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Pact Trouble. The U.S. and Nasser got off to a fine start when John Foster Dulles visited Cairo in 1953 and listened to Egypt's dynamic young leader argue earnestly that the country's troubles lay, not in Palestine, but at home−where a misgoverned and exploited population, grown from 10 million to 22 1/2 million in 50 years, needed land, three square meals, and some intimation of human dignity. With every intention of basing its Middle East policy on a revitalized Egypt, the U.S. poured $25.9 million in economic aid into Nasser's development program, helped him get the British out of their Canal Zone base, and sent Ambassador Henry Byroade, a West Pointer who could work closely and frankly with a fellow army man. "Egypt stands today in every respect with the West," smiled Nasser.
But Nasser declined to sign a military aid agreement with the U.S. "Too much like 'colonization,' " he said. He did not like the anti-Communist Baghdad Pact, either. But it was Israel's 1955 Gaza Strip raid, in which 38 of his soldiers were killed, that Nasser called "the turning point." "Until that moment," said Nasser later, "I felt the possibility of real peace was near." He counterpunched. He had to have more arms, he said.
While the U.S. hesitated, anxious not to start an arms race in the Middle East, the Russians saw the chance they had been looking for. The Nasser who found Chou En-lai's coexistence charter at Bandung "quite convincing" sounded to Communists like their kind of neutralist−a soldier, a conspirator with a smoldering sense of anticolonial vengeance. By offering arms to Nasser, the Communists could strike hard at the Baghdad Pact. They could also win a foothold at last in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Double Play. Their deal gave Nasser a reported 200 MIG fighters, 50 jet bombers, 200 tanks, two destroyers, six submarines. Nonetheless, Washington at first took Nasser's word that it was just a commercial transaction with the Czechs, based on considerations of self-defense and the need for bartering away surplus cotton. Turning the other cheek, the U.S. practically embargoed arms shipments to Israel, and even volunteered to help build a $1.3 billion dam at Aswan, offering Nasser a $56 million grant for a starter. The World Bank pledged an additional $200 million loan.
But that tireless student of the Levantine press already knew that his Soviet arms deal had set the whole Arab world afire. He had played the West against the East, and come out on top; he had received arms from the East, and stood to get a dam from the West. He began to throw his weight around. When the British tried to line up Jordan with the Baghdad Pact, he counterpunched. Radio Cairo's propaganda, joined by Saudi gold and Communist intrigue, helped blow Glubb Pasha out of Jordan. Nasser's broadcasts spread hatred for the U.S. among the 900,000 Palestinian refugees. In French North Africa, Nasser's radio preached enmity to the French. Despite Nasser's "soldier's word" to the contrary, the French say that in Algeria they have captured 50 graduates of Egyptian non-com schools, and believe there are 500 more Egyptian-trained guerrillas fighting there.