THE NEO-CONS, DETENTE AND ISRAEL

I wrote below that some neo-conservatives were concerned that detente between the U.S. and the Soviet Union may not be good for Israel and I found some evidence from a neo-con insider, Richard Perle.

From the National Security Archives, The Cold War, Episode 19

INT: You had certain reservations about the way that Secretary of State Kissinger handled the American response to the Yom Kippur crisis. What exactly were those reservations?

RP: Well, it seemed to us when that war began suddenly that the Secretary of State was so eager to save détente, which was clearly shattered by Soviet involvement in that war, involvement that had been planned, involvement that was surreptitious, involvement that... the Russians calculated could tip the balance in favor of the Egyptians and the Syrians. right after signing in June an agreement pledging to collaborate to stop possible outbreaks of war, something that they were obliged to do under that agreement and of course they didn't do, they deceived us, it seemed to us that he was so eager to preserve the détente, that he was restraining the assistance that should be made available under urgent circumstances to Israel for fear that a wider war would destroy what remained of détente at that point. he certainly doesn't share that view and it's obviously very difficult to know what was going on in his mind. but the evidence at the time seemed pretty unambiguous, that the response to the re-supply of Syrian and Egyptian forces by the United States was not immediately to re-supply, but to wait and to wait a dangerously long time, even though it was only seventy two or maybe ninety six hours.

INT: Do you see that détente was, in that sense, a threat to the existence of Israel?

RP: It was certainly possible to imagine a crisis in which the interests of détente could be incompatible with Israel's interests, although, ironically, when the Soviets began to threaten Israel in the bluntest way, threatening Israel's survival and the words, Israel has embarked upon a path leading to its own destruction, were words in a message from Brezhnev, when it reached those proportions, then it was clear that détente required confrontation with the Soviet Union, rather than acquiescence, because there could be no conceivable détente with the Soviet Union if it had taken the action it threatened to destroy Israel.