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Around mid-morning on June 6, we received a telephone call on an open line from Moscow--an extraordinary occurrence--from the Deputy Foreign Minister, Vladimir Semyonov. Our new orders were to accept Goldberg's idea. If it proved impossible to get a decision on that basis, we were to agree to the Security Council's proposed resolution on a cease-fire as the first step. The instructions, signed by Gromyko, stressed, "You must do that, even if the Arab countries do not agree--repeat do not agree."
When Fedorenko finally got to Goldberg, it was too late. The U.S. now insisted only upon an immediate cease-fire. The battle had quickly proved decisively to favor Israel, and the U.S. was no longer willing to settle for a pullback.
The lesson of the Six-Day War should have been clear. Whether the client was Egypt or Syria, South Yemen, Iraq or the Palestinians, the Kremlin's purpose was always the same: to establish and widen Soviet power in the Middle East, to use the area and its rivalries as a means of contesting and undermining Western strength. Party policymakers regarded the Arab world as fertile ground for furthering Soviet ideology. Military strategists saw its geography in terms of transit and servicing for Soviet ships in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, as staging areas for troops, as proving grounds for Soviet weaponry. Against these drives diplomats could bring little moderating force to bear.
But while the Soviet Union was ready to supply weapons to some Arab countries, to train their armies with Soviet advisers, to give them economic aid, it was not prepared to risk military confrontation with the U.S. in the region. Soviet leaders were eager to establish their influence in Arab countries, but had never been willing to defend their clients effectively. On the contrary, the war demonstrated the Soviet willingness to turn away from these countries in a critical moment after having encouraged the passions that precipitated the showdown.
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NEIGHBORS
The following year, in early August 1968, I left New York for vacation in the Soviet Union. When I arrived at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, I found the offices of Gromyko and Kuznetsov in turmoil. In Czechoslovakia, liberalizing reforms had got out of hand, at least in the Politburo's view, and led to an invasion by Soviet tanks and troops in August 1968.
After Khrushchev's ouster, the military was directed by the party Presidium to create a mobile force for such emergencies, for use not only in Soviet bloc countries but in any part of the world. This program provided for construction of aircraft carriers, helicopters and military transport planes capable of carrying light tanks, cannons and tactical missiles, and also for training a special paratrooper force headed by officers who spoke foreign languages. The mobile force is much stronger and more sophisticated today than when it moved against the Prague government in 1968. When I learned of the preparations for an invasion of Czechoslovakia, I felt lucky not to be in New York trying to defend the Soviet position.