ABSTRACT
The five papers on Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East focus primarily on the constraints that limit the Soviet Union's ability to implement its objectives in the region. These include Soviet perceptions of countervailing American strength in the region, fears of a superpower confrontation arising from escalating regional conflicts, the challenges posed by Islam, the pressures of client demands and the nature of internal power struggles between competing Soviet foreign policy elites. Herbert L. Sawyer argues that the Soviet leadership had ambivalent feelings about Washington's performance in Lebanon. With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, James R. Kurth asserts that the thinking of the American decision-making elite is characterized by several faulty assumptions. A retrospective view of superpower involvement in the Middle East has focused attention on a wide range of constraints, including faulty assumptions that have prevented both the United States and the Soviet Union from successfully implementing their foreign policy objectives.
