The last attempt by Britain and France to use their power on a significant
scale without the approval of the United States came in 1956. The Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal (to pay for the Aswan Dam that the United States, Britain and France would not help fund) was taken as a direct challenge to European power. The French were alienated by Egyptian support for the Algerian nationalists and the British, who saw Arab nationalism as a threat to their rapidly declining influence in the region, kept drawing wholly inappropriate parallels between Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian leader, and Adolf Hitler