← Back to the front page

Catastrophe: History’s Most Disastrous Defeats

Khalid Elhassan January 15, 2025 17 min

Catastrophe - Napoleon retreats from Moscow — Napoleon retreats from Moscow. ABC

3. Trying to Substitute Heated Words for Deeds

Catastrophe - Jordan's King Hussein and Gamal Abdel Nasser smile after signing a defense pact — Jordan’s King Hussein and Gamal Abdel Nasser smile after signing a defense pact. K-Pics

Nasser knew that the Egyptian military was in no shape to fight Israel, but he sought to regain his stature in the Arab world by bluster and bluff. He broadcast increasingly bellicose speeches threatening Israel, and sought to convey his seriousness with demonstrations short of war. However, Nasser got carried away with his own rhetoric, and escalated matters beyond the point of prudence. He massed Egyptian forces in the Sinai, and soon thereafter, requested withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers separating Israeli and Egyptian forces. A few days later, he closed to Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. The following week, Jordan’s king arrived in Egypt to ink a mutual defense pact, followed soon thereafter by a defensive pact with Iraq.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.