The UN, nor the US, was "terrified" of just Nasser. When considering the role of the world community, you have to factor in the Cold War. If the US/UN *had* stood up to Nasser, it may have only led him to jump further into bed with the Soviet Union. Compare the victory of 1967 with the near-disaster of 1973, when a Soviet equipped and militarily indoctrinated Egypt put the Israelis in the greatest peril of their nations history. If the Arabs had not attacked in 1967, then 1973 may have come as an even greater surprise to an even more unprepared Israel.

The Western nations feared not just Nasser, but Nasser backed into a corner and going to the Soviets hat-in-hand. In particular, while in retrospect Nasser's "pan-Arab" goals were more dream than achievable, there was a very real fear that with Soviet backing he could actually make pan-Arabism work. Recall that well before 1967 Nasser was being decried as a "Hitler" and was the subject of "destabilization" efforts. An international naval armady may have sounded like a good idea, but what if it hadn't worked? There woud have been one thing worse than ignoring Nasser, in the West's opinion, and that would have been putting up a "show of force" and then having it not work. Even worse, it could have been a US ship rather than the Israeli "Eliath" who first demonstrated the danger of anti-ship missiles.

In the end, of course, it is not like Israel was "abandoned." Far from it, the US gave every kind of support just short of actual military intervention. We were in a poor position to intervene in such a manner, both politically and militarily. In a perfect world than maybe the forces of right can always come charging in on a white stallion. In our world, however, things are rarely that simple. The assumption here seems to be that if we "stood up" to Nasser, he would have just slunk away with his tail between his legs. But what if he had called our bluff, instead? By 1990/91, after the 'Carter Doctrine', with no Vietnam in progress, and no Cold War to hamper us --- we were ready and able to put Saddam Hussein in his place. In 1967 we were in no such position, and for us to have pretended otherwise may have resulted in even greater tragedy.

A couple comments.

Nasir and the secular socialist Arab nationalists had already "gotten into bed" with the Communist Bloc while posing as "non-aligned" after the failed British-French-Israeli intervention in 1956 and the events that led up to that event. If there was a time for Western intervention that was it, but Eisenhower forced the British and French to back off and set the conditions that led to the war in 1967. Egyptian and Syrian forces in 1967 were armed, equipped and trained by Soviet industry and advisors. Their aviation was filled with MiG-17, -19 and -21 fighters and Il-28 light bombers. The armored forces consisted of T-34/85, T-54/55 and JS-II/III tanks and their artillery was entirely Soviet or Soviet Bloc provided. Their failure in 1967 as opposed to 1973 was related more to the surprise and momentum generated by the Israeli pre-emptive offensive that grabbed and held the initiative through the war. In 1973, the Egyptians and Syrians (don't forget that Israel fought its wars in 1967 and 1973 on at least two fronts) grabbed the initiative with surprise and fought their war successfully, until they abandoned their operational and strategic plan and allowed the Israelis the opportunity to seize the initiative and generate a successful counter-offensive that almost reached the gates of Cairo and Damascus. We just cannot say that if the UN and US had aborted Nasir's planned war in 1967, that "Yom Kippur" would have come earlier or later and have come closer to success for the Arabs. The defeat in 1967, the "War of Attrition" in 1970 and the international situation in 1973 where all events that created the war in 1973. Without defeat in 1967, would the Arab forces have conducted the internal reform and improvements that made such a difference to their performance in 1973? Without the "War of Attrition" in 1970, would the Israelis have been taken by surpise and without the international situation generated by the Israeli pre-emptive strike in 1967 would the Israelis have hesitated to take pre-emptive action against the Arabs? We can't fully know that stopping Nasir in 1967 would have had the consequences proposed in the article or the above post.

