Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973

Britain,Hughes the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973

✣ Geraint Hughes

The Yom Kippur, or Ramadan, war of 6–25 October 1973 cost the lives of 2,687 Israelis and 15,000–16,000 Arabs.1 The war also disrupted the incipient U.S.-Soviet détente and spurred Arab oil producers to impose an oil embargo against the West on 17 October 1973, contributing to a global recession and sparking a temporary rift between the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). West European politicians blamed the United States for provoking the embargo through its assistance to Israel and resented U.S. demands for unqualiªed support in the Middle East. A comment attributed to Henry Kissinger at the time—that “I don’t care what happens to NATO. I’m so disgusted”—may have been apocryphal, but it reºected the irritation that President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser felt toward the European allies. On the other side of the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Edward Heath was dismayed by the U.S. decision to raise the alert level of U.S. nuclear forces to Defense Condition 3 (DEFCON3) without giving his government adequate warning.2 The intra- Western crisis caused by the 1973 Arab-Israeli war can therefore be compared with other cases of transatlantic discord, such as those concerning Suez in 1956, the Polish crisis of 1980–1982, the Bosnian civil war from 1992 to 1995, and the Iraq war of 2003. Scholars have studied many aspects of the October 1973 war, particularly the military dimension of the conºict, the implications of the war for the intractable feud between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the effects of the

1. As far as casualties are concerned, the 1973 war was exceeded only by the 1948 war of independence and the 1967 Six-Day War. See Ahron Bregman, Israel’s Wars, 1947–93 (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 23, 92; and Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 304. 2. Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1994), p. 482; and Heath to Lord Bridges (Private Secretary to Prime Minister), 28 October 1973, in PREM15/1382, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNAUK). Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring 2008, pp. 3–40 © 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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crisis on the Cold War.3 Less attention has been paid, however, to the wider diplomatic implications for transatlantic ties. Although Raymond Garthoff deals sympathetically with West European criticisms of the Nixon administration’s policies during and after the October 1973 war, other accounts tend to echo Kissinger’s portrayal of the European allies as having jeopardized the West’s collective interests in the Middle East because of their economic self- interest and lack of resolve when faced with the Arab oil embargo.4 More recently, though, scholars have begun to look more closely at the West Euro- pean countries’ decision to break ranks with the United States.5 This article focuses on Britain’s part in the conºict, affording an additional perspective on the diplomatic confrontation that accompanied the clash of Israeli, Egyptian, and Syrian armies in the Sinai desert and the Golan Heights. The article pro- vides a corrective to the stark accusations of myopia and spinelessness leveled by Kissinger and other U.S. ofªcials against Britain and other NATO allies in late 1973. Although the interaction between U.S. and British policies in the Middle East during the post-1945 period has attracted considerable attention, scholars have tended to focus on the rise of the United States in replacing Britain as the dominant external power in the region. Some have depicted this process as a “changing of the guard” that suited British strategic and economic interests, whereas others argue that it was a hostile takeover in which a weakened Brit- ain was muscled out of the Arab world by its supposed ally. Historians have also debated the precise point at which the decline of British inºuence in the

3. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, pp. 66–94; Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Mid- dle East (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1982); The Sunday Times Insight Team, The Yom Kippur War (London: Andre Deutsch, 1975); Walter Laquer, Confrontation: The Middle East and World Poli- tics (London: Sphere, 1974); Edgar O’Ballance, No Victor, No Vanquished: The Yom Kippur War (Lon- don: Barrie and Jenkins, 1979); and Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War (New York: Schocken Books, 2004). For memoirs, see Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Touchstone, 1990); Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982); Victor Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin during the Yom Kippur War (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); and Mohamed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (London: Collins, 1975). Arabs refer to the 1973 conºict as the Ramadan War, and the Israelis and most Western scholars refer to it as the Yom Kippur War. Throughout this article I will refer to it as the 1973 war or the October war. 4. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, pp. 450–454. The tendency to portray European policies in 1973 in a negative light is evident in Kissinger’s Years of Upheaval, pp. 707–722. See also Coral Bell, “The October Middle East War: A Case Study in Crisis Management during Détente,” International Affairs, Vol. 50, No. 4 (October 1974), pp. 539–540; Walter J. Boyne, The Two O’Clock War: The 1973 Yom Kippur Conºict and the Airlift That Saved Israel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), pp. 87–88, 165; and Laquer, Confrontation, pp. 181–187. 5. The ªndings of a conference on European-American relations from 1956 to 2003, sponsored by the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, will eventually be published. Daniel Moeckli’s European Political Cooperation: The EC’s Struggle towards a Common Foreign Policy, 1969–74 (London: I. B. Tauris, forthcoming) also covers the impact of the 1973 war on U.S.-West European relations.

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Middle East began. Some have cited 1956 (the Suez crisis), others point to 1958 (the overthrow of the pro-British monarchy in Iraq), and still others have mentioned 1971 (the year the withdrawal of British garrisons from the Persian Gulf was completed).6 Yet in spite of the protracted decline of regional inºuence, successive British governments continued to act as though their country had a role to play in Middle Eastern affairs. This attitude was not merely a product of vainglory or imperialistic nostalgia; rather, it derived from geopolitical and economic realities. The Middle East was a focal point for Cold War competition because of the Arab-Israeli conºict, Soviet efforts to exploit regional tensions and to bolster its position as the patron of “progressive” Arab regimes and political movements, and the crucial economic importance of regional oil supplies for West European countries. The United Kingdom’s status in the international sphere had diminished by the early 1970s, but British policymakers wanted to uphold their country’s strategic and commercial interests in the Arab world.7 In addition, the article challenges received wisdom about the postwar Anglo-American alliance. The dispute between the Heath government and the Nixon administration over the 1973 war does not ªt well with the views of those who, like Scott Lucas, contend that “Britain paid the price of permanent subservience to American policy” in order to mend relations with the United States after Suez. The depiction of the “special relationship” as one of dominance and obedience has recently been popularized by critics of Tony Blair’s decision to support the U.S.-led war in Iraq.8 Yet the image of a subser- vient Britain forced to subordinate its foreign policy interests to those of its superpower ally is a caricature. The Arab-Israeli war of 1973 was one of sev- eral issues during the Cold War that provoked Anglo-American discord, and this episode poses three questions for scholars. Why did Britain side with its West European partners in refusing to endorse the Nixon administration’s policies in October 1973? How was the rift between Washington and London

6. See, for example, Nigel Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser: Anglo-American Relations and Arab Nationalism, 1955–59 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 1996); Peter Hahn, The United States, Great Britain and Egypt, 1945–1956 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); W. Scott Lucas, Divided We Stand: Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis (London: Sceptre, 1991); Ritchie Ovendale, Britain, the United States and the Transfer of Power in the Middle East, 1945–1962 (London: Leicester University Press, 1996); and Simon C. Smith, “Power Transferred? Britain, the United States, and the Gulf, 1956–71,” in Contemporary British History, Vol. 21, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 1–23. 7. DOP(73)26, Oman, 2 April 1973, in CAB148/130, TNAUK; CM(73)46th, 16 October 1973, in CAB128/53, TNAUK; and Clive Jones and John Stone, “Britain and the Arabian Gulf: New Perspec- tives on Strategic Inºuence,” International Relations, Vol. 13, No. 4 (April 1997), pp. 1–24. 8. Lucas, Divided We Stand, p. 324; “The Eden Project,” The Guardian, 15 January 2003, p. 7; and “Britain’s Special Relationship ‘Just a Myth,’” The Daily Telegraph, 1 December 2006, p. 8.

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resolved? What does this aspect of the history of Anglo-American relations re- veal about the nature of the bilateral alliance? In offering a response to these questions based on recently declassiªed documents from the British National Archives, this article demonstrates that the Heath government’s response to the 1973 conºict was driven not only by parochial economic concerns but also by Britain’s appraisal of Western interests in the Middle East—an appraisal that differed from the U.S. view. Furthermore, the fact that the UK was subsequently was able to restore amicable relations with the United States without abandoning its position on Arab-Israeli dispute conªrms that the profound disparity of diplomatic, economic, and military power between the two allies did not—and does not—automatically compel Britain to support U.S. policy objectives.

Britain and the Middle East: 1945–1970

The British response to the war of 1973 can be understood only if we take ac- count of the ªrst quarter of a century after World War II, when Britain’s inºuence in the Middle East declined dramatically. Britain’s postwar economic problems precluded the maintenance of its military presence and tradi- tional control over oil production in the region. Arab nationalist resentment of British imperialism and of the informal dominance exercised through client monarchies was compounded by the end of the Palestinian mandate and the establishment of Israel in 1948. The principal challenge to British power in the Middle East emerged with the overthrow of King Farouk in Egypt in July 1952. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ascended from the “free of- ªcers” movement to become Egypt’s president in January 1956, vowed to expel British inºuence from the Middle East. Nasser’s popularity in the Arab world, the threat his pan-Arabism posed to pro-British monarchs, and the de- velopment of the Egyptian-Soviet military relationship after 1955 provoked intense hostility in Whitehall. Prime Minister Anthony Eden was wont to conºate the goal of preserving Britain’s economic and strategic position in the Middle East with the Cold War objective of containing Communism. These two objectives spurred Britain’s attempts to overthrow Nasser, culminating in the ill-conceived collusion with France and Israel to seize the Suez Canal in October 1956. The Suez debacle led to a crisis in Anglo-American relations, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower used diplomatic and ªnancial pressure to halt the Anglo-French-Israeli assault on Egypt. The damage done to British inºuence was exacerbated as Nasser emerged from the war with his prestige enhanced in Arab eyes, making him an even more powerful threat to the UK’s regional interests. As one specialist on Anglo-Egyptian relations aptly states,

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from late 1956 to June 1967 “Egypt, with the exception of the Soviet Union, was arguably Britain’s most persistent foreign policy opponent.”9 Although the Suez crisis was a political and diplomatic catastrophe for Britain, it did not bring an end to the British presence in the Middle East. Over the next decade, Conservative and Labour governments fought a rear- guard action to preserve the UK’s status as a regional power and to bolster friendly regimes, though Eden’s successors were careful to ensure Washing- ton’s endorsement of their policy decisions. Successes such as the military interventions in Jordan (July 1958) and Kuwait (August 1961) were counter- balanced by the fall of the Hashemite dynasty in Iraq (July 1958), the debilitating insurgency in the British colonies of Aden and South Arabia (1962–1967), and the overthrow of King Idris of Libya by Colonel Muammar Gadhaª (September 1969).10 After Labour regained ofªce under Harold Wilson in October 1964, the new government committed itself to upholding British commitments “East of Suez.” In the Middle East, these included the maintenance of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), support for allied sheikhs in the Persian Gulf, and the retention of the base at Aden. However, the UK’s ªnancial problems eventually compelled Wilson to reduce the British military presence in the Middle East. In March 1966 the British government announced that Aden would be abandoned by the end of 1967. A year later, Wilson declared that Britain would withdraw from almost all of its Middle Eastern and Far Eastern commitments by 1975–1976. The devaluation of the pound in November 1967 prompted the Labour government in January 1968 to accelerate the timetable, allowing the “East of Suez” withdrawals to be completed by the end of 1971.11 Britain’s military presence in the Middle East had been undermined not only by economic realities but also by the Arab-Israeli conºict. Ofªcially, Brit- ish policy was to preserve good relations with the Arab states while encourag- ing a regional peace settlement. However, the intensiªcation of Arab-Israeli hostility in 1966–1967 and the outbreak of the Six Day War (5–11 June

9. Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1984); Keith Kyle, Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003); and Robert McNamara, Britain, Nasser and the Balance of Power in the Middle East 1952–1967 (Lon- don: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 1. 10. Wm. Roger Louis, “Britain and the Middle East after 1945,” in L. Carl Brown, ed., Diplomacy in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris 2001), pp. 32–43; Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 146–147, 163–164; and Jonathan Walker, Aden Insurgency. The Savage War in South Arabia 1962–1967 (Staplehurst, UK: Spellmount, 2005). 11. The most comprehensive study of this topic is Saki Dockrill’s Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez: The Choice between Europe and the World? (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). See also Phillip Darby, British Defence Policy East of Suez 1947–1968 (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1973); and Jeffrey Pickering, Britain’s Withdrawal from East of Suez (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1998). At the time of the 1967 defense review, Britain had 20,850 troops stationed in the Persian Gulf and Aden.

