Home’s assessment now was that a cease-fire in place was a mirage. Sadat would not accept anything less than an Israeli commitment to return to the 1967 frontiers. Our proposal would not fly unless Moscow was willing to pressure Sadat by cutting off his military supplies; he doubted the Soviets were prepared to go this far. Home proposed instead a compromise including a cease-fire in place, an international police force for the rest of the occupied territories, followed by an international conference. There was no chance that Israel would accept this scheme, which in some ways was even more disadvantageous to it than Sadat’s. After all, the introduction of an international force presupposed an almost immediate Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries, while Sadat was asking now for only an agreement to it in principle. I told Home it was too complicated; we would not support it. (Within the hour I told Cromer for Home that we would in fact veto it.)
I explained to Home that Dobrynin’s overture seemed to be based on the assumption that Sadat would not agree to a cease-fire ahead of time but would yield to a Security Council consensus backed by the superpowers. I could not conceive that the Soviets would risk our confidence by deliberately misinforming us about what was possible — especially as they were bound to be found out almost immediately. What were they going to get from it? I must say that even at this remove I cannot answer the question. Therefore, what did Britain stand to lose if it tested this hypothesis by introducing a cease-fire resolution? Home feared that acting without Sadat’s prior acquiescence would hurt Britain in the Arab world without benefit to us. However, he would check again in Cairo to see whether my hypothesis was correct.
I immediately told Dobrynin of Home’s negative view. Dobrynin was nonplussed. He reaffirmed that the Soviet Union would abstain from a cease-fire resolution, whatever Sadat’s preferences. The only hitch to this scheme was that Britain would put forward no resolution of which Sadat disapproved. “Maybe we should go with Australia,” suggested Dobrynin. I told him that we might do so after we heard again from Home.
At 1:40 P.M. Dobrynin called back with the astonishing news that the “Australian variation” was “not really a good one.” This made no sense whatever. If Moscow wanted a cease-fire and if it was confident of being able to get Sadat aboard, it could make no possible difference who introduced the resolution. Refusing Australia could only mean that the Kremlin, deciding that Home was probably right in his assessment of Sadat, was not willing to pay the price of his displeasure. (Unless of course it had been an elaborate trick all along.) I told Dobrynin to keep in mind that “there are no easy victories” in international affairs.
While waiting for the final British reply I told Scowcroft to get ready “to pour stuff in there.” If the cease-fire initiative failed for lack of Soviet cooperation, it must be because they anticipated an Arab victory or because they were not prepared to pay the price of a compromise. In either case our course was clear. We had to create a situation on the ground that would force the principal parties to reassess their positions: “We can’t let Israel lose. If the Soviet side wins we will be in very bad shape.” I then told Haig that if the cease-fire initiative collapsed, we would have to step up the airlift to maximum capacity using all available planes, no matter what the risk of confrontation. We could talk again only when the battle had turned once more.
At 3:35 P.M. on October 13 Home called with the final British reply: Sadat rejected any variation of a cease-fire. If it were introduced over his objection and if it threatened to pass because of Soviet and American abstention, Sadat would ask China to veto it. The French Ambassador had exactly the same impression of Sadat’s views. Home asked whether détente remained our motivating consideration. “Détente is not an end in itself,” I told him. “I think developments now are going to drive us towards a confrontation.”
All our information seemed to point in that direction. Egypt’s 21st armored division — carefully husbanded until now — had crossed the Suez Canal. At least one other armored division was preparing to follow.
The die was now cast; matters had reached a point where maneuvering would be suicidal and hesitation disastrous. The parties could not yet be brought to end the war — or the Soviets to support this course — by a calculation of their interests. All that was left was to force a change in the perception of their interests. We would pour in supplies. We would risk a confrontation. We would not talk again until there was no longer any doubt that no settlement could be imposed.
Conciliation is meaningful only if one is thought to have an alternative. We could not know, when we decided to engage in massive resupply, whether the Arab states would take out their frustration in bitter hostility or whether the Soviet Union would pick up the challenge and organize a bloc of countries working against our interests throughout the region. But we had no alternative anyway. If the Soviet-armed states won, the Soviets would control the postwar diplomacy. If Israel did not force a decision, it would be enmeshed in a war of attrition in which courage and ingenuity even in Israeli measure could not overcome a population ratio of thirty to one arrayed against it.
But events of the past week had also demonstrated how precarious was the base from which our diplomacy was operating. As we forced a showdown, we would be alone with Israel; inevitably, we would be isolated at the United Nations. Whatever our judgment about Soviet duplicity or obfuscation — and at the moment it was not kindly — they had not yet sought to embarrass us there. They had not introduced the Egyptian idea of linking a cease-fire with a return to the 1967 borders, which would have forced us to veto a cherished Arab goal. Still, Moscow had been far from helpful. It was clear that we faced a combination of Arab pressures, European fears, and Soviet opportunism that placed a floor under Arab risks. Egypt and Syria would be able to find a majority for a cease-fire in place whenever things got too hot. And we would not be able to block it for any lengthy period without enormous political costs.
