In now conveying to Cairo what it could expect from the United States, I separated the cease-fire from subsequent negotiations. I stressed that Egypt had redeemed its honor and changed the strategic environment. It could risk a cease-fire first and rely on negotiations later. Subsequent diplomacy closely corresponded to what my message to Ismail of October 16 put forward:
Dr. Kissinger wishes to present his frank assessment of the present situation.
The objective of the U.S. side continues to be to terminate the present fighting in circumstances that will facilitate progress toward a final settlement. Egyptian forces have already accomplished much. The humiliation which Egyptians and, indeed, the Arab world felt after 1967 has been erased. A new strategic situation has been established in which reliance by any country on permanent military supremacy has become illusory. Hence, the necessity of a political settlement is becoming much clearer to all parties.
What can the U.S. do in these circumstances? Dr. Kissinger has often said that he would promise only what he could deliver but deliver everything he promised. With its five-point proposal contained in Mr. Ismail’s message of October 10, the Egyptian side is asking, in effect, for Israeli agreement, as part of a cease-fire, to Egyptian terms for a total settlement. In Dr. Kissinger’s judgment, this is not achievable except by protracted war. No U.S. influence can bring this goal about in present circumstances.
What the U.S. side can promise and will fulfill is to make every effort to assist in achieving a final, just settlement once a cease-fire is reached. Dr. Kissinger believes that recent events may well serve to make it less difficult for the U.S. side in the future to exercise its influence constructively and effectively on behalf of such a settlement. . . .
The Egyptian side therefore has an important decision to make. To insist on its maximum program means continuation of the war and the possible jeopardy of all that has been achieved. The outcome will then be decided by military measures. The U.S. side will not speculate on this outcome but doubts whether it will be clear-cut. In any event, circumstances for a U.S. diplomatic effort would not be propitious.
If diplomacy is to be given a full opportunity, a cease-fire must precede it. Only in these circumstances can the promised U.S. diplomatic effort be developed. Egypt will find the guarantee for the seriousness of this effort in the formal promise of the U.S. side to engage itself fully as well as in the objective situation.
The goal must be to achieve a cease-fire and turn it rapidly into a real and just peace which reconciles the principles of sovereignty and security.
The U.S. side believes that progress could be made on the basis of a ceasefire in place, accompanied by an undertaking by the parties to start talks under the aegis of the Secretary General with a view to achieving a settlement in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242 in all of its parts, including withdrawal of forces envisaged by that resolution.
Dr. Kissinger greatly appreciates the thoughtful invitation of the Egyptian side to visit Egypt. Once a cease-fire has been achieved, he would be glad to give that invitation the most serious and sympathetic consideration as part of a serious effort to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East.
With warmest regards. . . .
The WSAG convened shortly after 10:00 A.M. Since the decision to resort to the airlift, its mood had been almost magically transformed. Gone were the hesitations of the previous week, the attempts to shift the potential blame for dangerous consequences. The most important role of a leader is to take on his shoulder the burden of ambiguity inherent in difficult choices. That accomplished, his subordinates have criteria and can turn to implementation. Nixon performed this role in the Middle East war when he made the airlift decision. I stated the principle that should govern our resupply effort: “Our only interest in this semi-confrontation situation is to run the Soviets into the ground fast. Give them the maximum incentive for a quick settlement. Bring in more each day than they do.” And as a rough guideline I suggested that we keep our resupply at least 25 percent ahead of the Soviets’. We decided to supplement the airlift with a strengthened sealift, for in the Black Sea the Soviets had been loading ships with enormous quantities of matériel, including their most modern equipment.
We had to conduct this confrontation for high stakes in the midst of a Watergate crisis that pitted Nixon against Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and in the face of an assault by some in the Congress and the media on our alleged softness over détente. Senator Henry M. Jackson on October 14 publicly accused me of having been beguiled by the Soviets. Columnist George F. Will on October 16 asserted that ideological blinders — undefined — left me unable to recognize a “dead détente” when I saw one. Joseph Kraft on October 18 claimed that I had been “taken in” by the Soviets.15 The New York Times on October 17 even reported a growing split between me and Counsellor to the President Melvin R. Laird, of all people, about Soviet intentions. As usual with Laird, I was the last to know that he had any views on the subject — much less different ones. True, I consistently urged a low-key public approach to the Soviets. Among superpowers the winner in a crisis must carefully judge when to rub in this fact to his opponent. I stressed this theme to my WSAG colleagues:
We must keep this whole thing low key today no matter what happens. There should be no backgrounders. If we can finish this off without a confrontation with the Soviets and without ripping our relations with the Arabs we will have earned our money. Everything else is grandstanding. We will take a very hard line on substance and keep the stuff going into Israel.
All morning the news continued to be favorable. Even before the WSAG met on October 16, we learned that a Soviet VIP plane was en route to Cairo; we guessed it carried Premier Alexei Kosygin, who had unexpectedly canceled an appointment with the visiting Danish Prime Minister. This had to mean that the Soviets would urge Sadat to accept our approach to the cease-fire; he needed no persuasion to persist in his proclaimed course. And Soviet pressure was likely to sour Soviet-Egyptian relations.