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1967) suggested that these objectives were unattainable. Ofªcials in London were not unhappy to see Nasser get his comeuppance in June 1967, but Israel’s victory had serious consequences for British interests in the Middle East. Not only was the Suez Canal blocked to merchant shipping, but Cairo accused the United States and Britain of aiding the preemptive Israeli air strikes against Egypt at the beginning of the war. As a consequence of this “Big Lie,” Arab states imposed an oil embargo against the United States and Britain. In addition, the Soviet Union reinforced its ties with regional Arab client states—notably Egypt, Syria, and Iraq—by stepping up its arms supplies. The Egyptians allowed the Soviet Navy’s Mediterranean ºeet to have access to Alexandria and other ports, and the Soviet Union provided additional weaponry and 4,000 advisers to bolster the Egyptian armed forces. These advisers were later supplemented by air force and air defense units, with some 30,000 Soviet troops deployed to Egypt from 1969 to 1972.12 From the British perspective, the increased Soviet activity in Egypt posed a direct threat to NATO’s southern ºank and had disturbing political implications, particularly after Nasser declared a “war of attrition” against Israel in March 1969. The intensiªed clashes along the Suez Canal had the potential to deteriorate into an Israeli-Soviet—and then a superpower—confrontation.13 This trend alarmed Conservative Party leaders, who criticized the “East of Suez” withdrawals and pledged to reverse Wilson’s decision to end Britain’s global role. However, after regaining ofªce in mid-1970, the Conservative government’s conduct of Middle Eastern policy reºected a sense that Britain had to rely primarily on diplomatic and economic—as opposed to military— means of upholding its interests in the Arab world. This limitation height- ened the contrast between U.S. and British policies toward the Arab-Israeli problem in the early 1970s.14

Anglo-American Relations: 1970–1973

Given the poor state of the U.S.-British “special relationship” in late 1973, it is ironic that Nixon welcomed the Conservative general election victory in

12. CC(65)49, “The Middle East,” 24 March 1965, in CAB129/20, TNAUK; Oren, Six Days; and Dima P. 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, Vol. 6, No. 1 (February 2006), pp. 113–136. 13. Minutes of Chiefs of Staff Meeting COS29th/68, 21 March 1968, in DEFE4/228, TNAUK; and DI58(N), “Naval Intelligence Review,” No.16, Spring 1968, in DEFE63/341, TNAUK. 14. John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), pp. 226–227; and P. Moon (Prime Minister’s Ofªce) to B. Norbury (Cabinet Ofªce), 15 September 1971, in PREM15/ 674, TNAUK.

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June 1970. Both he and his national security adviser had become dissatisªed with the Labour government and believed they could ªnd common ground with the Conservative successor. Both Heath and Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home shared Nixon’s and Kissinger’s fundamental skepticism about Soviet intentions, and Heath was by far the strongest of the West European leaders in supporting Nixon’s Vietnam policy.15 Even so, Heath was ambiva- lent about the United States and the concept of a “special relationship.” To secure Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), he concentrated on establishing closer ties with French President Georges Pomp- idou. Britain’s membership in the EEC after January 1973 affected Anglo- American alliance ties.16 U.S.-European relations were on an uneasy footing in the early 1970s not only because of trade and tariff disputes but also because of European concerns over the credibility of the U.S. commitment to NATO’s collective defense at a time of budding superpower détente. Despite professing conªdence in U.S. security guarantees, British ofªcials shared the other Europeans’ irritation regarding the inadequate state of transatlantic con- sultations and the imperiousness with which the Nixon administration treated U.S. allies. For the Europeans, U.S. insensitivity was demonstrated both by Washington’s unannounced decision in 1971 to suspend the dollar’s convertibility into gold and by the ªasco two years later with the “Year of Europe,” which followed Kissinger’s controversial speech on U.S.-European relations. That speech, delivered on 23 April 1973, did little to assist its declared aim of reinforcing transatlantic solidarity. Heath later described the effect of the “Year of Europe” speech as being “rather like my standing between the Lions of Trafalgar Square and announcing that we were embarking on a year to save America!”17 Another source of discord was the Middle East. At a press conference on 29 January 1969, Nixon acknowledged that the Arab-Israeli conºict had turned the region into a “powder keg.” However, the U.S. administration regarded Israel as a strategic asset in the Cold War, and from the late 1960s the United States became the principal arms supplier to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The Nixon administration’s policy toward Israel was partly inºuenced

15. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), pp. 932–934; DOP(73)9th Meeting, 6 April 1973, in CAB148/129, TNAUK; DOP(73)5, “Anglo-Soviet Relations,” 18 January 1973, in CAB148/129, TNAUK; and John W. Young, “Britain and ‘LBJ’s War,’ 1964–68,” Cold War History, Vol. 2, No. 3 (April 2002), p. 85. 16. William P.Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York: Hill and Wang 1998), p. 417; and Christopher Hill and Christopher Lord, “The Foreign Policy of the Heath Government,” in Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon, eds., The Heath Government 1970–74: A Reappraisal (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 306–307. 17. Memorandum by Lord Carrington (Defence Secretary) to Heath, 29 November 1972, in PREM15/1279, TNAUK. DOP(73)20th Meeting, 13 September 1973, in CAB148/129, TNAUK; and Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), pp. 492–493.

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by domestic political concerns but was also spurred by Kissinger’s conviction that the regional power balance depended on the maintenance of the IDF’s military supremacy over its Arab enemies. Furthermore, both Nixon and Kissinger regarded the Vietnam War and “triangular diplomacy” with China and the USSR to be of greater signiªcance than the Arab-Israeli crisis. Ad- hering to a policy of “linkage,” Kissinger repeatedly told Soviet interlocutors that peace talks in the Middle East could not occur without a settlement per- mitting U.S. withdrawal from Indochina.18 Superªcially, Britain’s goals in the Middle East did not differ dramatically from those of the United States. British ofªcials were worried about the possible overthrow of pro-Western regimes by radical parties or insurgents and were wary of Soviet inºuence in Arab states such as Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (or PDRY, as South Arabia and Aden became known after uniªcation and independence in December 1967). The rise of Arab radicalism had economic implications for the West, as shown by Libya’s and Iraq’s nationalization of oil production in July 1970 and June 1972.19 From Whitehall’s perspective, the best way to safeguard British interests was through a rapprochement with the Arab states and a distancing of the UK from Israel. Anglo-Israeli relations had generally been troubled since the collapse of the Palestinian mandate in the late 1940s, and bilateral ties deteriorated after the British became associated with the passage of United Nations (UN) Security Council (SC) Resolution 242 on 22 November 1967. Resolution 242 called for Israeli withdrawal from “territories occupied in the recent conºict” and for the conclusion of peace agreements between Israel and Arab states. The resolution was vague about implementation of its terms, and the Israelis insisted that they would cede territory only after direct negotiations with the Arabs. However, after the Khartoum summit of August 1967 the Arabs had adopted a collective position summarized as the “three no’s” (“no peace, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiation with Israel”). With little sign of compromise in the region in the late 1960s, the key questions regarding Middle East diplomacy were whether either the Israelis or their foes would ever moderate their demands and whether external powers could persuade or coerce either side into making concessions in the interests of peace.20

18. Bundy, Tangled Web, pp. 133–136, 329; and Jussi Hanhimäki, Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 97–98, 305. 19. JIC(A)(72)7, “The Subversive Threat from the PDRY,” 25 February 1972, in CAB186/11, TNAUK; Louis, “Britain and Middle East,” pp. 48–49; and Oles M. Smolansky and Bettie M. Smolansky, The USSR and Iraq: The Soviet Quest for Inºuence (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 15–33. 20. Note by C. McLean (Eastern Dept, Foreign Ofªce), 29 September 1965, in ER1691/5, FCO371/ 180917, TNAUK; and Moshe Gat, “Britain and Israel before and after the Six Day War, June 1967:

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British public opinion toward Israel at this time was still shaped by general sympathy arising from the Holocaust and respect for the IDF’s military prowess.21 Wilson and other senior Labour Party ofªcials shared these sentiments and regarded the Jewish state as a progressive social-democracy that de- served Western support. In contrast, the majority of ofªcials at the Foreign and Commonwealth Ofªce (FCO) were jaundiced toward Israel and were conscious of the effect of Arab-Israeli hostilities on Britain’s economic stake in the Gulf region. The plight of the Palestinians also aroused more sympathy in Whitehall than in Washington.22 The Heath government’s approach to the Arab-Israeli dispute was enunciated by Douglas-Home in a speech to the Conservative Association at Harrogate in October 1970. He said that another war could be averted only if UNSC Resolution 242 were implemented and Israel abandoned the territories seized in 1967—sentiments closer to those of “moderate” states such as Egypt than those of Israel and the United States. Douglas-Home’s comments “shocked” Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who complained about them during a visit to London in late November 1970. Meir feared an Arab onslaught against Israel and was aware that in strategic terms the Golan Heights and the Suez Canal were easier to defend than the 1967 frontiers. She therefore told Heath and Douglas-Home that Israel would not withdraw to its prewar frontiers and would have to rely on military power for its security.23 The British deplored Meir’s attitude and were disturbed by Israel’s propensity to respond to Palestinian terrorist attacks with raids against neigh- boring countries, notably Jordan and Lebanon. Ofªcials in Whitehall piously observed that the UK’s own problems with terrorism in Northern Ireland had not spurred reprisals against Eire, as if the threat posed by the Irish Republi- can Army to Britain was comparable to that posed to Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organization and its state sponsors. British policymakers had little empathy for Israelis’ concerns about the existential threat they believed their country faced. Meir and other senior Israeli ofªcials concluded that the FCO was chieºy responsible for the pro-Arab bias in British policy. As a consequence, Anglo-Israeli contacts such as those between Meir, Heath, and

From Support to Hostility,” Contemporary British History, Vol.18, No.1 (Spring 2004), pp. 54–77. The texts of UN Security Council resolutions are available in the lengthy series of volumes published by the UN, Resolutions and Decisions of the Security Council. 21. “West End Jammed with War Demonstrators,” The Times, 15 October 1973, p. 1; and “Tory Accuses Government on Israel Arms,” The Daily Telegraph (London), 15 October 1973, p. 3. 22. See Wilson’s comments in parliament on 18 October 1973, in Parliamentary Debates, 5th Ser., Vol. 861 (1973), cols. 439–441; and Frank Brenchley, Britain, the Six Day War and Its Aftermath (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005) pp. xix–xvi. 23. Conversation between Meir, Heath, Douglas-Home, and Others, 4 November 1970, in PREM15/105, TNAUK; and Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London: Allen Lane, 2000), pp. 283–285.

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Douglas-Home in November 1970 had all the characteristics of a dialogue of the deaf.24 The direction of British policy in the Middle East under Heath mirrored the policy adopted by French President Charles de Gaulle from the late 1960s. Like the French, the British distanced themselves from Israel and sought improved relations with the Arab states, although one key difference was that France was more prepared than Britain to sell weapons to radical anti-Western states such as Iraq and Libya.25 One additional source of Anglo-American tensions was the Nixon administration’s conduct of foreign policy. Both Nixon and Kissinger had an adversarial view of the U.S. government bureaucracy and used the National Security Council (NSC) and diplomatic backchannels with foreign governments to circumvent the State Department. The rivalry between Kissinger and Secretary of State William Rogers lasted until the latter resigned on 22 September 1973, allowing Kissinger to assume that post while also remaining national security adviser (and thus becoming the only ofªcial in U.S. history who simultaneously held the two positions).26 Lord Cromer, the Brit- ish ambassador to the United States, told Douglas-Home that despite all the informal connections the British embassy had with the U.S. policymaking establishment, British diplomats were unable to make sense of the Nixon administration’s foreign policy goals. The Watergate scandal also affected Anglo- American ties, as Nixon was forced to neglect foreign affairs and concentrate on saving his job. Under the threat of impeachment, he was reduced to drowning his sorrows and wallowing in self-pity. In the ensuing policymaking vacuum, Kissinger assumed control of U.S. foreign policy. On one occasion in October 1973, Kissinger even prevented the deputy national security adviser, General Brent Scowcroft, from passing a telephone call from Heath to Nixon, on the grounds that the president was “loaded.”27 Nixon’s and Kissinger’s

24. C. S. R Giffard (FCO) to D. Gore-Booth (Near East and North Africa Department—NENAD), 13 February 1974 in FCO93/528, TNAUK; D. Gladstone (Cairo) to Gore-Booth, 27 February 1974, in FCO93/528, TNAUK; “Visit of the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to Israel, 30 June–3 July 1973; Steering Briefs,” n.d., in FCO93/134, TNAUK; and Conversation between Heath and Olof Palme (Swedish PM) at Chequers, 13 September 1972, in PREM15/1764, TNAUK. 25. Edward Kolodziej, “France and the Arms Trade,” International Affairs, Vol. 56, No. 1 (January 1980), pp. 54–72; and Note by A. Parsons (Near East and North Africa Department—NENAD), 26 November 1973, in FCO93/184, TNAUK. 26. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, rev. and enlarged ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 300, 302; and William Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conºict since 1967 (Washing- ton, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), pp. 56–57. 27. Lord Cromer (Washington, DC) to Douglas-Home, 5 January 1972, in FCO82/176, TNAUK; and Hanhimäki, Flawed Architect, p. 303.

