ABSTRACT
SADAT'S DEALINGS WITH THE SOVIET UNION AND THE USA In the early 1970s, of course, nobody foresaw the catastrophe of the Lebanon. The prevailing Western view of the Middle East, after Egypt's ending of the War of Attrition and Jordan's curbing of the Palestinians, was complacent. It was, admittedly, tinged with disgust at Palestinian terrorism (notably the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games) and with concern at the extent of Soviet penetration of the area. The general feeling, though, was that Israel was invincible and that its neighbours recognised this. Egyptian rhetoric to the contrary was dismissed, and some amusement occasioned by the way in which Nasser's successor, Sadat, kept postponing the 'Year of Decision'. In fact Sadat was determined to prevent the 1967 cease-fire lines becoming 'a fait accompli, political lines similar to the 1949 armistice lines'.1 To stop this, he could either challenge them by force, which meant securing the necessary arms from the USSR, or enlist real US diplomatic pressure on Israel. From 1970 to 1973 he followed both tracks.
