ABSTRACT
Good bargaining might have averted the crisis and avoided the confrontation, since the zone of agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union was really very wide. At the least, bargaining strategies that read intentions more or less accurately and were signaled clearly could have minimized the damage from a confrontation. Bargaining should certainly not exacerbate the crisis and create the confrontation. Yet both Soviet and US strategies made the crisis more, not less, difficult to manage, contributed heavily to the confrontation, and did long-term damage to the relationship. Bargaining by both superpowers in 1973 was deeply flawed and potentially dangerous. This chapter explores Soviet and US strategies at the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war as a textbook case of inappropriate bargaining. It might be argued that Soviet compellence nevertheless increased US incentives to coerce Israel once the crisis between Moscow and Washington passed.