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conspiratorial conduct of policy was a further impediment to Anglo- American cooperation prior to and during the Arab-Israeli war.

The Road to War: August 1970–October 1973

The Conservatives did not reverse the substance of the 1968 East of Suez decisions, although the Heath government did maintain a limited military presence in the Middle East. British ofªcers were assigned to the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the UK sent military advisers to assist the sultan of Oman in a counterinsurgency war against left-wing guerrillas from July 1970 to September 1976. These deployments aside, the principal means of preserving British inºuence in the region were commercial, notably in the form of military sales to oil-rich clients. In 1972, Britain earned £292 million from weapons exports to the Middle East, with a further £355 million earned from the arms trade with regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. Despite the Tories’ earlier criticisms of Labour’s defense policies, Heath and his ministers recognized the limits of British power in the region as demonstrated in September 1970 when the Syrians intervened in the Jordanian civil war pitting King Hussein’s regime against the Palestinian guerrillas based in his kingdom. After the king appealed for U.S. and British aid on 21 September, Nixon ordered the U.S. 6th Fleet to move toward the Leba- nese coast, and the Israelis (with U.S. encouragement) prepared to intervene against the Syrian incursion into Jordan. Even though Hussein was a long- standing ally of Britain, ofªcials in London feared that intervention in concert with the United States would threaten British oil interests and investments in the Arab world. The Heath government therefore effectively abandoned Jor- dan to its fate, hoping that the Americans would not approach Britain for military and logistical assistance. Fortunately for Hussein, Syrian forces with- drew from his kingdom on 22 September, leaving the PLO to be crushed by the Jordanian army.28 The crisis was instructive, however, in what it revealed about the differing U.S. and British approaches to the Middle East— differences that reemerged in October 1973. Involvement in the Jordanian civil war was far more hazardous for Britain than the more limited and low-proªle British intervention in Oman, undertaken with support from the Saudis and the Iranians. In Jordan’s case, civil

28. JIC(A)(73)10, “The Outlook for the Persian Gulf up to 1978,” 11 May 1973, in CAB186/15, TNAUK; and Lawrence Freedman, “Britain and the Arms Trade,” International Affairs, Vol.54, No.3 (July 1978), pp. 377–392; Cabinet Conclusions, CM20(70), 21 September 1970, in CAB128/47, TNAUK; and Hanhimäki, Flawed Architect, pp. 93–97.

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strife between the Palestinians and the Hashemite dynasty was linked with the ongoing Arab-Israeli conºict. On 7 August 1970, U.S. Secretary of State Rog- ers successfully brokered a ceaseªre between Israel and Egypt, which held until October 1973. However, repeated efforts by Rogers and Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco to promote talks between the Egyptians and the Israelis yielded nothing. The State Department’s attempts at mediation followed up the proposals Rogers had laid out in October 1969, in which a negotiated Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai would be followed by negotiations for an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The Rogers Plan was rejected by both Israel and the Soviet Union and had less than wholehearted backing from the White House.29 Nixon’s unease over the continuing Arab-Israeli feud was overridden by his unwillingness to risk a “donnybrook” with Meir. His concerns over Middle Eastern stability increased by early 1973, but he was distracted by the fallout from Watergate and had to devolve most of foreign policy to Kissinger. Kissinger’s own intentions had little to do with his German Jewish heritage and were shaped primarily by his desire to weaken Soviet inºuence in the Middle East.30 He had criticized Dwight Eisenhower’s response to the Suez crisis, arguing that the United States should not undermine its friends and allow its enemies to beneªt, and he believed that the Arabs would eventually re- alize that only the United States could deliver a peace settlement with Israel. In particular, Kissinger presumed that the Egyptians would grow frustrated with the Soviet Union and would eventually restore relations with the United States to regain the land they had lost in 1967. The resolution of the Jorda- nian crisis left him conªdent that the IDF, backed by U.S. arms supplies, would in the short-term prevent any resumption of Arab-Israeli hostilities. Whether the Israeli covert nuclear program reinforced Kissinger’s convictions about the deterrent effect of Israel’s military strength is unclear.31 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who had taken ofªce after Nasser’s death on 28 September 1970, was frustrated with Washington’s passive attitude toward the Middle East and his own country’s dependence on Soviet support. He was viewed in foreign capitals as a transitional ªgure but proved

29. David A. Korn, “U.S.-Soviet Negotiations of 1969 and the Rogers Plan,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 37–50; and William B. Quandt, Decade of Decisions: American Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conºict, 1967–1976 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 91–92, 131. 30. For a recent book emphasizing Kissinger’s heritage as a Jew who had to ºee Nazi Germany, see Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Suri overstates this aspect of Kissinger, but Nixon did initially give Rogers responsibility for the Middle East because of Kissinger’s German-Jewish ancestry. 31. See Bundy, Tangled Web, pp. 180–181; and Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Colum- bia University Press 1998), pp. 323–338.

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to be more durable than expected. His principal goals were to recover the Sinai and to end the client relationship that had developed between the Soviet Union and Egypt during Nasser’s ªnal years.32 His speech to the Egyptian parliament on 4 February 1971 was his ªrst step to attain both of these objectives. Sadat surprised domestic and international opinion by offering an interim agreement with Israel (involving an IDF withdrawal and the opening of the Suez Canal) followed by negotiations for a peace agreement via UN mediation. This proposal departed from the “three no’s” Arab leaders had enunciated at Khartoum three years previously.33 However, Meir rejected Sadat’s overtures, arguing that Israel would not make territorial concessions as a pre- condition for peace. Sadat faced ridicule when his “year of decision” ended with neither a settlement nor a war, despite belligerent propaganda from Cairo in the latter half of 1971. Domestic frustration over the diplomatic im- passe inspired a failed coup by Ali Sabri, the secretary-general of the ruling Arab Socialist Union, in May 1971. Although Sadat survived, he was widely perceived as having been weakened by his failure to bring the Israelis to either the conference table or the battleªeld.34 British ofªcials welcomed Sadat’s February 1971 peace proposals and were exasperated with what they saw as Israel’s intransigence in rejecting them. The UK’s sympathies were evident in Douglas-Home’s Harrogate speech and his public advocacy of a withdrawal from the Sinai during his Sep- tember 1971 trip to Egypt.35 This visit was also intended by the British to foster reconciliation with the Egyptians, an objective facilitated not only by the warm reception Douglas-Home received in Cairo but also by Sadat’s decision to expel the bulk of the Soviet military advisers in his country in July 1972. Given Egypt’s central role in Arab politics, and the West’s interest in restrict- ing Soviet inºuence in the Middle East, FCO ofªcials concluded that Britain should seek amicable ties with Egypt, even if this meant distancing the UK from the United States and Israel. This was one of the reasons that Britain voted in July 1973 for a UN Security Council resolution (which the United

32. “Egyptians Accuse United States of Collusion with Israel after Rogers Pledge on Arms Supplies,” The Times (London), 18 October 1971, p. 5; R. Beaumont (Cairo) to Douglas-Home, 2 December 1970, in FCO39/737, TNAUK; and Anwar Sadat, In Search of Identity (London: Collins, 1978), p. 231. 33. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, pp. 103–104; and Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb, Kissinger (London: Hutchinson, 1974), pp. 452, 455. 34. “Egyptian Troops Told Zero Hour Is Near,” The Times (London), 25 October 1971, p. 3; Bregman, Israel’s Wars, pp. 105–106; and Beaumont to Douglas-Home, 1 January 1973, in FCO93/ 41, TNAUK. 35. “Sir Alec Calls on Israel to Return to Pre-War Line,” The Daily Telegraph (London), 14 October 1971, p. 2; and Conversation between Lord Balniel (Minister of State, FCO) and Meir, 5 July 1973, in FCO93/135, TNAUK.

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States vetoed) condemning Israel’s continued possession of the territories occupied in 1967.36 FCO ofªcials were aware that British inºuence in the region was far eclipsed by that of the United States, which alone had the diplomatic leverage to coax the Israelis to the conference table. However, to the dismay of Heath and the FCO, Nixon and Kissinger displayed little interest in Middle Eastern affairs and offered scant support for State Department efforts to foster a diplomatic settlement in the region. British diplomats in Washington attributed this lack of engagement to the Vietnam peace talks and “triangular diplomacy,” as well as electoral considerations. Yet this detachment from Middle Eastern affairs continued even after Nixon’s reelection in November 1972 and the Paris Peace Agreements in January 1973. Writing to Douglas-Home in April 1973, Cromer argued that Nixon and Kissinger believed that Arab- Israeli peace talks were infeasible and that the advent of U.S.-Soviet détente prevented the USSR’s Arab clients from attacking Israel. According to Cro- mer, the two U.S. ofªcials were convinced “that Middle East stability and American access to Arab oil are most likely to be preserved” by keeping Israel in “a position of such strength and conªdence that the Arabs are effectively deterred from initiating large-scale military action against her.”37 Heath regarded the Nixon administration’s approach as dangerously complacent. Throughout 1972 he was beset by protracted industrial disputes, and Heath sensed that instability in the Middle East might worsen Britain’s internal situation and endanger the political survival of the Conservative government. His exasperation with U.S. inaction in the Middle East was expressed in a telegram to Nixon on 15 June 1973 claiming that the ongoing conºict was “the main cause of anti-Western manifestations in the Arab world and the increase of Soviet inºuence.” Without a peace settlement, Heath argued, the Arabs would become more “frustrated, radicalised and irrational” and would eventually cut off oil supplies to the West. This telegram illus- trated the difference between British and U.S. perceptions of the Middle East. Policymakers in Washington assumed that the status quo would continue and questioned the ability of the Arabs to apply concerted economic pressure against the West. British leaders, by contrast, regarded the apparently unqual- iªed U.S. support for Israel as a threat to Western interests in the Middle East

36. Burke Trend (Cabinet Secretary) to Heath, 28 July 1972 in PREM15/1483, TNAUK; Cairo to FCO, No.1118, 31 July 1972, in PREM15/1483, TNAUK; DOP(73)15th and 16th Meetings, 28 June 1973, in CAB148/129, TNAUK; and B. Ledwidge (Tel Aviv) to Douglas-Home, 16 January 1974, in FCO93/444, TNAUK. 37. Steering Briefs, in FCO93/134, TNAUK. Cromer to Douglas-Home, 17 April 1973 in FCO93/ 230, TNAUK; and Note by M. Melhuish (Counselor, Washington, DC), 2 February 1973, in FCO93/230, TNAUK.

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and were aware that Britain and other EEC states received 80 percent of their oil supplies from the Arab world (as opposed to 5 percent for the United States).38 Three months after the eviction of Soviet combat forces from Egypt, Sadat ordered his generals to prepare a limited military operation to wipe out the IDF defenses on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and force Israel to engage in peace talks. For this purpose he needed military and ªnancial assistance from his fellow Arabs. On 22–23 August 1973 Egyptian and Syrian planners met in Cairo to prepare a coordinated attack on the Sinai and the Golan Heights, giving it the codename Operation Badr. Five days later, Sadat ºew to Riyadh to persuade King Faisal to organize oil sanctions against the West. To deceive both the Israelis and the outside world, Egyptian troop movements toward the Canal were disguised as exercises, and the concurrent Syrian buildup was attributed to increased clashes along the Golan front. So- viet leaders were not informed of Badr until 3 October, when Sadat told the Soviet ambassador to Cairo, Vladimir Vinogradov, that an attack on Israel was imminent. The following day, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad informed Vinogradov’s counterpart in Damascus, Nuritdin Mukhitdinov, that Badr would begin on 6 October. The Soviet Union responded by evacuating the families of the remaining Soviet advisers in Egypt and Syria.39 Until 6 October the Israelis and the majority of U.S. ofªcials remained convinced that the Arabs would not attack Israel.40 In the spring of 1973 most FCO ofªcials and the British military attachés in Cairo and Tel Aviv also believed that the withdrawal of Soviet air force and air defense units meant that an Egyptian attack across the canal would be “suicidal.”41 These assessments came into doubt when Egypt launched military maneuvers and Sadat then

38. Robert Taylor, “The Heath Government and Industrial Relations: Myth and Reality,” in Ball and Seldon, eds., Heath Government, pp. 161–190; and FCO to Washington DC, No.1269, 15 June 1973, in PREM15/1981, TNAUK. 39. Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 8–28; Bregman, Israel’s Wars, pp. 108–112, 114–123; Heikal, Ramadan, pp. 181, 204–206; and Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (London: Simon and Schuster, 1991), pp. 595–597. 40. Rabinovich, Yom Kippur, pp. 51–55; and Memorandum from National Security Council [NSC] Staff, “Indications of Arab Intentions to Initiate Hostilities,” n.d. (early May 1973), Document No. 1 in William Burr, ed., The October War and U.S. Policy: Electronic Brieªng Book (Washington, DC: National Security Archive, October 2003), available on-line as of early 2008 at http://www.gwu.edu/ ?nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/index.htm. See also O’Ballance, No Victor, pp. 51–52; and Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, pp. 458–459. 41. Adams to A. Parsons (NENAD), 6 March 1973, in FCO93/230, TNAUK; Col. A. D. Davies (UK military attaché, Cairo) to Beaumont, MAC13/1, 9 January 1973 in FCO93/65, TNAUK; Comment by M. A. Holding (NENAD), in FCO93/65, TNAUK; Group-Captain A. D. Boyle (UK defense attaché, Tel Aviv), 7 February 1973, in FCO93/143, TNAUK; and Note by Craig, 3 July 1973, in FCO93/143, TNAUK.

