The Yom Kippur War was a watershed in world politics. Although the hostilities lasted only three weeks, the war profoundly affected the subsequent course of the Arab-Israeli dispute, altered the regional balance in the Middle East, damaged relations between Washington and Moscow, and traumatized the international economy by catalyzing OPEC's transformation into a potent and determined cartel. The war also underscored the USSR's maturing stature as a global power – it was the Soviet Union's first massive intervention during the postwar era on behalf of a non-Communist client engaged in all-out conflict and the first historical instance of its taking definite escalatory steps in a regional conflict central to U.S. interests. The unprecedented level of Soviet involvement must be attributed not only to the USSR's determination to maintain influence with the Arab states but also to advances during the 1960s in its military capabilities: the achievement of strategic parity with the United States, the expansion of airlift and sealift capacity, and the logistical experience gained in previous regional conflicts. The war, in effect, inaugurated a new and more turbulent stage of Soviet military activism in the Third World.