brown, Soviet Naval Developments since World War II (New York: Praeger Special Publications, 1985), 82. 99 to achieve Egypt's objectives. El Sadat threatened, bluffed and manipulated the Kremlin into making decisions and taking policy approaches that either were contrary to previously articulated positions or ran counter to the best interests of the Soviet Union.

Moscow shifted towards policies that facilitated the pursuit of Cairo's objectives, while being revisionist and at times detrimental to the Kremlin.

The first phase of the relationship, September 1970 to July 1972, covers the period from Nasser's death to the expulsion of Soviet advisors. As we have seen, tension, disagreement and political posturing, by both sides, characterized this phase.

Cairo sought to enlist Moscow's help to facilitate the expression of Egypt's political objectives. The dispute pivoted on El Sadat's dissatisfaction with the apparent ossification of the state of no peace-no war, and Moscow's desire to settle Arab-Israeli discord diplomatically. As such, relations between the USSR and Egypt cooled dramatically. In early October 1971, El Sadat was due to arrive in Moscow for high-level consultations with the Soviet regime. On the first anniversary of Nasser's death in

September, Pravda ran an article, which stated that:

The imperialist states are doing their best to undermine relations and isolate Egypt from the Socialist states. The attempts of the imperialists and their allies to destroy Nasser's policy were thwarted by the signing of the Treaty. However, attempts to cloud relations have not ceased.

Before he left, El Sadat told a group of Egyptian academics that his principal goal during this trip was to remove the 'dark cloud' shrouding Soviet-Egyptian relations.

Nevertheless, the primary disagreement, at least from the Egyptian side, was not easy to resolve. El Sadat already committed himself to the thesis that 1971 was to be the "year of

52 G. Lebrecht, Arabskii iashchikpandory [The Arabian Pandora's Box], Pravda, 27 September 1971. 53 Anwar El Sadat, Speeches by President Anwar El Sadat: April-December 1971 (Cairo: State Information Services, 1980), 76. 100 decision" in Egypt's conflict with Israel. His main goal was to obtain increased Soviet support for military operations against the Israelis. On 19 August 1971, Heikal pointedly stated that, "any Arab defeat which the USSR does not help prevent will bring the Arab world and the Soviet position in it to pre-1955 conditions."54 In an even more flagrant example of Egypt's attempt to exploit the Soviet Union, Cairene spokesman, Tashin

Beshir, commented that El Sadat was preparing, "to bring about a superpower confrontation between the US and the USSR, if Israeli troops did not withdrawal from the

Sinai."55

The Russians however, were not yet willing to let themselves be so exploited. In the official Soviet description of the Moscow talks between El Sadat and Soviet leaders, there were frequent references to "a spirit of frankness" and "exchanges of opinion." In his speech of 12 October, El Sadat continued his theme that war was the only way to secure Israeli withdrawal and that he expected the Soviet Union to support Egypt in its time of need:

We proceed from the conviction that force is the only way to eliminate aggression against our lands. The peoples of the Soviet Union have always stood by us. Our people believe that the Soviet Union will stand by us at a time when we shall have to decide our destiny.

By contrast, Podgorniy's speech emphasized the need for a peaceful solution, and the joint communique issued at the end of the talks, was a clear reflection of Soviet, not

Egyptian priorities. The UN resolution of 22 November 1967 was repeatedly stressed, and anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism resolutely condemned. The most the Egyptians

Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar, 128. Cited in Ibid., 130. El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 86. 101 were able to extract from the discussions was a somewhat vague statement that the two

en sides 'agreed to measures aimed at the strengthening of Egypt's military might."

Most galling for the Egyptians, however, must have been the Soviet insertion into the communique of the following statement, which seemed to commit the Egyptians to a peaceful settlement: "The Soviet side noted with satisfaction Egypt's constructive position with respect to the achievement of a peaceful settlement." Party ideologist

Mikhail Suslov articulated Moscow's position, stating that, ...the existence of the state of Israel is a fact. The idea of annihilating it as a way of seizing land and achieving self-determination for the Palestinian people is self- contradictory. The pivot is the formation, strengthening and expansion of Arab progressive democratic movements in all the Arab countries and the victory of socialism in these countries.5

In an effort to maintain some positive ties to El Sadat's regime, Moscow gave final approval on 1 November for the construction of a $110 million aluminum plant at Nag

Hammadi. Yet in the period following the Soviet-Egyptian talks, the Soviet government continued to emphasize the need for a peaceful settlement to Middle Eastern conflict.