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declared on 1 May that he would “break the freeze” in the Canal Zone and that the Gulf states would support him by imposing an oil embargo against Israel’s Western backers. Anthony Parsons, the undersecretary supervising the FCO’s Near Eastern and North Africa Department (NENAD), told Douglas- Home that the odds against a breach of the ceaseªre had shrunk signiªcantly. One of Sadat’s advisors, Ashraf Marawan, reportedly expressed Sadat’s view that Egypt had no alternative but to resume ªghting with the Israelis and that “[there] were other methods of military action” open to Cairo besides an all- out attack on Israel. These comments were taken seriously in London, and at the end of May NENAD analysts concluded that Sadat was preparing for “a limited operation to hold part of the occupied Sinai” and provoke superpower intervention to break the diplomatic deadlock with Israel. However, FCO ofªcials concluded that the IDF would swiftly defeat the Egyptians, even if Syria intervened. One possible consequence was that Arab states would take reprisals against U.S. and West European interests, either through terrorist attacks or (as Sadat claimed) through the use of the “oil weapon.” The latter threat inºuenced both Heath’s telegram on 15 June to Nixon and appeals from London to Cairo to avoid any provocation that would induce Israel to launch a preemptive strike.42 On the morning of 6 October the British ambassador to Cairo, Philip Adams, reported on rumors of Egyptian troop movements, which, he said, were compatible “either with seasonal exercises or with purely defensive measures.” The following day Adams commented with astonishment on Sadat’s ability to conceal his intentions from Israel and the wider world, and by all indications his superiors in London shared Adams’s amazement at the outbreak and initial course of the conºict. Although British ofªcials foresaw the possibility of war, the actual timing of Badr was as much a surprise to London as it was to Washington or Jerusalem. Unlike the Americans, the British did take seriously Arab threats to interrupt petroleum supplies to the West, but they had also seriously underestimated the improvement in Arab military capabili- ties since 1967. The ªrst stages of the October war also undercut the assessment of British military experts that the expulsion of Soviet units and the loss of their technical expertise would hamper the Egyptian armed forces’ ability to ªght.43

42. Memorandum by Parsons, 2 May 1973, PREM15/1764, TNAUK; Notes by Douglas-Home and Parsons, 2 May 1973, in FCO93/253, TNAUK; Cairo to FCO, No.424, 9 May 1973, in FCO93/ 253, TNAUK; and Craig to Parsons, 24 May 1973, in FCO93/253, TNAUK. 43. D/DIS/25/2, “Defence Intelligence Staff Interim Report on the 1973 Middle East War,” 27 April 1974, in DEFE31/148, TNAUK; Cairo to FCO, No.742, 6 October 1973, in FCO93/254, TNAUK; and Cairo to FCO, No.754, 7 October 1973, FCO93/254, TNAUK. The reasons for the Israeli intelligence failure are analyzed in Uri Bar-Joseph, The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of Yom Kippur and Its Sources (New York: SUNY Press, 2005).

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War: 6–22 October 1973

At 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, 6 October, the Egyptians launched a massive onslaught against the Bar-Lev line, overwhelming the Israeli defenders and establishing a foothold on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. The following day, the Egyptian army had a force of around 100,000 soldiers in the Sinai that formed a defensive belt 4–5 miles deep along the canal. The Syrian offensive in the Golan Heights on the afternoon of 6 October almost led to a breakthrough. The Israelis rushed reinforcements to their northern front, and by 10 October the IDF forced the Syrians back across the 1967 ceaseªre line. Initial Israeli attempts to force the Egyptians out of the Sinai on 8–9 October were foiled when IDF air and armored attacks were blunted by Soviet- supplied anti-air and anti-tank systems. Having hitherto viewed Arab military prowess with contempt, the Israelis were taken aback by the reverses inºicted on them in the Sinai and by the heavy losses they had suffered on both fronts.44 Regional support for Egypt and Syria included not only military assistance from Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Jordan, Morocco, and Sudan, but also the decision by Arab oil producers on 17 October to cut output by 5 percent until Israel had withdrawn from all occupied Arab lands. Three days later the Sau- dis encouraged other Gulf states to impose a 10-percent reduction across the board and a complete embargo on petroleum exports to the United States and the Netherlands—the latter being regarded by Arab opinion as the most pro- Israeli of all EEC members. The use of the “oil weapon” helped to plunge the Western world into an economic crisis and was one of ªve issues over which U.S. and British policies diverged. The four others were arms transfers to the belligerents, U.S. access to air bases in Britain and Cyprus, competing efforts to secure a UN Security Council resolution for a ceaseªre, and the dispute within NATO over Soviet assistance to the Arab combatants.45 The root cause of this discord was the gulf between U.S. and European perceptions of the Arab-Israeli war. Kissinger viewed the resumption of hostilities exclusively within the context of the Cold War, and once it became clear that the war would not be a repeat of the Six-Day War he feared that an Arab victory would represent a triumph for the Soviet Union and its regional clients. By contrast, his European counterparts regarded the October war as an inevitable consequence of the stalemate since 1967. The French were the

44. For overviews of the war, see O’Ballance, No Victor, No Vanquished; and Rabinovich, Yom Kippur. See also Adams to Douglas-Home, 7 January 1974, in FCO93/561, TNAUK; and “Memcon of Lun- cheon for Kissinger’s Party, 22 October, 2:30–4:30 p.m.,” Document 55 in Burr, October War. 45. Bundy, Tangled Web, pp. 437–438; and FCO to Middle East Missions, No.128, 8 October 1973, in FCO93/256, TNAUK.

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most overtly sympathetic toward the Arabs; French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert rhetorically asked “[does] trying to return to one’s own territory consti- tute an unexpected aggression?” The British were less blunt in their public comments, but much to the annoyance of the Israelis (and the Labour front bench) the Heath government refused to brand Egypt and Syria as aggressors. The British were also unwilling to identify too closely with the Israeli cause, fearing that it would alienate Arab leaders and threaten the UK’s oil supplies. British leaders placed themselves at further odds with the Nixon administration by coordinating their response to the war with their EEC partners.46 Soon after the outbreak of war the Heath government imposed an embargo on arms sales to Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel. Ministry of Defence (MOD) ofªcials complained that this would undermine Britain’s credibility as a supplier and that important clients such as Iran would turn to other countries for future contracts. Yet the British embargo did not cover the Gulf states, even though they were transferring weaponry to Egypt. British ofªcials worried that an embargo against those states would jeopardize lucra- tive defense contracts such as the £250m deal the British Aircraft Corporation concluded with the Saudis.47 Prime Minister Meir angrily accused the British government of placing “the one that attacks and the victim of the attack... exactly in the same position.” Although pre-war Anglo-Israeli military ties were limited, the embargo caused outrage in Jerusalem. Britain sold 700 Cen- turion tanks to Israel in the late 1960s, but the supply of British military equipment declined in the years preceding the 1973 war, partly because of increased U.S. arms shipments to the IDF, and also because British ªrms trad- ing with the Israelis were boycotted by Arab countries. Nonetheless the Israeli ambassador to London, Michael Comay, complained that the embargo blocked the shipment of Centurion spare parts and 4,000 105mm tank rounds which the IDF desperately needed.48 The embargo was condemned by the press, Jewish MPs, and opposition front-benchers, although parliamentary debates during the war showed that both the Conservative and the Labour Parties were split between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian/pro-Arab advocates. Heath rejected complaints from cab-

46. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, pp. 707–710; Paris to FCO, No.1343, 10 October 1973, in FCO93/ 257, TNAUK; and Memorandum by Parsons, 11 October 1973, in PREM15/1765, TNAUK. 47. Paris to FCO, No.1373, 16 October 1973 in DEFE13/942, TNAUK; Note for Balniel, 17 Octo- ber 1973 in DEFE13/942, TNAUK; and H. L. Sufªeld (Head of Defence Sales, MOD) to Carring- ton, 24 October 1973 in DEFE13/942, TNAUK; and A. Acland (FCO) to R. Armstrong (Cabinet Ofªce), 15 October 1973, in DEFE13/942, TNAUK. 48. R. Anderson (MOD) to Parsons, 6 July 1973, in FCO93/140, TNAUK; Tel Aviv to FCO, No.471, 14 October 1973, in FCO93/261, TNAUK; and Conversation between Balniel and M. Comay (Israeli Ambassador), 10 October 1973, in PREM15/1765, TNAUK.

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inet ministers that the embargo would facilitate an Arab victory and enhance Soviet prestige in the region. He asserted that extensive U.S. assistance would prevent Israel’s defeat and that “our improved relations with the Arabs served to counter Soviet inºuence in the Middle East.”49 The embargo was an additional factor widening the rift with Israeli leaders, who felt betrayed by Brit- ain’s refusal to permit the export of the shells and tank components.50 In the same way that the Heath government’s policy on arms transfers angered Israeli ofªcials, the British response to U.S. requests for support for reconnaissance ºights over the Sinai peninsula and Golan Heights infuriated the Nixon administration. The United States and Britain had cooperated closely in the past in gathering signals intelligence (SIGINT) and imagery intelligence (IMINT), and British bases in Cyprus provided an important platform for Anglo-American intelligence operations in the Middle East. However, at the FCO’s behest the government prohibited the commander of British Forces in the Near East from launching reconnaissance missions from Cyprus.51 This sensitivity over spy ºights had its own implications for alliance ties because the United States wanted to use the Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Akrotiri to support missions ºown by the SR71 Blackbird spy plane, placing Britain in a difªcult position. The U.S.-British intelligence relationship was hardly a balanced one, and as one senior RAF ofªcer later noted, U.S. access to Cyprus was one of the few means Britain had of “[providing] some return for the enormous amounts of intelligence material provided by the U.S.”52 However, not only did the British remember the impact of the “Big Lie” in June 1967, but the Cypriot government compounded the issue by declar- ing on 12 October that it would “oppose the use of British bases in Cyprus as a springboard against Arab countries.” British ofªcials wanted to avoid being accused of colluding with Israel and refused to allow U.S. forces to use

49. For press comment, see “Israel Arms Ban Storm,” The Daily Telegraph (London), 18 October 1973, p. 1; and “The Hypocrisy of a Silly Old 14th Earl,” The Sun (London), 18 October 1973, p. 7, with a cartoon portraying Douglas-Home as an Arab puppet. See also Conversation between Balniel and Delegation of MPs at FCO, 8 October 1973, in PREM15/1765, TNAUK; and CM(73)46th, in CAB128/53, TNAUK. 50. U.S. Embassy Cable 8513 to State Department: “Conversations with Prime Minister Meir,” 23 October 1973, Document 58 in Burr, October War; and Conversation between Heath and Meir at 10 Downing St, 12 November 1973, in PREM15/1767, TNAUK. 51. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, p. 411; Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin, pp. 108, 113, 115; O’Ballance, No Victor, No Vanquished, p. 44; and FCO to Missions, No. 313, 6 October 1973, in FCO93/254, TNAUK. 52. PMVOW(W)(70)6(Addendum), “Visit of the Prime Minister to Washington 17–18 December 1970. Arab/Israeli Dispute. U2s in Cyprus,” 11 December 1970, in CAB133/398, TNAUK; and JARIB(UK)/211, Memorandum by Wing-Commander D. Adams, 8 April 1975, in AIR2/18991, TNAUK.