Informing Dinitz of our decision to operate the airlift at maximum capacity and exclusively with American military planes, I urged that Israel accelerate its military offensives so that they could be completed within forty-eight hours of the issue’s going to the Security Council — whenever that was. We could not stall much longer than that, and we would not be able to justify vetoing what many nations knew we had advocated a short time previously.
Soviet behavior remained puzzling. Had they been stringing us along, never intending to have a cease-fire? Did they maneuver to prolong the war? I accused Dobrynin of this when I informed him of the British refusal to introduce a cease-fire resolution. He was defensive, but asked what Soviet purpose would be served by such tactics. This puzzled me as well, so I halfheartedly invoked the Egyptian offensive expected for the next day. That I knew made little sense. We had done the procrastinating for seventy-two hours to help the Israeli offensive in Syria; the Soviets were willing to proceed on Wednesday. Dobrynin, who did not miss a trick, had understood our strategy. Did I suggest, he asked, that the Soviet Union had procrastinated for Israel to defeat the Syrians? “It is a very interesting presumption.” Sadat’s autobiography, as I have noted, asserts that the Soviets were pressing him for a cease-fire in place from the first day of the war. They did not start resupplying Egypt until Thursday, October 11, and did not put in substantial quantities until that very morning (Saturday, October 13), a week after the war began.
What seems to have occurred is that the Soviets sought to combine the advantage of every course of action: détente with us, enough support for their Arab friends to establish their indispensability if things went well, but not so much as to tempt a confrontation with the United States. The Kremlin may also have calculated that the Soviet position in the Middle East would be stronger if it could lure us into a cease-fire while the Arab armies had made net gains of territory with the aid of Soviet weapons and before the Israeli counteroffensive had achieved conclusive results. Even by October 13, after Israel’s successes against Syria, a cease-fire would have left at least Egyp
t in a very strong military position. But Sadat was either carried away by his successes or driven by his loyalty to Syria to relieve the pressures on his ally. We did not hear directly from the Syrians, but it would have been uncharacteristic of them to avow less intransigence than their ally and rival in Cairo. The Europeans were seeking to curry Arab favor and thereby objectively encouraged Arab euphoria. The Soviets were not willing to bring the sort of pressure that might have made Sadat go along with a cease-fire proposal at that point.
It is as wrong to overestimate the strategic insight of one’s adversary as it is dangerous to underrate it. In the beginning the United States and the Soviet Union were, in fact, pursuing comparable strategies, each seeking to enable its friends to gain the upper hand on the battlefield. When a stalemate developed, each side began to support its friends with consumables. We started earlier (on Sunday, authorizing use of El Al planes); the Soviets jumped in on Wednesday, much more massively than we, with an airlift. We would have matched this by Thursday evening or Friday morning but for the confusion over charters. We finally more than matched the Soviets’ moves by Sunday.
We had two assets, however. Our ally was ultimately stronger and better able to take advantage of resupply. And we were prepared to risk more than Moscow. Once a stalemate had become apparent, either by Soviet design or confusion, we moved decisively, even brutally, to break it. I had learned in Nixon’s first term, largely under his tutelage, that once a great nation commits itself, it must prevail. It will acquire no kudos for translating its inner doubts into hesitation. However ambivalently it has arrived at the point of decision, it must pursue the course on which it is embarked with a determination to succeed. Otherwise, it adds a reputation for incompetence to whatever controversy it is bound to incur on the merits of its decision.
That, at any rate, is how we acted as soon as London declined to put forward the cease-fire proposal and Moscow rejected the Australian alternative. I immediately warned Dobrynin: “We are now going to wash our hands of it and let nature take its course.” What that meant I then conveyed to Scowcroft: “Since we are going to be in a confrontation we should go all-out.” I instructed him to load ships with equipment for Israel so that a cease-fire that ended each side’s airlift would not suddenly cut Israel’s lifeline. I informed Cromer that we were starting an airlift to Israel, implying — with less than total accuracy — that it was due to the failure of the cease-fire initiative. Cromer asked: “What will be your posture when the Arabs start screaming oil at you?”
“Defiance,” I replied, playing Churchill.
“Just defiance?” queried Cromer, reasonably enough; “it is going to be rough, won’t it?”
“We have no choice,” I said.
Meanwhile, we had obtained Portuguese permission to use Lajes airfield in the Azores for refueling. When the first approach had been made on Friday, October 12, the Portuguese government had stalled. It had no national interest in antagonizing the Arab nations. It sought to extract some military equipment for its colonial wars in Mozambique and Angola. To this we were not prepared to agree. I had therefore drafted a Presidential letter of unusual abruptness to Portuguese Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano that refused military equipment and threatened to leave Portugal to its fate in a hostile world. By the middle of Saturday afternoon, the Portuguese gave us unconditional transit rights at Lajes air-base.