Despite El Sadat's increasingly bellicose speeches, Moscow clearly indicated that it would not support an Egyptian attack on Israeli held territory. The Soviets were influenced by their desire to avoid a confrontation with the United States, whose

President had just been invited to Moscow for a May 1972 summit meeting. Ultimately, the Arab-Israeli conflict was of tremendous value for the Soviet Union, since it allowed

Moscow a political entree into the Arab world. Yet, the price of the entree was a de-facto

57 The Policy of the Soviet Union in the Arab World: A Short Collection of Foreign Policy Documents (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), 44. 58 Ibid., 45. 59 Mikhail Suslov, "Blizhnii Vostok: voina ili mir [The Middle East: war or peace,]" Pravda, 12 October 1971. 102 alliance with countries that proved politically volatile as well as militarily impatient and apparently incompetent, and whose bellicose objectives the Soviet Union could not afford to support. According to one observer, the Soviet-Egyptian relationship at the start of

1972, "was a salvaged marriage, a holding operation without passion, for the sake of the children." However, the second phase of the relationship, in fact, was brimming with passion. Yet, it was not characterized by respect and admiration; rather, it was fed by resentment and bitterness.

As we have seen, El Sadat's decision to expel Soviet advisors represented a low- water mark in Soviet-Egyptian relations. Brezhnev's decision to withdraw SAM missile sites, radar stations and more advisors than requested was diplomatic blackmail, an attempt to influence El Sadat into adopting Soviet-approved foreign policy objectives and practices. The Kremlin believed that Egypt would not be able to recover the Sinai through diplomatic or military means without Soviet support. From August to December

1972, the relationship experienced a period of mutual disengagement. Egypt looked to

Western Europe and the United States for diplomatic support against Israel. The Soviet

Union endeavored to better relations with other Arab states, by advocating greater inclusion of national communist parties in their respective governments. Both attempts failed. By December, the Soviet Union and Egypt rediscovered each other. However,

Moscow's re-entree into Egypt was predicated upon Soviet support of Egypt's rectification of the situation of no peace-no war. Egypt was successful in this test of international brinkmanship. Moscow valued its position in Egypt more than its ability to influence Egypt's domestic and foreign affairs. Cairo's striking use of this paradoxical

60 John de St. Joree, "The Soviet-Egyptian Quarrel," Observer Foreign News Service, No. 30491, 23 October 1972. power minimized Soviet influence on Egypt's domestic politics and harnessed the

Kremlin's diplomatic and military largesse in pursuit of El Sadat's foreign policy agenda.

By October 1972, it became evident that El Sadat had failed to garner Western diplomatic support in his struggle against Israel. Sensing the potential for rapprochement,

Brezhnev invited El Sadat to Moscow. At this point, a general debate began in the top ranks of the Egyptian leadership about the proper relationship with the Soviet Union.

Heikal counseled renewed friendship, stating, "a sound, healthy relationship with the

USSR is vital, but it has to be based on equality, having a shared purpose."61 War

Minister Osama El Sadek, the most anti-Russian of the Egyptian cabinet members, claimed that, "renewed relations with the USSR are in our best interests, but we must not allow our aims to be held hostage to [Moscow's] objectives." Although Brezhnev and

El Sadat appear to have been eager for the meeting, the visit proved unproductive. First, the Egyptian President did not meet with Brezhnev. He was allegedly too ill. Second, there was no mention of resumed Soviet economic or military aid, and Soviet warships and airplanes were still prohibited from using their facilities in Egypt. The only positive aspect of the meeting was that Soviet leaders accepted an invitation to come to Egypt for consultations in December.

In a February 1977 speech, El Sadat recalled that during the October negotiations,

"the USSR was acting as a belligerent, condescending superpower, telling us what we could and could not do." It was at this point that El Sadat decided to take a hard line with Moscow. The intensity of El Sadat's anti-Soviet attitudes manifested themselves

61 Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar, 144. 62 Cited in El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 92. 63 Anwar El Sadat, Speeches by President Anwar El Sadat: Jan-June 1977 (Cairo: State Information Services, 1980), 18. 104 during Brezhnev's 4 to 6 December 1972 visit to Cairo. El Sadat threatened to rescind naval and aerodrome concession to the Soviet Union if the flow of economic and military aid did not resume immediately. He promised to undermine pro-Soviet regimes in the

Middle East and Africa, develop closer ties with the Gulf monarchies and pay a personal visit to Washington. An Egyptian member of the delegation recalled that at one point El

Sadat became so enraged that he threw an Egyptian antique against a wall. The Soviet delegation must have known that El Sadat's threats and histrionics were bluffs. Although

El Sadat developed ties with the oil-rich Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in

March 1972, these states were only willing to provide modest financial support and token military units in any military confrontation with Israel. Saudi Arabia, for example, was heavily dependent on American military, economic and technical assistance. Egypt's ability to undermine pro-Soviet regimes in the region was minimal. Economically and militarily, the Egyptian state was simply too weak and too reliant on outside assistance.

