Deterrence and learning in an enduring rivalry: Egypt and Israel, 1948-73

Security Studies

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 104-152

  Stein, Janice Gross ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000099613     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636419608429301     Document Type: Article

References (179)

1. Elli Lieberman, "The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate: Is the Dependent Variable Elusive?" Security Studies 3, no. 3 (spring 1994): 384-427;
2. and "What Makes Deterrence Work? Lessons from the Egyptian-Israeli Rivalry?" Security Studies 4, no. 4 (summer 1995): 851-910.
3. The explanatory power of rational deterrence theories has been the subject of controversy. Critics have claimed that psychological and political pressures can provoke challenges in ways not anticipated by rational models. See Christopher H. Achen and Duncan Snidal, "Rational Deterrence Theory and Comparative Case Studies," World Politics 41, no. 2 (January 1989): 143-69;
4. Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985);
5. Richard Ned Lebow, "Deterrence: A Political and Psychological Critique," in Perspectives on Deterrence, ed. Paul C. Stern, Robert Axelrod, Robert Jervis, and Roy Radner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989);
6. and Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, "Rational Deterrence Theory: I Think, Therefore I Deter," World Politics 41, no. 2 (January 1989): 208-24.
7. This line of reasoning is consistent with Bayesian models of updating where people update estimates in response to the diagnosticity of evidence. Formal models of Bayesian inference specify optimal rates of revision in estimates, when new information becomes available. Bayesian models assess the value of new information, given the prior information that was available, and prescribe appropriate rates of revision. They do not deal with the formation of beliefs and expectancies, but with the rational revision of beliefs and expectancies, given new information. There is considerable controversy about the appropriate criteria of rational inference. See Icek Ajzen, "Intuitive Theories of Events and the Effects of Base Rate Data on Prediction," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35, no. 5 (1977): 303-14.
8. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981);
9. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, "The Costs of War: A Rational Expectations Approach," American Political Science Review 77 (1983): 347-57;
10. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, "Reason and War," American Political Science Review 80 (1986): 1113-29;
11. and James D. Morrow, "Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining," American Journal of Political Science 33 (1989): 941-72.
12. Jack Levy, "Quantitative Studies of Deterrence Success and Failure," in Stern et al., Perspectives on Deterrence.
13. George W. Breslauer and Philip E. Tetlock, eds., Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview, 1991);
14. and Philip E. Tetlock, "Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy: In Search of an Elusive Concept," in Breslauer and Tetlock, Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy, 20-61.
15. See Patrick Morgan, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis, rev. ed. (Beverley Hills: Sage, 1983).
16. Lieberman, "The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate," 391, emphasis added.
17. For a similar definition of learning in social psychology, see Michael D. Cohen and Lee S. Sproull, "Editors' Introduction," Organizational Science 2 (February 1991): i-iii; in organizational theory,
18. see Linda Argote, "Group and Organizational Learning Curves: Individual, System, and Environmental Components," Organizational Science 2, no. 1 (February 1991).
19. See also Jack Levy, "Learning and Foreign Policy. Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield," International Organization 48, no. 2 (spring 1994): 279-312.
20. See George P. Huber, "Organizational Learning: The Contributing Processes and the Literatures," Organizational Science 2, no. 1(February 1991): 88-115, 89.
21. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 129.
22. Political psychologists distinguish between simple and complex learning. Learning is simple when means are better adjusted to ends. Complex learning occurs when people develop more differentiated schema and when these schema are integrated into higher order structures that highlight difficult trade-offs. Ernest Haas describes this dimension of political learning as "nested problem sets." See his When Knowledge is Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 84.
23. See also Levy, "Learning and Foreign Policy: Exploring A Conceptual Minefield";
24. and Janice Gross Stein, "Cognitive Psychology and Political Learning: Gorbachev as an Uncommitted Thinker and Motivated Learner," in International Organization 48, no. 2 (spring 1994): 155-84.
