Competition or collaboration?: The Soviet Union, detente, and the October 1973 war

Abstract

Abstract The ambiguities of Soviet behavior prior to and during the 1973 October War have since generated controversy on the question of whether the Soviet Union was essentially competitive or collaborative toward the United States during the Middle East crisis. Two irreconcilable schools of thought, the competitor and the collaborator, have arisen around each position. A third interpretation, the improvisator, attempts to reconcile this contradiction by attributing Soviet behavior not to strategic thought and planning but to ad‐hoc opportunism. A reexamination of the evidence suggests instead that the Kremlin's intentions were ultimately competitive, and the ambiguous blend of rivalry and restraint in its behavior was not the result of simple improvisation but of careful consideration for the requirements of the Soviet Union's precarious position in the Middle East at the time; its determination to compete with the United States in the region; and the Soviet view of detente.