Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian power politics and the Palestine question 0195123611, 0195160088, 9780195123616, 9780195160086
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Pan-Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question

MICHAEL DORAN

Oxford University Press

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

Studies in Middle Eastern History BERNARD LEWIS, ITAMAR RABINOVICH, AND ROGER SAVORY General Editors THE TURBAN FOR THE CROWN The Islamic Revolution in Iran Said Amir Arjomand THE ARAB PRESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST A History Ami Ayalon IRAN’S FIRST REVOLUTION Shi’ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909 Mangol Bayat SADDAM’S WORD Political Discourse in Iraq Ofra Bengio ISLAMIC REFORM Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria David Dean Commins KING HUSSEIN AND THE CHALLENGE OF ARAB RADICALISM Jordan, 1955–1967 Uriel Dann PAN-ARABISM BEFORE NASSER Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question Michael Doran

NASSER’S ‘‘BLESSED MOVEMENT’’ Egypt’s Free Ofﬁcers and the July Revolution Joel Gordon THE YOUNG TURKS IN OPPOSITION M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu CROSS-CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS AND CONFLICTS Charles Issawi THE FERTILE CRESCENT, 1800–1914 A Documentary Economic History Edited by Charles Issawi THE MAKING OF SAUDI ARABIA, 1916–1936 From Chieftaincy to Monarchical State Joseph Kostiner EUNUCHS AND SACRED BOUNDARIES IN ISLAMIC SOCIETY Shaun Marmon THE IMPERIAL HAREM Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire Leslie Pierce FROM ABDULLAH TO HUSSEIN Jordan in Transition Robert B. Satloff

Other volumes are in preparation.

PAN-ARABISM before NASSER Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question

MICHAEL DORAN

New York Oxford Oxford University Press 1999

1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sa˜o Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and an associated company in Berlin

Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2002 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Doran, Michael Scott, 1962– Pan-Arabism before Nasser : Egyptian power politics and the Palestine question / Michael Doran. p. cm.—(Studies in Middle Eastern history) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-19-512361-1; 0-19-516008-8 (pbk.) 1. Egypt—Politics and government—1919–1952. 2. Pan-Arabism. 3. Egypt—Foreign relations—Arab countries. 4. Arab-Israeli conﬂict. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in Middle Eastern history DT107.82.D67 1999 962.05—dc21 98-23001

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For Mark Mancall

Acknowledgments

I

W E L C O M E this opportunity to thank Professor L. Carl Brown, who supported me in this project from the beginning, and who made many useful comments on the manuscript. His professionalism will always be a model for me. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Professor Michael Cook, who helped me reﬁne my ideas, read every draft chapter, and made invaluable suggestions. Many thanks are due to Professor Robert Tignor, who also read the entire draft and offered many helpful comments. Professor Bernard Lewis directed me to a number of valuable sources, read several draft chapters, and bolstered my conﬁdence. Professor Abraham Udovitch also read parts of the manuscript; when workspace and moral support were in short supply, he provided both. Professor Norman Itzkowitz read two chapters and made helpful comments. My views on the postwar Middle East developed in tandem with those of Joshua Landis, from whom I have learned much about Syria. Joe Maiolo read and commented on two chapters; more important, he actually enjoyed talking at length about the balance of power. Professor Yohanan Friedmann, Professor Andras Hamori, Shahab Ahmed, and Abdelmajid Hannoum helped me with translations. Avraham Sela’s unpublished Ph.D. thesis aided me in more ways than my footnotes indicate, not least of all because it demonstrated the immense value of the second volume of the memoirs of Taha al-Hashimi. Muhammad alMasri introduced me to Jordan; he opened his library, providing me with rare sources that do not bear directly on this book but nonetheless inform its perspective. I beneﬁted more than once from the critical eye of Stephen Larsen, who deserves many thanks. The writing of this book would not have been possible were it not for the backing that I received from the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, and, in particular, from its Chairman, Professor Andras Hamori. In addition, I am very grateful for the generous ﬁnancial support that I received from the Fulbright-Hays Research Committee and from Princeton University. Mary Craparotta, Kathleen Knight-O’Neill, David Redman, and Nancy Carnes offered many kindnesses beyond their obligations. At the Oxford University Press, Thomas LeBien was particularly helpful and patient; Barry Katzen’s copyediting improved my text. My parents cannot be adequately acknowledged in this space; nor can Melanie, who waited.

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Contents

A Note on Transliteration and Terminology, x Introduction, 3 ONE

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy, 9

TWO

In the American Era, 44

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

The Keystone in the Arch, 66 Palestine between the Regional Blocs, 94 The Decision to Intervene, 128 War and Containment, 156 Conclusion, 193 Notes, 197 Bibliography, 221 Index, 227

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Note on Transliteration and Terminology

W

H E N transliterating Arabic and Hebrew, I have adopted simpliﬁed versions (no diacritical marks) of the standard systems. It is impossible to avoid confusion over the name of the state now called Jordan. In 1946, the authorities in Amman ofﬁcially changed the name, but many people—including British diplomats—continued to refer to it as Transjordan. Historians often assume erroneously that the name changed in 1950, when the Hashimite Kingdom annexed parts of Arab Palestine. For the period starting in 1946, I consistently use the name Jordan, but I quote from documents that do not. Anyone familiar with the sources on which this book is based knows that American diplomats tended to write much longer telegrams than their British colleagues, even though the State Department, unlike the Foreign Ofﬁce, instructed its representatives to omit as many words as possible from their cables. These rather unsuccessful efforts of the Americans to be concise have produced texts of an inferior literary quality. Some historians tackle this problem by inserting the missing words in brackets. I have taken the liberty of replacing the missing words without placing them in brackets, which are annoying to the eye.

x

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

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Introduction

The Problem Egyptian foreign policy has traced a pattern that poses a riddle for historians. Consider, for instance, the ﬁrst Arab–Israeli war. During the period 1947–1948, leaders in Cairo recoiled time and again when other Arab statesmen asked them to participate in military operations against the emerging state of Israel. In fact, Cairo did not decide to send troops into Palestine until 11 May 1948, just four days before the end of the British Mandate. Although Egyptian leaders initially displayed great uncertainty about joining the war, once they had mobilized their army, they proceeded to dominate the Arab coalition against the Jewish state; in addition, they appeared to exhibit a staunch commitment to the Palestinian cause. However, when their war fortunes had soured in early 1949, Egyptian statesmen abandoned the ﬁght and, leaving their allies in the lurch, became the ﬁrst Arab leaders to sign an armistice agreement with the Israelis. Egypt jumped in last, took charge, then jumped out ﬁrst. This pattern—ambivalence, leadership, abdication—is characteristic of more than just the actions of Cairo during eight or nine months in 1948. It also describes the trajectory of Egyptian policy toward the Arab–Israeli conﬂict in general. In the period before the 1948 War, leaders in Egypt displayed ambivalence toward the Arab struggle against Zionism. But by 1955 all signs of doubt had disappeared. For the next eighteen years, Cairo guided the Arab states in such a resolute manner that many observers came to believe that Egyptian leadership of the Arab side was a natural and permanent component of the Middle Eastern scene. Then, in 1977 President Anwar Sadat challenged this belief by making a dramatic appeal for peace with Israel. Suddenly, without consulting its Arab allies, Egypt had again jumped out ﬁrst. What is puzzling about this pattern? There is certainly nothing odd about the ﬁrst stage, the period of ambivalence. On the contrary, it would have been strange if leaders in Cairo had been eager to ﬁght, both because Egypt was already locked in a conﬂict with Britain, and because sober statesmen are often fearful of war. Similarly, whether we are analyzing policy during the 1948 War itself or during the entire span of the Arab–Israeli conﬂict, there is nothing odd about the last stage, the period of abdication. In 1948, Cairo signed an armistice agreement because its losses on the battleﬁeld had rendered the Egyptian army ineffective; in 1977, Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem because the cost of continuing the war 3

4

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

against Israel was simply too much for Egypt to bear. In both cases the Egyptian state pursued a practical policy motivated by concern for its military and economic well-being. By themselves, the stages of ambivalence and abdication require little explanation. Greater difﬁculties arise, however, when one attempts to explain the relationship between these and the middle stage, the period of leadership. On the face of it, states that reluctantly join coalitions and then quit without warning would hardly seem to possess the stuff of which international leadership is made. Yet, with seemingly little effort, Egypt assumed—in the 1948 War and in the period after 1955—the dominant position among the Arab states. The problems of analysis raised by Egyptian leadership of the Arab world in its conﬂict with Israel are, of course, part of a much larger matter: The Egyptian attitude toward other Arab countries, and, more precisely, toward the movement for Arab unity. Thus, the ambivalence–leadership–abdication pattern emerges not just in the policy of Cairo toward the Arab–Israeli conﬂict but, in addition, in its policy toward the Middle East in general. We may therefore ask how it was possible for the Egyptian state to become the architect of pan-Arabism in the 1950s and 1960s, only to abandon the role in the 1970s.