25. Dennis Epple, Linda Argote, and Rukimini Devadas, "Organizational Learning Curves: A Method for Investigating Intra-Plant Transfer of Knowledge Acquired Through Learning by Doing," Organizational Science 2, no. 1 (February 1991): 58-70, 58.
26. Argyris, "Action Science and Intervention," Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 19 (1983): 115-40, 116.
27. Ernest Haas describes this dimension of political learning as "nested problem sets." See his When Knowledge is Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 84.
28. Haas, When Knowledge is Power,
29. and Breslauer and Tetlock, Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy.
30. An early study of Soviet and American learning on security issues is Alexander L. George, Philip J. Farley, and Alexander Dallin, U.S.-Soviet Security Cooperation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
31. See especially Philip Tetlock, "Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy: In Search of an Elusive Concept," 40.
32. Argyris, "Action Science and Intervention," 116.
33. For a definition of schematas, see Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor, Social Cognition (New York: Random House, 1991), 140.
34. For arguments about cognitive stability, see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976);
35. Yaacov Y. I. Vertzberger, The Women In Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Decisionmaking (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990);
36. R. R. Lau and David O. Sears, "Social Cognition and Political Cognition: The Past, the Present, and the Future," in Political Cognition, ed. R. R. Lau and D. O. Sears (Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1986), 347-66.
37. For a discussion of cognitive psychology and foreign policy change, see Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, "Afghanistan, Carter, and Foreign Policy Change: The Limits of Cognitive Models," in Force, Diplomacy, and Statecraft: Essays in Honor of Alexander L. George, ed. Timothy J. McKeown and Dan Caldwell (Boulder Westview, 1993), 95-128.
38. L. Ross, M. R. Lepper, and M. Hubbard, "Perseverance in Self Perception and Social Perception: Biased Attributional Processes in the Debriefing Paradigm," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 (1975): 880-92.
39. The postulate that schemas are resistant to change can be interpreted as consistent with statistical logic if people assign a low variance estimate to their expectations. Psychological research contradicts this interpretation through repeated observations that exposure to discrepant information strengthens rather than undermines existing schemas. C. A. Anderson, M. R. Lepper, and L. Ross, "Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (1980): 1037-49;
40. C. A. Anderson, "Abstract and Concrete Data in the Perseverance of Social Theories: When Weak Data Lead to Unshakable Beliefs," Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology 19 (1983): 93-108;
41. and E. R. Hirt and S. J. Sherman, "The Role of Prior Knowledge in Explaining Hypothetical Events," Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology 21 (1985): 519-43.
42. The strengthening of schemas after exposure to contradictory information results from the processes of reasoning people use to explain the apparent inconsistency. Reasoning may transform the inconsistent information to make it consistent with the schema. See J. Crocker, "Judgment of Covariation by Social Perceivers," Psychological Bulletin 90 (1981): 272-92;
43. J. A. Kulik, "Confirmatory Attribution and the Perpetuation of Social Beliefs," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 441 (1983): 1171-81;
44. T. K. Srull, "Person Memory: Some Tests of Associative Storage and Retrieval Models," Journal of Experimental Psychology 7 (1981): 440-63;
45. R. S. Wyer Jr. and S. E. Gordon, "The Recall of Information about Persons and Groups," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 18 (1982): 128-64;
46. C. S. O'Sullivan and F. T. Durso, "Effect of Schema-Incongruent Information on Memory for Stereotypical Attributes," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47 (1984): 55-70.
47. In large part because schema theories focus on whole schemas, they are relatively static. For a critical review of the static quality of schema theory, see James H. Kuklinski, Robert C. Luskin, and John Holland, "Where is the Schema: Going Beyond the 'S' Word in Political Psychology," American Political Science Review 85, no. 2 (December 1991): 1341-56.
