I've been rewatching the crown lately, and got to the point where they depict the Suez crisis as kind of the practical and symbolic end of Britain's role as a great power; it destroyed a prime minister's career, ruined the economy, and seemingly putting the UK in a funk that lasts all the way through the rest of the show thus far, etc. I guess my question is, How did other western allies fare? I'd imagine Israel being seen as an aggressor set the stage for later wars (its more complicated than that of course, just explaining my thoughts), and I'd guess the US siding against its European allies led to some awkward government summits, for example.
Great question!
I’ll start with France. So France and the US had an interesting relationship. The US had been advocating for anti colonial policies for some time and the French were a colonial empire. This heavily went against them obviously. And the French and the US were both part of NATO but the alliance was a little more precarious than either would admit. But after the Suez Crisis, it soon became very clear to France what all of this meant. The US had not only gone against them, but had gotten upset at the French acting independently from them. This showed the French that the US, or the UK as well, were both not the most trust worthy allies and for them to reconsider their relationship. They had been going in this direction for some time, for example, the US and UK wanted France to be the main military power on the European continent to fight the Soviets. The French were not too keen on being in another spot of being overrun. All of these things combined would eventually result in France leaving NATO some years later.
Israel performed well in the war. Again they had demonstrated their superb skill in armored warfare and combined arms operations. For Israel it showed them that they were extremely capable to hold up in a brawl with the Arab world and put a new level of confidence in their command. Diplomatically Israel didn’t get as much backlash as much as the UK and French and and US didn’t really care as much. They still supported the Israelis. This combined Israeli confidence and American/British arms would lead to the Israelis winning the six day war and the October war.
Perhaps the nation that benefited the most, besides Egypt, was the United States. It had showed the world that the age of these imperialist powers were over and the age of the US had begun. The US was now the unrivaled leader of NATO. Without US involvement, a possible war would have broken out with the UK, France and the USSR, and honestly without America the Soviets would have won, and all parties involved knew that if western Europe wanted to stay capitalist and not a soviet puppet state, then they’d need American support to do so.
Honestly you can go on with the affects of each nation in this event. These were just the main reasons. But I could add that French military confidence was somewhat restored, Israeli taking of the Sinai allowed better economic growth as they gained a port in the Red Sea, and that the United States showed the British that they could crash their economy and that the British need to remain a friend of the US. But these were just the ones I thought of as important.