State versus Society The goal of this book is to explore this puzzling pattern in Egyptian foreign policy. The few studies that grapple with this matter directly (together with the works that address it indirectly) rest on the presupposition—rarely if indeed ever explicitly stated—that Egyptian public opinion forced the twin policies of panArabism and anti-Zionism on the Egyptian state. This literature assumes that the 1952 Revolution swept away a corrupt elite and swept in Gamal Abd al-Nasser and his fellow Free Ofﬁcers, who, being from a humbler class, were in closer touch with an authentic Egypt. According to this view, the Free Ofﬁcers, in contrast to their predecessors, adopted policies that tapped into the mainstream of Egyptian culture and society. Through these men, it is implied, the popular goals of establishing strong bonds with the Arab world and of liberating the Middle East from foreign control began for the ﬁrst time to animate high policy. Hence, profound cultural and social forces threw Egypt into the thicket of inter-Arab relations and the Arab–Israeli conﬂict. In short, these studies unconsciously accept the view of Egyptian history—favored by the Nasser regime itself—that panArabism rose from the street. Out of a desire to deepen our understanding of Egyptian pan-Arabism, this study suggests a new perspective on its origins. My approach proceeds from the top down; it restores the state to the central role that it deserves in the analysis of Egyptian politics and foreign policy. The adoption by Cairo of a pan-Arab strategy, I argue, cannot be understood without examining the pressure placed on the Egyptian elite by the demands of the Middle Eastern international system. An approach that focuses on state interest does not deny the importance of social and cultural movements in the history of pan-Arabism; rather, it views

Introduction

5

them as but two of many forces that imposed themselves on the leadership in Cairo. After all, pan-Arabism was not simply a popular idea, it was also a policy. This idea had a profound historical impact, because leaders in Cairo threw the weight of the most powerful Arab state behind it. Historians, therefore, must direct their attention beyond the realm of social and cultural developments; they must address the argument that state interest made pan-Arabism attractive to leaders in Cairo. The view of history that emphasizes social and cultural roots cannot make sense of the puzzling pattern of Egyptian foreign policy. For instance, it cannot explain the jettisoning of pan-Arabism following the 1973 Arab–Israeli war. If it was simply the case that profound social and cultural forces made pan-Arabism attractive to Gamal Abd al-Nasser, then those forces must have been operating with equal force on his fellow Free Ofﬁcer, Anwar Sadat. Moreover, to acknowledge that reasons of state led President Sadat to abandon Egyptian leadership of the Arab world is to recognize the state itself as an independent actor in history— to understand it as an agent mediating, if not directing, social and cultural currents. Therefore, a state-centered approach to the study of pan-Arabism can provide us with a framework for understanding the ambivalence–leadership– abdication pattern of Egyptian foreign policy.

The Argument What new international order should arise in the Middle East? This question cast a long shadow over the region for more than a decade after World War II; this book seeks to reconstruct the answer that the Egyptian elite gave to it. I focus on the years 1945–1948, but the book is haunted by the specter of Gamal Abd alNasser. This is because the pan-Arabism of the 1950s and 1960s grew out of the vision of regional order that Egyptian leaders developed in the late Faruq era. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the old regime contended simultaneously with war in Palestine, the Anglo-Egyptian conﬂict, and struggles with Arab rivals. These issues forced the Egyptian government to formulate a coherent vision of the postwar Middle East. After the Revolution in 1952, the new leaders in Cairo inherited the grand strategy of the old regime. Chapter 1 examines the legitimacy crisis that developed in Egypt during 1946, when the government of Prime Minister Ismail Sidqi found itself caught between the dictates of the international system and the angry demands of Egyptian nationalists. On the one hand, the British government, temporarily unchallenged by any other great power in the region, demanded that Egypt remain within the imperial sphere of inﬂuence. On the other hand, nationalist opinion claimed the right to withdraw from the British security zone and called for the unity of Egypt and the Sudan under the crown of King Faruq. Thus the international and domestic political systems pulled the Egyptian government in opposite directions. In October 1946, Ismail Sidqi and British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin compromised, arriving at a draft for a new treaty. The agreement, fundamentally illegitimate in almost all Egyptian political circles, aroused intense opposition to

6

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

the Sidqi government, which fell as a result. Subsequent governments concluded that it was impossible to renew the treaty with Great Britain and still remain legitimate at home. Chapter 2 follows Ismail Sidqi’s successor, Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi, as he attempted to enlist the support of the United States in an effort to break the British grip on Egypt. The al-Nuqrashi government, hoping to capitalize on the tensions created by the Cold War, placed the question of Anglo-Egyptian relations before the United Nations, demanding the abrogation of the existing treaty of alliance. The Egyptian appeal to the Security Council was in essence a call for help from the United States government. Considerable support for the Egyptian position did exist in Washington, where many ofﬁcials feared that the AngloEgyptian conﬂict would redound to the detriment of the West in its struggle against the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Americans regarded the continuation of the Anglo-Egyptian military alliance as necessary for the defense of the Middle East. Consequently, they took a line in the Security Council that in effect killed the Egyptian appeal. Chapter 3 examines inter-Arab relations within the context of the AngloEgyptian dispute. It demonstrates that the attempt by Cairo to use the Arab League—which it dominated—as an anti-British instrument led to the formation of two blocs in the Middle East, which I shall call the Turco-Hashimite Entente (Iraq, Jordan, Turkey) and the Triangle Alliance (Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia). The alliance led by Egypt sought to oust the British from their role as the predominant military power in the Middle East, and it sought to contain, if not weaken, Jordan and Iraq, both of which harbored plans to expand at the expense of Syria and Palestine. This book argues that protecting the Triangle Alliance and ousting the British from Egypt gradually led the elite in Cairo to develop a plan for international revolution in the Middle East. The government of Ismail Sidqi pursued a vision of regional order that would have diminished, but not eliminated, British participation in regional defense. The Empire, according to the Bevin–Sidqi Agreement, would have retained military bases in Egypt, but direct British control of those bases would have been sharply restricted. By contrast, the al-Nuqrashi government pursued a vision of a new Middle Eastern order, one devoid of a signiﬁcant British presence. Between March 1947 and February 1948 it became clear that al-Nuqrashi sought to replace the British security system with a bloc of Arab states led by Egypt and organized under the aegis of the Arab League. By eliminating Britain as the predominant power in the region, Cairo would have dealt a severe blow to Iraq and Jordan, the clients of Britain. Thus the new Arab order would have been dominated by Egypt and her close allies, Syria and Saudi Arabia. It was in the midst of this struggle over regional order, and partly as a result of it, that the British withdrew from Palestine. Chapters 4 through 6 analyze Egyptian policy toward the Palestine question against the background of the conﬂict between the Turco-Hashimite Entente and the Triangle Alliance. These three chapters develop the view that, despite the strength of popular antiZionism, the elite in Cairo never formulated policy purely according to the dic-

Introduction

7

tates of ideology. The question ‘‘What new order should arise in the Middle East?’’ always remained the central concern of Egyptian strategists. Thus Cairo fought against Israel primarily in order to preserve the position of Egypt as the dominant power in the Arab world. The Egyptian elite directed operations on the battleﬁeld with the aim not of destroying Israel but rather of preserving the special status of Egypt among the Arab states. This book concludes with the events of 1948. All the same, the policy problem that it analyzes informs the speciﬁc strategies and tactics of Egyptian foreign policy from the push for complete independence after World War II until the debacle of 1967.

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ONE

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

The Bevin–Sidqi Agreement: A False Path On 20 December 1945 the Egyptian prime minister, Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi, delivered a Note to the British Government stating that ‘‘the manifest interests of Anglo-Egyptian friendship and alliance’’ required the revision of the 1936 treaty between the two countries. One month later, on 26 January 1946, the British government responded grudgingly: The Foreign Ofﬁce Note of reply expressed a willingness to undertake ‘‘a review’’ of the treaty arrangements, but it also took leave to observe that the events of World War II proved ‘‘the essential soundness of the fundamental principles’’ of the treaty.1 Since these principles included, among other things, extraterritorial privileges for the British military in Egypt, the reluctance of the British to revise the treaty enraged Egyptian nationalists. The publication of the two Notes in Egypt sparked off student riots organized by the opposition Wafd party. On the one hand, the protesters attacked the government for opening talks over ‘‘revision’’ of a treaty that, in their eyes, should have been summarily abolished; on the other hand, the students attacked the British for their expressed desire to preserve the status quo. The riots precipitated a cabinet crisis that ended when King Faruq dismissed al-Nuqrashi Pasha and called on Ismail Sidqi to form a new government. Under the circumstances of conﬂict between the Wafd and the government, the king’s choice for the premiership had powerful symbolic signiﬁcance. A political independent, Sidqi Pasha had served as prime minister once before, during the period 1930–1933, when he displayed a willingness to engage in open combat with the Wafd.2 In support of his policies during that ﬁrst stint in ofﬁce, Sidqi had not hesitated to jail party leaders and to shut down Wafdist newspapers. By selecting him now to follow through with the process of negotiation initiated by al-Nuqrashi Pasha, King Faruq signaled to the Wafd that he would aggressively resist its attempts to dictate policies to the government. Thus Sidqi Pasha set about the task of negotiating with the British while in open conﬂict with the most powerful political organization in Egypt. Constant pressure from the opposition left the prime minister little room for maneuver. Mustafa al-Nahhas, the veteran leader of the Wafd, had one major goal in the conﬂict with the government: To bring it down. The Wafd had boycotted 9

10

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

the elections of January 1945 and, consequently, it had no representation in the Chamber of Deputies (although it did retain seats in the Senate). Since Nahhas Pasha could reasonably expect that the new elections would result in a landslide victory for his party, he searched for every means possible to discredit the policies of Ismail Sidqi. To achieve that end, the Wafd, together with all opposition parties, attempted to present the attitude of the Sidqi government toward the AngloEgyptian negotiations as a betrayal of fundamental nationalist values. Since nationalist attacks had already succeeded in bringing down the al-Nuqrashi cabinet, the Wafd and other opposition groups reasoned that they could also topple Sidqi’s government. The new prime minister, then, walked a tightrope between the nationalists at home and the British abroad. In order to remain legitimate in Egypt, Sidqi Pasha required a new agreement with the British that could be plausibly presented to the Egyptian public as the fulﬁllment, or near fulﬁllment, of its fundamental nationalist aspirations. These had remained largely the same since the time of Sa‘d Zaghlul: Complete independence from Britain, as well as Egyptian sovereignty over the Sudan. Since the Notes exchanged between the Egyptian and British governments had deﬁned the goal of negotiations as revision, not abrogation, of the 1936 treaty, the very act of negotiating with the British appeared to a nationalist public as, at best, appeasement of the imperialists. The Wafd, of course, lost no opportunity to highlight this appearance; consequently the government was on the defensive at home from the moment it sat down at the negotiating table. Despite his advanced age, Sidqi Pasha displayed a dogged determination to get the best bargain possible from the British. The tortuous negotiations, punctuated by cabinet crises and constant attacks from the opposition, lasted from March until October 1946, when they culminated in the Bevin–Sidqi Agreement, a draft treaty which the British foreign minister and the Egyptian prime minister intended to lay before their parliaments for ratiﬁcation. The Agreement dealt with three basic issues: the evacuation of British troops from Egypt, the new terms of the Anglo-Egyptian military alliance, and the status of the Sudan. Before the ink had dried on the agreement, however, Bevin and Sidqi immediately quarreled over their differing interpretations of the Sudan Protocol, a single paragraph that laid out a new Anglo-Egyptian understanding in the Sudan. The ﬁrst sentence of the passage stated: [T]he policy which the High Contracting Parties undertake to follow in the Sudan within the framework of the unity between the Sudan and Egypt under the common Crown of Egypt will have for its essential objectives to assure the well-being of the Sudanese, the development of their interests, and their active preparation for selfgovernment and consequently the exercise of their right to choose the future status of the Sudan.

