ABSTRACT
The Suez War raised Nasser’s prestige high. He had secured the leadershipin Egypt only in 1954. Suez confirmed him in it and made him a popular as well as a military ruler. He had kept his head and his dignity, had emerged intact from an imperialist onslaught and an Israeli invasion, and had demonstrated his power in the Arab world when even Nuri es-Said, Britain’s staunchest friend in the Middle East felt obliged to condemn Britain’s action and propose Britain’s eviction from the Baghdad Pact. Jordan too rejected its traditional British links and the subsidies which went with them, denounced its treaty with Britain and joined instead the EgyptianSyrian alliance of 1955 (to which Saudi Arabia and Yemen also belonged). Nasser kept the canal and showed he could work it and got the dam too. The Americans, who might be said to have precipitated the whole affair by abandoning the dam project, had supported a regime which they had notoriously ceased to admire and were left in the aftermath without a policy. The Russians were jubilantly claiming all the credit and getting much of it, and they undertook to finance the Aswan Dam in place of the Americans and British.
