350. 1973: The Yom Kippur War & The First Oil Crisis (Part 5)
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What were the intelligence failures that led to the Yom Kippur War?
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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand.
And me, William Durupul. And today we've got something a little bit different.
October 1973, the Yom Kippur War, the day Arabs crossed the Suez Canal into the Sinai. The intelligence failure that made this possible, the extraordinary military engineering that made this happen, and the oil embargo that made the whole world feel the consequences. This is by absolutely any measure one of the great thrillers, if you like, of the 20th century.
I think we should start with one of Avi Schleim's great insights from his book, The Iron Wall. And he very much blames the intelligence failures in 1973, the fact that the Egyptians were able to surprise the Israelis as much as they did, to what he calls ha-conceptia in Hebrew. It's a set of assumptions that he says are deeply embedded in the Israeli military thinking of the period. And it allows the Israelis completely to underestimate all the Arab armies, but particularly the Egyptians.
Can you talk us through the assumptions and just make those clear to us?
So if you remember back in the 1967 episode that we did with Eugene, the key Israeli coup was to destroy the Egyptian Air Force, the enormous Egyptian Air Force at that point, on the ground in the first 10 minutes of the war.
Who was Anwar Sadat and how did he change Egypt's strategy?
And an idea embedded itself in Israeli military thinking that Egypt will not go to war without first achieving air superiority of Israel. And as they'd lost most of their air force in 1967 and had yet to rebuild it, that basically Israel was completely safe. The other idea is that Syria, which was a smaller power than Egypt, Egypt we don't really think of today as a kind of major military power in the Middle East, but it was in the 1960s. And the idea that Israel had at this point was that Syria would not attack without Egypt and that a coordinated Egyptian-Syrian assault was therefore impossible if there hadn't been a proper Egyptian rebuilding of its air wing. It's a very reasonable assumption.
Air power is the key in desert warfare, and Egypt genuinely had not restored its air force to anything like 1967 levels. But according to Avi's assessment, this had led to such contempt for the Arab armies following this lightning victory in 1967 that we talked about. They simply thought there was really no possibility of Arab assault on Israel in the early 70s, and therefore there were no countermeasures in place.
Israel thought nobody will act without Egypt say so, and Nasser is not there to say so anymore. That's also not a ridiculous assumption. And the man who comes to replace him, Anwar Sadat, they underestimate him. So let me tell you a little bit about Anwar Sadat. He's born in 1918 in a small village in the Nile Delta. He's dark-skinned. And this is important because it is still a society where, you know, the lighter-skinned people are the ones with the power, and being dark-skinned carried a social stigma. So he's regarded, really, in Cairo politics as a provincial outsider, sort of a yokel.
What innovative tactics did Egypt use to breach Israeli defenses?
He's called the donkey, in fact, initially, by the kind of the grandees in Cairo, yeah.
But when he inherits the presidency from Nasser in 1970, he's had years in prison. He's had years in opposition to think about what he would do if he was in charge of Egypt, what Egypt needs to maintain that position that it did have under Nasser of being the colossus. of the Middle East. What he decides is the most daring strategic analysis of any Arab leader of his generation, that Egypt cannot afford to remain at war with Israel. It's a striking thing. People haven't dared to say it or even think it. The economy is wrecked. His army Humiliated twice in a decade. The Air Force destroyed. Sinai gone. And now you've got the Soviets who are there thick on the ground, dragging their feet about sending their most sophisticated weapons to Egypt.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What were the intelligence failures that led to the Yom Kippur War?
0:00–1:55
2
Who was Anwar Sadat and how did he change Egypt's strategy?
1:55–3:43
3
What innovative tactics did Egypt use to breach Israeli defenses?
3:43–5:16
4
How did the Yom Kippur War impact Israeli military strategy?
5:16–7:05
5
What role did the United States play during the Yom Kippur War?
7:05–9:03
6
How did the oil crisis reshape the global economy in 1973?
9:03–10:59
7
What were the immediate effects of the Arab oil embargo?
10:59–12:58
8
How did the Yom Kippur War set the stage for future peace negotiations?
12:58–39:53
Speakers
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