Composition by committee rarely produces elegant prose: the tortured syntax reﬂected a deep gulf between the two delegations. This sentence conveys two contradictory principles: self-determination for the Sudanese, championed by Bevin, and Egyptian sovereignty over the Sudan, championed by Sidqi.

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

11

Relations between Egypt and Britain became troubled as soon as the Egyptian prime minister stepped off the plane that brought him back to Cairo. While still at the airport, he announced that he had brought the Sudan home to Egypt. The statement provoked a storm of outrage among Sudanese supporters of independence, and among their British patrons in the Sudanese Government. Partly as a result of pressure emanating from those quarters, London felt compelled to disavow immediately Sidqi Pasha’s interpretation of the Protocol. Since Bevin was en route to New York, it fell to Prime Minister Attlee to state in Parliament that the Bevin–Sidqi Agreement did not in fact deliver up the Sudan to the Egypt. Following this statement, Bevin demanded from Cairo that an exchange of letters be appended to the Bevin–Sidqi Agreement stating that the Protocol would not lead to a change in the status quo of the Sudan, where in practice the British wielded power. Given the nationalist pressure on the Egyptian government, the prime minister could not afford to go back on his original interpretation of the Protocol. In midDecember, therefore, after further discussions with the British government had failed to produce an agreement, Sidqi—who was suffering from poor health, exhausted from the negotiations, and beleaguered by the opposition attacks at home—resigned from ofﬁce. The Bevin–Sidqi Agreement had died. Since the British foreign minister and the Egyptian prime minister did, after surmounting many obstacles, actually agree on a draft treaty, and since the two men subsequently fell out over the Sudan Protocol, the sequence of events has left the lasting impression that the Sudan question killed the chances for an Anglo-Egyptian rapprochement.3 Although this interpretation draws strength from the actual course of events, it fails to take into account the powerful opposition in Egypt to the other clauses of the Bevin–Sidqi Agreement. It ignores, in particular, the revulsion that the most powerful Egyptian political parties felt at the very notion of an Anglo-Egyptian alliance, which constituted the basic framework of the agreement. Certainly the controversy over the Sudan did wreck an understanding between two men, Sidqi and Bevin; it is not the case, however, that the chances for cooperation between two states, Egypt and Britain, were dashed on the rocks of the Sudan. The profound strength of anti-British feeling in Egypt in the postwar period, not to mention the fundamental weakness of the Sidqi government, raises serious doubts regarding the possibility of the proposed alliance ever functioning in a manner that would have been acceptable to the two governments. To argue that the Bevin–Sidqi Agreement would not have provided a sound basis for an alliance is not to quibble over what might have been in history, but rather to highlight the dominant forces that actually determined the course of Anglo-Egyptian relations throughout the entire postwar period. A perspective that views the Sudan question as the spoiler of Anglo-Egyptian friendship presupposes a completely different kind of interaction between Britain and Egypt than what actually existed. More particularly, it blinds us to the dominant trends in Egyptian political thinking. Perhaps one reason that historians continue to emphasize the Sudan as the issue that scuttled a rapprochement between the two powers is that even after

12

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

the event Great Britain and the United States continued to see the Bevin–Sidqi Agreement as a glass half full. Both powers had an abiding interest in roping Egypt into an alliance with the West: In an effort to solve their Cold War dilemmas in the Middle East, they kept alive for years the basic assumption of the agreement—the notion that an Anglo-Egyptian alliance could be made politically acceptable to the Egyptians. Yet an understanding of the course that events actually followed requires looking beyond the attitudes of the Western powers; it requires examining the interaction between Western and Egyptian thinking. And in Cairo no prime minister after Sidqi Pasha ever displayed a desire to negotiate within the framework of the Bevin–Sidqi agreement. The attraction that diplomats in the West felt for the Bevin–Sidqi formula, and the revulsion it generated among Egyptians, are the basic factors that governed the course of Egyptian relations with the United States and Great Britain until 1954. In that year, Western diplomatic pressure and temporary Egyptian weakness resurrected the Bevin–Sidqi framework in the form of the AngloEgyptian Agreement of October 1954. To grasp the causes for the unraveling of that later agreement, and for the consequent crisis and war in 1956, we must ﬁrst examine the divergent attitudes that developed in Egypt and the West during the Bevin–Sidqi negotiations.

The Wafd, the Government, and Anglo-Egyptian Relations On 13 June 1945 the Egyptian government voted to rescind some of the more onerous martial-law restrictions that it had enacted in September 1939 when the British declared war against Nazi Germany.4 While the Egyptian state still retained certain extraordinary powers allowing it to monitor and regulate the political activities of its citizens, in June it began gradually to lift press censorship. After nearly six years of control, the political parties once again engaged in something like open debate. As the curtain of censorship rose above the political stage, the Egyptian public discovered that the developments of World War II had created deeper and more bitter divisions among the major political actors than had ever existed before. Although many of the basic divisions among the Egyptian ruling elite dated back to World War I and its aftermath, the constellation of forces that emerged from the press blackout had moved into alignment as a result of the events of 4 February 1942. On that day Miles Lampson, the British ambassador in Cairo, surrounded Abdin Palace with armored cars and delivered an ultimatum to King Faruq: If the British did not receive word immediately that a new government under Wafd leader al-Nahhas had been appointed, then they would take drastic action to ensure their interests. Lampson installed the Wafd in power at gunpoint in order to purge the Egyptian government of Axis collaborators, potential and real, at a moment when Rommel’s Afrika Korps had nearly penetrated as far east as the Nile Delta. Only the Wafd, the largest and most prestigious political party

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

13

in the country, wielded the power and the authority necessary to impose a proBritish discipline on the entire Egyptian political system.5 The government of Mustafa al-Nahhas remained in power until October 1944, when the war had moved far from the borders of Egypt and King Faruq felt that circumstances would now permit him to again wield a free hand in Egyptian politics. He dismissed the prime minister and called on Ahmad Mahir, a Sa‘dist, to form a new government. The three-year ascendancy of the Wafd had not gone smoothly for the rivals of the party: Al-Nahhas allegedly used the cover provided by British patronage and martial law to punish enemies and to feather his nest.6 But, if the opponents of the Wafd suffered a setback, al-Nahhas did not gain as much as he might have expected from his tenure in ofﬁce. Against the background of his attempts to promote favorites and siphon proﬁts from the public trough, al-Nahhas fell out with the ﬁnance minister (and secretary-general of the party), Makram Ubayd Pasha, who had aggressively opposed some of the prime minister’s more dubious ventures. Unwilling to brook opposition from within the party, al-Nahhas engineered the ouster of Ubayd from the government. Ubayd retaliated in 1944 by publishing The Black Book, which detailed corruption and abuse of power that, he claimed, characterized the government of al-Nahhas.7 In addition, he established his own splinter party, the Independent Wafdist Bloc, which quickly became the beˆte noire of the Wafd. In January 1945, three months after Mustafa al-Nahhas fell from power, the new prime minister, Ahmad Mahir, called a general election; as mentioned previously, the Wafd refused to participate, claiming, no doubt with some justiﬁcation, that the government would use the powers accorded it under the martial law legislation to rig the outcome. As a result of the boycott, the largest party in Egypt ceased to have any representatives in the Chamber of Deputies.8 To make matters worse for al-Nahhas, Makram Ubayd and several of his colleagues from the Independent Wafdist Bloc ﬁgured prominently in the new government, also headed by Ahmad Mahir. Ubayd used his position of power to organize and lead a special ministerial committee of inquiry that would, investigate the malfeasance of the Wafd government, with an eye to bringing criminal charges.9 Throughout 1945 Ubayd obstinately provoked a number of crises in the cabinet in an effort to force the government to put al-Nahhas on trial; Ubayd may have hoped that if al-Nahhas were jailed the way would be clear for Ubayd to assume leadership of the party.10 While many in the government certainly shared the interest of Ubayd in blackening the reputation of al-Nahhas, powerful forces lobbied against actually bringing criminal charges against him. A trial would have complicated relations with the British, who, having installed al-Nahhas by force, felt compelled to protect his—and their own—reputation.11 In addition, the present government had, according to the American Ambassador, its share of skeletons in the closet: Initiating a precedent whereby members of new governments prosecute their immediate predecessors in ofﬁce could be dangerous. Although King Faruq seems to have supported the efforts of Ubayd, other ministers contented themselves with publicizing the ﬁndings of the special committee, thereby destroying the

