ABSTRACT
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were not sufficiently preoccupied with the problems of Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, and Latin America, they confronted with ticking time bombs in the Middle East. The pan-Arab nationalism that had seemed so threatening to Western interests under Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser degenerated into a squabbling rivalry between Arab nations. Nasser's hesitation gave the Israelis their chance. When Lyndon Johnson's attempt to mobilize an international effort to end the blockade of the Straits of Tiran faltered, Israel launched a preemptive air strike that caught the Egyptian air force unprepared and virtually destroyed it in one blow. The Egyptians and other Arabs had avenged the humiliation of the Six-Day War, so they able to retreat from their insistence on the destruction of Israel. President Jimmy Carter, who took office in the temporary lull that followed the Lebanese civil war, tried to break out of Kissinger's step-by-step process by offering a plan for a comprehensive settlement.
