Essay: Suez Crisis
Dec. 2nd, 2009 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI've been fascinated and charmed by the vignettes that my friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wcg posted last year in his journal and then expanded on this year. I greatly admire his fascination with and learning about aspects of American history that I'd never encountered, and I've been impressed by his ability to turn them into terrific yarns. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so though I don't think I can do nearly as well as he, I decided to try and set myself the same task: write each day of the month a short piece about an interesting incident in history.
I heard David Kilcullen speak today; he's a former Australian infantry officer and sometime advisor to the USG on counterinsurgency (COIN) and counterterrorism. He talked a good deal about COIN theory and the practical aspects of trying to implement it on the ground in Afghanistan, where he's spent a good deal of time. Ironically, the Wikipedia entry on him quotes his observation that "[President Obama] risks a Suez-style debacle in Afghanistan if he fails to deploy enough extra troops and opts instead for a messy compromise." Ironic because I'd decided to write my first piece on the Suez Crisis, which I just finished reading about for a class.
Since I'm doing two days at once, I've written a fairly long piece, which I'll post in two segments.
Like many historical events, the Suez Crisis of 1956 was like a ball of yarn, threads of history that were so tightly tangled and knotted around each other that it becomes almost impossible to tease out a single length and distinguish it from the others.
One thread was the rich crimson of British imperial history. But this thread was sadly worn and frayed. Britain in the 1950s was a battered country, exhausted by the effort of defeating the Axis Powers and seeing its great empire slip away. The jewel in its crown was gone, partitioned into Pakistan and India, with Burma and Ceylon falling away shortly thereafter. Its mandates in the Middle East had ended too: Transjordan had become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; Palestine had been divided into Israel and an Arab state that had died stillborn in the violence of 1948, its territory split between Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. Western interest in Iran had been preserved in the CIA-engineered coup of 1953, but at the cost of the nation passing from the British sphere to that of rising America.
Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden had served as Winston Churchill’s righthand man during the latter’s service as PM during World War II. Now he had gained the greatest political office in the land when his nation’s long-held power and influence seemed in steep decline. Eden was determined to restore Britain’s standing, especially as the senior Western power in the Middle East. Israel, smarting from the years of repression during the Palestine Mandate, did not trust Britain at all. But the UK still held influence in Iraq and Jordan, the two Hashemite kingdoms it had created after World War I and helped preserve through World War II. And it controlled Egypt, homeland of pharaohs and site of the Suez Canal, that miracle of the 19th century that linked the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, allowing ships traveling between Europe and Asia to avoid long transits around the continent of Africa.
With the end of empire, the canal was not the crucial military artery in Britain’s empire that it had been since it was seized by British troops in 1882 to “protect” it during an Egyptian revolution (which British troops then proceeded to put down). But it was still vital in economic terms to Britain and the rest of Europe, as ships carrying Middle East oil passed through Suez to fill the fuel bunkers of the Free World. In 1951, a popularly elected government in Egypt abrogated the treaty under which Britain still controlled the canal (and, effectively, Egypt). Britain (represented by then-Foreign Minister Eden) grudgingly faced the reality that they could not retain control by force and negotiated a withdrawal of British forces from Egypt, with the proviso that they could return if Egypt (or another Arab country, or Turkey) were attacked. British troops pulled out in July 1956, leaving the Canal in the hands of a private Franco-British company, to be operated for the good of the international community as a neutral property, under the terms of an 1888 treaty (one that Britan had ignored in the past when it proved convenient to British foreign policy to do so).
Another thread in the tangle was the green of Egypt itself, by 1956 under the rule of President Gamal abd an-Nasir. Nasir, a hugely charismatic former military officer, had been elected in June 1956 after several years in which he had been first part of the revolutionary Free Officers movement, then vice-chairman of its successor, the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council, then prime minister (after his followers seized the president), and finally presidential candidate of the sole legal party, the National Union, in the 1956 election. Nasir combined idealism and a hearty dose of pragmatism with considerable ability as a political operator and public speaker. He had led the negotiations that rid Egypt of the hated British, and he had engineered a deal for arms with the Soviet bloc when no Western government seemed willing to sell Egypt the weapons it needed. Nasir wished Egypt, not Britain, to take the place of leader among the Arab nations of the Middle East. He discouraged other Arab states from joining the British-sponsored Baghdad Pact, an anticommunist defense organization. When PM Eden visited Cairo to promote the pact, he lectured Nasir on international relations like a master delivering a lesson to a schoolboy, which deeply offended Nasir. When rioters in Amman persuaded King Hussein of Jordan to reject a British envoy urging Jordan’s accession to the Pact, and after the king then followed up this snub by firing the British officer who had headed Jordan’s elite Arab Legion for 30 years and replacing him with an Arab officer, Eden flew into a frenzy. He blamed the move on Nasir and announced to a startled and horrified British Foreign Office minister that he would crush Nasir, the he wanted Nasir “murdered”. When the US and the UK refused to help Egypt build a huge dam on the Nile at Aswan, Nasir turned to the Soviets for aid and, as a counterblow to the West, calmly announced that he was nationalizing the Suez Canal; it would be Egyptian national property, not Western private property.