14

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

reputation of al-Nahhas without actually dragging the matter into the courts. Nevertheless, Ubayd persisted. His efforts to stand al-Nahhas before a judge ultimately failed; however, he did succeed—by repeatedly threatening to resign— in severely weakening the cabinet. The pursuit of this vendetta exacerbated deep divisions within the government that, in order to stay in power, forced it to rely heavily on the coercive power that it enjoyed thanks to the regime of martial law. Thus, as free debate returned to the Egyptian political arena, a shaky government, propped up by the palace, was locked in bitter conﬂict with the Wafd. Given the circumstances, therefore, Mustafa al-Nahhas sought to bring down the government and to arrange for new elections, which (the charges of corruption notwithstanding) would undoubtedly ﬁll the Chamber of Deputies with a Wafdist majority.12 Since neither the King (who had not forgotten the humiliation of 4 February 1942) nor the government had any wish to see the Wafd return to power, the scene was set for a long and costly struggle. Not surprisingly, the Wafd countered the charges of corruption by playing the nationalist card. Under any circumstances, al-Nahhas Pasha might have been expected to agitate for a revision of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, but the need to erase the stigma of wartime collaboration with the British gave him a special incentive to prove his patriotism by accusing the government of neglecting the duties of Egyptian nationalism. From June to September 1945 the Wafd orchestrated a propaganda campaign in the press: The government, it claimed, was illegitimate; new elections must be held. The newspapers of the party, which included several of the most popular in Egypt, charged that the end of the war had created a new world that rendered the terms of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty obsolete. In order to seize the opportunities presented by this historic moment, the Wafd cried, a government broadly representative of the Egyptian people must take power and aggressively seek complete independence for Egypt. Unfortunately, so the argument went, the ruling clique did not have the power, the authority, or the wherewithal to exploit the possibilities of this critical moment. The Wafd, by contrast, had always championed the national aspirations of the Egyptian people and, therefore, it functioned as the only vehicle appropriate for leading the Egyptians to freedom and to unify them with the Sudanese. Since an unfair election carried out under abnormal circumstances had produced a nonrepresentative Chamber of Deputies, the government had no choice but to resign. A neutral cabinet—that is, one not hostile to the Wafd—should be appointed to preside over fair and open elections.13 The drumbeat of Wafdist propaganda struck a deep resounding chord in Egyptian political sensibilities. Establishment politicians felt pressure from all sides to extricate Egypt from the terms of the 1936 treaty, which in its day had been touted as a legal bulwark against British domination. However, the ﬂood of foreign soldiers that had poured over Egyptian shores during the war had shown this bulwark up as a pillar of sand. The ﬁrst serious sign of a dangerous mood in the country had come when the al-Nuqrashi Pasha’s predecessor, Ahmad Mahir, lost his life to an assassin’s bullet in February 1945. The prime minister had died for declaring war against the Axis—a step interpreted by nationalists as an act of subservience to Britain.14 Supporters of the declaration of war justiﬁed it

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

15

as an action designed to secure for Egypt a seat at the peace conference, where it would be better placed to lobby for complete independence. The declaration of war by Mahir raised expectations that the new world order would beneﬁt Egypt; his assassination, however, served as a warning to others regarding the dangers of cooperating with Britain. The belief that the new international order, founded on the principles of the Atlantic Charter, would strengthen the hand of Cairo against British imperialism grew in strength during the San Francisco Conference, which established the United Nations. The Egyptian delegate to the conference worked assiduously, yet in vain, to advance the cause of nations subservient to the great powers and to weaken the status of the British Empire in international affairs. In addition, the delegate sought to promote the particular interests of Egypt. The view gained ground in Cairo that the Egyptians, as founding members of the Arab League and the leaders of the Arab world, deserved a permanent seat on the Security Council.15 Thus considerable disappointment resulted when the political elite in Cairo realized that the Great Powers, Britain among them, would dominate the Security Council and would function as the policemen of the world. Despite the disappointment, ofﬁcial Egyptian opinion held to the view that the Charter of the United Nations rendered null and void the special rights in Egypt accorded to Britain by the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. It is impossible to say whether the elite in Cairo truly believed that the Charter abrogated the alliance with Britain. But, given its need to ﬁnd a legal basis on which to oppose the British position in Egypt, Cairo had a manifest interest in promoting this interpretation of the new international order.16 The currency of such views, however, ultimately worked in favor of the Wafdist propaganda campaign. As many countries, including Syria and Lebanon, received independence, Egyptian nationalist opinion grew angry and impatient. The Wafd, playing on these feelings, accused the government of shameful inaction. In September 1945, al-Nahhas began to direct his attacks against the prime minister personally, claiming that al-Nuqrashi Pasha was willfully neglecting Egyptian national aspirations. Each day the press requested to know when the prime minister would place before the British the demands for complete independence and for sovereignty over the Sudan. After all, the government itself had embraced these as the basis of its own policy. The Wafd argued that al-Nuqrashi, concerned only with staying in power, had in fact no intention of approaching the British. London, it argued, would inevitably reject Egyptian nationalist demands. In that case the government would be forced to admit failure: It would have no choice but to resign and call for an election.17 The prime minister had no effective retort: The strength of nationalist feeling in Egypt had reached such a fevered pitch—and the belief that the new world order would work to the advantage of Egypt had such plausibility—as to deprive the prime minister of ideological resources. Moreover, the Wafdist critique had a strong basis in reality. Ofﬁcials in London did not, in fact, desire to enter into complex negotiations with the Egyptians, both because they had more pressing matters on their agenda and because they, too, considered the cabinet of alNuqrashi weak and nonrepresentative.

16

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

The British calculated their moves toward the al-Nuqrashi cabinet by using as a model the negotiations for the 1936 treaty, which had been carried out between the British government and a delegation of Egyptians composed of all major political parties, the Wafd included.18 The requirements of Britain in the Middle East necessitated an agreement that would stand on a solid political base in Egyptian domestic politics: A treaty negotiated with a weak, minority government would be subjected to constant attack in Egypt and, therefore, would not stand the test of time. As Miles Lampson stated to the American Ambassador in Egypt, the king and the anti-Wafdist politicians had conspired against Britain and the Wafd by throwing al-Nahhas out of ofﬁce in October 1944; now they would have to settle their own internal differences.19 If al-Nuqrashi had little means of countering the attacks of the Wafd, the British Ambassador reasoned, he was caught in a dilemma of his own making. London would adopt a posture of aloofness from the Egyptian political fray. In the light of this unresponsiveness, the Egyptian government had little choice but to play for time, as long as it refused to call for elections. Thus al-Nuqrashi limply answered the attacks of the Wafd by stating that Anglo-Egyptian relations were complex and delicate, that it would be dangerous to jump precipitously into negotiations; ﬁrst, he said, the groundwork had to be prepared. He counseled patience.20 Meanwhile, the government, using the material from Makram Ubayd’s special committee, continued to attack the credibility of the Wafd. In addition, al-Nuqrashi and his supporters tried to turn nationalist sentiment against the Wafd by, for the ﬁrst time, publicizing the details of the ultimatum presented to King Faruq by Lampson on 4 February 1942.21 In effect, the progovernment press now accused the Wafd not just of corruption but also of collaboration with the British. While these attacks may in fact have diminished the personal stature of alNahhas, they did little if anything to relieve the cabinet from the pressure generated by the accusation that it did not have the gumption to stand up to the British. At issue for the prime minister and his colleagues was not the legitimacy of the Wafd but the persuasiveness of the claim that historic opportunities were being squandered. By September 1945 a sense had developed among the Egyptian political elite that the al-Nuqrashi cabinet stood on its last legs. Rumors spread regarding the composition of the successor government; politicians jockeyed for position. For instance, Husayn Haykal Pasha, the president of the Senate, began to associate himself with the moderate wing of the Wafd, with whom he allegedly intended to form a new coalition.22 In addition, Makram Ubayd led a faction of ‘‘dissident elements’’ within the cabinet who put heavy pressure on al-Nuqrashi to confront London.23 Even the most conservative supporters of the government encouraged it to take direct action in Anglo-Egyptian relations. The effort to save the cabinet focused on the ‘‘Committee of Elder Statesmen,’’ an informal body of experienced politicians on whom al-Nuqrashi had come to rely, especially in the realm of foreign affairs. The committee placed the government under the wide umbrella of elite support, thus shielding it from the Wafdist criticism of being nonrepre-

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

17

sentational. Despite its nonconstitutional status, the committee wielded considerable moral authority.24 On 23 September, it issued the following statement: The . . . Committee unanimously considers that the National Rights, as afﬁrmed by the entire nation and proclaimed by the Government, are the withdrawal of the British forces and the realization of the unity of Egypt and the Sudan according to the will of the inhabitants of the Nile Valley. Further, the Committee esteem the present moment most opportune to work for the realization of national aspirations and . . . to begin negotiations with our ally with the object of arriving at an accord on this basis. . . . 25

The elder statesmen tacitly acknowledged that Wafdist propaganda had cut deeply into al-Nuqrashi’s base of support. The government subsequently voted to approve the statement and, therefore, committed itself to bringing the British to the negotiating table. Yet, despite the mounting pressure coming even from conservative supporters of the government, al-Nuqrashi continued to temporize: He assured supporters that, in fact, he had taken action on Anglo-Egyptian relations but refused to offer details of his actions, arguing that the matter required silence. Against the background of these assurances, a storm broke out in Egypt in late October when Ernest Bevin, the British foreign minister, inadvertently proved al-Nuqrashi to be a liar. In answer to a question in Parliament, Bevin remarked that he had not received from the Egyptian government any ofﬁcial demands regarding the status of the Sudan.26 The statement prompted at least two prominent members of the Committee of Elder Statesmen, including Ismail Sidqi, to tender their resignations. The departure of Sidqi threatened to precipitate the complete dissolution of the committee—a development that would have severely weakened the authority of the government. King Faruq, therefore, took the extraordinary step of mediating between the committee and the government. In a hurried round of meetings, the monarch brokered a deal between the committee and the prime minister: In return for a commitment by the government to confront Britain, the committee would remain intact. Faruq issued a public call for support of the cabinet, thereby staking the royal reputation on the good faith of the government.27

