The threat of Nasserism shaped the shah’s regional strategy in the 1950s and 1960s. This chapter explores the development of the shah’s policy of building relations with moderate allies in the Arab world who could help to contain and balance the radicalism of Nasser. The shah found two allies in North Africa: Tunisia under President Habib Bourguiba and Morocco under King Hassan II. Bourguiba and King Hassan were, like the shah, moderate rulers, with strong ties to the West, who shared the same concerns over Egyptian ambitions and the threat that Nasserism posed to regional stability. One of the strategies the shah developed, for which he sought the support of King Hassan in particular, was to challenge Nasser’s claims to leadership in the Islamic world, by attempting to form a separate grouping of Islamic countries. The ultimate manifestation of this was the Islamic Summit Conference, held in Rabat in 1969, in which King Hassan and the shah played leading roles.

This chapter explores the relationship between Iran and Egypt during the 1950s and 1960s, placing it in a regional context. The two countries forged close ties during the 1930s, when the Iranian crown prince, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, married Egyptian Princess Fawzia Faud. Shared histories of colonial interference shaped the friendship between Egypt and Iran during the oil nationalisation crisis, yet in the years after the 1952 coup in Egypt, which brought down the monarchy and ultimately brought Nasser to power, Egypt and Iran’s paths diverged. At the Bandung Conference in 1955, while Nasser was inspired by the prospects of Afro-Asian solidarity, the shah’s government was concerned with the need for moderation, and to maintain close ties to the West. One year later, after the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, Nasser became the leading voice of pan-Arabism, which the shah viewed as a major threat both to regional security and to his reign. This divergence in perceptions of their places in the Global South ultimately led to a break in relations between Iran and Egypt. This chapter examines in detail the events that led to this fracture, and the ultimate emergence of Nasser as the shah’s main adversary.

This chapter examines the evolution of Soviet foreign policy from Stalin's death in 1953 until the 1956 Suez Crisis. It begins with a discussion of the power struggle in the Soviet leadership, which led to the arrest and execution of Lavrentii Beria. Beria, as well as his rivals in leadership, briefly explored prospects for detente with the West, including by effectively giving up on socialism in East Germany. By 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev consolidated power in his hands, such prospects faded for two reasons. First, the nuclear revolution emboldened Khrushchev, eliminating the need for concessions to the West. Second, decolonization in the “third world” opened new horizons for the Soviet leader as he embraced opportunities to project Soviet influence to remote shores, seeking a clientele and – through their recognition of Soviet greatness – a form of revolutionary legitimacy. The chapter offers an in-depth analysis of Khrushchev's bromance with Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and an overview of the consequences of the Suez Crisis for Soviet foreign policy.

It is not clear whether Egypt did in fact intend to invade Israel in June 1967. Egypt, however, mobilized its forces and moved them into Sinai near the border with Israel, placed the Jordanian army under Egyptian command, coordinated its military plans with other Arab States, demanded the removal of UNEF and closed the Strait of Tiran. These actions, combined with bellicose statements, it can be argued, gave Israel legitimate reason to apprehend that an attack was imminent. It might well be that the closing of the Strait of Tiran, was, in itself, an armed attack. Israel’s use of force was legitimate if it had, at the time, a reasonable belief that an Egyptian attack had taken place or was imminent. According to modern international law, Israel’s use of force was not legitimate if it was a preemptive strike to prevent the possibility of an Egyptian attack. Neither the UN Security Council nor the UN General Assembly took a position as to who was the aggressor in the Six Day War. As a result of the June 1967 Six Day War, the region’s strategic geography was drastically changed.

This chapter gives an overview of the book in how it deals with dignity in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution in the context of the Arab Uprisings. Dignity or karama in Arabic is a nebulous concept that challenges us to reflect about various issues such as identity, human rights, and faith. This chapter shows that the research to write this book was prompted by the complexity of dignity demands at a time when the region of North Africa and the Middle East was drifting in the socio-political event of the “Arab Spring” or Arab Uprisings. The main motivation in the research was to investigate understandings of karama in the specific context of Egypt during the 2011 protests. To do so, the focus was on interviews with participants in the 2011 protests and analysis of art forms that emerged during protests and in which there was an explicit expression of dignity/lack of dignity. The chapter presents the argument and contribution of the book, the importance of terminology and layers of meanings, and finally the wider context for dignity slogans. The chapter ends by presenting the book structure and the thematic chapters.

