Mistakes in the run-up to war
Misr minal-Thawra ilal-Hazima (Egypt from Revolution to Defeat: Preludes to the June 1967 War), Mamdouh Anis Fathy, Abu Dhabi: Centre for Strategic Studies,
2003. pp643
The June 1967 War and its repercussions still cast their shadow over the region, perhaps unlike any other event in contemporary Middle Eastern history. Nevertheless, the available information on this crucial turning point barely scratches the surface. This is a problem that plagues historical studies of fateful events written soon after they happened, when security considerations can outweigh the benefits of publication. Such was the case with Mamdouh Anis Fathy, a strategic analyst whose country was a party to the 1967 War, and whose job, in its aftermath, gave him access to highly sensitive classified information.
Now, however, 35 years later, much of this information has been made available to the public in Fathy's book Egypt from Revolution to Defeat. For the first time we can glimpse confidential telegrams to Egypt's embassies in the Arab world and to its embassies in Washington and Moscow; the highly classified "position paper" issued by the office of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser; communications from the Egyptian intelligence and the Ministry of Defense, and the minutes of Egyptian cabinet meetings on the eve of the war. Such documents, moreover, are systematically arranged in a manner that both places them in their proper historical context and renders them easily accessible and comprehensible to the general reader. Even if one believes, at first glance, that the author's premises and conclusions are neither new nor controversial, this by no means diminishes the value of a work that will serve as an indispensable reference and that projects readers directly into the heat of the pre-war climate.
For both historians and lay readers, the book acquires additional importance for its comprehensive and determinedly empirical approach to answering many of the unresolved questions surrounding the Six Day War.
If the task of the historian is to help shape a people's consciousness in order better to equip them to respond to the demands of the present, there is no doubt that Mamdouh Anis Fathy is eminently suited to the task. With a PhD in international relations from the University of Kansas, a further PhD in military strategy and a PhD in international law from Ain Shams University in Egypt, Fathy's academic credentials are beyond question. This accumulated scholarship, in conjunction with a comprehensive and determinedly empirical approach, Fathy has brought to bear in his attempt to address many of the unresolved questions surrounding the Six Day War. The result is a work as intriguing for its consummate scholarship as it is for the new insights it conveys.
While arranged chronologically, as perhaps best suits the treatment of a countdown to war, the book has sustained thematic coherence. It takes the 1952 Egyptian Revolution as its starting point, showing this event's impact on the regional geopolitical map and highlighting changes in Egypt's political structure and its foreign relations. This was a stormy period during which power in Egypt coalesced around the figures of Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Abdel-Hakim Amer, in which the transition to authoritarian rule gave the military unprecedented powers in political life, and in which socialist ideals inspired major agrarian, economic and social reforms. It was also a period in which the threat of the recently created state of Israel acquired new dimensions against the backdrop of the transition from late colonialism to the nascent Cold War, the combination of which impacted on Egypt's relations with France, Britain, the US and the Soviet Union.
Fathy proceeds from the premise that Abdel-Nasser had hoped to build strong relations with the US in the hope that this would further Egypt's domestic and regional interests, but that this hope was thwarted by an American Congress under pressure from the Zionist lobby to constrain Washington's relations with Egypt. Tensions between the two countries reached a head when Washington attempted to tie its economic aid to Egypt and to other countries in the region to certain foreign policy commitments. Cairo, if it wanted to receive the good graces of the US, would have to establish relations with Israel and stay clear of the Soviet camp, and to back up these demands, Washington not only waved the carrot of economic aid but also worked to create Arab forces to rival Egypt's regional leadership. This tactic, Fathy maintains, was, and perhaps remains, a constant in US policy towards Egypt. However, Washington's pressure accomplished precisely the opposite of what was intended, virtually driving Nasser into establishing bridges with the Soviet Union.
If Cairo's relations with Moscow got off on a somewhat awkward footing with the latter's denunciation of the Anglo- Egyptian Evacuation Agreement (October 1954) as a "pact" with the imperialist powers, the Bandung Conference in 1955, bringing Egypt into the Non-Aligned Movement, went some way towards rectifying matters. In the wake of this conference, Egypt received Soviet military aid, in exchange for which Moscow obtained the right to use Egyptian ports.
Despite the Anglo-Egyptian agreement, Egypt's relations with Britain quickly deteriorated, as they did with France, which was losing its hold over Tunisia and Morocco at this time and was fighting to retain control over Algeria, whose independence was ardently supported by Egypt. The tensions of the period culminated in the nationalisation of the Suez Canal and the subsequent invasion of Egypt by Anglo-French and Israeli forces in 1956.
The book's third chapter, which treats pivotal developments in Egypt and the region such as the Tripartite Aggression of 1956 to the war in Yemen in 1962, draws attention to an issue rarely accorded more than superficial attention in the Arabic literature on this period: the convergence of the executive and legislative authorities of the state in Egypt and the rise of pragmatism in ideology as a determinant of national policy. In part, the author attributes these twin phenomena to the novelty of the one-party system, which, he suggests, was a potentially destabilising factor, in spite of the steadily increasing centralisation of the state and growing state control over the economy.
In this chapter, too, Fathy makes the controversial assertion that Nasser's pan-Arab policies pitted Egypt not only against the US but also against the USSR. If pan-Arabism was a reaction against Western imperialist designs in the region, it also conflicted with Moscow's long-term interests. A major arena for the interplay between the regional and international dimensions of Pan-Arabism was the civil war in Yemen (1962-1967). The political and military ramifications of Egypt's intervention there are the subject of the fourth chapter, which may well be the most important work in Arabic to date on this subject. It is in this chapter in particular that Fathy draws on his expertise in international relations and military strategy to present a thorough, multifaceted portrait of Egypt's role in the events in Yemen in terms of motivation and political, strategic and material limitations. Here, too, we find the complex rivalries among the Arab powers being played out, as they each attempted to assert themselves, as well as the issue of superpower politics and assorted policies of containment.
Fathy has not omitted a discussion of the domestic impact of Egypt's adventure in Yemen, specifically the rapid entrenchment of the power of the military establishment over all the institutions of government, a subject he treats more fully in his subsequent chapter on the run-up to the 1967 War. Readers are certain to appreciate the exhaustive treatment Fathy gives of the conflict between the civil and military wings of the state, all the more so because of the detailed corroborative information he is able to give, much of which has previously not been made public. Against this minutely drawn portrait of the intricacies of the Egyptian political regime in its domestic and regional aspects, Fathy gives special focus to the rivalry between Abdel-Hakim Amer and Abdel-Nasser. Of particular importance is his theory that the effect of the complex relationship between these two men was gravely to hamper Egypt's political and military strategy at a critical juncture.
Fathy's history culminates in his treatment of the escalating international tensions that preceded the outbreak of the 1967 War. It is in this chapter that the general reader will see for the first time the crucial confidential communications that Fathy uses to support his argument that the Egyptian leadership's political and military calculations were founded on erroneous readings of regional and international realities, the result of which was military disaster. Here, too, we glimpse how the rivalry between the government and military authorities played itself out in the field, with catastrophic consequences. Egyptian forces stationed in the Sinai, Fathy informs us, had no clear idea of their mission. Meanwhile, the fanfare in the Egyptian press and the bellicose rhetoric of the regime gave Israel just the opening it needed to launch its "preemptive" strike.
The war and subsequent defeat was ultimately the product of drastic tactical and strategic blunders, made all the more tragic by the fact that the one-party system did not permit effective popular participation in crucial decisions affecting the lives and welfare of the Egyptian people.
Reviewed by
Mustafa El-Labbad
