Gamal Abdel Nasser

Gamal Abdel NASSER (1918-1970) was an Egyptian politician who played a prominent role in shaping the region’s politics in the twentieth century. Starting his career in the Egyptian military, Nasser rose in rank and formed a close circle of allies (many of them fellow officers in the army). After participating in and surviving the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in July of 1952 Nasser and 89 of his compatriots (the “Free Officers”) ousted King Farouk I in a coup, seizing control of the government. After some internal power struggles, Nasser emerged as Prime Minister in 1954, and quickly got to work instituting his policy platform, which would come to be known as Arab Socialism. Nasser’s policies aimed at modernizing Egypt, improving the material living conditions of its people, addressing inequality in land distribution, and instituted basic healthcare and welfare measures, as well as a minimum wage and provisions designed to help women. In 1956, the United States and Britain pulled out of an agreement to provide $270 million to fund the first stage of Nasser’s most ambitious public works project, the Aswan High Dam. In response, Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, income from which Egypt could use to fund completion of the dam.

Britain and France did not take this well, resulting in the armed conflict known as the “Suez Crisis.” Although the Egyptian air force was decimated in this conflict, Nasser and Egypt emerged from the conflict with great prestige and appeared to be a model for how Arab countries could stand up to and resist domination by imperial powers. Nasser’s dream of an Arab socialist republic did not last, however, and following Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war against Israel, many in the Arab world came to see Nasserism and socialism as failed solutions, especially given the economic struggles the Soviet Union was facing around this time, and accordingly looked to other alternatives, paving the way for the real rise of Islamic radicalism.