It is indeed a crisis for everyone involved. For Egypt, the country is being bombed and invaded by three foreign powers and its sovereignty threatened. For Britain and France, it represents a threat to their declining hegemony (esp. for the former) in the 'Middle East' and a threat to a vital trade link, plus the outcomes threaten the very basis of their economies. For the United States, it's a betrayal by NATO allies who have blindsided the Eisenhower administration and risks damaging the 'Western' position with Arab states. For Israel, it's a further escalation of ongoing tension with Egypt and the wider 'Arab world'. For the USSR - and Khrushchev in particular - it's more of an opportunity to make gains in the perceived zero sum game of the Cold War.

It's important to wind back a little and start with the ascent to power of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. Nasser came to power as a leader of the Young Officers coup in 1952, a coup that removed the British-aligned King Farouk from power. Out of this coup this, it was Nasser who rose to become the head of the government and arguably the biggest figure in all of Arab nationalism (although that self-diagnosed position does not go unchallenged!).

At the same time in Washington, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his administration (in particular his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) were concerned about the effects of a continued British imperial presence in the region (Britain was - despite the decline of the empire - still the dominant power in the 'Middle East'). Despite Egypt having been granted independence in 1922, there was still vast British military forces stationed in the country. This was mainly to do with the crucial Suez Canal, an artery through which flowed the vast majority of Britain’s oil supplies. In 1954, Eisenhower and Dulles managed to persuade British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to withdraw the British military from Egypt. This withdrawal was based upon US and Egyptian guarantees that the canal would remain open and that the oil would continue to flow. Why did the Eisenhower administration take this course pf action? Arab nationalism. In particular, the rise of Nasser.

Nasser had extremely ambitious plans for Egypt’s modernisation and reform. The most prominent aspect of this was the Aswan High Dam project, a huge hydro-electric and irrigation system on the River Nile, that promised to transform Egypt’s industry and agriculture. Such a plan aligned very closely with American ideas about modernisation, where ‘less developed’ societies could become more like their Western counterparts through modernisation, and gigantic projects such as dams were typical of this. Indeed, we see such projects in Afghanistan in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, in Ghana after independence, and even in Vietnam in the 1960s. But it was Nasser, British arrogance, the dam, and oil that precipitated the Middle East’s biggest crisis of the 1950s – Suez.

So - finally! - the crisis! On July 26, 1956, Nasser announced that the Suez Canal had been nationalised in the name of the Egyptian people. Not only that, but the canal would be closed to Israeli vessels. Why? The Eisenhower administration had initially offered support and funding for the massive Aswan project in the hope that Egypt would come into the Western orbit (because they are viewing things through a 'Cold War lens' at this point). In September 1955, it emerged that Egypt was purchasing significant quantities of arms from the USSR, via Czechoslovakia. Nasser had originally wanted to buy American weapons but refused to guarantee that they would not be used against Israel, so Washington turned down the potential sale.

Nasser was also frustrating London's attempts to broaden the Baghdad Pact, a sort of mini-NATO in the Middle East. Nasser effectively persuaded Jordan not to join and was convinced that the American and British were potentially allying with Iraqi prime minister Nuri as-Said against him. as-Said was one of Nasser’s main rivals for leadership within the Arab world.

In May 1956, Nasser also diplomatically recognised the communist People's Republic of China (PRC), which sent the Eisenhower administration into something of a fury. They cancelled funding for the Aswan project, in the hope that Nasser would approach the Soviets for help (he did) and that the project's vast costs would create significant financial problems for Moscow. It is important to remember, though, that much of what Nasser was doing was nothing to do with America, Britain, or the Cold War directly. A lot of it was about his leadership in the Arab world and his desire to be a major figure in a potential unified Arabian state.

When the British-French-Israeli invasion finally happened in October-November of 1956, there was further fury in Washington at the fact that their alleged allies had blindsided them. Eisenhower’s administration threatened Britain with economic ruin if they didn't pull out, supported sanctions against Israel, and refused to supply oil in the face of a Saudi Arabian boycott. The crisis also served massively increase Nasser’s popularity at home and abroad.

Why, then, did the US not support its allies? There are several reasons. There was Eisenhower’s genuine fury that his alleged allies would take such election on the eve of the US presidential elections. The invasion also risked inflaming Arab nationalist sentiment and risked driving Arab leaders further towards the Soviet Union. At the same time as Suez, the USSR had launched its brutal repression of the 1956 uprising in Hungary. Aggressive Western action meant that the administration was not able to take full propaganda advantage of events in Eastern Europe. There was also the very real threat that the USSR might get involved on Egypt’s side, potentially leading to a wider war. Moscow had issued veiled and sometimes not so veiled threats to this effect. Khrushchev indicated that he might be willing to use the USSR’s atomic weapons in support of Egypt.

The foreign relations historian George Herring sums it up very well when he comments that:

“The Suez affair was one of the most complex and dangerous of Cold War crises. Walking a tightrope over numerous conflicting forces, Eisenhower and Dulles did manage to avert war with the Soviet Union and limit the damage to relations with the Arab states. On the other hand, America’s relations with its major allies plunged to their lowest point in years. Washington and London each believed they had been double-crossed. The British and French resented their humiliation at the hands of an ally. An already volatile Middle East was further destabilized. Nasser remained in power – a fact Dulles later privately lamented to the British. Soviet premier Khrushchev mistakenly concluded that his rocket-rattling had carried the day, thus emboldening him to further and even more reckless nuclear gambits.”

I hope that this gives a useful general outline of the short to medium term roots of the crisis and why is was a crisis for those involved.

Malcolm

​

Sources

Barrett, Roby C., The Greater Middle East and the Cold War: U.S. Foreign Policy under Eisenhower and Kennedy (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010)

Dietrich, Christopher R. W., Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Grendzier, Irene L., Notes from the Minefield: United States intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997)

Herring, George, The American Century and Beyond: U.S. Foreign Relations, 1893-2014 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)

Khalil, Osamah F., ‘The Crossroads of the World: U.S. and British Foreign Policy Doctrines and the Construct of the Middle East, 1902–2007’, Diplomatic History 38:2 (February 2014), 299-344

Smith, Simon C., Ending Empire in the Middle East: Britain, the United States, and Post-war decolonization (London: Taylor and Francis, 2012)

Yaqub, Salim, Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)