As far as an international naval force, first, any such force would have been made up of US, British and French ships and would have looked not like a UN "peacekeeping" force but a Western intervention on the scale of the 1956 Suez landings. Thus any such measure would have been vetoed by the USSR in the Security Council and decried in the Arab and "Non-Aligned World" as Western agression. Such a move had every possibility of widening and deepening the crisis. Militarily, the US had the naval forces to commit, and there was very little the Soviets or anyone else could have done about it. The Israeli destroyer was sunk by "Styx" missiles fired from within the harbor at Alexandria, not on the open sea. Any attempt by Egyptian fast attack craft to engage the USN would have ended in the same abject failure experienced by the North Vietnamese, because in 1967 naval aviation trumped almost any other form of naval power, and the USN was naval aviation in 1967 (and for any time since 1946 for that matter). But the real point is that if the Egyptians had attempted to stop an "international" convoy, the only true way to secure free passage through the Straits would have been to occupy them, which would have required the commitment of US Marines to ground action. I'm not sure that the Johnson Administration was prepared to do that.

Finally, I cannot see where any action by the US or UN was going to prevent a war between the Arabs and Israel. Secular Arab socialist nationalism had generated a situation where the "destruction of Zionism" had become a major, if not primary, reason for the existence of regimes such as Nasir's in Egypt. Internal pressures in Egypt, Syria and Iraq were going to force aggression on those governments at some point, regardless of any actions short of full military intervention by the US or UN. And the USSR would never allow the UN to that and the US didn't have the international support or the military assets to do so.

As a postscript here, let's remember that the US gave Israel little more than moral support until the early 1970s. The only US weapons used by the ISDF in the Six Day War were WW2 or other "cast-offs" bought on the open market or provided by France as support when the French were still fighting the "vast Arab conspiracy" in Algeria. Most aircraft were French made and most ground weapons that weren't US cast-offs were British. The standard infantry weapon was an Israeli designed and produced SMG and a Belgian designed and Israeli produced rifle and MG, where German and Czech "leftovers" weren't being used by Reservists. The newest US weapons were M48A2 medium tanks transferred by West Germany as reparations, still a generation back from US Army standard. The increase in US support to Israel, including the release of first line weapons systems such as M60 battle tanks and F-4E Phantom tac fighters came more a result of Nixon Administration and Republican Party exploitation of US domestic politics.

fozzy:

I was home from Cuba then and stationed at Camp Lejeune, NC with 10th Marines, a 155mm self propelled Howitzer Regiment. Word had come to us that in the Summer of 1970, we were restricted to base for the weekend. Along with 6th Marine Regiment, we were on stand-by for deployment to Israel. Most of the regiment were hardened veterans of Vietnam and were not happy with the thought of being redeployed to the Middle East after having done a tour in Vietnam. Fortunately we did not go as there would have been hell to pay.

The military was ~ 3 million men then and far bigger than what it is today. The draft was still a factor also. Deploying to the Middle East would not have been as difficult as it is today. In fact, it would have been relatively easy to do and fight two fronts. We were extremely mobile at that time also. The issue then as it is in Iraq today. Once you engage, how do you disengage once the battle is over and leave a peaceful land. You can't and we would have been entrapped.

I would be interested in knowing more about this alert order. There was no situation in 1970 that would call for the deployment of US ground forces to Israel in 1970. The "War of Attrition" which was on-going at the time, involved the Egyptians trying to use AAA and SAMs to deny airspace over and just beyond the Canal to the Israelis while conducting artillery interdiction and harrassment fire on the Israeli positions of what would become the so-called "Bar Lev" line. The Israelis basically won the military side of this campaign, destroying several Soviet manned AD sites and shooting done some MiG-21s with Soviet pilots. The only point at which I know of US forces being alerted for immediate deployment to Israel was in Oct 73 when the 82d ABN and other strategic reserve units along with the 6th MEB in the Med were alerted for movement to counter the Soviet threat to deploy Soviet Army Guards airborne divisions to Egypt to save the Egyptian 6th Army and set up blocking positions south of Cairo