ABSTRACT

When one thinks of Presidents who made a substantial contribution to the creation of American policy in the Middle East, Ronald Reagan's name would be at the bottom of the list. Making tangible progress in advancing the peace process would ordinarily be, as William B. Quandt suggests, the standard measure by which the Middle East policy community would assess the significance of any President as an influential actor in the formulation and implementation of American diplomacy in the region. With the United States poised to suffer the devastating economic effects of the Arab oil embargo which followed the end of the Yom Kippur War, in 1973 Richard and Henry Kissinger committed the United States to pursue a diplomatic initiative to break the stalemate in the peace process which had existed since the Six-Day War. While Reagan was willing to propose a fair and balanced plan to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, he was unwilling to assure its implementation against Israeli opposition.