A Lost Peace : : Great Power Politics and the Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1967–1979 / / Galen Jackson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Jackson, Galen,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Cornell Studies in Security Affairs
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (276 p.)

In A Lost Peace, Galen Jackson rewrites an important chapter in the history of the middle Cold War period, changing how we think about the Arab-Israeli conflict.During the June 1967 Middle East war, Israeli forces seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt; the Golan Heights from Syria; and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This conflict was followed, in October 1973, by a joint Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israel, which threatened to drag the United States and the Soviet Union into a confrontation, even though the superpowers had seemingly embraced the idea of détente. This conflict contributed significantly to the ensuing deterioration of US-Soviet relations.The standard explanation for why détente failed is that the Soviet Union, driven mainly by its Communist ideology, pursued a highly aggressive foreign policy during the 1970s. In the Middle East specifically, the conventional wisdom is that the Soviets played a destabilizing role by egging the Arabs on in their conflict with Israel, in an effort to undermine the US position in the region for Cold War gain.Jackson challenges standard accounts of this period, demonstrating that the United States sought to exploit the Soviet Union in the Middle East, despite repeated entreaties from USSR leaders that the superpowers cooperate to reach a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement. By leveraging the remarkable evidence now available to scholars, Jackson reveals that the United States and the Soviet Union may have missed an opportunity for Middle East peace during the 1970s.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: A Great Power Peace? -- 1. Deadlock: The Superpowers after the June 1967 War -- 2. Toward a Breakthrough? Nixon, the War of Attrition, and a Shift in Soviet Policy -- 3. Waiting for 1973: The Election, the Summit, and Sadat’s Expulsion of the Soviets -- 4. “Under the Cover of Détente”: The October War, Watergate, and Kissinger -- 5. “The Maximum Anti-Soviet Policy”: The Superpowers and the Road to Sinai II -- 6. A Peace Too Far? The Comprehensive Framework Collapses -- Conclusion: What Drove the Cold War? -- Notes -- Index