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→Middle East
===Middle East===
===Middle East===
One challenge to détente under Kissinger came with the outbreak of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Faced with a threat of Soviet intervention, Kissinger successfully urged that U.S. forces be placed on worldwide alert. He then employed shuttle diplomacy to secure cease-fires between Israel and the Arab states and to restore U.S. Egyptian diplomatic ties, broken since 1967.
One challenge to détente under Kissinger came with the outbreak of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Faced with a threat of Soviet intervention, Kissinger successfully urged that U.S. forces be placed on worldwide alert. With Israel facing defeat at the hands of the Arab aggressors, President Nixon (over Kissinger's initial objections) launched the largest airlift in military history to save Israel from collapse (the left would condemn his actions no matter how big or how small, Nixon said, so "''let's make it big''"). Kissinger then employed shuttle diplomacy to secure cease-fires between Israel and the Arab states and to restore U.S.-Egyptian diplomatic ties, broken since 1967. The US assisted in a vast rescue operation conducted by Israeli forces to save Egyptian troops stranded in the Sinai.<ref>The Times, UK, June 15, 1967.</ref> President Ford then secured the first peace agreements between Israel and Egypt, which would be finalized under President Carter. In turn, [[Jordan]] felt compelled to reach a separate peace, and the Arabs were deterred from launching a conventional war against Israel ever again.
Kissinger and Nixon approved a covert [[CIA]] campaign of subversion and sabotage designed to bring down the Socialist government of [[Iraq]] in 1973. Done in collaboration with the [[Shah]] of neighboring [[Iran]], it involved Soviet arms captured from Egypt and [[Syria]] in the 1973 war being dispatched to Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq. The Shah cynically used the Kurds to pressure the Ba'athist government to back down on a number of serious territorial disputes between the two nations. The US brokered a peace treaty between Iraq and Iran in 1975, and aid to the Kurds was subsequently cut off. The Kurds were then viciously slaughtered. "''Covert action should not be confused with missionary work,''" Kissinger famously declared.<ref>http://www.slate.com/id/2156400/</ref>
Kissinger helped to diffuse sectarian conflict in [[Lebanon]] in order to prevent the possibility of regional war, and opposed the Soviet-backed attempt by Communist forces to conquer North [[Yemen]].
=== Latin American policies===
=== Latin American policies===