48. Jennifer Crocker, Darlene B. Hannah, and Renee Weber, "Person Memory and Causal Attributions," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44 (1983): 55-66.
49. E .T. Higgins and J. A. Bargh, "Social Cognition and Social Perception," in Annual Review of Psychology 38, ed. M. R. Rosenzweig and L. W. Porter (Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, 1987), 369-425, 386.
50. Hazel Markus and Robert B. Zajonc, "The Cognitive Perspective in Social Psychology," in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson, Handbook of Social Psychology, 3rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1985).
51. Cognitive psychologists who study processes of attribution are less explicit in modelling processes of change. They note only that individuals may vary in their propensity to acquire schemata and in their tendency to use them to process information when they do have them. Susan Fiske, "Schema-Based Versus Piecemeal Politics: A Patchwork Quilt, but Not a Blanket," in Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, 154-81.
52. P. Suedfeld and A.D. Rank, "Revolutionary Leaders: Long-Term Success as a Function of Changes in Conceptual Complexity," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34 (1976): 169-78;
53. P. Suedfeld and P. Tetlock, "Integrative Complexity of Communication in International Crisis," Journal of Conflict Resolution 21 (1977): 168-84;
54. P. Tetlock, "Integrative Complexity of American and Soviet Foreign Policy Rhetorics: A Time-Series Analysis," Journnal of Personality and Social Psychology 49 (1985): 1565-85.
55. Pamela J. Conover and Stanley Feldman, "How People Organize the Political World: A Schematic Model," American Journal of Political Science 28 (1984): 95-126. Those who possess multiple judgment dimensions also tend to possess rules of abstraction that facilitate the integration and comparison of information. They tend to produce alternative interpretations of new information, but by using their capacity for abstraction and integration, are able to resolve these ambiguities. People with low cognitive complexity tend to produce absolute, fixed judgments.
56. W. L. Bennett, The Political Mind and the Political Environment (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975), 33-35,
57. and Vertzberger, The World In Their Minds, 134-37.
58. E. T. Higgins and J. A. Bargh, "Social Cognition and Social Perception," in Annual Review of Psychology 38, ed. M. R. Rosenzweig and L. W. Porter (Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, 1987), 369-425.
59. See James G. March, Lee S. Sproull, and Michal Tamuz, "Learning from Samples of One or Fewer," Organizational Science 2, no. 1 (February 1991): 1-13.
60. General Walid Halim, interview with author, Cairo, December 1977. See also Nadav Safran, From War to War: The Arab-Israeli Confrontation, 1948-1967 (New York: Pegasus, 1969), 28-36.
61. Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for a State: A History of the Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (forthcoming), chap. 2.
62. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for a State, chap. 2.
63. Mohamed Haykal, interview with author, Cairo, December 1977. See also Janice Gross Stein, "Calculation, Miscalculation, and Conventional Deterrence I: The View from Cairo," in Jervis, Lebow, and Stein, Psychology and Deterrence, 34-59.
64. Safran, From War to War, 225;
65. Paul Jabber, Not by War Alone: Security and Arms Control in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 115-21.
66. Trevor Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947-1974 (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 3-19.
67. See Lieberman, "The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate," 393.
68. The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate Ibid., 416.
69. See Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 124-27.
70. Ambassador Tahseen Bashir, interview with author, Washington, D.C., April 1976; Dupuy, Elusive Victory, 217-18;
71. and Safran, From War to War, 56.
72. See "Statement by Shams al-Din Badran on Events Preceding the June War of 1967," Al-Ahram 2 February 1968.
73. Reprinted in International Documents on Palestine, 1968, ed. Zuhair Diab (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971), doc. 298, 319-22.
74. Israel's military intelligence gained access to the message from 'Amir, who was then visiting in Pakistan, to Nasir. See Yitzhak Rabin, Service Ledger (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1979), 133. Rabin makes no mention of the message in his English-language memoirs.