Social Unrest Feeds the Nationalist Impulse The cabinet crisis cannot be understood against the background of the rivalry among the establishment parties alone. By September 1945 a wide array of extraparliamentary forces had openly sided with the Wafd in its demand that the prime minister should take immediate action in pursuit of Egyptian national aspirations. In addition to a number of prominent Independents in the Chamber of Deputies, the following groups all endorsed the Wafdist position: the Muslim Brothers, the Young Egypt Party, student organizations, workers syndicates, and

18

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

the lawyers guild.28 The support of the nonparliamentary organizations had a particularly explosive potential: At the center of the Egyptian political stage stood radical groups that espoused revolutionary ideologies and that displayed a willingness to take violent actions against the government and the British alike. To be an opposition group in Egyptian politics in the 1940s and 1950s meant by deﬁnition to be anti-British, and the Muslim Brothers, the Young Egypt Party, and the Communists all took a maximalist line on the question of independence.29 Regardless of the nature of their formal relations with Wafd, therefore, they all sang its tune. These radical groups had a powerful hold over the imagination of the generation of 1936—that is, those who came to political maturity under the shadow of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of that year. To them, the very real gains in independence that Egypt had achieved under the treaty seemed, at best, hollow. The British ultimatum to Faruq in 1942 had belied all the verbiage of alliance between sovereign states; the treaty, in their eyes, was a sham; the traditional political actors, squabbling among themselves, had no ability or inclination to treat the root causes of the Egyptian national dilemma. These radical groups had divergent diagnoses of what ailed Egypt, but all agreed that the traditional political and social system suffered from a pernicious disease. Despite their different perspectives, all regarded the imperialist presence as a cancerous tumor in the Egyptian body politic: They viewed the inability of the traditional politicians to treat the disease as proof of its severity and of the need for a radical cure. The massive inﬂuence of the British held the Egyptians in thrall not just to Western military power but to insidious Western ideas as well. For the Muslim Brothers, the British presence encouraged people to stray from the fundamental tenets of Islam; for the followers of Young Egypt, it corrupted the national character; and for the Communists, it entangled Egypt in the capitalist web. The nature and scope of these ideas created a body of thought that inextricably tied the question of relations with Britain to social, economic, and cultural problems. These doctrines encouraged their advocates to organize social groups (such as students or workers) and to imbue them with the sense that their parochial concerns had an intimate connection to the larger, national dilemma. Radical propaganda wove diverse issues—ranging from the causes of unemployment to the role of movie theaters in cultural life—into a coherent pattern at the center of which always stood the foreign presence in Egypt. For the government, the role of the Muslim Brothers in fomenting anti-British sentiment posed the greatest threat. After the Wafd, they controlled the largest political following in the country—and certainly the most devoted. By 1947 they could plausibly claim to speak for one million Egyptians. Although the Brotherhood was not technically a political party, its size and organization gave it a central place in national life. The Brothers wielded considerable ﬁnancial power; they ran businesses, social welfare agencies, and youth clubs, and they printed their own newspaper. Alarmingly, they controlled a large clandestine paramilitary organization. The Muslim Brothers had ﬁelded candidates for ofﬁce in the elections of January 1945. After losing seats in districts where they commanded a clear majority, however, they declared the political system corrupt,

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

19

withdrawing from electoral politics. They did not, therefore, function as a traditional political party, yet no government could ignore their presence.

Ismail Sidqi Rises with the Crowd The government limped along until early December 1945. One minister resigned due to illness and another minister died. Haﬁz Ramadan Pasha resigned from the cabinet under pressure from the right wing of his Nationalist Party, the slogan of which was ‘‘Egypt for the Egyptians’’ and ‘‘No Negotiations until Evacuation.’’30 This resignation brought into sharp relief the inability of the government to present itself successfully to the Egyptian people as its representative before the British.31 As the cabinet tottered in this weakened state, Makram Ubayd exposed its deep divisions by criticizing in his party organ the unwillingness of the government to take action in the Anglo-Egyptian arena. Meanwhile, it emerged that the Egyptian foreign minister had returned empty-handed from London, where he had conducted talks regarding the opening of negotiations. Makram Ubayd then delivered a public ultimatum to the Egyptian prime minister. If alNuqrashi failed to demand publicly from the British that they respond to the Egyptian call for negotiations within a ﬁxed period of time, then he would resign from the government along with at least two of his colleagues from the Independent Wafdist Bloc.32 Once again the cabinet was saved from dissolution by King Faruq, who now mediated between the prime minister and his rebellious ﬁnance minister. The outcome of this second round of royal mediation shifted the balance of power within the cabinet to the advantage of Makram Ubayd, who succeeded in forcing al-Nuqrashi to issue the Note of 20 December requesting that the British ‘‘ﬁx an early date for an Egyptian delegation to proceed to London to negotiate with them the revision of the treaty of 1936.’’ This concession, however, did not bridge the open rift between the two rivals within the government. Although Ubayd held a personal grudge against alNahhas, the ideology of the Independent Wafdist Bloc did not differ signiﬁcantly from the ideology of the Wafd. From December 1945 until the signing of the Bevin–Sidqi Agreement, Ubayd played to the nationalist grandstand, consistently proving, at the expense of the government, the purity of his nationalist credentials by advocating an aggressive position on Anglo-Egyptian relations. The weak tone of the Note to the British embarrassed Ubayd and functioned as a magnet for renewed criticism of the government. Nationalist attacks grew even more hostile when the Egyptian foreign minister was quoted in the local press as having stated in London that it would be pointless to raise the matter of Anglo-Egyptian relations before the Security Council, where, coincidentally, the Soviet Union had launched a campaign against British policy toward Indonesia and Greece. The report created a storm in Egypt, where every politician continued to espouse the view that the creation of the United Nations nulliﬁed the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement.33 At a moment when the Security Council functioned as an anti-imperial instrument, the Egyptian govern-

20

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

ment appeared to have denied the need for United Nations intervention and, moreover, had implicitly delivered a message praising the alliance with Britain. The public in Cairo gained the impression that its government had conspired with the British against Egyptian national aspirations. One prominent newspaper went so far as to allege that the Egyptian foreign minister had issued the statement in consultation with the British in order to prevent the Soviet Union from raising in the Security Council the status of Egypt together with the status of Greece and Indonesia.34 The British responded, on 25 January, to the Egyptian Note in a manner that conﬁrmed the worst suspicions of Egyptian nationalists. By afﬁrming the ‘‘essential soundness’’ of the terms of the 1936 treaty, London revealed that, despite its expressed willingness ‘‘to undertake a review’’ of the treaty, its would in no way agree to relax the imperial grip on Egypt. Given the basic ideological currents in Egyptian politics, the two Notes provided the Wafd and the Muslim Brothers with highly combustible material. Both groups took a stand in favor of complete independence from Britain and portrayed the government’s policy of attempting to revise the treaty as treachery. Mustafa al-Nahhas issued a manifesto in the name of his party in which he characterized the Egyptian Note and the British reply as ‘‘a shameful conspiracy’’ and ‘‘a disaster unparalleled in modern history.’’35 The long manifesto concluded with a veiled call to arms: Egyptians, now is the time to raise your voice against the weakness of Egypt’s policy and against the greed and ambition of the British. . . . No Egyptian proud of his country and jealous of his rights will hesitate to go forth in battle. The Wafd, chosen by you to achieve your independence, announces in the name of the Egyptian nation that it cannot be bound by the result of negotiations conducted by weak and inexperienced men. Forward, to strive and struggle for you country’s cause. . . . Let us, one and all, raise our voice to tell all that there are people in Egypt who will not be subjugated.36

The Muslim Brothers, who also published a manifesto, responded in a similar vein. Attacking the notion of alliance with Britain, Hasan al-Banna announced that the term ‘‘partnership’’ was simply a new word for imperialism. ‘‘The Sons of the Nile,’’ his manifesto declared, ‘‘will yield to no oppressor and will band together to demand their rights, ready to give their lives in the cause of justice.’’37 The two mass parties did not restrict their activities to the publication of manifestos: With the aid of their university organizers, they took their struggle to the streets. The student protesters addressed a letter with demands to King Faruq and then began a march on Abdin palace. As several thousand demonstrators reached the Abbas bridge they clashed with the police, who opened ﬁre and wounded 150 people. Further protests continued on the following days in both Cairo and Alexandria, resulting in a total of twelve dead over a period of four days. Since the police in Cairo were still controlled by British commanders, the violence greatly strengthened anti-British feeling and created a general atmosphere hostile to the government’s policy.38 As a result of the deaths and the anger they provoked, the position of alNuqrashi proved embarrassing to Makram Ubayd, who remained concerned with

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

21

preserving the nationalist credentials he had won for himself in December, when he had forced the government to take action on treaty negotiations. Accordingly, he attacked the prime minister openly in the Senate and in his newspaper. He then tendered his resignation to the king on 13 February, protesting that the government reaction to the demonstrations had been excessive and that he had not been consulted.39 Faced with the impossibility of bringing Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi and Makram Ubayd together yet again, King Faruq, who himself was no doubt embarrassed by the deaths, asked the government to resign. He called on Ismail Sidqi to form a new cabinet, which took ofﬁce on 17 February.40 With the exception of the prime minister, political nonentities populated the new government: Competent technocrats, few with formal party afﬁliations, held all the major portfolios.41 Such a government, unlike its fractious predecessor, would clearly be subservient to the will of the prime minister, but its composition raised doubt about whether it would be capable of managing the opposition forces in the streets. By choosing Sidqi, who during the period 1930–1933 had displayed his ability to police the Wafd, King Faruq signaled his continued refusal to countenance a government led by Mustafa al-Nahhas. Yet no Egyptian prime minister in 1946 could hope to swim directly against the powerful nationalist currents ﬂowing through the country. The lukewarm vote of conﬁdence the new government received from the Chamber of Deputies, which had no Wafdist members, spoke for itself: 105 deputies supported the cabinet, 3 opposed it, 78 abstained from voting, and 79 were absent. Makram Ubayd, who did not receive a portfolio, voted in favor, but announced that the support of the Independent Wafdist Bloc, which commanded twenty-nine deputies, had been given on a conditional basis. Thus although he would not hold a ministry he would continue to hold the government hostage.42 In effect, Sidqi had the choice of ruling the country by quasidictatorship or of attempting to co-opt as much of the nationalist program as possible. The ﬁrst steps of the government demonstrated that it would attempt to present itself as the representative of nationalist opinion, and that it would attempt to steal a march on the Wafd and the Muslim Brothers. Thus the foreign minister announced that he, too, would seek total independence from the British and unity between Egypt and the Sudan. He also stated that the existence of the Security Council did make the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty an anachronism, but that since the Egyptian government had in 1936 signed an alliance that would last twenty years, it was preferable to attempt to extricate Egypt from it by direct negotiations with the British. In an attempt to ﬂow with the nationalist tide, and, perhaps, to increase his bargaining power over the British, Ismail Sidqi permitted protesters throughout the country to stage large anti-British demonstrations on 21 February. Demonstrators, led primarily by Wafdist and Muslim Brother student organizers, called for the immediate evacuation of British troops from the major population centers.43 In Alexandria and Port Said the protest remained peaceful. In Cairo, however, events quickly turned violent, leading to one of the worst incidents of unrest in the postwar period. Thousands of angry youths, armed with clubs and baskets

