NEW MOVES AFOOT

Since 1945 Western governments have been notoriously slow to anticipate, and to adapt their own attitudes towards, changes in Arab policies and priorities. In the 1950s the. Nasserite wave was already far up the beach before the West recognised it as a regional force with which they might have reached an accommodation. Instead Western reactions culminated in the cancellation of the finance- for the Aswan High Dam and the Suez crisis of 1956.