ABSTRACT
With the partition of Palestine in 1948, Soviet and American foreign policy interests spread to the Arab world as well. In the mid-1950s the new Soviet leadership skillfully exploited the regional polarization in the Middle East, a development that had crystallized in large measure as a consequence of the US policy of globalizing and militarizing the strategy of containment. The Sino-Soviet rift was a distracting problem for Moscow, which was interested in stabilizing the superpower relationship in Europe. Shrewdly, Khrushchev kept Moscow’s mini-Cold War with Cairo from interfering with the expansion of economic ties, as exemplified by the Soviet commitment in October 1958 and January 1960 to help build the Aswan Dam. The Soviets held out the prospect of renewed diplomatic ties to Israel, and Gromyko implied, but never explicitly stated as some newspapers reported at the time, that Moscow would accept Israel’s 1967 borders as legitimate.