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Akrotiri.53 Responding to Washington’s request for permission to ºy the SR71 from the U.S. airbase at Mildenhall in Britain, Heath stipulated that any ºights must be kept deniable, so that in the event of a press leak the British could claim ignorance—a move that infuriated Kissinger, who supposedly curtailed intelligence cooperation as a consequence of this decision (though the practical implications of this action are difªcult to determine). In rebut- ting later U.S. accusations of British bad faith, Cromer informed Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger of “our very considerable contribution to the total amount of raw intelligence data available to the U.S. during the Middle East- ern hostility,” suggesting that signiªcant bilateral collaboration in intelligence-gathering and analysis continued during the war. It is also conceivable that the U.S. request for support was not entirely related to national intelligence needs. If Edgar O’Ballance is correct, the SR71 ºights were intended to gather IMINT and SIGINT material on Egyptian anti-aircraft defenses for the Israelis, and two Blackbirds based in Iran ºew a mission over the Sinai on 13 October. Whatever the intentions behind these ºights, Kissinger’s retro- spective claim that the British restricted U.S. intelligence-gathering does not acknowledge the distinction between London’s refusal to allow access to Akrotiri and Heath’s qualiªed position on Mildenhall. If Kissinger had ac- cepted British requests for deniability, the SR71 would have had sufªcient range to cover the Middle East from a base in the UK.54 Kissinger’s anger with the British over the SR71 row was compounded by the abortive attempt on 12–13 October to pass a UN Security Council ceaseªre resolution. As Raymond Garthoff observes, during the two weeks of the war the superpowers “alternated between urging a prompt ceaseªre and using delaying tactics to postpone one, depending on the tide of battle and es- timates of the course of further hostilities.” Kissinger initially expected a swift Israeli victory and therefore opposed the early passage of a ceaseªre resolution. In contrast, the British wanted an immediate ceaseªre implemented in situ, as opposed to a withdrawal by the Arabs to the 1967 lines. Not only was this proposal unacceptable to the United States and Israel, but it was also abhorrent to Egypt, as the Soviet Union discovered. After meeting Assad on 8 October, Mukhitdinov informed Moscow that the Syrian president was “begging for a ceaseªre.” The following day the Soviet ambassador in Cairo

53. A. J. Coles (Private Secretary to Balniel) to Parsons, 9 October 1973, in FCO93/256, TNAUK; and Joint Intelligence Group (Cyprus), General Intelligence Report No.42/73, n.d., in WO386/11, TNAUK. 54. Insight Team, Yom Kippur, pp. 424–425; Cromer to Douglas-Home, 15 November 1973, in PREM15/1767, TNAUK; Chief of Air Staff (Air Chief Marshal Sir Denis Spotswood) to Carrington, 24 October 1973, in DEFE31/145, TNAUK; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 709; and O’Ballance, No Victor, No Vanquished, pp. 182–183.

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was instructed to persuade Sadat to approve a halt to military operations. However, the Egyptian president contacted Assad, who denied Mukhitdinov’s report, prompting Sadat to accuse Vinogradov of lying to him. The exact circumstances behind this diplomatic ªasco were disputed by the three governments involved, but what was evident was that Sadat did not see any need to sue for peace.55 U.S. conªdence in the IDF’s military prowess was shaken by Kissinger’s meeting with the Israeli ambassador, Simcha Dinitz, at the White House on 9 October. Dinitz spoke frankly about the scale of Israeli losses, stating that his country urgently needed U.S. supplies to replace equipment damaged or destroyed. These pleas eventually spurred the U.S. airlift of arms to Israel and induced Kissinger to reassess the need for a ceaseªre, which, in light of Arab unwillingness to withdraw to 1967 boundaries, had to be implemented in place. On 12 October the Soviet ambassador, Anatolii Dobrynin, proposed to Kissinger that the superpowers should encourage a third party to table a ceaseªre resolution at the UN Security Council. Dobrynin claimed that Sadat would accept this resolution, but suggested that when it came to the vote the United States and the USSR should abstain. Kissinger suggested that Britain could sponsor the ceaseªre proposal, and he subsequently asked the British government (via its ambassador in Washington) to approach the UN Security Council on the superpowers’ behalf, stipulating that the resolution should be tabled by the evening of 13 October. Much to Cromer’s bemusement, Kissinger stressed that London should not waste time with diplomatic consul- tations (even with the U.S. mission to the UN) before convening the Security Council.56 However, FCO ofªcials realized from their own contacts with Cairo that Sadat was in no mood to conclude hostilities, and they were annoyed that Kissinger discussed the ceaseªre proposal (and Britain’s own potential involvement) with Soviet ofªcials without consulting the British government ªrst. Moreover, Kissinger’s emphasis on the urgency of introducing a resolution gave the British little time to act. Heath and Douglas-Home were both involved with the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool when Kissinger approached Cromer. Adams met Sadat at his headquarters on the morning of 13 October, only to be told that the proposal was a “Kissinger trick” and that

55. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, pp. 414–415; Washington DC to FCO, No.3118, 6 Octo- ber 1973, in FCO93/254, TNAUK; Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 198–201; Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin, pp. 43–49; and Memorandum by A. Thorpe (Beirut), 30 March 1974, in FCO93/561, TNAUK. 56. “Memcon between Dinitz and Kissinger, 9 October 1973, 6:10–6:35 p.m.,” in Burr, October War; and Washington DC to FCO, GPS620, 12 October 1973, in PREM15/1765, TNAUK.

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he would ask the Chinese to veto any ceaseªre resolution. Heath and Douglas- Home refused to press the case for a cessation of hostilities, deciding that Sadat’s attitude made the proposal infeasible. Kissinger summoned Cromer to voice his displeasure, proclaiming that “he could not recall any crisis in the last three years when the British had been with the Americans when the chips were down.” British diplomats reacted with scorn to Kissinger’s complaints. One dismissively commented that it was an example of “Henry acting the typical German bully boy.”57 However, Heath’s refusal to table a ceaseªre resolution became a source of U.S. recriminations in the aftermath of the war. Moscow’s role in provoking (inadvertently or otherwise) this Anglo- American row reºected the Soviet authorities’ own convoluted response to the war. Although the Soviet Union gave diplomatic support and arms transfers to “progressive” regimes, Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders worried that Arab radicalism could provoke a wider conºagration and undermine détente with Washington. Ofªcials in Moscow were as surprised as their superpower rivals by the initial progress of Egyptian and Syrian military operations and expected that their Arab allies would soon face defeat. Victor Israelyan, a Soviet Foreign Ministry ofªcial who advised the Communist Party’s Politburo throughout the war, retrospectively stated that Moscow was alarmed by Chinese support for the Arab cause, fearing that Beijing could erode Moscow’s inºuence over its clients.58 This factor and the need to show solidarity with Cairo and Damascus prompted the Soviet Union to resupply the Arab belligerents from 9 October. The IDF’s progress on the Golan front and Israeli air raids into Syria reinforced Moscow’s determination not to see the Arabs beaten. The Soviet Union also bolstered its naval presence in the Mediterranean. By the end of the war, the Soviet Navy had 96 warships and supporting vessels concentrated west of Crete. From 9 to 25 October the USSR shipped some 63,000 tons of arms to Egypt and Syria, with a further 12,500 tons ºown into Cairo and Damascus.59 The scale of Soviet assistance

57. Draft Telegram to Cairo, 12 October 1973, in PREM15/1765, TNAUK; FCO to Washington DC, GR200, 12 October 1973, in PREM15/1765, TNAUK; and Record of Meeting at PM’s Resi- dence at Chequers, 13 October 1973, in PREM15/1765, TNAUK; and Insight Team, Yom Kippur, pp. 281–282. In 1971 the UN General Assembly voted to replace the Republic of China (Taiwan) with the People’s Republic of China as one of the ªve permanent members of the UN Security Coun- cil. The United States had vetoed previous attempts to change Chinese representation in the UN, but the Nixon administration’s rapprochement with Beijing led to U.S. agreement to displace Taiwan. 58. Galia Golan, “The Soviet Union and the Yom Kippur War,” in P.R. Kumaraswamy, ed., Revisiting the Yom Kippur War (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 127–149; and Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin, pp. 37–38, 56–61. 59. William Quandt, “Soviet Policy in the October Middle East War—II,” International Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 4 (October 1977), pp. 590–591; and Lyle J. Goldstein and Yuri M. Zhukov, “A Tale of Two Fleets: A Russian Perspective on the 1973 Naval Standoff in the Mediterranean,” Naval War Col- lege Review, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Spring 2004), pp. 43–50.

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and Nixon’s determination not to “let Israel go down the tubes” decisively affected the interdepartmental debate in Washington concerning Israeli requests for military assistance. Operation Nickel Grass, the U.S. airlift and sealift of arms to Israel, commenced on 14 October. The U.S. Navy also more than matched the Soviet naval buildup by deploying three carrier groups in the Mediterranean to reinforce the 6th Fleet.60 U.S. ofªcials were increasingly frustrated by the lack of support shown by their European allies, especially the refusal of nearly all NATO powers (including Britain) to provide logistical support for Nickel Grass. Portugal alone complied in granting access to Lajes airbase in the Azores, although in the process the Portuguese authorities were able to obtain more U.S. assistance for their counterinsurgency wars in Portugal’s African colonies.61 Kissinger was enraged by the response of the other European leaders, whom he described as “jackals.” The U.S. ambassador to London, Walter Annenberg, found the British attitude incomprehensible, given that both Heath and Douglas-Home had shown alarm over the growth of Soviet inºuence in the Middle East. The United States accused its allies of showing supine indifference to Moscow’s “adventurism” and its use of Arab allies as proxies, and on 16 October the U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Council (NAC), Donald Rumsfeld, called on NATO to impose punitive measures against the Soviet Union in response to its challenge to Western interests in the Middle East. Rumsfeld proposed commercial sanctions, suspension of NATO involvement in talks on the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), and the use of diplomatic and economic pressure on Hungary and Yugoslavia, both of which were assisting the Soviet airlift to the Arabs.62 Rumsfeld’s European colleagues at NAC greeted his statement with incredulity. Although Rumsfeld claimed that the USSR’s support for the Arab cause constituted a threat to détente, Kissinger had already publicly declared that U.S.-Soviet relations were not being jeopardized by the war. Further-

60. Stephen Ambrose, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973–1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), pp. 240–241; COS(MISC)1004/85A, “Presentation to Secretary of State on the Middle East War,” 20 December 1973, in DEFE11/740, TNAUK. 61. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, p. 450; and Norrie MacQueen, “Belated Decolonization and UN Politics against the Backdrop of the Cold War: Portugal, Britain, and Guinea-Bissau’s Proclama- tion of Independence,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Fall 2006), p. 31. 62. Washington, DC, to FCO, No.3208, 14 October 1973, in PREM15/1765, TNAUK “U.S. Embassy United Kingdom Cable 12113 to State Department, ‘European Attitudes in Middle East Conºict,’” 18 October 1973, Document 39 in Burr, October War; “U.S. Mission to NATO Cable 4936 to Department of State, ‘NATO Implications of the Middle East Conºict: NAC Meeting of October 16, 1973,’” 16 October 1973, Document 32A in Burr, October War; “U.S. Mission to NATO Cable 4937 to Department of State, ‘NATO Implications of the Middle East Conºict: NAC Meeting of October 16, 1973,’” 16 October 1973, Document 32B in Burr, October War; and “Tran- script, ‘Secretary’s Staff Meeting,’ 23 October 1973, 4:35 p.m.,” Document 63 in Burr, October War.

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more, the U.S. delegation to the CSCE talks assured European counterparts that “the Middle Eastern situation would not affect the work of the CSCE.” The proposals outlined by Rumsfeld were deemed impractical by British ofªcials, who believed that economic sanctions would be a “pinprick” and that pressure on Hungary would be fruitless because it had no choice as a Warsaw Pact state other than to support the Soviet airlift. As for Yugoslavia, the British government worried that the application of economic and diplomatic coercion would merely drive that country closer to the USSR. Douglas- Home protested that the United States expected its allies to endorse “Ameri- can Middle Eastern policies which so far had been undertaken alone and which had not been fully explained.” Other FCO ofªcials compared Rumsfeld’s behavior with the Soviet Union’s treatment of other Warsaw Pact states.63 Transatlantic tensions were intensiªed by the oil embargo announced the day after Rumsfeld’s presentation to the NAC. The move came as a complete surprise to Kissinger, even though U.S. Treasury and State Department experts had warned of such a step. When Nixon publicly stated after the war that Europe would have “frozen to death” over the winter without the U.S.- brokered ceaseªre, allied governments saw themselves as hostages to U.S. policy, accusing Nixon and Kissinger of provoking the energy crisis through their own misconceived actions.64 The Saudis and other oil producers imposed their embargo after the war had shifted in Israel’s favor. Having stabilized the Golan front, the Israelis could focus their attention on the Sinai, the scene of an Egyptian offensive on 14 October. The Egyptian army advanced beyond the cover of its anti-air and anti-tank screen and was defeated by the IDF, which broke through the gap between Egypt’s Second and Third Armies. The Israelis crossed the canal and within four days had encircled the Third Army around Port Suez. By this time, Soviet leaders feared that the ongoing war would end with the humilia- tion of an ally and that the conºict could end in a superpower confrontation. At Brezhnev’s request, Nixon sent Kissinger to Moscow on 20 October to negotiate a ceaseªre resolution. After a day of talks with the Soviet leader and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Kissinger and Sisco agreed to a draft text that would be presented jointly to the UN Security Council. Resolution 338, subsequently passed on 22 October, called on the Israelis and Arabs to con-

63. UKDELNATO to FCO, No. 668, in FCO41/1178, TNAUK; FCO to UKDELNATO, No. 362, 16 October 1973, in FCO41/1178, TNAUK; UKMISCSCE to FCO, No. 473, 17 October 1973, in FCO41/1178, TNAUK; and J. Bullard (East European and Soviet Department) to C. Tickell (FCO), 23 October 1973, in FCO41/1178, TNAUK. 64. FCO to UKDELNATO, No. 362, 16 October 1973, in FCO41/1178, TNAUK; “US Sets Out Strict Measures for Saving Fuel to Meet Possible Embargo by Arabs,” The Times, 16 October 1973; Bundy, Tangled Web, pp. 431–433; and “Memcon, ‘WSAG Principals: Middle East War,’ 17 October 1973, 4:00 p.m.,” Document 36B in Burr, October War.

