ABSTRACT
The Arab-Israel arms races in the 1960s were the most feverish in the nonindustrial world. The policies had been framed in the first two post-war decades, when bipolarity conditioned international politics the world over, including the Middle East. The military policies of the U.S.S.R. and of the United States toward the Middle East had originally been designed to serve the interests of the superpowers in their global competition. The military policies of the regional and extraregional powers were shaping the political systems in the Middle East. The military influence was most visible, however, in the countries where the soldiers seized power. The rival military policies of the outside powers, particularly the United States and the Soviet Union, must be evaluated in the perspective of the region’s heterogeneity. The Soviet-American avoidance of a confrontation and the opposition of the superpowers to nuclear proliferation were clearly concerned more with peace among the major powers than with peace in the Middle East.