22

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

of rocks, rallied in Khedive Ismail square, the location of a number of British military institutions, including a large barracks and the headquarters of the British Air Force in Egypt. The demonstrators stoned the buildings; the men inside responded with gunﬁre. When four British army trucks strayed into the square, protesters leaped onto them; soldiers knocked them back onto the road, wounding eight people and killing one. The angry mob burned the trucks and ‘‘manhandled’’ their drivers.44 Elsewhere in Cairo the police turned back a crowd en route to the British embassy; the protesters vented their anger instead on the Anglican cathedral. The quick arrival of troops stymied the attempt to torch the church, but the crowd managed to sack the bishop’s residence. Hours after the main action had dissipated, small bands still roamed the city, destroying and looting European establishments.45 The next day calm returned to Cairo as the British army lurked about in tanks and trucks mounted with machine guns; the Egyptian police manned strategic intersections.46 The day of violence left many wounded: The total number of dead stood, according to the Egyptian prime minister, at around ﬁfteen.47 The student leadership, held under police guard at the university, sent representatives to the government to inform it of their decision to call a three-day student strike and to initiate a boycott of British goods.48 The events of 21 February prompted London to issue a strong protest to Sidqi and to Faruq, claiming that the policy of the government had created a climate that encouraged violent anti-British activities. British ofﬁcials in Cairo had bristled at the decision by Sidqi to allow the demonstration, and they deeply resented the attitude of King Faruq. For three days prior to the demonstration, the monarch had warmly received numerous delegations of student protesters who marched to his palace chanting anti-British slogans. The British military commanders blamed the king in particular: They contemplated calling on him themselves but abandoned the idea because they feared it would be received in Egypt as a repetition of Lampson’s ultimatum to Faruq on 4 February 1942.49 Nonetheless, on 22 February, the British ambassador delivered a letter to the Egyptian government demanding punishment for those responsible for the violence, compensation for damage to British property, and assurance of arrangements designed to prevent violence in the future. Ismail Sidqi rejected the British demands, arguing that the demonstrators simply expressed the Egyptian national will and that improper behavior by the British had caused the disturbances.50 On 22 February, in an act that no doubt enraged the British, the prime minister toured Cairo, receiving a thunderous applause from a crowd that numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 people.51 The conservative statesman and the crowd were enjoying their honeymoon, which was destined to be short.

A Delegation Is Formed The incident did not bode well for the success of the impending Anglo-Egyptian talks: nonetheless, when the dust from the demonstration had settled, the prime minister set about organizing (on the model of the 1936 treaty negotiations) a

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

23

delegation composed of representatives from all the major parties. Mustafa alNahhas agreed to join only on the conditions that he would lead the delegation and that the group would begin its work only after a caretaker government took power with the intention of conducting a general election. In effect, therefore, he called for negotiations only after a government by the Wafd had been formed. Sidqi rejected the conditions and put together a delegation devoid of Wafdist representatives—a delegation, that is, that would suffer from the persistent opposition of al-Nahhas and his ideological allies. In contrast to the Wafd, however, Makram Ubayd agreed to join the delegation, where he would persist in performing the role of in-house nationalist agitator. Thus, although Sidqi had succeeded in composing a cabinet that would not suffer from the divisiveness of the previous government, his relations with Makram Ubayd within the delegation would develop along the same lines as the alNuqrashi–Ubayd relationship. A powerful personality, Sidqi Pasha would prove more adept at handling Ubayd, yet his problem remained essentially the same: Under the prevailing political conditions there existed no possibility of composing a delegation capable of standing united in the face of the militant anti-British call of the Wafd, the Muslim Brotherhood, and numerous other nationalist organizations. However noble his intentions, in order to survive in power Ismail Sidqi stood before two simple tests: He had to achieve total independence for Egypt and he had to bring the Sudan under the sovereignty of the Egyptian crown. Failure to achieve these demands would not ruin the reputation of the prime minister—as long as he remained faithful to their spirit. If, however, he tried to sell something less to the Egyptian public, he could expect serious trouble. These had been the demands of Egyptian nationalists since the time of Sa‘d Zaghlul, and they constituted the ofﬁcial policy of the Sidqi government.

Egypt in the British Strategic Vision Because of the strategic importance of Egypt to the British Empire, and because the Egyptian demands for Treaty revision coincided with complex BritishAmerican-Soviet negotiations over the nature of the postwar world order, diplomatists in London formulated their policy toward Egypt with an eye on global considerations. The British attitude toward the nationalist wave sweeping Cairo, therefore, cannot be understood without surveying the place of the Middle East in the negotiations between the great powers over the postwar settlement. Prior to the Suez Crisis, the British regarded their Empire as a third force in world affairs—a power squeezed uncomfortably between the capitalist United States, with which it shared many interests, and the Communist Soviet Union, which it feared greatly.52 While Whitehall planners still saw themselves as players on the global stage, they also recognized that the ability of Britain to behave as the equal of its wartime allies had come under grave threat. The war had exhausted Britain, while, at the same time, it had fostered the spectacular expansion of Soviet and American might; moreover, it had eliminated Germany and Japan as great powers. Consequently, on the Eurasian land mass, the Soviet Union had

24

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

no rival; in the Western hemisphere and in the Paciﬁc, the Americans towered over all. Sandwiched between the emerging superpowers, strategists in London feared that their counterparts in Moscow and Washington would squeeze Britain out of the top ranks of diplomacy and relegate her to the status of a second-rate power. Complete pessimism, however, did not overtake British diplomatists, who still nursed some hope concerning the strength of Britain in the future.53 Yet they perceived clearly the dangers of their current exhaustion. The weakness of Britain vis-a`-vis the superpowers compelled statesmen in London to gird themselves for a struggle with their wartime allies, who, purely on the basis of the arrogance of power, might not be inclined to respect British interests in the postwar era. Contemplating the present differential in capabilities and gambling that the economic recovery of Britain would diminish that differential, British diplomatists resolved that they must refuse to relinquish control over traditional spheres of interest. They believed that if their government, as a result of temporary weakness, allowed its international position to erode, then even after an economic recovery it would be impossible for Britain to regain the status of a great power. Retreat, they reckoned, would be permanent; hunkering down offered the only basis for hope.54 As Whitehall planners catalogued the international assets that they deemed worthy of stubborn preservation, they placed primary importance on the traditional British position in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, the only area of global geostrategic importance in which Britain still played the predominating role. The region, of course, had great intrinsic value for Britain: It sat athwart crucial routes of imperial communications—land, air, and sea—that London deemed vital both economically and strategically. In addition, the Middle East contained massive reserves of cheap crude oil that played an ever-increasing role in European industrial life. Under any circumstances, therefore, the British could have been expected to guard their privileged position with extreme jealousy. However, as the Egyptians delivered their demands for treaty revision, statesmen in London were calculating the value of their position in the Middle East at a rate even higher than its intrinsic worth to Britain. Whitehall planners believed that the very existence of Britain as a global player depended upon maintaining its role as the preponderating power in the region.55 Moreover, the dissipation of their inﬂuence in the Middle East would have disastrous ramiﬁcations far beyond the borders of the British Isles: Nothing less than the future of Europe, they believed, was at stake in the Middle East. In the course of 1945–1946, the British position in the region had come under severe threat from the north. In the ﬁnal year of the war, the massive expansion of Soviet military power, the general opacity of Soviet intentions, and the demonstrated appetite of Stalin for territory and control in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East forced diplomatists in London to regard the Soviet Union as a rival in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The dominant view among imperial strategists held that if the Soviets succeeded in breaking the British grip on the greater Mediterranean region, not only would Britain become a second-class power but all of continental Europe would likely fall under the