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clude hostilities no later than 12 hours after the resolution’s adoption and stipulated that the belligerents should negotiate a peace settlement “under ap- propriate auspices.” Kissinger and Gromyko agreed in principle that this phrase referred to the two superpowers.65 In contrast to the British and other U.S. allies who were relieved by the Moscow agreement, the Israelis believed that Resolution 338 denied them the chance to inºict a crushing defeat on the Egyptians as sought by IDF com- manders. On the morning of 22 October, Kissinger ºew from Moscow to Tel Aviv for a tough meeting with Meir. To mollify his Israeli hosts, Kissinger dis- closed that the United States would not protest if operations continued after the ceaseªre was supposed to take effect. Although he himself asserts that he had in mind a few hours of “slippage,” one Israeli source alleges that he acqui- esced in the continuation of hostilities for two to three days.66 Whatever Kissinger actually said, the tenor of his comments clearly encouraged the Israelis to press on with their efforts against the Egyptians. The result was an escalation of superpower tensions, which in turn did further damage to U.S.- British relations.

Crisis: 22–25 October 1973

The UN Security Council’s approval of Resolution 338 did not prevent renewed ªghting on the African side of the Canal on 22–23 October, as the IDF tightened its encirclement of Egypt’s Third Army. In response, the UN Security Council passed a second resolution (No. 339) calling for the immediate dispatch of a truce observer force to oversee the implementation of a ceaseªre. A beleaguered Sadat appealed to both superpowers to intervene and enforce Resolution 338, and Brezhnev demanded that Nixon compel the Israelis to cease their effort to destroy the Third Army. Soviet leaders believed that Kissinger had tricked them to accept a ceaseªre that neither the United States nor Israel had any intention of seeing implemented. At 9:35 p.m. Wash- ington time on 24 October, Dobrynin gave Kissinger a message from Brezh-

65. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, 139–141; “Brezhnev to Nixon, 19 October 1973, Handed to Kissinger 11:45 a.m.,” Document 41 in Burr, October War; Hanhimäki, Flawed Architect, pp. 309–311; “Memcon between Brezhnev and Kissinger, 20 October 1973, 9:15–11:30 p.m.,” Document 46 in Burr, October War; and “Memcon between Brezhnev and Kissinger, 21 October 1973, 12:00 noon– 4:00 p.m.,” Document 49 in Burr, October War. 66. “Memcon between Kissinger and Western Ambassadors, 21 October 1973, 6:30–6:45 p.m.,” Doc- ument 50 in Burr, October War; “U.S. Embassy Soviet Union Cable 13148 to Department of State, 21 October 1973,” Document 51 in Burr, October War; “Memcon between Meir and Kissinger, 22 Octo- ber 1973, 1:35–2:15 p.m.,” Document 54 in Burr, October War; Hanhimäki, Flawed Architect, pp. 313–314; and Bundy, Tangled Web, p. 439.

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nev to Nixon calling for the dispatch of “Soviet and American military contingents” to Egypt to enforce the UN ceaseªre resolutions. The Soviet leader ominously asserted that if U.S. action was not forthcoming “we should be faced with the necessity urgently to consider the question of taking appropri- ate steps unilaterally.” Brezhnev’s message resembled the symbolic “warnings” Moscow had issued at the climax of the Suez crisis and Six Day War. Accord- ing to Israelyan, the word “contingents” referred to observers rather than combat units, and Brezhnev also wanted to remind Nixon of the obligations Kissinger had apparently agreed to in Moscow.67 The previous day, Kissinger had told State Department subordinates that the administration’s handling of the Middle Eastern crisis was “a major suc- cess” and that “without the close relationship with the Soviet Union, this [war] may have escalated.” Brezhnev’s demarche to Nixon demonstrated that superpower détente was, in fact, still precarious. Kissinger was aware that Soviet leaders would regard the continuation of hostilities as evidence of his bad faith, but he viewed Brezhnev’s message as an ultimatum. Soon after re- ceiving Dobrynin, Kissinger convened a meeting of the Washington Special Action Group (WSAG), an ad hoc body consisting of senior policymakers. Kissinger chaired the meeting in place of Nixon, who apparently was in a drunken and distraught state because of the prospect of impeachment. The WSAG discussed both Brezhnev’s message and intelligence indicating that the USSR was considering military intervention in the Canal Zone: A Soviet ºotilla was sailing for the Egyptian coast, the Soviet airlift of arms to Egypt had slowed, and a vessel carrying ªssile material had passed through the Black Sea straits. Participants concluded that the Soviet Union was preparing to de- ploy its airborne and naval infantry divisions to Egypt and agreed at 11:41 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) to raise the alert state of U.S. nuclear forces to DEFCON3, a decision approved by Nixon the following morning. Kissinger informally told Cromer about the alert measures soon after the WSAG meeting, but NATO partners were not ofªcially notiªed until Rumsfeld briefed his NAC colleagues at 9:00 a.m. Brussels time on 25 October. By that point, news of the nuclear alert was being broadcast worldwide.68 The U.S. media interpreted the move as a blatant attempt to distract

67. Sadat to Nixon, 23 October 1973, transcribed in “Excerpts from Backchannel U.S.-Egyptian messages, 20–26 October 1973,” Document 44 in Burr, October War; “Hotline Messages from Brezhnev to Nixon, 23 October 1973,” Documents 61A and 61B in Burr, October War; Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin, pp. 181–183; and Lebow and Stein, We All Lost, pp. 243–244. 68. “Transcript, ‘Secretary’s Staff Meeting,’ 23 October 1973”; and “Department of State Cable 210450 to U.S. Mission, North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” 25 October 1973, Document 74 in Burr, October War; Note of Telephone Call from Cromer to 10 Downing St., 25 October 1973, in PREM15/1766, TNAUK; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, pp. 423–426; and Hanhimäki, Flawed Architect, p. 316.

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public opinion from Watergate, and some senior ofªcials in Washington believed that the Soviet Union was blufªng and was in no position to risk a confrontation with superior U.S. forces in the eastern Mediterranean. Although Soviet leaders were angered by the U.S. move, they chose not to respond in kind. The nuclear alert highlighted the Nixon administration’s tendency during previous crises—such as those over Jordan and Cuba in 1970, and with the Indo-Pakistani war the following year—to rely on coercive gestures of military might to signal political intent. Although the alert was rescinded on 26 October, it had grave diplomatic consequences because it indirectly involved the European allies. The Europeans reacted with dismay and fury, concluding that the United States wanted them to accept the dangers of association with policy decisions of which they remained uninformed.69 Rumsfeld’s NAC counterparts berated him over the U.S. failure to give their governments advance notice of the alert and compared the Nixon administration’s secrecy unfavorably to John F. Kennedy’s efforts to keep NATO allies informed of U.S. decision-making during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The Heath government was in a particularly difªcult situation because of the presence of U.S. nuclear forces on British soil. Kissinger had briefed the British ambassador on Brezhnev’s message to Nixon and on the conclusions of the WSAG meeting, but he did not refer to the DEFCON3 alert. Heath did not comprehend the scale of the U.S. response until the ªrst news reports reached him. In Parliament, the Labour Party was able to embarrass the government over the whole affair.70 The signiªcance of the alert for Britain was not conªned to domestic politics. Since January 1952 the U.S. and British governments had an informal but well-established understanding that the United States would not use nuclear forces based in the UK without Britain’s consent.71 Pre-1973 British

69. In September 1970 the White House became convinced that the Soviet Union was building a nuclear submarine base at Cienfuegos in Cuba. Kissinger warned Ambassador Anatolii Dobrynin that this was a matter of “utmost gravity,” but the crisis soon petered out. See Garthoff, Détente and Con- frontation, p. 425. 70. “U.S. Mission to NATO Cable 5179 to State Department, ‘U.S. Action Regarding Middle East,’” 26 October 1973 Document No. 79A in Burr, October War; “U.S. Mission to NATO Cable 5184 to State Department, ‘U.S. Action Regarding Middle East,’” 26 October 1973 in Burr, October War; Cromer to 10 Downing St, 25 October 1973, in PREM15/1766, TNAUK; Parliamentary Debates, 5th ser., Vol. 861 (1973), cols.1477–1478; Parliamentary Debates, 5th ser., Vol. 863 (1973), cols.19, 1475–1483; and “Britain in Dark on Nuclear Alert,” The Guardian (London), 26 October 1973, pp. 1–2. 71. “Memorandum of Conversation, Truman-Churchill Talks, ‘Meeting on Agenda Items A: The Strategic Air Plans and the Use of Nuclear Weapons (TCT D-2/7) and B. Technical Cooperation in Atomic Energy (TCT D-2/8), 7 January 1952, 5–5:45 p.m., Top Secret,’” Document 4A in William Burr, ed., “Consultation is Presidential Business.” Secret Understandings on the Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1950–1974: Electronic Brieªng Book (Washington, DC: National Security Archive, 2005), available on-line as of January 2008 at http://www.gwu.edu/?nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB159/index.htm.

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planning presumed that during an East-West crisis British preparations for war would be governed by NATO alert procedures and that London would receive advance rather than retroactive notice from Washington if the readiness level of U.S. nuclear forces changed. However, the issue of advance consultation on employment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Britain had not been deªned by the 1952 agreement, although successive prime ministers assumed that the United States would inform them of any decision potentially involving the use of U.S. strategic or theater nuclear forces. Heath was therefore dismayed by the alert, not only because he had not been warned of this decision, but also because he considered it an unnecessary escalation.72 On 28 October, Heath ordered his Private Secretary, Lord Bridges, to in- vestigate the circumstances behind the U.S. alert. Heath was enraged by the Whitehall bureaucracy’s failure to give him prior notiªcation, even though the MOD had been informed of the imposition of DEFCON3 through its Pentagon contacts hours before 10 Downing Street was. He also directed the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) to examine the intelligence that led to the alert, noting that the move had disturbed public opinion and outraged many MPs, some of whom asserted that Nixon had taken leave of his senses. Heath indicated that he shared the suspicion that Watergate had affected the president’s mental stability (the prime minister was unaware that Nixon was not present when the WSAG made its decision). Heath also told Bridges that the decision to raise nuclear alert levels was a disproportionate response, lacking either practicality or credibility even if the Soviet Union had been planning to send troops to Egypt. Above all, the British public was worried “as to what use the Americans would have been able to make of their forces here without in any way consulting us or considering British interests.” The tone of alarm in Heath’s letter highlighted one of the key ambiguities of U.S.-British relations, namely, the status of U.S. nuclear forces in Britain and the prospect that they could be used without consultation with the host government. The episode also raised the disturbing possibility that Britain faced the potentially cata- strophic risks of alignment without the beneªts of being a privileged alliance partner.73 The JIC’s assessment of intelligence pertaining to Soviet intentions was

72. Simon Duke, U.S. Defence Bases in the United Kingdom: A Matter for Joint Decision? (London: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 164–165. On British contingency planning for nuclear war, see Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Penguin, 2003); and Conversation between Heath and Willy Brandt (West German Chancellor) at 10 Downing St, 15 November 1973, in PREM15/1767, TNAUK. 73. Heath to Lord Bridges, 28 October 1973, in PREM15/1382, TNAUK. On public and parliamentary concern, see “Nixon’s Action Raises Doubts,” The Guardian, 26 October 1973, p. 2.