Moreover, Moscow's other regional allies, Syria and Iraq, shared El Sadat's opinion on the necessity of a military solution to their mutual problems with Israel. El Sadat's aggressive posturing could not have fooled Moscow, yet the Soviets acquiesced nonetheless.

In mid-January 1973, Soviet military advisors and technicians started to return to

Egypt. Changes in Soviet policy were immediately evident. In early February, the first of fifteen R-l 1 ground-to-ground missiles, better known in the West as SCUD missiles, arrived in Egypt. The same week, Moscow announced plans for the construction of a

MiG 25 assembly facility in Alexandria and entered into negotiations concerning the sale

Cited in El Hussini, Soviet Egyptian Relations, 102. Ibid., 103. of three used diesel submarines to the Egyptian navy. Later in the month, Gromyko announced the sale of 125 T-72 heavy tanks to the Egyptian army, even though they had yet to enter service in the Red Army. Any hesitation that the Politburo felt about providing offensive arms quickly evaporated in early 1973. Regarding a diplomatic solution to Middle East peace, Moscow altered its perspective as well. In April 1973,

Podgorniy stated that, "due to Zionist aggression and imperialist plots, the basis for a just

/TO and lasting peace in the Middle East is no longer attainable through diplomacy." This may have been lip service to El Sadat and other aggrieved Arab leaders, and not necessarily a Soviet endorsement for a military solution. Yet, it represented a radical break from Moscow's previous diplomatic position and its tacit endorsement of the situation of no peace-no war. Moreover, in March 1973, Moscow decided to place a head tax on all Soviet Jews immigrating to Israel. This decision, while mollifying El Sadat, damaged Soviet-American relations.

In early 1973 Soviet actions in the Middle East strained superpower relations.

Kissinger wrote that, "Moscow's apparent willingness to pursue a military settlement to the Middle East conflict almost resulted in the cancellation of the June 1973 summit meeting."70 While this might be an over-statement, only 22 out of a total of 3,200 words in the final communique issued on 24 June dealt with the Middle East situation. The text merely stated that, "the parties expressed their deep concern with the situation in the

Middle East and exchanged opinions regarding ways of reaching a settlement."71 Such

66 Cited in Richard Remneck, Reinterpreting Soviet-Third World Relations (Boulder: Westview, 1996), 96. 67 Rubenstein, Red Star on the Nile, 129. 68 SSSR i Blizhnevostochnoe uregulirovanie: Dokumenty i materialy [The USSR and a Middle East settlement] (Moscow: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, 1989), 165. 69 Freedman, Soviet Policy Towards the Middle East, 123. 70 Kissinger, The White House Years, 12>-1A. 71 SSSR i Blizhnevostochnoe uregulirovanie, 183. 106 prosaic words implied that negotiations on the peace process were ineffective, or that the issue was discussed hardly, if at all, with the knowledge that no breakthroughs could be reached. This communique contrasts with the one issued at the end of the 1972 summit, when the superpowers "committed themselves to working for a peaceful and fair solution to Middle East conflict." Washington also enacted a series of retaliatory measures against the Soviet Union for its support of El Sadat's truculence. In July 1973, the

American Congress voted to halt temporarily American wheat shipments to the Soviet

Union, cancel an agreement on energy cooperation and increase aid to a number of pro-

American regimes fighting Soviet sponsored insurgencies. Washington also allocated two additional aircraft carrier task forces to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and three squadrons of Phantom F-25 fighters to its bases in Italy and Greece. Soviet actions also fueled the fears of those within the American administration who were opposed to detente. Melvin Laird, a staunch opponent of detente and an advisor to Richard Nixon, complained in June 1973 that, "we are not seeing Soviet action in the Middle East to support the concept of detente. If the Soviet Union persists on this course, [we] may need to rethink our policies." In August during the visit of Danish Premier Jorgensen, Nixon acknowledged that, "[the Soviet Union] is trying to exploit detente for the benefit of its allies in the Middle East."75 In September, the New York Times ran a headline claiming,