75. Robert Stephens, Nasser: A Political Biography (London: Allen Lane, 1971), 443.
76. It became clear in May 1967 that it indeed would not provoke retaliation. See Janice Gross Stein and Raymond Tanter, Rational Decision Making. Israel's Security Choices, 1967 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980), 157-213.
77. Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 96;
78. Adeed I. Dawisha, Egypt in the Arab World: The Elements of Foreign Policy (New York: Wiley, 1976), 38-39;
79. and Fawaz Gerges, The Superpowers and the Middle East: Regional and International Politics, 1955-1967 (Boulder: Westview, 1994), 166-80.
80. Bashir, interview with author, Washington, D.C., April 1976; and Ambassador Salah Bassiouni, interview with author, June 1992. Ambassador Bassiouni was special assistant to the undersecretary for foreign affairs in Cairo in June 1967. See also Richard Parker, "The June 1967 War Some Mysteries Explored," The Middle East Journal 46, no. 2 (spring 1992): 177-97;
81. and The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). In June 1992 Ambassador Parker assembled senior American, Soviet, Egyptian, and Israeli officials who had participated in decision making in the 1967 war in an international conference in Washington, D.C. Collectively, they reconstructed the period leading to the outbreak of war in 1967.
82. See Richard Parker, ed. The Six Day War: A Retrospective (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, forthcoming 1996).
83. Memorandum of conversation between Robert Komer, the senior Middle East staff member of the National Security Council and the Egyptian ambassador Mustafa Kamil, 18 March 1963. The date of the memo is 26 March 1963. NSF, box 322, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Mass. Cited by Avner Cohen, "Cairo, Dimona, and the June 1967 War," Middle East Journal 50, no. 2 (spring 1966); 190-210, 193.
84. Safran, From War to War, 154;
85. and Michael Barnett, Confronting tht Costs of War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 94-97.
86. Safran, From War to War, 434.
87. R .D. McLaurin, Mohammed Mughisuddin, and Abraham R. Wagner, Foreign Policy Making in the Middle East (New York: Praeger, 1977), 63.
88. Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, "The Primacy of Economics: The Foreign Policy of Egypt," in The Foreign Policies of Arab States, ed. Baghat Korany and Ali E. Hillal Dessouki (Boulder: Westview, 1984), 138.
89. John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 93-100, 426-29.
90. Ali Abdel Rahman Rahmy, The Egyptian Policy in the Arab World: Intervention in the Yemen 1962-1967 Case Study (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983).
91. Barnett, Confronting the Costs of War, 81.
92. Haykal, interview with author, Cairo, December 1977.
93. Newly available documents from the archives of the Palestine Liberation Organization show an intense debate between senior Egyptian military commanders and PLO leaders from 1964 to 1967 about the strength and composition of the PLO, its formation and control, staff and field command, and issues of politically-related military jurisdiction. Egypt worked systematically to constrain the freedom of action, the size, and the command structure of PLA combat units in the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip. For a fascinating account, see Yezid Sayigh, "Confrontation or Containment: The Palestine Liberation Army in Egyptian Strategy Toward Israel," December 1995, unpub. paper, forthcoming in Armed Struggle and the Search for a State: A History of the Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993.
94. Lieberman, "The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate," 404-7.
95. See Jon D. Glassman, Arms for the Arabs: The Soviet Union and War in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 31 ff.
96. Cited by Richard Parker, ed. The Six Day War: A Retrospective, chap. 5.
97. Daniel Dishon, ed. Middle East Record, 1967 (Tel Aviv: Israel Universities Press, 1971), 176-77.
98. Raymond Cohen claims that the decision to escalate the clash into a major confrontation in the air was a deliberate choice by Israel. The date was the anniversary of the Syrian Ba'ath party and the dog fight in the air took place in full view of festive celebrators in Damascus. Raymond Cohen, "Intercultural Communication between Israel and Egypt: Deterrence Failure before the Six-Day War," Review of International Studies 14 (1988): 1-16, 5.