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not expressed as bluntly as Heath’s but was implicitly as critical. JIC analysts concluded that although “the Russians may have felt that they could not ignore Egyptian appeals” to stave off the Israelis and save the Third Army, it was unlikely that the USSR would jeopardize superpower détente—and also alarm Arab and non-aligned countries—by intervening in Egypt. SIGINT in- formation showed that there “were no signiªcant anomalies or deviations” in the pattern of Soviet military activity, especially the Strategic Missile Forces, and no indications of any preparations to put the USSR on a war footing. The JIC’s assessment was that although Moscow wanted to press the Nixon administration to restrain Israel, Brezhnev’s message was too vague to consti- tute an ultimatum. The JIC also noted that Kissinger’s comment to Cromer about U.S. forces as having been put on “a low level of military alert” was “difªcult to reconcile” with the decision to bring U.S. forces to DEFCON3. The JIC concluded that if the U.S. government had genuinely believed that Soviet intervention was feasible, the president could have ordered “a military response at a lower level.” “The U.S. response” to Brezhnev’s message, according to the JIC, “was higher than necessary” to prevent unilateral Soviet action in the Middle East.74 Concurrent with the nuclear alert, Kissinger used diplomatic pressure to force the Israelis to agree to a ceaseªre. The United States insisted that food, water, and medical supplies be made available to the Third Army and that the Israelis should negotiate an agreement on military disengagement with the Egyptians. The two superpowers also agreed to UN Security Council Resolu- tion 339 calling for the introduction of a UN Emergency Force (UNEF) to act as a buffer between the belligerents.75 Regarding the DEFCON3 alert, Kissinger maintained both at the time and in his memoirs that Washington had no time to consult Britain or any other European allies. In contrast, James Schlesinger later stated that the alert “was not handled well by the United States Government. There was a time for consultation and discussion that could have been utilized.”76 Yet given the poor state of U.S.-West European relations, it is unlikely that Kissinger and the rest of the WSAG were in any mood to consult partners who, as Kissinger put it, had “acted like jackals” from the start of the war.

74. JIC(A)(73)43rd, 26 October 1973, in CAB185/13, TNAUK; Note by Cabinet Ofªce Assess- ments Staff, “The U.S. Alert of 25 October,” 29 October 1973, in PREM15/1382, TNAUK; and P. Cradock (Assessments Staff) to Heath, 1 November 1973, in PREM15/1767, TNAUK. 75. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, p. 433; COS22nd/73, 25 October 1973, in DEFE4/279, TNAUK; and JIG(Cyprus), General Intelligence Report No.42/73, 30 October 1973, in WO386/11, TNAUK. 76. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, pp. 712–713; Duke, US Bases, p. 165; and Washington to FCO, No.3146 and 3147, 31 November 1973, in PREM15/1767, TNAUK.

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Repercussions: October–December 1973

Transatlantic acrimony persisted in the weeks after the ceaseªre. Kissinger resented Jobert’s speech at the French National Assembly on 16 October accusing the superpowers of fueling the recent war by providing vast quantities of arms to the belligerents. Jobert conveniently ignored France’s own arms transfers to the Libyans and Iraqis despite their involvement in military operations against Israel. The West German government irritated the United States on 25 October by blocking U.S. arms shipments from NATO stocks in West Germany to Israel, on the grounds that the ceaseªre no longer justiªed them. Nixon warned Prime Minister Willy Brandt that the European powers were undermining Western unity by “disassociating themselves from the U.S. in the Middle East.” In conversation with the French ambassador to Washing- ton, Kissinger accused the Europeans of behaving “not as friends but as hostile powers.”77 As far as the British were concerned, the Nixon administration was irked by Heath’s refusal to endorse the U.S. nuclear alert and by the UK’s role in drafting the EEC Declaration on the Middle East (6 November 1973) urging the withdrawal of all belligerents to the frontlines of 22 October and the implementation of UNSC Resolution 242. Kissinger’s public comment that “those European allies who had been consulted the most about U.S. policy on the Middle East turned out to be the least co-operative” was clearly aimed at Britain.78 The dispute over the abortive ceaseªre resolution of 12–13 October also resurfaced after the war. The United States claimed, and the British ada- mantly denied, that Britain had deliberately dissuaded Egypt from accepting a cessation of hostilities. Schlesinger repeated this accusation in a conversation with British Defence Secretary Lord Carrington, arguing that Britain was following an anti-American agenda set by France. In an angry confrontation with Schlesinger on 15 November, Cromer asserted that “our dependence on Middle East oil was a fact of life” and that the United States had nothing to gain if the European allies were “brought militarily and industrially to [their] knees.” Cromer was disturbed by Schlesinger’s pointed remarks about the failure of Western powers to “[ªnish] the job properly” during Suez and his hint

77. “Thomas R. Pickering, Executive Secretary State Department, to George Springsteen, Acting As- sistant Secretary for European Affairs, 17 October 1973, Enclosing Memorandum by Lawrence Eagleburger,” 17 October 1973, Document 35 in Burr, October War; “State Department Cable 211737 to U.S. Embassy France, ‘Koskiusko-Morizet Call on Secretary,’ 26 October 1973, with Mar- ginal Comments by NSC staffer,” Document 75 in Burr, October War; and “Department of State Ca- ble 212618 to U.S. Embassy West Germany, ‘Secretary’s Meeting with FRG Ambassador Von Staden, October 26,’” 27 October 1973, Document 81 in Burr, October War. 78. Brussels to FCO, No. 508, 6 November 1973, in FCO8/1966, TNAUK; and Washington to FCO, No.3416 and 3417, 31 October 1973, in PREM15/1767, TNAUK.

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that post-Vietnam domestic reluctance to use force as a tool of national policy could be reversed by the oil embargo. Cromer told Douglas-Home that he found Schlesinger’s remarks “worrying.”79 These vague but ominous comments were accompanied by public acts of saber-rattling against Arab oil producers in late 1973. A week before Schlesinger’s conversation with Cromer, the U.S. Defense Department asked the MOD for refueling at Diego Garcia of a U.S. Navy task force led by an aircraft carrier, the USS Hancock, and for an RAF reconnaissance ºight from Masirah, Oman to support the task force’s passage to the Arabian Sea. Britain granted access to Diego Garcia but denied the latter request and asked about the Hancock group’s mission. U.S. responses were contradictory; Schlesinger claimed that the task force was intended to “show the ºag,” whereas U.S. Navy sources said the deployment would help counter the Soviet maritime buildup in the eastern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. The British were uneasy about the discrepancy. Douglas-Home told Cromer that U.S. naval maneuvers near the Persian Gulf could have “far-reaching and damaging [consequences] for us.”80 Carrington was disconcerted by the tone of Schlesinger’s conversations with both himself and Cromer, as well as by Kissinger’s press conference on 21 November afªrming that “the United States would have to consider what counter-measures it might have to take” if Arab countries continued to exploit the oil weapon. Schlesinger suggested to Heath that the British government should prepare a contingency plan in the event of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. Despite sensationalist newspaper reports in 2004 describing the then-newly declassiªed JIC contingency study, the evidence in- dicates that British ofªcials in 1973 did not actually believe that a U.S. attempt to seize the Persian Gulf oilªelds was imminent.81 British intelligence analysts concluded that the implications of intervention, including confrontation with regional powers such as Iraq, the complete collapse of relations with the Arab world, the disintegration of the Western alliance, and a possible clash

79. Conversation between Carrington, Schlesinger, and Ofªcials at UK Ambassador’s Residence, The Hague, 7 November 1973, in PREM17/1767, TNAUK; FCO to Washington, No.2406, 1 December 1973, in PREM15/1989, TNAUK; Cromer to Douglas-Home, 15 November 1973, in PREM15/ 1767, TNAUK; and “Memcon between Kissinger and the Earl of Cromer, British Ambassador, 31 October 1973, 9:05–9:40 a.m.,” Document 90 in Burr, October War. 80. J. A. B. Kelly, Arabia, the Gulf and the West (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980), pp. 494– 499; FCO to Washington DC, No. 2218, 4 November 1973 in PREM15/1767, TNAUK; Bridges to PM, No.2218, 4 November 1973 in PREM15/1767, TNAUK; and Memorandum for PM, 9 No- vember 1973, in PREM15/1767, TNAUK. 81. Carrington to Heath, 28 November 1973; in PREM15/1768, TNAUK; “Heath Feared U.S. Plan to Invade Gulf,” The Guardian, 1 January 2004, p. 3; “U.S. Ready to Seize Arab Oilªelds, Spy Chiefs Said,” The Times (London), 1 January 2004, p. 3; and “Was America Preparing a War for Gulf Oil in 1973?” The Independent, 1 January 2004, p. 2.

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with the USSR, outweighed any potential gains. Cabinet Secretary Sir John Hunt informed Heath that “there is no evidence or suggestion that the United States will resort to the use of force in the near future.” The JIC’s deliberations therefore represented little more than a planning exercise.82 With the ongoing U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, congressional restrictions on the use of military force, and the beleaguered state of Nixon’s own presidency, it is highly unlikely that U.S. leaders ever seriously considered—as one highly inaccurate 2004 press report asserted—“a lightning war in the Middle East to end the 1973 oil crisis.” Although Kissinger found it “intellectually absurd that 8 million Bedouin should hold to ransom the whole of the industrialised West,” he himself ruled out military intervention to secure access to petroleum supplies in the Middle East.83 Even though the British were not unduly concerned about possible U.S. military action in the Middle East, they were disturbed by the lack of U.S. consultation during and after the October war. At a dinner held by 10 Downing Street for U.S. correspondents on 28 November, Heath criticized the Nixon administration for disregarding British warnings about the inevitability of another Arab-Israeli clash and made scathing remarks about Washington’s treatment of its European partners throughout the Middle East- ern crisis. These comments provoked what Cromer called a “display of ‘primma-donnish’ behaviour” from Kissinger, who was scheduled to visit London on 11–13 December en route back to Washington from the NATO Foreign Ministers’ conference in Brussels. Kissinger threatened to cancel all his functions in the capital (except a meeting with U.S. embassy staff) in protest.84 This outburst received little sympathy in London, where FCO ofªcials noted that Kissinger used press conferences and leaks to criticize the Europe- ans throughout the war and after. But Douglas-Home was sufªciently un- nerved by the bickering to send a frank telegram to Kissinger on 29 Novem- ber. Unlike Heath, Douglas-Home’s Atlanticist credentials were impeccable, but this did not prevent him from criticizing the U.S. approach to both the Arab-Israeli problem and intra-Western politics. He noted that after his speech at Harrogate three years earlier Britain had consistently afªrmed that “there could be no peace except on the basis of Israeli withdrawal from the oc-

82. JIC(A)(73)49th, 5 December 1973, in CAB185/13, TNAUK; Cradock, “Middle East: Possible Use of Force by the United States,” 12 December 1973, in PREM15/2153, TNAUK; and Hunt to W. Armstrong (Head of Civil Service), 29 November 1973, in PREM15/1768, TNAUK. 83. Conversation between Douglas-Home and Kissinger, 12 December 1973, in PREM15/2232, TNAUK; and P. Ramsbotham (Washington) to A. H. Campbell (FCO), 23 December 1974, in FCO93/529, TNAUK. 84. Washington to FCO, No. 3736 and No. 3737, 30 November 1973, in PREM15/1989, TNAUK; FCO to Washington, No.2406, 1 December 1973, in PREM15/1989, TNAUK.

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cupied territories.” He stressed that the position adopted by Britain and other EEC countries during the Arab-Israeli war was therefore not a product of “Arab blackmail.” Far from being anti-American, he said, the British regarded the United States as the only power capable of brokering a settlement between Israel and its Arab enemies. Before October 1973 he and other British leaders had tried in vain to encourage the U.S. administration to embark on Middle Eastern peacemaking. Referring to the Soviet-American standoff on 24–25 October, Douglas-Home emphasized that Britain was “ªrmly alongside the U.S.” in confronting Soviet expansionism but believed that the United States was obliged “to take us more systematically into your conªdence and consult with us during the period of build up towards crisis and confrontation.” The telegram thus was both a reafªrmation of the importance Britain attributed to the transatlantic alliance and an appeal for Kissinger to reassess his tendency to treat U.S. allies not as partners but as recalcitrant auxiliaries.85 Whatever Kissinger thought of Heath’s “personal attacks,” he respected Douglas-Home for his diplomatic skills and pro-American attitude, and this helped to shape Kissinger’s approach to the West European allies after the war. Despite Kissinger’s anti-European comments, made mostly in private with his subordinates, transatlantic contacts improved gradually after an amicable NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels on 10 December 1973. Kiss- inger expressed regret at the inadequate warning the Europeans had received of the nuclear alert on 25 October, and he also made clear his commitment to securing a Middle East peace agreement.86 Douglas-Home and FCO ofªcials eschewed public disagreements with the Nixon administration and warned the other European allies to avoid overt declarations that would cause unnecessary transatlantic antagonism.87

The Aftermath of the War: 1973–1976

For the British, the fallout from the Arab-Israeli war had direct consequences for domestic policy. As a result of the oil embargo, the Heath government or-

85. Douglas-Home to Kissinger, 29 November 1973, “Visit of U.S. Secretary of State 11–13 Decem- ber. Briefs. Annex D,” in PREM15/2232, TNAUK. 86. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, pp. 721–722; Hanhimäki, Flawed Architect, pp. 348–350; UKDELNATO to FCO, No.595, 10 December 1973 in PREM15/2232, TNAUK; and Hunt to Bridges, 11 December 1973, in PREM15/2232, TNAUK. 87. John Dickie, “Special No More”: Anglo-American Relations—Rhetoric and Reality (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1994), pp. 149–151; FMV(73)5 and FMV(73)16, “Visit of President Pompidou 16/17 November 1973. Political Co-operation and Transatlantic Relations,” 9 November 1973, in FCO33/2123, TNAUK; and “Middle East,” 12 November 1973, in FCO33/2123, TNAUK.