"The End of Detente." Although, this proved a little pessimistic, Moscow's military

Text issued at the end of the 1972 summit in Arab-Israeli Conflict and Conciliation: A Documentary History, ed. Bernard Reich (London: Greenwood Press, 1985),121. 73 Shabram Chubin, "Soviet-American Rivalry in the Middle East: The Political Dimension," in The USSR in the Middle East, eds. Karen Dawisha and Adeed Dawisha (Toronto: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 1982), 128. 74 Cited in Edward R. Cheehan, The Arabs, Israelis and Kissinger: A Secret History of American Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1976), 263. 75 Cited in Kissinger, The White House Years, 122. support of Egypt resulted in tangible loses for the Soviet Union and a deterioration of superpower relations.

The logical conclusion of El Sadat's policies was a third Arab-Israeli conflict, which came with a surprise Arab assault on 6 October 1973. During the conflict, the

Soviet Union took active measures to ensure the success of its Arab allies. From 7 to 26

October, Moscow undertook a massive airlift campaign to support Egypt and Syria.

During the conflict's first seventy-two hours, when the Israelis suffered significant losses,

Moscow blocked Anglo-American efforts in the UN that called for an immediate in-place ceasefire. When the Arab position deteriorated, the Kremlin attempted to launch its own diplomatic offensive in the UN and Western capitals to pressure the Israelis into a ceasefire. After Israel failed to abide by a 23 October American-Soviet ceasefire proposal, Moscow responded by transporting planes to the bases of its alerted airborne troops. This resulted in Kissinger issuing a nuclear alert and raising the status of

American strategic nuclear forces to defense condition two.

As the war ended, Soviet policy makers could point to a number of significant gains. On the strategic level, the Soviet world position was greatly enhanced by the war.

NATO faced its biggest crisis since the Suez conflict because of West European opposition to the supplying of Israel from American bases in Europe. Differences over policy toward the oil embargo exacerbated the strains within the alliance further.

Meanwhile the European Common Market fractured over the failure of Great Britain,

France, Italy and West Germany to assist fellow European Economic Community member the Netherlands, which suffered from a total oil embargo. The embargo itself was the manifestation of a long coveted Soviet objective, the creation of anti-imperialist 108

Arab unity. Not only did Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria, Kuwait and Morocco deploy their forces against Israel, staunch American allies, such as Saudi Arabia fully supported the embargo, while the Kingdom of Bahrain evicted Washington from its naval facilities at Manama. However, these gains were transient. The embargo never seriously jeopardized American energy security, as its domestic demand was met through domestic production. Moreover, the end of the Yom Kippur War signaled the advent of the third phase of Soviet-Egyptian relations under investigation, the complete collapse of the

Moscow-Cairo nexus.

The ceasefire that ended the Yom Kippur War was particularly timely for the

Arab armies. The events that followed demonstrated El Sadat's resolve to regain the

Sinai. This resulted in a complete loss of Moscow's influence and presence in Egypt. By

11 October, Israeli Defense Forces repulsed Syria's Golan Heights offensive, advanced within twenty miles of Damascus, and then proceeded to relocate the majority of its forces to the Sinai to combat the Egyptians. Although, the Egyptian Second and Third

Armies had quickly crossed the Canal and breached the Israeli Bar Lev line, Soviet

General B.V. Gafurov and Egypt's Chief of the General Staff Saad El Shazly cautioned

El Sadat not to press the assault outside of the SAM shield.76 He did not listen. By 20

October, Israeli armored columns, protected by overwhelming air superiority, crossed the

Canal and encircled Egypt's Second army, severing its supply lines. If not for

Washington's pressure on Tel Aviv, which stemmed from Moscow's pleas to

Washington, the IDF would have annihilated the Egyptian armies. The key consequence of Egypt's inability to regain the Sinai by military means was El Sadat's acceptance of diplomacy. For this, the path to his objectives lay through Washington and not Moscow.