99. Cited in Dan Schueftan, "Nasser's 1967 Policy Reconsidered," Jerusalem Quarterly 3 (1977): 132.
100. Haykal, interview with author, Cairo, December 1977.
101. Stein and Tanter, Rational Decision Making, 160.
102. Lieberman cites as evidence of the change in Nasir's estimates two speeches that he gave. In the first, on 22 May to the Advanced Airforce Headquarters, the president claimed: "There is a great difference between yesterday and today, between 1956 and 1967...At that time we had a few Ilyushin bombers...Today we have many Ilyushins and other aircraft." He added that although Egyptian troops were still in Yemen, this did not matter because "we are capable of carrying out our duties in Yemen and at the same time doing our national duty here in Egypt" Speech to Advanced Airforce Headquarters, 22 May 1967, in International Documents on Palestine 1967, ed. Tuad Jabber (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1970), doc. 318, 538-41. This speech was given after the blockade had been decided upon, before war broke out, and to a group of air force officers being readied for the battle Nasir expected to come. The second speech was given on 9 June, after the scope of the disastrous defeat became clear to Nasir. It was a justification of the choices he had made: "...our estimates of the enemy's strength were precise. They showed us that our armed forces had reached a level of equipment and training at which they were capable of deterring and repelling the enemy." (Cited in Stephens, Nasser, 482). Neither of these speeches provide evidence that is relevant to the critical decision Nasir made on 22 May to announce the blockade of the Straits of Tiran. Lieberman, "The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate," 405.
103. For a similar analysis of British policy before the Second World War, where policy drove capability estimates rather than estimates driving policy, sec Wesley Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).
104. Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 174. General Muhammad Fawzi remembered that at the meting on 2 June at General Headquarters, attended by Nasir and 'Amir, Sidqi Mahmoud estimated the losses from a preemptive strike at 15 to 20 percent, and then worried that this would mean the loss of initiative and the possible crippling of the air force. Discussion then turned to the measures that were necessary to protect the air force against a preemptive strike.
105. Muhammad Fawzi, Harb al-Thalath Sanawat (in Arabic) (Cairo: Dar al Mustaqbal al-Arabi, 1980), 124-26.
106. See also Parker, The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East, 57. This far more sober estimate suggests that some senior Egyptian officers did not overestimate their capabilities and warned of the consequences. The warning was ignored by Nasir and 'Amir.
107. Interview, Al-Musawar, 18 May 1967.
108. Mahmoud Riad, The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East (London: Quartet, 1981), 23.
109. Mahmoud Riad, The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East Ibid.1981), 23.
110. Interview, Al-Musawar, 20 May 1967.
111. Lieberman, "The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate," 406.
112. Lieberman cites Hanson Baldwin, who estimated on 24 May that "A comparison of tangible and intangibles of military power in the Middle East would seem to indicate that neither side has enough superiority to court all-out war;" and Eric Pace, writing in the New York Times that "[The Egyptian forces now deployed] would presumably prevent any sudden humiliating defeat, like that of the offensive in 1956, where the Israelis overran the Sinai peninsula." "The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate," 406. These estimates are far more cautious and reserved than those of Egyptian officials, who had access to better data.
113. Georgi Kornienko, then head of International Organizations, Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, interview with author, Washington, D.C.; and Parker, The Six Day War: A Retrospective.
114. William Quandt, Decade of Decisions: American Policy Toward the Arab-Israel Conflict, 1967-1976 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), 50.
115. In a tense meeting with the prime minister at the headquarters of Southern Command late on 25 May, military officers expressed their dissatisfaction with the hesitation of the government and pressed for approval of immediate military action. General Ariel Sharon, the principal speaker, argued forcefully that the growing strength of Egyptian forces would increase the cost of Israel's military action; the earlier the attack, the easier it would be to defeat the Egyptian army. Janice Gross Stein, "The Arab-Israeli War of 1967: Inadvertent War Through Miscalculated Escalation," in Avoiding War: Problems of Crisis Management, ed. Alexander George (Boulder Westview, 1991): 126-59, 140.