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dered a state of emergency on 13 November 1973. A month later, as fuel prices doubled and industrial unrest intensiªed, the government announced a three-day work week. In January 1974 the Heath government was forced to beg Iran to grant Britain increased oil exports to alleviate shortages. The only comfort for the government came from Kissinger’s talks with Douglas-Home in December. The U.S. secretary of state expressed readiness to “apply pressure” on Israel to relieve the Egyptian Third Army and to secure a disengagement agreement separating the belligerents in the Sinai. Kissinger also claimed that his controversial comments on “counter-measures” against the Arab embargo referred only to the need for Western cooperation, including pooling of petroleum reserves, cooperative research on energy conservation, and the exploitation of oil sources outside the Middle East to mitigate the impact of the energy crisis. He stressed that he was not alluding to any effort to seize the oil reserves by force.88 In the aftermath of the 1973 war, Kissinger engaged in “shuttle diplomacy” in the Middle East, seeking to promote peace talks and to weaken Soviet inºuence in the Arab world. After a series of visits to regional powers, he brokered the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Syrian disengagement agreements of January and May 1974. In response, the Arabs lifted the embargo in March 1974, and the following year Sadat reopened the Suez Canal to international shipping. Egypt and Israel also concluded a further interim agreement on disengagement (known as Sinai II) in September 1975. The ultimate result of these Egyptian-Israeli contacts were the Camp David accords of September 1978, a topic outside the scope of this article. Kissinger’s pre-October 1973 belief that the Egyptians would eventually turn to the United States for help in negotiating a regional settlement proved to be correct, although he had not expected that a war would come ªrst. Before October 1973 Kissinger had established a back-channel with Sadat’s national security adviser, Haªz Ismail, whose postwar engagement in Middle Eastern peacemaking led to the rees- tablishment and strengthening of U.S.-Egyptian diplomatic ties in the late 1970s. U.S.-Israeli relations deteriorated in late 1973 and early 1974. The Israelis resented the pressure exerted by the United States to end the war and to negotiate with their Arab enemies, although Israel’s reliance on U.S. military assistance prevented any public discord between the two sides. Soviet leaders were displeased with the outcome of the war because the United States deliberately excluded the USSR from Middle Eastern diplomacy. The Soviet

88. Kenneth Morgan, The People’s Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 347–348; Douglas-Home and Kissinger, 12 December 1973, in PREM15/2232, TNAUK; and Kelly, Arabia, pp. 420–422.

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Union spent the post-1973 period cultivating relations with “rejectionist” allies (notably Iraq, Libya, and Syria) that opposed any peace settlement with Israel.89 As far as U.S.-European relations were concerned, the Energy Confer- ence in Washington, DC in February 1974 and the long-delayed Atlantic Declaration of June 1974 were more symbolic than substantive, but they un- derscored the renewed vigor of the transatlantic alliance. This revival was spurred in part by the replacement of Heath (who lost the February 1974 general election), Pompidou (who died of bone cancer in April 1974), and Brandt (who resigned the following month) by more Atlanticist leaders— Harold Wilson, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, and Helmut Schmidt. In Washing- ton, too, signiªcant changes resulted from Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 and Kissinger’s commitment to Middle Eastern diplomacy. Kissinger showed rare humility during his visit to London in December 1973, admitting publicly that “the United States did not do all that it might have done before the war to promote a permanent settlement in the Middle East.” His involvement in the disengagement negotiations provided a stark contrast to his pre-war laissez faire attitude to the region. Without publicly admitting it, Kissinger was aware that both he and Nixon had ignored allied warnings about the like- lihood of a Middle Eastern war and Arab oil sanctions and had alienated the most important U.S. allies by acting unilaterally. Kissinger’s conduct of U.S. foreign policy in early 1974 suggests that he concluded that the United States needed to alter its approach to the Arab-Israeli problem to rebuild relations not only with the “moderate” Arab states, but also with Britain and other NATO allies.90

Conclusions

The British government had foreseen that a new war was likely to break out in the Middle East and that it would pose serious economic consequences for the West, but Britain was unable to prevent the October 1973 war or mitigate its effects. Although the FCO had overestimated the IDF’s ability to with- stand an Egyptian and Syrian attack, British assessments of the Arabs’ likely use of the “oil weapon” were more accurate than Kissinger’s forecasts. Despite continued frictions, Britain after the war offered indirect assistance to

89. Quandt, Peace Process, pp. 98–99, 130–156, 165–173; Yergin, The Prize, pp. 630–632; and Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, pp. 448–449. 90. “U.S. Mission to NATO Cable 5184 to State Department, ‘U.S. Action Regarding Middle East,’” 26 October 1973, Document 79B in Burr, October War; and Note by Tickell, 29 October 1973, in PREM15/1766, TNAUK.

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Kissinger’s diplomatic efforts, especially regarding the Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement. Heath’s government permitted the United States to use British air bases for support of reconnaissance ºights overseeing the ceaseªre in the Sinai. FCO ofªcials also expressed satisfaction with the renewal of U.S. mediation between Israel and the Arabs. The British government essentially endorsed Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” and welcomed Washington’s ac- knowledgment that Israel would eventually have to surrender land seized in 1967 as the price for peace. Although memories of the Suez crisis still haunted Anglo-American relations, the main cause of contention in Whitehall before October 1973 was not the extent of U.S. inºuence in the Middle East, but the Nixon administration’s lack of involvement in addressing the Arab-Israeli conºict. Kissinger’s postwar regional diplomacy, the brieªngs given by him and Sisco to the FCO on U.S. negotiating tactics, and Kissinger’s readiness to cajole the Israelis into concluding disengagement agreements with Egypt and Syria—all of these contributed signiªcantly to the revival of Anglo-American relations in early 1974.91 Commentators such as Coral Bell, Walter Laquer, and Richard Pipes have argued that Britain, like other West European countries, was so preoccu- pied with its own narrow economic interests in the Middle East that it offered diplomatic support to the Arab cause and overlooked the Soviet-backed challenge to Western interests in the region.92 The U.S. ambassador to Britain was astonished that an ally hitherto concerned about the expansion of Soviet inºuence in the Third World was not prepared to support Israel against Mos- cow’s proxies. It is true that the British response to the war was to a considerable degree motivated by the country’s political and economic stake in the Middle East, including the vital interest of maintaining oil supplies from the Persian Gulf, and by a recognition that the East of Suez decisions of 1968 would obliged Britain to use non-military means (notably trade and diplomatic ties with former adversaries like Egypt) as a means of upholding these interests. Yet Heath, Douglas-Home, and FCO ofªcials were also concerned about the Cold War implications of the Arab-Israeli conºict. Although the United States saw Israel as a strategic partner and an asset in the Cold War, the British concluded that an inºexible Western alignment with the Israelis

91. Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 333; A. Simons (Washington) to G. Arthur (Chairman JIC), 24 April 1974, in FCO93/401, TNAUK; and Cromer to T. Brimelow (Permanent Under-Secretary FCO), 9 January 1974, in FCO82/436, TNAUK. 92. Bell, “Middle East War,” pp. 539–540; Laquer, Confrontation, pp. 181–187; and Richard Pipes, “Détente: Moscow’s View,” in Richard Pipes, ed., Soviet Strategy in Europe (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1976), p. 37.

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would drive the Arabs into Moscow’s camp. The recovery of Anglo-American relations in late 1973 and early 1974 owed much to the renewed engagement of the United States in Middle Eastern diplomacy, which ofªcials in White- hall concluded would best protect Western interests and weaken the Soviet Union’s position in the region, not least by undermining Moscow’s inºuence over former allies such as Egypt.93 One factor behind the deterioration of the “special relationship” in the ªnal months of 1973 was the British perception that the informal understanding on which the Anglo-American alliance was based had been violated by the United States. For Britain, one of the beneªts of the bilateral relationship was the privileged access Britain had to U.S. decision-making. Writing to his superiors in March 1973, Cromer noted that Kissinger expressed disdain for all the European allies except Britain. But Nixon’s and Kissinger’s covert approach to policymaking not only circumvented the U.S. bureaucracy but also confused allied powers. The consequences of this approach can be seen during the Arab-Israeli war, notably the stark contrast between Rumsfeld’s statement at the NAC on 17 October and Kissinger’s positive comments about superpower détente. The delay in notifying the NAC of the nuclear alert on 25 October, after the NATO governments had already learned about it through media reports, was a further outgrowth of this secretiveness. The main grievance for the British was that they were kept in the dark as much as the other European countries about U.S. intentions. When British leaders complained about the Nixon administration’s inadequate consultation with NATO, as Douglas-Home did in late November 1973, their main concern was the failure to conªde in Britain.94 The divergence between U.S. and British policies doing the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 was shaped only by Britain’s heavy dependence on Middle East- ern oil supplies but also by two signiªcant political factors: Heath’s Europhilia and skepticism about U.S. policy, and Britain’s interest in preventing a rift between the Arab countries and the West that would beneªt the USSR. Alli- ances between major powers and weaker allies repeatedly demonstrate that dependence does not necessarily involve subservience.95 The U.S.-British alliance is no different in that respect. The improvement of Anglo-American

93. J. E. Killick (UK Ambassador, Moscow) to Parsons, 1 August 1973, in FCO93/229, TNAUK; Washington DC to FCO, No.815, 7 March 1974, in FCO93/28, TNAUK; “U.S. Embassy United Kingdom Cable No. 12113”; and “State Department Cable 211737.” 94. Cromer to Brimelow, 7 March 1973, in FCO73/135, TNAUK; and Douglas-Home to Kissinger, 29 November 1973, in PREM15/2232, TNAUK. 95. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, “Alliance Strategy: U.S.-Small Allies Relationships,” Journal of Strategic Studies Vol.3, No.2 (September 1980), pp. 202–216; and Smolansky and Smolansky, USSR and Iraq, pp. 1–9.

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relations after October 1973 did not derive from any signiªcant change in British policy on the Arab-Israeli problem. Instead it resulted from two factors—Kissinger’s engagement in Middle Eastern diplomacy, and a shared Cold War objective of curtailing Soviet inºuence in the Arab world. The sharp differences in U.S. and British responses to the Arab-Israeli conºict before and during the 1973 war indicated that the ties binding Britain to the United States did not impose inºexible constraints on British policy. The “special relationship” survived after the Cold War, but the same dynamic is at work. Given the generally negative impact of the Iraq war on transatlantic relations and the apparent cooling of U.S.-British relations after Gordon Brown became prime minister in June 2007, one might expect that in a future Mid- dle Eastern crisis the British government might well decide not to back the United States.96 If the risks of supporting U.S. policies overseas may outweigh any potential beneªts, Brown or a successor might, like Heath in 1973, decide that Britain’s political and economic interests would be best served by adopting policies that diverged from those of its superpower ally.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the staffs of The National Archives of the United Kingdom and the British Library Newspaper Depository at Colindale for assisting his research on this article, as well as the anonymous external re- viewers of earlier drafts for the Journal of Cold War Studies. Saki Dockrill, Saul Kelly, Jonathan Hill, and Christian Tripodi of King’s College, London, provided helpful critiques on an earlier draft. The analysis, opinions, and conclusions expressed or implied in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Joint Services Command and Staff College, the Ministry of Defence, or any other UK government agency.

96. Press reports and public statements since late 2006 indicate considerable strain on the Anglo- American relationship as a result of the gradual British military withdrawal from southern Iraq, the consequences of the Lebanon war of July–August 2006, U.S. hostility to British government efforts to engage Syria, and the uncertainty surrounding the Iranian nuclear program. See, for example, “Iran and Syria Can Be Blair’s ‘Partners for Peace,” The Times, 14 November 2006, p. 1; “Condoleezza Rice rejette le principe d’ouverture diplomatique a l’égard de Téhéran et de Damas,” Le Monde, 15 Novem- ber 2006, p. 3; “A Rough Patch for the Special Relationship,” The Economist, 3 February 2007, p. 24; and “Doublespeak,” The Economist, 2 August 2007, p. 11.

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