Escalation in the Middle East and Persian Gulf,

Abstract

In many ways the Middle East/Persian Gulf region is one of the most likely places in which a U.S.-Soviet conflict could ultimately escalate into nuclear war. The combination of high mutual superpower stakes in the region, endemic political instability among its states, and the presence of strong military forces in close proximity guarantees that crises in the Middle East/Persian Gulf will continue to have the potential to trigger direct U.S.-Soviet military conflict and consequently the use of nuclear weapons. Within the region, which stretches from Morocco to Pakistan, there is a wide variety of local conflicts and corresponding many ways in which the superpowers could conceivably be drawn into war. Of these regional conflicts, two stand out as serious enough to raise the possibility of nuclear war between the superpowers: a possible Soviet invasion of Iran and other parts of the Persian Gulf, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1984
Accession Number
ADA152587

Entities

People

  • F. Fukuyama

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agreements
  • Air Force
  • Ballistic Missiles
  • Cold War
  • Governments
  • Intergovernmental Organizations
  • International Organizations
  • Military Organizations
  • Military Science
  • National Politics
  • Naval Warfare
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Treaties
  • United States
  • United States Central Command
  • Ussr
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Strategic Security Studies