Michael S. Doran
24 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
surely have been the one to seal the
deal. He would have been regarded as a
diplomatic wizard: ending the Egyptian-
Israeli conÁict while simultaneously
bringing Egypt into the Western bloc.
As it turned out, however, it was the
Carter administration that brokered the
Camp David accords, and that fact
greatly inÁuenced the lessons that
subsequent generations learned from
the triumph.
Getting the parties to commit to a
Änal settlement was a huge diplomatic
accomplishment that required single-
minded presidential focus and enormous
reserves o patience and tenacity, for
all o which Carter deserves immense
credit. In the process o Änishing what
Kissinger started, however, he embed-
ded his own ideas about the region’s true
problems and solutions into the U.S.
position—ideas that were less accurate
than Kissinger’s but would end up
sanctiÄed as gospel because they coin-
cided with the success o the earlier,
more hard-bitten strategy.ENTER CARTER
Carter and his team were contemptuous
o the diplomacy that had led to the
Sinai Interim Agreement. They believed
it was necessary to solve the entire Arab-
Israeli conÁict all at once, in a single,
grand, multilateral forum. It was Kis-
singer who had Ärst convened such a
conference in Geneva back in 1973, but
purely in order to raise an international
umbrella over his personal diplomacy.
Carter wanted to reconvene the Geneva
conference, this time for real, with the
Soviets playing the role o true partners.
The underlying problem in the
Middle East, Carter passionately
believed, was the Israeli suppression oany talks—even as Moscow scrambled
to rebuild the Egyptian military. A
newly emboldened Nasser soon chal-
lenged Israel along the Suez Canal, the
Israelis retaliated with airstrikes, and
skirmishing escalated into what is now
referred to as the War o Attrition.
Watching Israel more than hold its
own, U.S. President Richard Nixon and
his national security adviser, Henry
Kissinger, decided that the Jewish state
had earned respect as an ally and eventu-
ally built Israel’s new strength into the
administration’s strategizing. Kissinger
saw Israeli power as a tool for changing
the geopolitical map, a lever that could
Áip Egypt, then the most powerful Arab
state, from the Soviet camp to the U.S.
one. To regain its lost territory and reopen
the Suez Canal, he reasoned, Egypt had
to negotiate directly with Israel. The Sovi-
ets could help Cairo make war, but only
the United States could help it make
peace. Washington could deliver the
Israelis and broker a lasting settlement—
but only i Egyptian President Anwar
al-Sadat would abandon Moscow.
After yet another major war in 1973,
the strategy worked. The Sinai Interim
Agreement, signed by Egypt and Israel
in 1975, included a withdrawal o Israeli
forces from land bordering the Suez
Canal—the recent grand reopening o
which had included, at Sadat’s insistence,
an American warship. The “interim”
part o the deal was a pledge by both
sides to negotiate a Änal peace deal
without resort to war. It laid the ground-
work for the historic peace between
Egypt and Israel that would eventually
be signed at Camp David in 1978.
Had U.S. President Gerald Ford
defeated his Democratic challenger,
Jimmy Carter, in 1976, Kissinger would