116. Cited by Riad, Struggle for Peace, 19.
117. Riad, Struggle for Peace, Ibid.19.
118. As recently as 1966, Nasir argued that "We can annihilate Israel in twelve days were the Arabs to form a united front. Any attack on Israel from the south is not possible from a military point of view. Israel can be attacked only from the territory of Jordan and Syria." Cited by Theodore Draper, Israel and World Politics: The Roots of the Third Arab-Israeli War (New York Viking, 1968), 44.
119. Riad quotes Nasir's reaction to Johnson's note: "I doubt gravely the sincerity of Johnson. For a man who has always sided with Israel, it is inconceivable that, all of a sudden, he would become even-handed." Struggle for Peace, 20.
120. Abdul Majeen Farid, "Records, Secrets, and Deliberations of Hussein-Nasser Talks, 1967-1970," Al-Rai, 4 June 1983,
121. cited by Samir A. Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 96.
122. Mahmoud Riad, interview with author, Cairo, December 1977.
123. Fawzi, Harb al-Thalath Sanawat, 76-82, describes in detail the rivalry between Nasir and 'Amir and the strong institutional base of support 'Amir enjoyed among the senior officers. In 1962, in an effort to circumscribe 'Amir's power, Nasir formed a Presidential Council whose members would have to relinquish all executive positions they held. 'Amir refused to relinquish the command of the armed forces and resigned in protest. Senior officers expressed their support for 'Amir and Nasir backed down. Subsequently, he was reluctant to challenge 'Amir directly. Salah Nasir, the director of General Intelligence, was an 'Amir appointee and loyal to him.
124. See also Parker, The Six Day War: A Retrospective.
125. Ironically, evidence has subsequently revealed that the raids which provoked the esSamu action were not carried out by el-Fatah, but by the Abtal al-'Awda group, which was pro-Nasir and in close contact with Egyptian intelligence. Yezid Sayigh, unpub. memo, 17 June 1996.
126. The Unified Arab Command was established at the Arab summit meeting in Cairo in 1964. It drew up a detailed plan which described the measures needed to improve Arab defensive and offensive capabilities against Israel. Egypt and Saudi Arabia agreed to finance the development of military capabilities in the "confrontation" states. Arab states were also asked to avoid providing Israel with a pretext to statt a preventive war; included was the instruction that no Arab state bordering Israel should either encourage or tolerate raids into Israel's territory. See Riad, The Simple for Peace in the Middle East, 12;
127. Wasfi al-Tal, Writings in Arab Affairs (in Arabic) (Amman: Dar al-Liwa, 1980,), 326;
128. and Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War, 58.
129. Wasfi al-Tal, Writings, 243.
130. Radio Jordan Bulletin, 18-19 December 1966.
131. Badran, International Documents, 319.
132. Parker, Politics of Miscalculation, 92, 104-7,
133. as cited by Cohen, "Cairo, Dimona, and the June 1967 War," 199.
134. Israel's Cabinet met on 18-19 June 1967 and approved, by unanimous vote, a proposal under which Israel would withdraw from all of the Sinai and the Golan in return for peace treaties with these two countries, demilitarization of the Sinai and the Golan, guarantees from Egypt for freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran and the Suez Canal, and from Syria for the unimpeded flow of water into Israel from the sources of the Jordan River. See David A. Korn, Stalemate, The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970 (Boulder Westview, 1992), 13. As deputy chief and then chief of the political section at the American embassy in Israel from 1967 to 1971, Korn was in a position to see much of the privileged cable traffic.
