FOREWORDxvi
Time and again, we encountered the opposite: Soviet motivation to reverse the
1967 debacle was just as strong as the Eg yptians’, and to achieve this peacefully—even
if it had been possible to do so—would not rectify the damage. A Russian commenta-
tor was hardly exaggerating when he wrote, at the height of anti-Communist back-
lash in 1992:
this war too is on the conscience of the [State Security] Committee. The KGB persuaded
President Gamal Abdel Nasser to wage the War of Attrition to the bitter end. Nasser
trusted the KGB men but did ask for help, and Big Brother, the best friend of oppressed
nations, did help—first with military gear, and when it became clear that the Arabs could
not do it on their own, by sending in its own forces.^9Likewise, we found that previous studies laid excessive stress on the diplomatic
history of the period. While stalemate in peace efforts may have helped to justify the
use of force, for Eg yptians and Soviets alike winning a military rematch against Israel
was from the outset both a means and an end in itself. A negotiated accord might
have reversed the results of Israel’s victory in June 1967 by gaining a return of lost
territory. But it could not undo the humiliation of Soviet weaponry and doctrine, or
reassure the USSR’s other allies of its support, any more than it could redeem
Eg yptian valor. There is no indication that both parties’ joint determination to
achieve these goals was diminished at any point by the prospects for a peaceful resolu-
tion. On the contrary, as Eg yptian propagandist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal not
only admits but boasts, “the deception plan” for the ultimate offensive included
instructions to diplomats to “speak in pacific terms (without, it must be added, know-
ing the purpose).”^10
Likewise, the Soviets’ immense military operation, once prepared and launched,
assumed a logic of its own, which was at most modified or rescheduled to accom-
modate UN assemblies or US–Soviet summit meetings. At least as frequently,
such linkage cut the other way. Several examples follow in which the parallel
timelines show that diplomatic activity served as a diversion for military strateg y.
Moreover, persuasive cases have been made that military action in the Middle East
was occasionally timed to suit Soviet purposes elsewhere, such as the unleashing
of artillery barrages across the canal to coincide with the Warsaw Pact interven-
tion in Czechoslovakia. But it was also perceived as essential to protect the USSR’s
own self-defined security interests. Vladimir Vinogradov, the Soviet ambassador
in Cairo from October 1970 to April 1974, still maintained twenty-eight years
later that the Soviet presence in Eg ypt was necessary in order “to oppose the
United States’ military machine and its advance guard approaching ... the south-
ernmost approach to our own country, and ... possessing an anti-Soviet spring-
board on our very frontier.”^11