ABSTRACT
It was hard to be optimistic about what the decade of the 1970s would bring. There appeared to be no easy way out of the Vietnam mess. And as long as the war continued it was bound to increase tensions and divisions within American society. The Kremlin beheld the American fiasco first with incomprehension and then with incredulity: how could a renowned political leader get into trouble by doing something so trivial and natural as a little spying on his opponents? Or was Nixon victim of an intrigue by the enemies of his policy of rapprochement with the USSR? The Soviets believed they had a friend in Nixon, and if Ambassador Dobrynin is to be believed, Brezhnev's feelings toward him bordered on affection. The 1973 Yom Kippur war pitted Egypt and Syria against Israel, the Arab states seeking revenge for the 1967 humiliation and loss of territory to the Jewish state.
