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inter-Arab power balance, typically embroiled in the rivalries that split the Arab world and a part of the solidarities that united it. In the 1950s, modernizing, nationalist Egypt's rivals were traditional pro-Western Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and its main ally was Syria. In the 1970s, an alliance of Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia led the Arab world in its search for peace with honor; when Sadat made a separate peace, Syria became Egypt's main rival. The country's Arab-Islamic identity also put certain constraints on foreign-policy decision makers: to violate it risked the legitimacy of the whole regime. Finally, Egypt's foreign policy was pulled in contrary directions by the ideals of anti-imperialist nonalignment and the webs of dependency in which the country was increasingly enmeshed. Egypt's long history of subordination to foreign rulers, especially European imperialism, produced an inferiority complex, an intense anti-imperialism, a quest for dignity, and, particularly under Nasser, a powerful national pride among Egyptians. Egypt's national ideal was to be independent of both East and West, to be a strong prosperous state, to stand up to Israel, and to lead the Arab world. Yet, as a poverty-stricken developing country and a new state actor in the international power game, Egypt could not do without large amounts of economic aid and military assistance from the advanced economies and the great powers. Such dependency, of course, carried heavy costs and threats to national independence. The problem of dependency could be minimized by diversifying aid sources, and Nasser initially pursued a policy of balance between East and West, which won aid from both sides and minimized dependence on any one. United States support for Israel after the June 1967 War made Egypt ever more dependent on the Soviet Union for military aid and protection, but this dependence was, in part, balanced by increasing financial aid from the conservative Arab oil states. By the late 1970s, Sadat, in choosing to rely on American diplomacy to recover Egyptian land from Israel and in allowing his ties to the Soviet Union and the Arab world to wither, had led Egypt into heavy economic and military dependency on the United States. This dependency, by precluding foreign-policy decisions displeasing to Israel and Washington, sharply limited Egypt's pursuit of a vigorous Arab and independent foreign policy. The basic dilemma of Egypt's foreign policy was that its dependence on foreign assistance conflicted with its aspiration for national independence and its concept of its role as an Arab-Islamic and traditionally nonaligned entity.