Pan-Arabism Before Nasser

Book excerpt: This book aims to alter profoundly the accepted version of the history of post-World War II Egyptian foreign policy. Michael Doran convincingly demonstrates the absence of any true pan-Arab front from the very beginning of the Arab League. Pan-Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question argues that, in the late 1940s, Cairo pursued a single-minded foreign policy designed to drive Great Britain, the enemy of Egyptian independence, out of the Middle East. This struggle generated the secondary goal of Egyptian foreign policy: undermining the Middle Eastern states working to sustain British influence in the region. While uncovering a significant dimension of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Doran also lays the foundation for a new understanding of Egyptian foreign policy. He argues persuasively that pan-Arabism, a policy that historians have traditionally associated with the rise of Gamal Abd al-Nasser in the middle 1950s, actually originated under the old regime.