"Rethinking Arab Nationalism in Nasserism: The Transformation of Nasser's Ideology and the Evolution of Egyptian Foreign Policy in the Early Revolutionary Years"
OGAWA Hiroshi
last update: 20151225
Rethinking Arab Nationalism in Nasserism: The Transformation of Nasser's Ideology and the Evolution of Egyptian Foreign Policy in the Early Revolutionary Years
OGAWA Hiroshi
Abstract:
Previous studies on Gamal Abdel Nasser's Arab nationalism have emphasized either strategy or ideology. In
this paper, I analyze Nasser's Arab nationalism from the latter perspective, but I pay particular attention to
the historical background in which Nasser's ideology developed. Then, I show how Nasser's transformation of
Egyptian nationalism into Arab nationalism can also be explained from the perspectives of national identity
and foreign policy.
First, I analyze, from the perspective of constructivism, the third section of "The Philosophy of the
Revolution" and "The Declaration of Nationalizing the Suez Canal." Nasser reconstructed Egyptian national
identity from an Egyptian one to one interwoven with Arab national history. Moreover, in a crucial paragraph
of the latter text, he radically redefined Egyptian history as that of the Arab nation from the beginning of
"history." Secondly, I place these discourses within the historical evolution of Egyptian foreign policy.
Reconsidering the relationships between the above ideological transformations and foreign policies such as
"Neutralism" and "Positive Neutralism," I explain how Arab nationalism was gradually adopted as Egyptian
foreign policy. Finally, I discuss that, for understanding colonial issues still lingering in the world, it is
important to analyze Arab nationalism by combining the perspectives of strategy and ideology.
Keywords: Gamal Abdel Nasser, Arab nationalism, identity, Neutralism/Positive Neutralism, colonialism
REV: 20151225