At 5:30 P.M. on October 13 — with the airlift under way — Nixon and I had a lengthy review. We realized that if the Egyptian offensive succeeded, in the next twenty-four hours the war could turn decisively against our interests. I speculated that once Egyptian tanks ventured outside their antiaircraft missile screen the Israeli air force might bloody them and break the back of the offensive. But the Arabs were certainly cocky. If they prevailed in these circumstances, we would really have to “tighten our belts.” Nixon did not think that Israel’s armed forces had deteriorated so rapidly that they would lose a pitched battle. But he agreed we were now in a test of wills, saying that this was “one of those times” and “that’s what we are here for.”
Nixon, whatever his travail, would see it through. No faint heart would be able to appeal to him to reverse our course. And if his ordeal deprived him of his previous intensity, it gave him the composure of a man who had seen the worst and to whom there were no further terrors. Indeed, he probably welcomed staking his future on defending the interests of free peoples as he understood them rather than on the outcome of a sordid litigation over events that had clearly gotten away from him.
As so often before when confronted with decisive American action, the Soviets began to pull back. Late in the day we received an “oral message” from Brezhnev. Moscow had been prepared for two days to implement the cease-fire, it said, but when the United States procrastinated, the Arabs had changed their minds. I remarked sarcastically to Dobrynin that perhaps the growing Soviet airlift (now 140 planes) contributed to this Arab determination. Dobrynin reiterated the hope of his leadership that what happened should not undo all the good that had been accomplished. But the time for soothing generalities was over. A tolerable conclusion depended on our ability to convince the Soviets that there would be no flinching on our part, either to protect détente or for fear of the Arab reaction. “We will not under any circumstances let détente be used for unilateral advantage,” I said. “[D]on’t think we will accept a military setback in the Middle East.” Making a virtue out of our bureaucratic confusion over charters, I claimed that we had delayed to give diplomacy a chance. But the Egyptian proposal that a return to the 1967 borders be a precondition of a cease-fire was, and would remain, “unacceptable.” At most, we could consider a reference to Security Council Resolution 242 as part of a cease-fire but not go beyond it or define the words “secure boundaries” more precisely. Basically, I said, we would let matters develop for three or four days and then see what the situation was. We were ready to discuss a Middle East settlement but only after a cease-fire. Moscow should not believe that it could pressure us by military means. Dobrynin was not eager for controversy. He would report everything I had said, “quote . . . unquote,” he assured me.
In almost every crisis there occurs a moment, however fleeting, which conveys an unmistakable signal that the other side is not prepared to push matters to a confrontation. Brezhnev’s message and Dobrynin’s subdued behavior hinted that unless Moscow changed its mind, we would be able to see our new course through to a conclusion. The curtain had been raised on a new act, the first scene of which would be the tank battle in the Sinai.
October 14: Deadlock on the Battlefield
NOW everything depended on our playing our hand coolly and deliberately. Egypt launched its new thrust into the Sinai as expected on Sunday, October 14 — largely to relieve the pressure on Syria. But that battle was out of our hands. While it was raging, we reviewed our plans and sought to minimize the impact of our decisions on the Arab world. That Sunday morning Nixon and I talked again. We both agreed that the battle in the Sinai would not last long. Supplies for both sides would have to come long distances and would soon be exhausted; the desert did not lend itself to protracted warfare.
The WSAG meeting that assembled at 9:16 that morning settled the technicalities of the airlift once and for all. We would skip charters and keep moving with a straight-out US military airlift. The next, perhaps most important, task for the remainder of the day was to make sure the key actors knew our purposes and to keep in view an ultimate end to the deepening conflict. At midday, I told Dobrynin that Soviet actions had provoked us into an airlift of considerable magnitude. I warned him against raising the ante; we had the capacity to expand the scale of the airlift to match any Soviet escalation. By the same token we were prepared to stop the airlift soon after a cease-fire was achieved. Dobrynin, subdued, said he would report this to his leaders as a “direct quotation”; it was “important for them to know the mood.”
That evening I sent a message for Sadat to Hafiz Ismail in Cairo. As
I have pointed out, only amateurs believe that clever diplomacy consists of telling each party a different story. In fact the only safe assumption is that the various parties will exchange information, especially in the Middle East, where tale-telling is an art form. I laid heavy stress on our aborted effort to arrange a cease-fire based on the Soviet claim that Egypt was prepared to accept it. I emphasized that the United States could not ignore the Soviet airlift into the Middle East. It was not self-evident, of course, that Sadat would find persuasive the reasoning that we had the right to arm Israel because the Soviet Union was arming Egypt or that our thwarting of the Egyptian military effort was an argument for an American role in the peace process:
The U.S. side wishes to inform the Egyptian side that it is prepared to cease its own airlift resupply efforts immediately after a cease-fire is reached.
The United States wishes to emphasize again that it recognizes the unacceptability to the Egyptian side of the conditions which existed prior to the outbreak of recent hostilities. The U.S. side will make a major effort as soon as hostilities are terminated to assist in bringing a just and lasting peace to the Middle East. It continues to hope that the channel to Egypt established with so much difficulty will be maintained even under the pressure of events.
Years of Upheaval Page 77