The same nationalist foreign policy by which Nasser had ended the Western domination of Egypt had led him into a trap that entrenched a new foreign presence on Egyptian soil.

The Arab adulation of Nasser was a major component of the regime's legitimacy.

The long-sought British withdrawal from Egypt, the defeat of the security pacts by which the West sought to harness the Arabs against the Soviet Union, the successful nationalization of the Suez Canal, and the failure of the 1956 French-British- Israeli invasion put Egypt at the head of an aroused Arab nationalist movement and resulted in a substantial retreat of Western control from the Middle East.

He adeptly exploited changes in the international balance of power, namely the local weakening of Western imperialism, the Soviet challenge to Western dominance, and the national awakening of the Arab peoples, to win a series of significant nationalist victories.