The Role of Egypt in the Implementation of Block Projects the United States in the Middle East in the First Half of the 1950s
Authors:   V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, Kryzhko Lydia A. , Kryzhko Evgeniy V. ,   V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, Pashkovsky Petr I. ,   V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University
Published: December 2024

The study aims to show the importance of Egypt in the implementation by the United States of the idea of creating a military-political bloc in the Middle East in the first half of the 1950s. The projected alliance was supposed to be an analogue of NATO in this region, potentially projecting the geopolitical interests of Washington and aimed at curbing the penetration of the “communist threat” into it.
The source base of the study includes documents from the administrations of the US Presidents, as well as materials from the archive of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation, defining the place of Egypt in American regional interests. Analysis of international agreements (“Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation Treaty Between the States of the Arab League” and Baghdad Pact) makes it possible to highlight the foreign policy positions of the Arab states in the early 1950s. G. Nasser's programmatic work “The Philosophy of the Revolution” forms an idea of the main directions of Egypt’s foreign policy, and the memoirs of the British Foreign Minister A. Eden and the confidant G. Nasser M. Heikal provide an understanding of the mechanism for making political decisions in the implementation of bloc projects.
The article substantiates the activation of the initiative to create a military-political bloc in the Middle East with the participation of Egypt by the US: during this period, Britain's position weakened, Arab-Jewish confrontation intensified, the revolution of "free officers" in Egypt and the subsequent transformation of its foreign policy course took place. The authors describe several successive attempts by the US to implement the idea of the “Middle East Command” bloc. Attention is focused on the role of Egypt’s position in the failure of such projects as the “Middle East Command” (MEC), “Middle East Defense Organization” (MEDO). The process of creating the Baghdad Pact with the corresponding reaction of Egypt are considered.
The reasons have been established that the stake on Egypt as a key player in the region and a potential leader of the military-political bloc initiated by the US turned out to be untenable. In Egypt, the radical course of the revolution prevailed, charting the way to unite the Arabs in the struggle against the colonial past, with which both the UK and the US were associated, trying to replace it in the region. The attempts of the American administration to achieve coexistence in a single bloc between Egypt and Israel turned out to be in vain: Cairo’s bid for leadership in the Arab world could not be matched with peace initiatives against the Israeli side. The concept of the Baghdad Pact was implemented, but in the matter of the planned prospects for expansion it ran into a number of obstacles, which were also associated with the confrontational position of Egypt, which was gaining weight in the Arab world and did not deny the prospects of military-political cooperation with the USSR.