Morse deserves credit for conducting extensive primary source research. One of the book’s strengths is its research, and scholars may find this book valuable for its source material. These are all crucial points to explore, but the author’s analyses do not speak to a larger argument. The US resupply of Israel was slow in coming, in part because of bureaucratic infighting the resupply swung the war for Israel an oil embargo forced the United States to become more engaged in the peace process Kissinger negotiated a ceasefire with the Soviet Union amidst the Nixon administration’s disarray stemming from the Watergate fiasco Israeli violations of the ceasefire nearly brought about a superpower confrontation and the aftermath of the war served as a beginning for Kissinger’s step-by-step diplomacy, which would culminate in peace between Israel and Egypt as part of the Camp David Accords.
The rest of the chapters similarly speak to important themes and occurrences, but again, the discussion is disconnected from a larger purpose. While these are important points to make, they have been made elsewhere. Morse also points out that Egyptian president Anwar Sadat had warned US officials of his plan to restart hostilities leading up to October 1973 in order to re-energize the stalled peace process. Rogers served as Nixon’s secretary of state until September 1973, when Kissinger assumed those duties in addition to being national security advisor. Morse notes the power struggle between Kissinger and William Rogers. The first chapter-like the book as a whole-fails to make a discernible argument, but still presents interesting details and engaging prose. Following the introduction, Morse begins by exploring the run-up to war in October 1973.
Thus, the book amounts to a recounting of the Yom Kippur War from an American perspective. Rather, the author references some especially important secondary works early on, and then moves on to a chronological unfolding of the events surrounding the 1973 war, based largely on primary sources. Ultimately, the introduction lacks a stated position regarding the Yom Kippur War and/or the special relationship, and the scholarship discussed in the introduction is not really engaged, challenged, or reconfigured throughout the book. The book would have been significantly aided by an introduction that more directly addressed scholarship relating to the 1973 war or, alternatively, the author could have written the rest of the book about the special relationship. Moreover, Morse fails to articulate how the war itself reshaped the US-Israel special relationship. Instead, his narrative reflects the impact of these forces on how Kissinger (and President Richard Nixon) handled the 1973 war, but not in a structured way that advances a particular argument. Morse does not situate his work within any of these three schools of thought. However, the introduction and the book itself do not mesh. Morse identifies three different schools of scholarship that try to explain the development of a so-called special relationship: strategic concerns during the Cold War domestic politics and cultural/moral factors (what Morse calls the “special connection” thesis). The book begins with a well-laid-out introduction that explores the relevant historical literature about the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel. While Morse offers a readable, well-researched account of Kissinger’s handling of the conflict, unfortunately, this modest book of 172 pages of text fails to advance a coherent argument that contributes to either the historiography of the war or the historiography of US-Israel relations. David Morse’s book, Kissinger and the Yom Kippur War, details the US response to the Yom Kippur War, seen through the eyes of the US secretary of state and national security advisor at the time-Henry Kissinger. In October 1973, Egyptian and Syrian militaries attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, starting the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, sometimes called the Yom Kippur War.
Reviewed by Kenny Kolander (West Virginia University)Ĭommissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air War College)
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