At first glance, a review of American-Israeli relations during the traumatic days and weeks that befell Israel following the surprise attack of October 6, 1973, reveals a beam of light shining in the darkness alongside a distilled expression of the resilience and strength of the alliance between Washington and Jerusalem.
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In the face of the existential challenge that Golda Meir's government was suddenly faced with, it was Nixon's government that provided her with significant military support in the form of the Operation Nickel Grass airlift, and a diplomatic security network in the face of the Egyptian and Syrian assault and the Kremlin's escalating threats.
Video: Biden speaks on America's commitment to Israel's security / Credit: Reuters
However, after 50 years, a deeper look at relations between the countries after the tectonic shock that Israel received on 6th October 1973, reveals a far more complex and antagonistic picture. The key to understanding this picture can be found in the appointment, on 22 August 1973, of Henry Kissinger to the role of secretary of state following the resignation of William Rogers, in addition to his role as national security adviser.
And indeed, it was the new secretary of state and national security adviser, Kissinger, who led the diplomatic efforts during the war and following its conclusion, with the aim of excluding the Soviet Union (who led a hostile, nationalist, and - during the War of Attrition – even aggressive line towards Israel) from any involvement in the region. The main significance of this appointment, especially after the outbreak of fighting, was the entry of a new secretary (who, apart from Black September in 1970, had until then avoided getting involved too closely with the Arab-Israeli conflict) who was now focusing on the Middle East with all his prestige, status, and power. The fact that President Nixon was then up to his neck in the Watergate scandal allowed Kissinger wide margins of maneuver and freedom of action, almost totally free of any presidential or congressional constraints.
In this way, in one fell swoop, the new secretary became the exclusive architect of American strategy. The dramatic events that took place on Yom Kippur were for him a catalyst for the practical implementation of his political, global, and regional worldviews.
During Nixon's first presidency, and at the beginning of his second presidency, as mentioned, Kissinger the adviser was careful not to get too close to the polarized Middle Eastern arena. This approach was anchored in the assumption that the asymmetrical situation that had been formed in the arena following Israel's stirring victory in the Six-Day War prevented from the outset any diplomatic initiatives based on mutual concessions and compromises.
However, in Kissinger's view, a new situation arose following the great explosion of October 6. This is because he believed that a new window of opportunity had been opened to create a completely different regional and global balance of power.
One must remember that the inter-superpower context played a central role in Kissinger's order of priorities. He strove to prevent any attempted takeover by the Soviet Union in any arena, both via the stick of deterrence and the carrot of economic temptation. In the Middle East, after Anwar Sadat became Egyptian president on October 15, 1970, he broadcast signals and took steps that made it clear he intended to disengage from Moscow and move closer to the United States. In this way, he consolidated the infrastructure for producing a new and more conciliatory era between Cairo and Washington.
Striving for a balanced finale
After his appointment as secretary of state and the outbreak of war, for Kissinger, the conditions were right to completely fulfill his vision. Against this background, one can understand the reasons for the steps that were taken during the war, and which nurtured unavoidable friction with the threatened Israeli partner. At the heart of this policy was Kissinger's aspiration to bring an end to the conflict in as balanced a way as possible, and without Egypt ending it was defeated and insulted like in 1967.
This strategic balance, he believed, would prevent a horrific scenario in which Cairo would revert to the era of extreme, Nasserite anti-Western radicalism. It would facilitate a symmetrical end to the fighting that Sadat would be able to market as a strategic victory (with exclusive American mediation), opening a diplomatic front that would lead to a gradual advance towards a settlement, while pushing the Soviet Union to the margins.
Heavy pressure on Jerusalem
In the years prior to the outbreak of war and during it, President Sadat didn't hide his intention of abandoning Moscow's patronage (despite its military support and the airlift that it operated for Egypt after the war began), and the secretary of state had no choice but to establish his position vis-à-vis Egypt. At its foundation was a policy that was consolidated to prove to the Egyptian president that only Kissinger could grant the Land of Pharaohs the necessary incentive to advance his preferred strategy – the establishment and fostering of relations between Washington and Cairo.
In this lies the roots of the crisis, which began to cloud American-Israeli relations while the artillery blasts could still be heard in the background, and reached its peak in the spring of 1975 when Kissinger revealed his (and President Gerald Ford's) "reassessment" and national policy to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his government. Specifically, the meaning of this incentive was to demonstrate America's ability to apply effective pressure on Israel and to force it to make real concessions after the revolution on the battlefield.
For example, during the final days of fighting, when Kissinger was determined to prevent Israel from achieving a dramatic and crushing resolution on the Egyptian front and prove to Sadat his ability to force his will on Israel, the secretary of state placed heavy pressure on the Meir government. His goal was to ensure that her forces ended their encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army, which was besieged on the east bank of the Suez Canal. The surrender of the large Egyptian forces would clearly illustrate the extent of the Egyptian defeat, and in doing so would prevent efforts to turn the war into a lever for Israeli-Egyptian negotiations mediated and directed by the American patron. Indeed, following this pressure, which found expression, among other things, in the explicit threat – attributed to the president himself - "to disengage from Israel," the Israeli government surrendered and decided to end the siege.
The timing of the ceasefire agreement, which was achieved on October 22, 1973, was also intended to prevent the IDF, which had great momentum, from utilizing its military advantage in the face of the apparent defeat of the Egyptians. This was so Kissinger could preserve - at any price - the status and prestige of the Egyptian president, Sadat, for whom the pendulum of battle was now tipped against him.
Saving for a rainy day
The essence of Kissinger's strategy was seen in the strategic airlift Operation Nickel Grass, which began on 14th October and continued until November 12th. Paradoxically, although this operation was burned into the Israeli public's consciousness as a daring move and brave support for its Israeli partner during its fateful hour of need, in practice the picture was far more complicated. Not only did the operation start more than a week after the Egyptian-Syrian attack, but the weapons were inspected and included far less than Israel had requested. By the next day, it had become clear that Washington's intention was to provide Israel with a total replacement of the weapons systems that were damaged in battle, but without changing the overall balance of forces on the Egyptian front.
Kissinger worried that agreeing to Israeli demands for massive and even more far-reaching assistance would perpetuate an asymmetrical and frozen political situation and would also frustrate the rapprochement of Egypt and the United States. The American patron was also convinced that Israel wanted to store at least some of the weapons in a warehouse for a rainy day, without committing to the apparent reality on the battlefield. As a result, there were soon mutual grudges and suspicion between Jerusalem and Washington, which reached their peak with the "new assessment" that Kissinger initiated in the spring of 1975.
A word about the architect's own operating code: There's no doubt that the portrait of Kissinger that arises from his strategy during the war was of a skilled and sophisticated diplomat who succeeded in quickly identifying – in the middle of a complex and chaotic arena – the opportunities created by the great explosion of 6th October for the United States, particularly with regards to Egypt, and moved steadily forward to advance them. This, while constantly striving to identify a balancing point between contradictory goals, like the goal of rapprochement with Egypt without undermining the basic principles of the alliance with Israel. The fact that, despite this sophistication, Kissinger didn't succeed in making peace between the two countries (despite creating the infrastructure for this to happen) is another story that is worthy of a separate discussion.
Professor Abraham Ben-Zvi and Dr. Gadi Warsha's upcoming book, published by Lamda-The Open University Press, is called "Knock of every door: Israel's foreign policy 1948-2018" (Hebrew).
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