Almost concurrently we were informed that a small force of twenty-five Israeli tanks had crossed to the west side of the Suez Canal at Great Bitter Lake and was beginning to tear up the surface-to-air missile fields. If it continued, this guaranteed an Israeli victory because it exposed the Egyptian forces across the Canal to the full fury of Israeli air power. But it was too early to tell whether the Israelis could sustain themselves on the west side of the Canal. The WSAG considered the move as only a raid, as indeed the Israelis first presented it. It was during this meeting discussing war strategy that the news bulletin was brought in reporting that I had won the Nobel Peace Prize, as described in Chapter VIII.
At the end of Tuesday, October 16, I reported to Nixon that the odds were two out of three in favor of a rapid conclusion of the war. The previous cease-fire effort of October 13 had looked too easy; we had done it “too much with mirrors.” The solution would be more reliable now because we were no longer dependent on the actions of others. Our own commitment of resources would, with every passing day, improve the prospects for our strategy. Kosygin would either deadlock with Sadat — and thus undermine Soviet relations with Cairo — or get him to accept our formula. Either outcome would strengthen our hand in Cairo. The Israeli crossing of the Canal might only be a raid, as we continued to believe. But it would weaken the SAM missile screen and thus enhance Israel’s ability to squeeze the Egyptians back across the Canal. Time was now clearly working for us.
October 17: Heading for a Cease-Fire
WEDNESDAY, October 17, was once again a day of waiting for the unfolding of events, though events now were increasingly turning in our favor. Early in the morning Dobrynin informed me officially that Kosygin was in Cairo. He had as well a message from Brezhnev that underlined what we already knew: that while the Soviet Union might be willing to fight the Middle East war by proxy, it would stop well short of a confrontation with us. Brezhnev could not resist calling attention to his previous warnings about the danger o
f a Middle East explosion. He repeated the familiar Soviet position that if Israel returned to the 1967 borders its security could be guaranteed by the superpowers or the Security Council. (This was a doubtful boon, given the fact that the Security Council had proved unable even to take a vote in the second week of a major war.) But the conventional rhetoric was the prelude to asserting that matters had “not [yet] passed the point of no return”; the two superpowers should use their influence for restraint. In short, unless the Soviets were tricking us — and our airlift was depriving them of the capacity to do so — they would not stand in the way and might even promote the solution we had outlined of linking a cease-fire only to a general affirmation of Security Council Resolution 242.
The Sinai Front: Israeli Canal Crossing and Breakthrough
We were by now in the fortunate position of not having to make additional decisions to affect the military outcome. We could outsupply the Soviets, and our friends were better organized to use the equipment we were sending them. At one of the WSAG meetings, Admiral Moorer offered the opinion that the Syrians might be able to drive their newly arrived Soviet tanks to the front lines; they would not be able to fight with them. Therefore, much of Wednesday was spent on setting the stage for postwar diplomacy and on preventing noncombatant Arab nations from taking irrevocable steps in the passion of the moment. The Israeli bridgehead across the Canal was growing; it was no longer a raiding party but a full-fledged counteroffensive. Soon the Soviets would have no choice but to ask for a cease-fire.
That Wednesday a delegation of foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria, and Kuwait visited Washington to press the Arab cause. I saw them first at 10:15 A.M. The short-term American aim, I explained, was to end the fighting, after which “we will engage in a diplomatic effort to find a just and lasting peace.” The war should be ended in a way that would leave Arab-American relations “as friendly as possible.” Prolongation of the conflict would run the risk of great-power confrontation on Arab soil — the perennial Arab nightmare. It would not be possible, I said, to go beyond a general commitment to Resolution 242 nor to obtain an Israeli commitment to return to the 1967 lines: “If you insist on everything as a precondition for a cease-fire, then the war will go on.”
The dialogue continued with Nixon in the Oval Office at 11:10 A.M. The Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, the gentle and wise Omar Saqqaf, summed up the Arab position in a tone of moderation: “Israel is not being threatened by the Arabs with annihilation.” The Saudi Minister was not afraid to affirm explicitly that Israel had a right to exist, albeit within its 1967 frontiers: “We want no more than a return to the 1967 borders and respect for the rights of refugees to return to their lands or be compensated for what they have lost. This would be enough to guarantee the stability and integrity of Israel.”
Even while accepting the existence of Israel — surely the minimum condition for a serious negotiation — Saqqaf had given us a Herculean task. Israel would not return to the 1967 borders as the result of a war imposed on it by its neighbors, in which, moreover, the tide of battle was now beginning to turn in its favor. On the other hand, without United States support there could be no progress even toward more limited objectives. And several of the Arab countries represented in the President’s office needed the United States to fend off threats from rapacious neighbors (often Arabs) and to stabilize domestic turbulence. They and we had to cope with this seeming paradox without ever making it explicit.