This chapter focuses on the theme of dignity as identity and particularly Arab identity. One of the important components in the construction of nationality is consolidating a sense of identity. Karama/dignity – in the sense of being an image of God with inherent worth – has supported for millennia a sense of identity for humans. In the discussion of karama as identity in the slogans of the 2011 Arab Uprisings in Egypt, the chapter shows that there is a widespread understanding of the lack of dignity in Arab contexts, mostly due to oppressive political regimes in a postcolonial setting, which can be seen through various expressions of karama as identity in arts and in the interviews. The chapter also highlights how identity politics are also essential to increasingly globalized societal contexts around the world.

This chapter is not a thematic one, but a general review of the main findings from the different themes and an analysis of the suggested framing of “dignition,” which is a demand for dignity recognition. The chapter begins by showing the language dimension in articulating political demands to see how protesters may use a form of dignition at a particular time and for particular needs. The chapter presents the suggestion of dignition as one linked to dynamics of revolutionary change and populist demands. Then, the chapter looks at how discussions of identity in the Arab and Egyptian contexts have political drivers particularly in the processes of modernizing Arab states after the colonial period. This leads to emotional discussions of articulating the demand of dignity which reveals issues of identity for protesters. Lastly, the chapter exposes the dynamics of modernity and development in the context of accelerated globalization, which increase the precarity of dignity perceptions.

Chapter 1 starts with a critical juncture that installed a new pattern with the political surge of armies in many Arab states. Newly independent states engaged in the complex task of building their armed forces, also as a symbol of their newly gained sovereignty. During this foundational period, the complex processes of nation- and state-building went hand in hand with the politicization of the officer corps so that the army was propelled as the founder of new, postcolonial political orders and as a specific incubator, in control of real power and endowed with huge power resources. Within this general trend, some militaries were much more submitted to social trends and penetration by societies in the form of ethno-confessional or tribal dimensions, when compared with the relative closure of the Egyptian armed forces to society and its dynamics. Rather than their exhaustion in the framework of national armies, subsequent political developments witnessed their enhancement, as exemplified by Syria and Yemen. And, in this overall picture of heightened militarization in the Arab World, Tunisia appeared as the negative and exceptional case with its armed forces remaining a subservient part of the (civilian) Tunisian state and regime alike.

In this chapter, I explore extensively the history of coup-proofing in Egypt beginning with the Free Officers regime in 1952. King Faruq (1936–1952) was already corrupting his generals prior to the Free Officers’ coup but Gamal ʿAbdul Nasser (1952–1970) surpassed by far whatever the monarchy did in this regard. Nasser also developed multiple security agencies charged with spying on the military, and one another. In Syria, too, corruption and counterbalancing were part of the coup-proofing panoply; and, in addition, identity politics. I show that minority reaction against Sunni hegemony in the military began in the 1960s – two decades after the French left. I trace the beginnings of Alawi ethnic stacking in the Syrian officer corps to the 1963 first Baʿathi coup. I maintain that 1963 proved to be a turning point because the Baʿathification of politics was concomitant with the progressive Alawitization of the officer corps.

The second chapter revisits Gamal Abdel Nasser and the 1952 revolution. Focusing on the emergence of Nasserism, I argue that it represents the first and last hegemonic project in modern Egypt. Nasserism can be understood as a collective will that was produced in a particular historical moment – one that was formed against the dangers of imperialism and the hopes of a postcolonial project. Nasserism was also, however, an articulation of an elitist state-led project of decolonization that centred the military, the state, and capitalism, leaving powerful legacies that would haunt Egypt’s future. Exploring these contradictions, the chapter charts a history of Nasserism through Fanon and Gramsci, thinking through anticolonial nationalism, state-led capitalism, third wordlism, the colonial international, and hegemony. I argue that the creation and then decline of Nasserism as a hegemonic project is central to understanding contemporary Egyptian politics. The chapter looks specifically at the anticolonial movements predating 1952; the creation of the Free Officers and new historical bloc; the creation of consent in civil society; and some of the paradigmatic events of anticolonialism in Egypt, such as the nationalisation of the Suez Canal.

Chapter two presents an overview of the evolution of Egypt’s political economy under Nasser and Sadat. Central to this history are the struggles over property rights. Under Nasser, nationalist attempts to modernize the economy eventually gave way to an experiment in Arab socialism within the geopolitical context of the Cold War. During this period, an ‘authoritarian bargain’ was established in which broadly redistributive social and economic policies sought to provide welfare for, and redistribute land to, the popular classes in return for their political subordination. In the 1970s, Sadat began to dismantle Arab socialism and establish a more liberal political economy through his infitah policy. In doing so, Sadat presided over the beginning of the disintegration of the authoritarian bargain. To contain social conflict, Sadat emboldened the right-wing forces of political Islam in the hope that they would combat the left and provide an Islamic alternative to the social protection offered by the Nasserists.