76 Zolotarev, Rossiia, 208. 109

Almost immediately, El Sadat endeavored to better his relations with the United

States. On 2 November, Egypt's Foreign Affairs Minister cabled Kissinger and asked him to broker an Egypt-Israeli prisoner exchange arrangement. This was concluded on 7

November. This was followed by an American mediated disengagement agreement, signed on 18 January, which saw Israel's withdrawal not only from its salient on the west bank of the Canal, but also a complete evacuation from its east bank as well. For the first time since 1967, Egypt controlled both sides of the Suez Canal. In the process, Kissinger managed to secure the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Egypt and the

United States. In fact, relations between the two states warmed so rapidly that a steady stream of businessmen arrived in Egypt, which under El Sadat's economic reforms provided a haven for investment. In early 1974, David Rockefeller traveled to Cairo to announce that he was planning to open a string of banks in Egypt's major cities.

Soviet-Egyptian relations began to deteriorate very rapidly. The Soviet Union retaliated by branding El Sadat a traitor to Nasser's heritage, an obvious attempt to

no undermine his position among the Egyptian public and elites. El Sadat was not intimidated. During a 3 April 1974 speech in Cairo, he claimed once again that he expelled Soviet advisors in 1972 because they defaulted on promised arms deliveries, certainly an attempt to undermine Moscow's image with other states. Then, on 18 April

El Sadat announced that he would no longer be relying exclusively on Soviet arms and announced the purchase of French Fl Mirage fighters. The Egyptian leader, in a speech to the Egyptian People's Assembly asked the United States to supply Egypt with arms

77 Kissinger, The White House Years, 155. 78 Observer, "Agressivnyi kurs praviashchikh krugov Egipeta [The aggressive course of Egypt's ruling circles]," Pravda, 21 January 1974. 79 Anwar El Sadat, Speeches by President Anwar El Sadat: Jan-Apr 1974 (Cairo: State Information Services, 1980), 69-70 110 because the Soviet Union used the supply of arms, ammunition and spare parts as an

"instrument of policy leverage to influence Egypt's actions." Although this statement is correct, its implications and the message El Sadat probably intended to convey, that the

Egypt-American rift of the previous twenty-three years was a result of coercive Soviet diplomacy, is spurious at best. Regardless of how he chose to frame Egypt's past actions, it became clear that El Sadat was willing to break ties with the Soviet Union and develop better relations with the United States, with the goal of diplomatically settling his grievances vis-a-vis Israel.

This, however, leaves us with one unanswered question. If El Sadat had orientated

Egyptian diplomacy towards the United States, which by the beginning of 1974 he had clearly done, why did he wait until March 1976 to abrogate the Treaty and cancel all military concessions? Like any good gambler, El Sadat was simply hedging his bets.

There was no guarantee that the United States could pressure Israel into evacuating the

Sinai. Similarly, there was no guarantee that Washington would financially support

Cairo's development. With this in mind, he maintained minimal positive ties with the

Soviet Union. From 1974 to 1976, five bilateral summits took place in either Cairo or

Moscow. However, the composition of the visiting delegations was low level, with defense ministers as the highest-ranking figures. Commitments were minimal and the communiques tended to focus on Palestinian issues. The Soviet Union still attempted to persuade Cairo of the benefits of a strong relationship with Moscow. A 15 May 1975 article in Izvestiia claimed that, "the establishment of relations between the USA and a number of Arab states has in no way affected the provocative, aggressive nature of

Ibid., 87. Ill

Israel's course."81 Yet, Soviet protestations were to no avail. By early 1976, Soviet-

Egyptian estrangement was complete, punctuated by a $250 million arms sale to Cairo. In response, the Soviet Union stopped supplying the Egyptian army with spare parts, and prohibited Eastern bloc countries from doing the same. This was the pretext required by

El Sadat, and on 14 March 1976, he abrogated the Treaty.

1 G.I. Starchenkov, "Izrail': armiia i gosudarstvo [Israel: Army and state]" Izvestiia, 15 May 1975. 112

Conclusion

From 1965 to 1975, the Soviet-Egyptian relationship was the cornerstone of

Moscow's policy in the Middle East. The Kremlin's alignment with the epicenter of the

Arab world permitted the articulation of military, political and economic objectives designed to enhance its own power and prestige, while simultaneously eroding that of the

United States. This research has demonstrated that the Moscow-Cairo nexus was of far greater scope and depth than hitherto recognized by the scholarly community. Certainly, political and military acrimony between the Arabs and the Israelis provided the Kremlin a timely entree into regional affairs. Yet, to frame Soviet-Egyptian relations by this single variable limits both our understanding of and the benefits accrued to Moscow from its relationship with Cairo. Chapter One explored Egypt's role in the facilitation and implementation of the Kremlin's re-conceptualized military doctrine. Egypt, as both a geographic entity and an active diplomatic partner, became linked to Moscow's creation of geo-strategic objectives designed to enhance the security of the Soviet Union.

