Stalemate: The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970

During the years 1967-70, the period of Korn's study, he served in the political section of the American embassy in Israel. He kept notes, saved clippings, and resolved one day he would write the history of Egypt's forgotten War of Attrition against Israel. It took twenty years for him to fulfill his resolve, but it's been worth the wait: Stalemate is all it could be. Korn rounded out his first-hand experiences by drawing extensively on Hebrew- and Arabic-language written sources and interviewing some one hundred persons who participated in the events he describes. Until the archives on this topic open, his study will remain authoritative. At the same time, Korn writes so compellingly, parts of his account read like popular history. As in the case of Graham E. Fuller's The "Center of the Universe" (reviewed in ORBIS, Spring 1992), Stalemate exhibits the virtues of U.S. government analysis, an unjustly deprecated genre.

Korn draws two main conclusions about the War of Attrition. First, it did not appreciably change the diplomatic or military position of either side, and so was "a war without victor or vanquished." Second, the Egyptians and Israelis squandered a real possibility of beginning the peace process in the late 1960s, and so unnecessarily rode the path to war again. Only after thousands more lost their lives in October 1973 did the two sides finally make good their opportunity.

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