2 - Egypt

Summary

In the June 1967 War Egypt lost not only ten thousand men in five days and the Sinai desert but also more intangible assets, such as regional and international credibility and national self-confidence. The scale of this disaster, combined with Egypt's own role in its initiation, provokes many questions. One of the most enduring mysteries concerns the intentions of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Did he plan a war? Did he expect one? Or did he simply blunder into it through a process of uncontrolled escalation? This chapter argues that Nasser made war neither by accident nor by design. He took a set of actions primarily aimed at reaping political gains, but he was well aware that they carried a high risk of precipitating military hostilities.

This chapter endorses the vital importance of the international system to the development of the crisis in May, including the Cold War context and Arab regional competition. It focuses, however, on the Egyptian regime – its authoritarian structure, internal divisions, and deeply rooted preconceptions. Within this framework, it argues that particular and deeply ingrained elite images of Egypt's enemies guided policy in the crisis. For the Egyptian regime, the enemy in late 1966 and early 1967 was threefold. Imperialism, represented by the United States and Britain, was linked to the “Arab reactionaries” as well as to Zionist Israel, typically described as an “imperialist base in the heart of the Arab homeland.” Imperialism, especially that of the United States, was seen as by far the most powerful and rhetorically salient enemy up to and during the early stages of the 1967 crisis, while the other hostile states were “only satellites spinning in the United States orbit and following its steps.”