ABSTRACT
The period following the 1956 war witnessed Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser at the height of his power and confidence. Humbled by its retreat from Suez, Britain was declining as regional hegemon, leaving its allies in Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere vulnerable to revolution and Egyptian subversion. Meanwhile France was increasingly mired in the Algerian morass which threatened its status as the preeminent player in North Africa. Nasser’s Egypt saw an opportunity in the decline of the European powers to assert its own regional leadership. Syria was one of the first fruits to fall in Cairo’s lap when it signed a union agreement with Egypt in February 1958. For the first time in over a century Egypt had become a key player in the geopolitics of the mashreq, a strategic area that encompassed Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. Another sign of Nasser’s ascendancy was increased Egyptian subversion against the conservative Arab states and the British protectorates; however, Cairo’s attempts at overthrowing leaderships in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia were checked by a powerful new player on the regional scene: the United States. Egypt’s regional ascendancy was to be short-lived. By the early 1960s, Nasser’s dreams of a pan-Arab union under Egyptian control were crushed first by the isolation his regional subversion engendered and second by the secession of Syria from the union in 1961. Although Cairo retained considerable influence in the Arab world and a strong capacity for clandestine warfare it never again reached the heights of power it enjoyed in the four years following Suez.