135. Korn, Stalemate, 87, 93.
136. Mahmud 'Azmi, "Ten Years After the October War," al-Fikr al-Istrariji, 11-12 (1984), discusses in detail Nasir's Plan 2000 to cross the Suez Canal.
137. Korn, Stalemate, 91.
138. Military Intelligence, interview with author, Cairo, December 1977.
139. Georgi Kornienko, interview with author, Washington, D.C., June 1992; and Korn, Stalemate, 54. As early as June 1967, when the Soviet Union began to rebuild the Egyptian armed forces, they pressed Nasir to look for a diplomatic rather than a military solution. Soviet leaders would warn consistently against an Egyptian use of force until October 1973.
140. Cited in Parker, Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East, 130.
141. Stein, "Calculation, Miscalculation, and Conventional Deterrence," 43-45.
142. In the autumn of 1968 Egypt had deployed some 100,000 soldiers, dug three lines of fortifications, and several hundred big guns. Israel, by contrast, deployed only a single tank brigade, several hundred infantry and engineering troops, and eight mobile artillery pieces on the front line. In the two rounds of exchanges in September and October 1968, Israel lost twenty-five soldiers killed and more than fifty wounded. In response, Israel's senior military officers began an intense debate on appropriate measures. Gen. Avraham Aden favored a set of defensive compounds strung along the Canal line, while Gen. Yisrael Tal argued that Israeli armor should be deployed ten kilometers behind the Canal, out of sight of Egyptian artillery. When Egyptian forces crossed the Canal, Israel's armor would trap and destroy Egyptian forces in mobile warfare. Tal lost the argument and the Bar Lev line was built.
143. Dan Shueftan, Attrition: Egypt's Post War Political Strategy, 1967-1970 (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publication, 1989);
144. Avi Shlaim and Raymond Tanter, "Decision Process, Choice, and Consequences: Israel's Deep Penetration Bombing in Egypt 1970" World Politics 30, no. 4 July 1978): 493-96.
145. Senior military officers, interview with author, Cairo, December 1977.
146. Field Marshal Abdul Ghani al-Gamassy, "Memoirs," October Magazine, Cairo, 17 September 1989.
147. Korn, Stalemate, 88.
148. One exception was General Ezer Weizman, formerly commander of Israel's Air Force, who argued that Israel had lost the war and had failed to find a satisfactory answer to the surface-to-air missile system installed by the Soviet Union in the closing days of the War. See Ezer Weizman, On Eagles' Wings (Jerusalem: Steimatzky's, 1976), 274-75.
149. Anwar el-Sadat, Speech to the People's Assembly, Cairo, 4 February 1971, In Search of Identity, 279-80. Lieberman makes no mention of Sadat's initiative in his analysis of deterrence stability.
150. Stein, "Calculation, Miscalculation and Conventional Deterrence I," 49-51.
151. See Janice Gross Stein, "The Political Economy of Strategic Agreements: The Linked Costs of Failure at Camp David," in Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics, ed. Peter Evans, Harold Jacobsen, and Robert Putnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 77-103. 100.
152. Janice Gross Stein, "Calculation, Miscalculation, and Conventional Deterrence II: The View from Jerusalem," in Jervis, Lebow, and Stein, Psychology and Deterrence, 60-88.
153. Anwar el-Sadat, May Day Speech, Cairo, 1 May 1973, Middle East News Agency, 3 May 1973; and Stein, "Calculation, Miscalculation, and Conventional Deterrence I," 50.
154. Sadat, In Search of Identity, 219-21;
155. Hassan el-Badri, Taha el-Magdoub, and Mohammed Dk el-Din Zhody, The Ramadan War (Dunn Loring, VA: T. N. Dupuy Associates, 1978);
156. and Saad el-Shazli, The Crossing of the Suez (San Francisco: American Mideast Research, 1980).
