Nasser's Gamble : How Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power.

Print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction. The Golden Age of Nasserism; Idealism and Pragmatism in Nasser's Foreign Policy; The Nature of Middle Eastern Politics; The Place of the Intervention in Egyptian Memory; Structure of the Book -- ch.1. The Road to War; The Coup in Yemen; The Struggle for Power in Egypt; The Accidental Intervention?; The Denouement of the Crisis in Cairo -- ch.2. The Soviet-Egyptian Intervention in Yemen; The Nature of Soviet Relations with Egypt and Yemen; The Egyptian Appeal and the Soviet Response; Explaining Soviet Behavior; Forms of Early Soviet Involvement -- ch.3. Food for "Peace": The Breakdown of US-Egyptian Relations, 1962-65; Recognition; Disengagement; The Suspension of US Aid; The Balance of Payments Crisis -- ch.4. Guns for Cotton: The Unraveling of Soviet-Egyptian Relations, 1964-66; Guns for Cotton; The Soviet Quest for Base Rights in Egypt; From Jiddah to Moscow; In the Cracks of Cold War Geology; The Final Unraveling -- ch.5. On the Battlefield in Yemen--and in Egypt; Counterinsurgency; Casualties; Cost; Corruption; The Spread of Popular Discontent -- ch.6. The Fruitless Quest for Peace: Saudi-Egyptian Negotiations, 1964-66; The First Arab Summit; The Second Arab Summit; The Jiddah Agreement; From the Islamic Pact to the Long Breath Strategy; The Kuwaiti Mediation and the Return of Sallal -- ch.7. The Six-Day War and the End of the Intervention in Yemen; The Sinai Option; The Syrian Connection; The Soviet Spark; The Egyptian Initiative; The Impact of the Yemen War on Egyptian Military Performance in the Six-Day War; The Khartoum Conference and the Withdrawal of the Egyptians from Yemen -- Afterword. The Twilight of Egyptian Power.

"Nasser's Gamble draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as "my Vietnam." Jesse Ferris argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi-Egyptian struggle over Yemen, Ferris demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the "Arab Cold War" set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, Nasser's Gamble brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011."

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