After the Six Day War, the Kremlin obtained unrestricted access and de-facto sovereignty over facilities in Egypt; the Soviet leadership was able to implement plans for the creation of an immediate counterweight to American military might in the Southwestern and Southern TVDs. From this point, the Soviet-Egyptian relationship approached a military-colonial dynamic, where the influx of Soviet weapon systems, armed personnel, spare parts and war material professedly served Egypt's interests vis-a-vis Israel.

However, the boon to Moscow's pursuit of global strategic and military objectives was unmistakable. The Soviet Union had become a Mediterranean and Indian Ocean power 113 with recognized interests in the Middle East where it was regulating economic investments, exerting political influence and using military bases.

Chapter Two examined the various ways in which Moscow's association with

Cairo assisted the attainment of Soviet objectives in the Third World. These objectives included diplomatic normalization with the new nations of the Third World, strategic denial aimed at preventing the acquisition and exploitation of military, political and economic opportunities by hostile states, and the establishment of footholds in indifferent and hostile environments. In the same vein, Egypt played a critical role in assisting Soviet diplomatic, military and economic relations with the states of the Third World. The

USSR's principal objective in the decolonized world was to marginalize the power and influence of the United States. Moscow's initial entrees into the Third World leveraged a broad array of financial, diplomatic and military tactics in support of this objective.

However, the Kremlin realized that considerable inputs into developing states did not necessarily result in policy outputs favorable to the Soviet Union, and this resulted in a tactical shift that favored military assistance. In part, this decision stemmed from Egypt's newly acquired and aggressively independent line in foreign and domestic affairs.

Under Nasser, particularly after the Six Day War, problems that arose over the fundamental asymmetry between Soviet and Egyptian aims and objectives were sublimated due to Cairo's economic atrophy and military catastrophe. Egypt had a pressing need for a host of large-scale Soviet inputs to buttress its dilapidated domestic situation. In return, Moscow sought and obtained a number of concessions and Egyptian policy shifts. These included naval and aeronautic bases, socialist political and economic transformations, and similar opinions on a range of foreign policy matters, such as the 114 war in Vietnam and the reunification of the two Germanys. Even though Nasser's Egypt proved pliant to Soviet requests, a policy divergence still existed over the issue of Israel and Moscow's insistence on a negotiated peace. Yet, as the War of Attrition demonstrated, Cairo was far from strong or capable enough to address unilaterally its grievances with Israel. The death of Nasser in September 1970 and the emergence of El

Sadat heightened the fundamental asymmetry between Soviet and Egyptian aims and objectives. As explored in Chapter Three, the traditional patron-client relationship collapsed and in its place rose a new unequal dynamic. Soviet largesse neither tempered the rancor of El Sadat's public remarks nor ensured Egyptian domestic and foreign policies that were complementary to Soviet positions. As such, he used the extract the military and economic means to wage war against Israel. This involved a number of shifts in Soviet policy concerning the desirability of a negotiated peace and Soviet willingness to support publicly Egypt's truculence. Ultimately, Moscow allowed itself to be placed in a humbling position, where Soviet positions regarding the Middle East had to pass an Egyptian litmus test of acceptability. Egypt thus essentially obtained a veto over Soviet policy making. The resulting shifts proved detrimental to the USSR's relationship with the United States and inspired suspicion about Moscow's commitment to superpower detente.

The scholarly community tends to view the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev as a conservative, reactionary and status-quo global actor infected with gerontocratic malaise and lethargy. This thesis has revealed that in its pursuit of its objectives, the

Soviet Union was far from a conservative actor; rather, it was opportunistic and aggressive. Moscow's strategy advanced an activist foreign policy agenda that exploited 115 events and evinced new opportunities to strengthen the international position of the

Soviet Union and weaken that of the United States. Although the USSR was repeatedly assailed as a supporter of no peace-no war, the Kremlin's endorsement of Egypt's military solution, whether coerced or not, demonstrated a proactive and pragmatic approach to its foreign policy. At the very least, it belies the notion that the Soviet Union was a hesitant, status-quo oriented, global actor. This preliminary conclusion would be well served by further investigations of Soviet behavior conducted in the post-Cold War era. 116

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