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

25

shadow of Communism. In such circumstances, Great Britain would become a client of either the United States or the Soviet Union.56 The greatest threat to the established British position in the Middle East came as a result of Soviet pressure on Turkey and Iran. The interest of Moscow in these countries had predated the German invasion of Russia: Nazi diplomatic correspondence, captured during the war, documented an early Soviet desire to play a major role there. In November 1940, when Soviet and German representatives attempted to thrash out an agreement over spheres of inﬂuence, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, demanded from the Germans ‘‘the establishment of a base for land and naval forces of the USSR within range of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles by means of a long term lease.’’ In addition, Molotov afﬁrmed that ‘‘the area south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf is recognized as the center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union.’’57 The German invasion of Russia had deﬂected Moscow from these aspirations, which gradually revived—together with Soviet power—following the defeat of the Nazi armies at Stalingrad. Soviet expansion into the Middle East ﬁrst became a British obsession during the period 1944–1945. After the Red Army ﬂooded across Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Moscow aggressively pursued ﬁve major policies, all clearly animated by the same desires to which Molotov had earlier given expression: (1) the scrapping of the Montreux Convention of 1936, which regulated the control of shipping through the Black Sea Straits; (2) the right, to be established by treaty with Ankara, to construct a military base on Turkish soil along the straits; (3) the ceding of territory in Eastern Turkey—around Kars and Ardahan—to the Soviet Union; (4) the maintenance, under Soviet bayonets, of puppet regimes in northern Iran; and (5) the attempt to wrest an exclusive oil concession from the government in Tehran.58 The Montreux Convention of 1936 gave the Turkish government sole responsibility for the defense of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, both of which Turkey had closed to the warships of all nations during times of war. Stalin, in an expansive mood following the successes of the Red Army over the Nazis, now sought new terms that would open the straits to the Soviet navy and that would make the Soviet Union directly responsible for the defense of the waterways, whose security would be guaranteed by the construction of a Soviet base. Such a development, of course, would radically shift the regional balance of power by eliminating the traditional inﬂuence of the British in Ankara. Moreover, allowing the Soviets to build a base and giving them the territory they claimed in the East would lay the groundwork for Moscow to create a pliant political system in Turkey. Experience suggested that Moscow would follow its insistence on territory and a base with efforts to subvert the Turkish political system. To British eyes, the pressure on Ankara appeared even more sinister when viewed against the background of Soviet actions in northern Iran, which the Red Army had occupied as a result of the Anglo-Russian-Persian Agreement of 1942. Although the agreement called for noninterference in the internal affairs of the country, the Soviets had nonetheless deprived Tehran of any say in the governance of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, where Moscow established puppet Azerbai-

26

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

jani and Kurdish governments. These policies demonstrated that the Soviets were laying the foundation for a permanent position in the northern Iran, notwithstanding their acceptance of the clauses in the 1942 agreement that required both the British and the Soviets to evacuate completely all troops within six months of the cessation of hostilities. Faced with irrefutable evidence that Moscow had no intention of honoring its commitments, the Iranian, American, and British governments began pressuring the Soviets to demonstrate good faith. Not surprisingly, Moscow met these pleas with a stone wall. If successful, Soviet policies toward Iran and Turkey would give Moscow a springboard with which to extend its inﬂuence not just over the states immediately adjacent to the Soviet Union but farther south as well, down to the oilproducing regions of the Persian Gulf, ‘‘the center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union,’’ as Molotov had described it to the Nazis. The importance of oil in the calculations of Moscow expressed itself directly when the Soviets demanded from the Iranian government an exclusive oil concession in the north—a demand that Tehran successfully foiled. Moscow, however, may have been casting its gaze beyond the oil of Iran. The creation of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, centered directly opposite the Iraqi border and running north along the Turkish frontier, suggested that the Soviets coveted Iraqi oil as well. Support for a Kurdish state in Iran certainly dovetailed with the other policies toward Turkey, where a large Kurdish minority also harbored bitter grievances against Ankara. The cessation of Kars and Ardahan, together with the establishment of autonomous Kurdish and Azerbaijani states in northern Iran, would inevitably spread Soviet inﬂuence throughout the Kurdish population of eastern Turkey, thereby signiﬁcantly increasing the leverage of Moscow over Ankara. In addition, of course, Kurdish nationalism could also function as a powerful means of pressuring the Iraqi government, whose army had, between 1942 and 1945, forcefully subdued a Kurdish insurrection led by Mustafa al-Barzani. The links between Soviet policy toward Iran and Turkey, on the one hand, and toward Iraq, on the other, were not simply hypothetical: Following the failure of his rebellion in northern Iraq, al-Barzani ﬂed, along with some 3,000 of his men, to the Republic of Mahabad, where he solidiﬁed ties with the Soviets that continued for years after. If Moscow were allowed, therefore, a free hand in eastern Turkey and northern Iran, its goodwill toward the British position in Iraq would stand as the only impediment to Soviet pressure being brought to bear directly on Iraqi Kurdistan, which guarded the valuable oil ﬁelds around Kirkuk. Whatever the conscious intentions of Moscow toward Iraq and its oil, playing the ethnic card in Iran could not but awaken powerful fears in Baghdad, Ankara, and London. Direct Soviet pressure on Turkey and Iran also caused British ofﬁcials to regard gravely the indirect inﬂuence of Moscow over events in Greece, where local Communists played a leading role in an incipient civil war. In late 1945, the British attempted to install in Athens a government loyal to London and hostile to Moscow; much to British dismay, however, a signiﬁcant portion of the Greek public regarded that government as illegitimate. Since the Communist party led the revolt against the British-sponsored regime, diplomatists in London had good

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

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reason for believing that a successful Soviet bid for inﬂuence over Turkey would greatly strengthen the rebels in Greece, whose other neighbors had already fallen under Communist control. In contrast to the cases of Turkey and Iran, however, Moscow, out of deference to the British, did not attempt to bludgeon the Greek government into submission. In October 1944, Stalin and Churchill had arrived at their famous agreement that portioned out, by percentage, Soviet and British inﬂuence in the Balkan states: The Soviets, in return for a relatively free hand in the countries under their occupation, acquiesced in the British demand for the lion’s share (90 percent) of control over Greece.59 Having relegated the country to the British sphere of interest, Stalin refrained from making any direct demands on Athens. At the same time, however, the Russians did nothing to help the British quell the domestic upheaval in Greece.60 Allowing the Greek sore to fester, within the conﬁnes of the Anglo-Soviet understanding, served Soviet interests in the postwar bargaining over spheres of inﬂuence. Whenever the British or the Americans protested against the heavy-handed policy of the Russians in countries and territories under Soviet occupation, Moscow found it convenient to counter the accusations by pointing to the British use of force in Greece. Thus, for instance, at the London Conference of Foreign Ministers, in September 1945, the Russians raised the Greek question when the Americans pressured them over Romania. Also, on 19 January 1946, when the Iranian government appealed to the United Nations Security Council in protest over the Soviet occupation of northern Iran, Moscow responded two days later by placing before the Council the British occupation of Greece (and, for good measure, Indonesia as well).61 Since Iran had been subject to the percentages agreement, Soviet actions toward Greece demonstrated that Moscow regarded that agreement as a loose understanding: It might inform policy as long as the Soviets found British goodwill useful, but it would certainly not remove the Greek issue from the international agenda. The frontiers remained porous between the British and Soviet spheres of inﬂuence. Although Turkey, Iran, and Greece obviously constituted the kernel of dispute between Moscow and London, the attitude of the Russians toward the Mediterranean in general also fueled the fears of British diplomatists. As part of the postwar settlement, the great powers faced the task of determining the future of a number of territories along the Mediterranean littoral, most of them former Italian possessions.62 In the discussions of the Big Three (Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union), related to these issues, Moscow displayed a tendency to dilute the dominant inﬂuence of Britain in the region. For instance, on various occasions Stalin and his lieutenants pushed for a Soviet role in the trusteeship of Libya and Tangier; they resisted the British effort to give the Dodecanese Islands to Greece; they sought to extend the sovereignty of Communist Yugoslavia over Trieste; and they pressured the British and the French to evacuate Syria and Lebanon.63 To be sure, the Soviets did not pursue these Mediterranean demands with the aggressiveness that characterized their policies toward Turkey and Iran.64 Nonetheless, given the ﬂuid nature of international affairs in early 1946, ofﬁcials in London were in no mood to gamble on the future goodwill of the Soviet Union.

28

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

Tension between London and Moscow did not simply play itself out behind the closed doors of diplomatic chambers. In fact, it became a major public spectacle when it formed the theme of the ﬁrst meeting of the United Nations Security Council, which convened in London in early 1946. The Council considered four issues: the British occupations of Indonesia, Greece, and the Levant states, and the Soviet occupation of northern Iran. Predictably, Moscow pushed for an early withdrawal of troops from the territories under British control, while London pressed the Soviets to evacuate Azerbaijan and Kurdistan.65 The discussions in the Security Council, which were characterized by tedious debates over matters of procedure, no doubt did little to resolve the problems in a manner that fulﬁlled the pious hopes of United Nations architects; nonetheless, the very existence of such an arena had a signiﬁcant inﬂuence on the relations between Great Britain and its clients in the Middle East. The structure of the Security Council conspired with the rivalry between the great powers to create an international environment that tended to beneﬁt small states nursing grievances against the British Empire. On the face of it, the power of veto enjoyed by Britain as a permanent member might have been expected to shield the Empire from such claims. In actual fact, however, the Security Council functioned as a mechanism for capturing diffuse anti-imperial forces and channeling them against the British (and, for that matter, the French), especially on matters over which London and Washington were not in accord. Being the weakest of the Big Three, Britain would sooner modify its policies in most areas than step out of line with the United States; Britain needed U.S. support on the Security Council in order to counter the power and expansiveness of the Soviet Union. While the Americans did tend to support the interests of Britain over those of the Soviets, they also deemed necessary British concessions to local nationalism. Thus, in cases where the Americans and British were not in total agreement, a lesser power could capitalize on great-power discord simply by placing its claims before the Security Council, where the public nature of the debate encouraged the participants to force their policies to conform in appearance to their avowed principles. The case of the British and French forces in the Levant illustrates well the manner in which the new world order gave small states a court of appeal against Britain. Before turning to the Security Council, the Syrians had attempted to introduce the Soviets into the equation. On the eve of the Potsdam conference of July 1945, Damascus appealed directly to Moscow in a bid for Soviet aid in ousting the British and French troops from Syria and Lebanon.66 This direct appeal, however, had little effect. Although Stalin raised the question at the conference, he—no doubt having more important matters on his agenda—did not attempt to pressure the British and the French. Following this failure, the Syrians, in concert with the Lebanese, placed the matter before the Security Council, deﬁning the issue as a dispute with the occupying powers. The terms of the appeal—which suggested that Britain had been collaborating with French imperialism—surprised London, which had initially encouraged the Syrians to play their hand at the United Nations. On the basis of their rather anti-French policies in the Levant, the British believed erroneously that they had created reservoirs of

