Soviet Decision-Making in the Middle East: The 1973 October War and the 1980 Gulf War

Abstract

T HE issue of how the Soviet decision-making process operates, and the way in which various influences from the domestic and external environment are fed into that process, has been of acute interest to Western policy-makers and analysts alike in recent years. At the root of this interest is the belief that a state's foreign policy is not merely a pre-determined result of constant geo-political, economic, or even ideological factors. Rather these constants are seen as influencing policy only through the variables of decision-making structures and processes, including not only the more formal institutional context of decisions and the nature of the political leadership but also the stability and regularity of decision-making processes over time and during both crisis and non-crisis periods. Examining the formulation of Soviet policy in the Middle East, and looking particularly at the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and the Iraqi-Iranian war which broke out on September 22nd 1980, it is clear that this provides a particularly suitable case study for the analysis of Soviet decision-making. The Soviet Union has been actively involved in the Middle East since 1955. The region itself has seen periods of both relative calm and war; and the Soviet Union has gone through several leadership changes and phases during this period, ranging from de-Stalinisation to collective leadership and the emergence of Leonid Brezhnev as primus inter pares. Furthermore, Soviet policy formulation toward the Middle East has always taken place within the context of the current state of East-West relations; and these relations, too, have been subject to fluctuation and evolution, from the cold war to detente. The Middle Eastern wars of 1973 and 1980, both provide particularly good examples of the constraining influence of this larger, global, 'correlation of forces'. But before any conclusions can be drawn about Soviet decisionmaking, two basic questions require answering: what is the institutional context for policy formulation toward the Middle East during periods of noncrisis; and secondly, what are the influences which operate to affect the outcome of the policy process?