Nixon with his mastery of intangibles knew exactly how to strike the right note: to promise a major diplomatic effort without committing himself to a particular outcome. Though Nixon no longer had the time or nervous energy to give consistent leadership — he was even then arranging the face-off with Archibald Cox that was to lead to the beginning of impeachment proceedings against him — he handled his meeting with the Arab ministers masterfully and without a sense of strain. He tried to bring the Arab leaders to a sense of limits, if more obliquely than I:
I will work for a cease-fire, not in order to trick you into stopping at the cease-fire lines, but to use it as a basis to go on from there for a settlement on the basis of Resolution 242. I make this commitment to you. It is very important to use restraint now. I know how people feel, I understand. We will use restraint, and we hope you will. . . . You have my pledge. I can’t say that we can categorically move Israel back to the 1967 borders, but we will work within the framework for Resolution 242.
As he warmed to the subject, Nixon grew exuberant. He promised me as a negotiator. He implied — to my horror — that this ensured success. He returned to a familiar theme from his first term, assuring his guests that despite my Jewish origin I was not subject to domestic, that is to say Jewish, pressures. Saqqaf, who had already earlier in the conversation avowed that I was “doing a great job,” turned this point deftly aside: “We are all Semites together.”
Saqqaf, upon leaving the Oval Office, made a conciliatory public statement expressing great confidence in President Nixon — to the discomfiture of Nixon-haters eager to announce that Watergate was wrecking our ability to handle crises: “The man who could solve the Vietnam war, the man who could have settled the peace all over the world, can easily play a good role in settling and having peace in our area of the Middle East.”
Thus the American airlift resupplying Israel had not impaired — and had perhaps enhanced — Arab conviction that the United States was the key to a peace settlement. The ministers seemed determined to refrain from confrontation. On my part, when I met them afterward once again, I urged our visitors not to ask the impossible:
We know Israel is not prepared to accept any of the present Arab ideas. The Israeli Prime Minister said so yesterday. In any case, and whatever the pressures may be, U. S. influence will have to be used. There is no substitute for U. S. influence. While the Arab armies have done better than expected, these armies cannot attain Arab diplomatic objectives without a long war and the high risk of Great Power involvement.
I cannot say that these observations evoked wild enthusiasm; but neither were they rejected. The four foreign ministers urged me to involve myself despite all my reservations; once you are committed to a medicine man, his sense of reality is interpreted as an act of modesty. I was the deus ex machina — for what, unfortunately, no one could describe.
While I was meeting with the Arab foreign ministers, I asked Scow-croft to have Dinitz obtain his government’s reaction to the idea of linking a cease-fire only to some call for implementing Resolution 242. We expected little difficulty; after all, Resolution 242 had been the basis of Mideast negotiations for six years.
The daily WSAG deliberation took place at 3:00 P.M. on October 17 in a relaxed atmosphere. Clements reported that our airlift was meeting the criterion of exceeding the Soviet airlift by 25 percent. I complacently observed that the mood of the Arab ministers seemed to confirm that there would be no immediate oil embargo. Somewhat more accurately, I predicted that diplomacy would be dormant until Kosygin returned to Moscow. “But we have to keep the stuff going into Israel. We have to pour it in until someone quits.”
At the end of the meeting I took my WSAG colleagues to the Oval Office for a pep talk by Nixon, who even in the midst of his preoccupation with the Watergate tapes decision showed his grasp of the situation:
No one is more keenly aware of the stakes: oil and our strategic position. We can’t go down the road to a cease-fire without a negotiating effort which will succeed. The purpose of the meeting this morning [with the four Arab ministers] was to contribute to this. Some of these — not the Algerians — are desperately afraid of being left at the mercy of the Soviet Union. The Saudis, Moroccans, and even the Algerians, fear this. The other aspect is our relations with the Soviet Union. This is bigger than the Middle East. We can’t allow a Soviet-supported operation to succeed against an American-supported operation. If it does, our credibility everywhere is severely shaken.
But as the WSAG adjourned, a ne
ws ticker spelled out more complications. The Arab oil producers meeting in Kuwait had just announced an immediate production cutback of 5 percent, to be followed by successive monthly cutbacks of 5 percent until Israel withdrew to the 1967 frontiers. Further, in a separate development, the six Persian Gulf members of OPEC unilaterally increased the price of oil by 70 percent, from $3.01 to $5.12 a barrel. We were so focused on the danger of an embargo that we thought the production cutback, which the CIA estimated as initially one million barrels a day, largely a symbolic gesture. This it was — but it had revolutionary implications. As it became progressively evident that the producer cartel could set prices nearly arbitrarily by manipulating production, a new phase of postwar history began. It took some months for all parties to grasp its ramifications. I shall discuss this in Chapter XIX.
One result was immediately apparent. Vague European uneasiness was congealing into panic. Dissociation from the United States was accelerating. Europe seemed to have no specific aim except to seek the goodwill of the oil producers; it had no underlying strategy except to ease immediate pressures. Michel Jobert was in the lead. Not a week before, on October 11, he had sat in my office for a briefing on the war’s diplomacy and expatiated on the desirability of leaving things alone and not pushing matters at the UN. But now Reuters reported a highly critical speech by Jobert in the National Assembly attacking the United States for fraternizing with Brezhnev while both sides were pouring arms into the area.
Years of Upheaval Page 79