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

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goodwill among the Syrian and Lebanese elites.67 By contrast, leaders in Damascus and Beirut knew well that the Soviets would not side publicly with Britain and France on such an issue; in addition, they knew that the Americans also wished to avoid being painted as the supporters of European imperialism. Thus by taking the issue out of the back channels of diplomacy, the small states of the Levant capitalized on the international ideological positions of Moscow and Washington.68 In the event, the Security Council deadlocked when the Soviets vetoed an American-authored resolution. Nonetheless, international exposure forced the British and French governments to propitiate Washington by pledging to honor the terms of the defeated resolution, which in effect called for the swift withdrawal of their troops from Lebanon and Syria. Therefore, the appeal to the United Nations, though by no means a resounding afﬁrmation of the sovereignty of small nations, still bore some fruit. The nature of this new world order inﬂuenced Anglo-Egyptian relations in an indirect, yet signiﬁcant, manner. Leaders in Cairo, unlike their counterparts in the Levant, did not, in fact, appeal directly either to Moscow or to the United Nations; nonetheless Anglo-Soviet discord cast a long shadow over all that transpired in the Anglo-Egyptian arena. The threat of the Soviet Union and Egypt cooperating against Britain certainly informed the attitude of London toward the Egyptian question from as early as July 1945, when, at the Potsdam Conference, Stalin suddenly raised the question of the British position in Egypt. In the course of a discussion between the Big Three regarding the Soviet demands for a base on the Black Sea Straits, Truman and Churchill attempted to deﬂect Stalin from pressing his demands. Stalin, however, would have nothing of it; crossing swords with Churchill, he won a tactical victory in the debate: STALIN :

I am afraid we won’t reach an agreement on the straits. Our ideas differ widely. Perhaps we can pass over this point now.

CHURCHILL :

I think that the freedom of the straits in war and in peace, for war and merchant vessel[s], should be guaranteed by the three great powers. That is a proposal worthy of discussion.

STALIN :

We are also for the freedom of all trafﬁc.

CHURCHILL :

We should think that an international guaranty would be more than the equivalent of a base.

STALIN :

What will be done about the Suez Canal?

CHURCHILL : STALIN :

CHURCHILL : STALIN :

It will be open.

What about international control? That question has not been raised.

I am raising it.

CHURCHILL :

We have an agreement, with which we are satisﬁed. There have been

no complaints. STALIN :

Egypt should be consulted.

CHURCHILL :

We have a treaty.

30

Pan-Arabism before Nasser STALIN :

You suggest that international control is preferable. We want a treaty with

Turkey.

Faced with the clear parallel between the Turkish and the Egyptian cases, and with the threat of the Soviets becoming directly involved in Anglo-Egyptian relations, Churchill retreated, quickly agreeing with Stalin’s initial assertion that they should pass over the point: ‘‘I quite agree,’’ he said, ‘‘that this must be put off.’’69 By raising the Egyptian issue in the context of a discussion over Turkey, Stalin demonstrated that Turkey, not Egypt, was the matter of vital interest for the Soviet Union. Just as the issue of Greece had provided a means for Stalin to combat Western pressure over Soviet policy in Romania and Iran, threatening to attack the legitimacy of the Suez Canal Zone bases functioned as an effective means of pressuring Churchill for concessions over the straits. Moreover, given all of the important issues—in Europe and elsewhere around the globe—that still remained unsettled between the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States, it seems unlikely that Stalin would wish to needlessly antagonize the British by attacking one of their most vital imperial strongholds.70 Such an attack would certainly not succeed and might well drive the British and the Americans even closer together. Nevertheless, while the Soviets no doubt saw little interest in launching a direct attack on the British position in Egypt, they certainly had, as in the case of Greece, a great interest in indirectly fostering discord between the British and the Egyptians—if only to keep the Egyptian question in an unsettled state, to allow the Soviets to pressure the British whenever they saw ﬁt. In addition, if Egyptian nationalism could independently weaken the British position in the Middle East, so much the better for the Soviet Union, which had no long-term interest in keeping the British ensconced in the region. Thus, while Soviet diplomatists refrained from intervening in Anglo-Egyptian relations, Soviet publicists pumped a continual stream of anti-British and pronationalist propaganda into the Middle East.71 Moreover, Moscow may well have conducted clandestine relations with the Egyptian opposition—the Wafd and the Communists in particular—encouraging attacks on the British in Egypt and funneling information to the opposition which would provide the basis for a well-informed critique of AngloEgyptian relations.72 The logic of this bifurcated Soviet policy suggested that, in the event of the Anglo-Egyptian dispute becoming public and international—for instance, by being placed before the Security Council—the Soviets would not hesitate to take an anti-British position, just as they had done in the cases of Indonesia, Greece, and the Levant. The British, therefore, had a powerful interest in restricting the Egyptian question, in keeping it strictly within the conﬁnes of bilateral relations between London and Cairo.73 Of course, the possibility of the Soviet Union and Egypt tacitly cooperating at the United Nations against Britain depended not just on the policies of Moscow but on those of Cairo as well. Here, too, the British had good cause for worry. During the ﬁrst meeting of the Security Council, the Egyptian delegation, which

The Taproot of Egyptian Foreign Policy

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held one of the temporary seats, displayed an alarming tendency to support the anti-British initiatives of the Soviet Union. In the case of Indonesia, for instance, the Egyptians were the only members of the council who voted together with the Poles and the Soviets for the immediate withdrawal of British troops; in the case of the Levant, the Egyptians also pursued an anti-British line. Though less aggressive on the matter of Greece, Cairo nonetheless did not fall in directly behind London. Since the occupation of northern Iran had, in Egyptian eyes, much in common with the British control of the Canal Zone, Cairo refrained from supporting the position of the Soviets. The absence, however, of a consistently proSoviet bias did not preclude the likelihood of Soviet–Egyptian cooperation in the event of an appeal to the council to annul the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. Cairo could be expected to follow its own sense of self-interest, to pursue an antiimperial line in every instance. The attitude of the Egyptian government placed the British on the horns of a dilemma. Given the strength of the view in Egypt, fostered by the political opposition, that the new world order rendered the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty obsolete, London came under strong pressure to negotiate with the Egyptians, lest Cairo follow the example of Syria and Lebanon. From a strictly legal point of view, nothing compelled the British to honor the Egyptian request for talks: The 1936 treaty would remain valid for twenty years; a special clause of the treaty also stipulated that revisions would be made only when both parties deemed them necessary. From a political point of view, however, a rejection of the request would almost inevitably force the Egyptian government to bow to the will of the opposition and appeal to the United Nations, thereby directly involving the Soviet Union (and the United States) in the Anglo-Egyptian dispute. But, if the British feared that the Egyptian issue might yet become another subject for great-power bargaining, they also loathed the idea of sitting down directly opposite Egyptian negotiators, who, given the nature of Egyptian domestic politics, would undoubtedly call for a withdrawal of British forces from the Canal Zone. In British eyes, the evacuation of imperial forces from Egypt would constitute as great a blow to British dominance of the Middle East as would the success of Soviet policy toward Turkey and Iran. London, therefore, was trapped. Failure to respond to the Egyptian demand would vastly complicate the issue; responding, however, would provide Egyptian nationalists with an opportunity to challenge the foundation of British power in the Middle East. When speaking of Britain as ‘‘dominant’’ in the region, we refer to a status that certainly entailed political and economic dimensions; fundamentally, however, ‘‘dominance’’ boiled down to the question of military power, to the preponderant position of Britain in the regional security system. Practically speaking, the British hoped that great powers and regional powers alike would recognize— without London being forced to resort to a public declaration—a kind of British Monroe Doctrine over the Middle East.74 In order for London to remain dominant in the area, no potentially hostile state could be permitted bases in the region. Moreover, no local state could be allowed to conduct a foreign policy indifferent to British security interests. Creating conditions in which all countries would regard the Middle East as an exclusively British security zone required

32

Pan-Arabism before Nasser

Britain to project the image of a power capable of defending the region against all comers. Inﬂuential groups in London believed that without control of the bases in the Canal Zone, the projection of such an image would be impossible. Only the facilities in Egypt could provide a military infrastructure adequate for creating the impression of Britain as a Middle Eastern colossus. Diplomatists in London, therefore, sought to safeguard the essential features of the 1936 treaty: the right to maintain British bases on Egyptian soil; the right to expand their forces in time of war; and commitment on the part of Egypt to undertake no international responsibilities and no domestic policies that endangered the interests of Britain. The rhetoric of the document implied a mutual relationship between equals: It afﬁrmed that each state would come to the aid of the other in time of war. In essence, however, the 1936 treaty was a unilateral agreement; it gave Britain near complete control over matters pertaining to the defense of Egypt. The ‘‘aid’’—laid out in tedious details ﬁlling numerous clauses—that Cairo provided Britain amounted to transforming the country in time of war into a British air base, barracks, supply center, and machine shop all rolled into one. Egypt, as deﬁned by the 1936 treaty, was simply the world’s largest aircraft carrier and transport vessel, permanently docked in the Middle East. In relation to the other facilities that Britain controlled in the region, the Canal Zone resembled the dense center of a spider’s web. If Egyptian nationalism were to rip it away from the greater network, then the British facilities in Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Malta, and Cyprus would be left dangling like so many strands of a tattered web. Without the sobering effect of a massive imperial force stationed on the ground in the Middle East, British diplomatists would ﬁnd it difﬁcult in the extreme to convince, for instance, the Iraqis that Britain actually possessed the ability to defend their country against the Soviets—especially since the Soviets, thanks to geography, enjoyed the advantage of naturally dominating the Eurasian land mass. Under circumstances of attenuated imperial power, therefore, the Iraqis (and other Arab states) could be expected to ﬁnd new friends to help defend their oil wealth. The desire, then, to keep Egypt ﬁrmly bound to the British regional security system arose not only from the strict logic of military thinking but also from calculations regarding the political and economic implications of strategy. Although 