Subscribers can listen to the audio of today’s post here.
In his 2001 book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens acts as the prosecution in the former Secretary of State’s “trial” for numerous war crimes. Kissinger is a piece of shit, but he also may have prevented World War III by helping bring the Yom Kippur War to an end.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: December 21, 1973--
Israel kicked ass in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, launching a surprise attack that crippled the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian militaries in a mere six days, seeing Israel take control of huge chunks of new territory. Six years later Egypt and Syria wanted that territory back, launching a surprise attack of their own on October 6, 1973, when many Israelis were celebrating Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism.
Egyptian and Syrian militaries had all sorts of fancy new weapons provided by the Soviets, and Israel was caught with its holiday pants down. Soon, several Muslim nations sent considerable expeditionary forces to side with Egypt and Syria. Israel was in deep shit, their situation so desperate they considered using tactical nuclear weapons to prevent a total defeat. This possibility, coupled with the U.S. supplying Israel and the Soviets supplying the Arab coalition (both on a massive scale) in an intense conflict involving over a million combatants, meant tensions were high between the two nuclear superpowers. Continues below …
The whole idea of tactical nukes scares the shit out of me, because some fuckwit could just decide to use one because it’s only a little nuclear kaboom so what’s the harm but the harm is that these things snowball and then goodbye humanity. I need a drink. Wanna buy me a drink? Click the green button.
Israel fought hard, at a heavy cost, and beat back the coalition. Before long Israeli forces were only a hundred miles from Cairo and had encircled the Egyptian Third Army, threatening to obliterate it. This took tensions between the U.S. and USSR to an extreme level, in part due to a CIA report that the Soviets were sending nukes to Egypt to prevent their defeat. Add to this that the war saw the largest naval confrontation of the entire Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR, and it’s possible humanity might not have seen 1974.
Kissinger feared upsetting the balance of power. He said to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, “My nightmare is a victory for either side.” Three weeks into the war Soviet leader Brezhnev told the U.S. they better fucking help implement a ceasefire or the USSR was gonna get directly involved on Egypt’s side. President Nixon was mired in Watergate at the time and totally fucking useless, so Kissinger took charge. He convinced Egypt to drop its request for Soviet intervention, because if they got involved, so would the U.S. Kissinger also threatened Israel to not destroy the Egyptian army, engaging in much of what became known as “shuttle diplomacy” by serving as an intermediary between the warring nations without those nations having direct contact.
This served to facilitate a gradual cessation of hostilities, and then on December 21, 1973, began the Geneva Conference to negotiate a solution to the conflict. While no agreement was reached at the conference, its efforts did result in a military disengagement, bringing the world back from the brink. Syria refused to attend the conference due to the U.S. and Israel forbidding the Palestinian Liberation Organization from sending representatives.
Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:
Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.
I find this article fascinating: technically accurate and interesting, but I can't help feeling like this would have generated more cursing if it had been Israel attacking Arab nations on *their* holiest day. I honestly didn't think about that until the last line of the article about Syria refusing to attend, which I felt was an odd way to end it... I suspect your intention was to avoid opining on the matter?