Overview

The volume focuses on the issues that primarily engaged high-level policymakers. Major topics include: 1) U.S. efforts to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining influence in the strategically located and oil-rich Near East region; 2) the attempts of U.S. policymakers to pro-mote peace and stability in the region and to avoid being drawn into either inter-Arab or Arab-Israeli disputes; 3) U.S. efforts to preserve access to the region's oil supplies by maintaining and strengthening its position in the moderate Arab states, especially Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; 4) reiteration of the long-standing U.S. commitment to Saudi Arabia's territorial integrity in the event of unprovoked aggression, while warning that such support would be difficult if Saudi involvement in Yemen provoked military confrontation with the United Arab Republic; 5) U.S. military assistance to the Saudi armed forces combined with support for a Saudi program of political, social, and economic progress; 6) the attempts of U.S. policymakers to prevent the escalation and spread of the civil war in Yemen by encouraging a negotiated settlement; 7) the attempts of U.S. policymakers to delay British withdrawal from South Arabia and the Persian Gulf; 8) U.S. support for British efforts to negotiate an orderly and peaceful transition to independence for Aden and the British Protectorates in South Arabia; 9) U.S. efforts to maintain access to and influence in the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf as British forces prepared to withdraw; 10) the 1968 decision to establish a U.S. military facility on Diego Garcia, with British support, as a means of improving the overall Western military posture in the Indian Ocean; 11) the desire of the United States to preserve Iraq's political and social stability, thereby ensuring the contin-ued flow of oil and lessening the danger of inroads by Communists or radical Arab nationalists; and 12) U.S. efforts to rebuild relations with the Arab states after the Six-Day War.