Former US diplomat Richard B. Parker presents three detailed studies of policy failures that he believes were precipitated by miscalculations on the part of diplomats and of government and military leaders in one or more Middle Eastern countries, the United States, and the former USSR. They are the Soviet-Egyptian miscalculation leading to the June 1967 war between Israel and the Arab states, the US-Israeli miscalculation leading to the Soviet military intervention in Egypt in 1970, and the US-Israeli miscalculation leading to the disastrous Lebanese-Israeli peace agreement of 17 May 1983.