157. President Anwar el-Sadat, interview with author, Cairo, December 1977.
158. Stein, "Calculation, Miscalculation, and Conventional Deterrence I," 46.
159. Lieberman, "The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate," 413.
160. The Rational Deterrence Theory Debate Ibid, 413.
161. Gary Goertz and Paul Diehl, "The Empirical Importance of Enduring Rivalries," International Interactions 18 (1992): 151-63;
162. "Enduring Rivalries: Theoretical Constructs and Empirical patterns," International Studies Quarterly 37 (1993): 147-72;
163. and "The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries: The Impact of Political Shocks," American Journal of Political Science 39 (February 1995): 30-52.
164. Jack Levy, "An Introduction to Prospect Theory," Political Psychology 13 (June 1992): 171-86;
165. "Prospect Theory and International Relations: Theoretical Applications and Analytical Problems," Political Psychology 13 (June 1992), 283-310;
166. and "Loss Aversion, Framing, and Bargaining: The Implications of Prospect Theory for International Conflict," International Political Science Review 17 (1996), 177-93.
167. See also Janice Gross Stein and Louis Pauly, eds. Choosing to Cooperate: How States Avoid Loss (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
168. Jervis, Perception and Mispencption in International Relations, 117-202.
169. Irving L. Janis, Crucial Decisions: Leadership in Policymaking and Crisis Management (New York: Free Press, 1989);
170. and Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann, Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice, and Commitment (New York: Free Press, 1977).
171. Morgan observes that "designing around deterrence" is not surprising by those who are deterred, feeling frustrated, and seeking a way out. Patrick M. Morgan, "Reflections on Deterrence Theory and Enduring Rivalries," September 1995, unpub. paper, 25-28.
172. For discussion of "designing around" deterrence commitments, rather than around capabilities, see Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).
173. Lieberman concludes that a short-term balance of forces favoring a challenger is consistent with the failure of general or immediate deterrence. In 1967, Arab states collectively had at least a two-to one advantage, and in 1973, force ratios had improved even further. "What Makes Deterrence Work?" 874-76. Yet, short-term ratios were an extraordinarily poor predictor of battlefield performance. Despite the improvement in force ratios in favor of Egypt by 1973, Egyptian battlefield performance was relatively worse than it had been in 1967. In 1967 a normalized comparison of combat performance measures Israeli superiority at approximately 54 percent over Jordanian personnel, 75 percent over Egyptian and 163 percent over Syrian personnel. Despite the improvement in short-term force ratios in favor of Arab states in 1973, Israel's relative combat performance was generally better 88 percent over Jordanian, 98 percent over Egyptian, and 154 percent over Syrian personnel. The normalized measure of 54 percent with Jordan, for example, indicates that 100 Israelis in combat formations were the operational equivalent of about 154 Jordanians. Dupuy, Elusive Victory, 626-27, and 632-33. Egyptian generals did not rely exclusively on force ratios to estimate the relative balance of capabilities. With the exception of the spring of 1967, after 1957 they estimated that their capability was inferior, despite the favorable short-term force ratios (Table 8). A concept of learning that focuses narrowly only on force ratios will be as poor a predictor of deterrence stability as the ratios are of battlefield performance.
174. Stein, "The Political Economy of Strategic Agreements: The Linked Costs of Failure at Camp David," 86.
175. The then minister of defence, Moshe Dayan, proposed a partial retreat from the Suez Canal and the reopening of the Canal to commercial traffic. He could not persuade Prime Minister Meir to make any political concessions when Israel had "won" the war. Stein, "Calculation, Miscalculation, and Conventional Deterrence," 50.
176. Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, "Deterrence and Foreign Policy," World Politics 41, no. 2 (January 1989): 183-207, 182;
177. Gary Goertz, "Enduring rivalries and the study of deterrence," July 1995, unpub. paper, 14.
178. Stein, "Cognitive Psychology and Political Learning";
179. and Sim B. Sitkin, "Learning Through Failure: The Strategy of Small Losses," Research in Organizational Behavior 14 (1992): 231-66.