The third major skein in this ball would be Israel, perhaps represented by a sturdy khaki cord. Having survived the gradually escalating civil war in Mandatory Palestine and emerging as the self-proclaimed State of Israel, this newest of the world’s nations relied on no one but itself. Financial aid came from the United States, but mostly from private citizens, very little from the US government, which was concerned with promoting a pan-Arab alliance against the spread of communism and did not wish to offend oil producers like Saudi Arabia too much by seeming too close to Israel. Israel found itself frustrated by constant guerrilla attacks by Palestinians trained, equipped, and supported by Egypt. Retaliatory raids did not stop the cross-border attacks; a more permanent solution was needed. Egypt also promoted an Arab economic boycott of Israel and barred goods bound to or from Israel from passing through the Suez Canal or the Strait of Tiran, the route to Israel’s southern port of Eilat. To drive off the Egyptians’ Palestinian surrogates and to reopen the sea routes, Israel needed to drive the Egyptian Army out of the Sinai Peninsula. It had the land power to do it (thanks in part to its sole national arms supplier, France), but it needed airpower, heavy bombers that France was not willing to provide. Reluctantly (given Israel’s colonial experience), Prime Minister David Ben Gurion turned to Eden’s Britain.
wcg posted last year in his journal and then expanded on this year. I greatly admire his fascination with and learning about aspects of American history that I'd never encountered, and I've been impressed by his ability to turn them into terrific yarns. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so though I don't think I can do nearly as well as he, I decided to try and set myself the same task: write each day of the month a short piece about an interesting incident in history.I heard David Kilcullen speak today; he's a former Australian infantry officer and sometime advisor to the USG on counterinsurgency (COIN) and counterterrorism. He talked a good deal about COIN theory and the practical aspects of trying to implement it on the ground in Afghanistan, where he's spent a good deal of time. Ironically, the Wikipedia entry on him quotes his observation that "[President Obama] risks a Suez-style debacle in Afghanistan if he fails to deploy enough extra troops and opts instead for a messy compromise." Ironic because I'd decided to write my first piece on the Suez Crisis, which I just finished reading about for a class.
Since I'm doing two days at once, I've written a fairly long piece, which I'll post in two segments.
Like many historical events, the Suez Crisis of 1956 was like a ball of yarn, threads of history that were so tightly tangled and knotted around each other that it becomes almost impossible to tease out a single length and distinguish it from the others.
One thread was the rich crimson of British imperial history. But this thread was sadly worn and frayed. Britain in the 1950s was a battered country, exhausted by the effort of defeating the Axis Powers and seeing its great empire slip away. The jewel in its crown was gone, partitioned into Pakistan and India, with Burma and Ceylon falling away shortly thereafter. Its mandates in the Middle East had ended too: Transjordan had become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; Palestine had been divided into Israel and an Arab state that had died stillborn in the violence of 1948, its territory split between Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. Western interest in Iran had been preserved in the CIA-engineered coup of 1953, but at the cost of the nation passing from the British sphere to that of rising America.
Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden had served as Winston Churchill’s righthand man during the latter’s service as PM during World War II. Now he had gained the greatest political office in the land when his nation’s long-held power and influence seemed in steep decline. Eden was determined to restore Britain’s standing, especially as the senior Western power in the Middle East. Israel, smarting from the years of repression during the Palestine Mandate, did not trust Britain at all. But the UK still held influence in Iraq and Jordan, the two Hashemite kingdoms it had created after World War I and helped preserve through World War II. And it controlled Egypt, homeland of pharaohs and site of the Suez Canal, that miracle of the 19th century that linked the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, allowing ships traveling between Europe and Asia to avoid long transits around the continent of Africa.
With the end of empire, the canal was not the crucial military artery in Britain’s empire that it had been since it was seized by British troops in 1882 to “protect” it during an Egyptian revolution (which British troops then proceeded to put down). But it was still vital in economic terms to Britain and the rest of Europe, as ships carrying Middle East oil passed through Suez to fill the fuel bunkers of the Free World. In 1951, a popularly elected government in Egypt abrogated the treaty under which Britain still controlled the canal (and, effectively, Egypt). Britain (represented by then-Foreign Minister Eden) grudgingly faced the reality that they could not retain control by force and negotiated a withdrawal of British forces from Egypt, with the proviso that they could return if Egypt (or another Arab country, or Turkey) were attacked. British troops pulled out in July 1956, leaving the Canal in the hands of a private Franco-British company, to be operated for the good of the international community as a neutral property, under the terms of an 1888 treaty (one that Britan had ignored in the past when it proved convenient to British foreign policy to do so).
Another thread in the tangle was the green of Egypt itself, by 1956 under the rule of President Gamal abd an-Nasir. Nasir, a hugely charismatic former military officer, had been elected in June 1956 after several years in which he had been first part of the revolutionary Free Officers movement, then vice-chairman of its successor, the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council, then prime minister (after his followers seized the president), and finally presidential candidate of the sole legal party, the National Union, in the 1956 election. Nasir combined idealism and a hearty dose of pragmatism with considerable ability as a political operator and public speaker. He had led the negotiations that rid Egypt of the hated British, and he had engineered a deal for arms with the Soviet bloc when no Western government seemed willing to sell Egypt the weapons it needed. Nasir wished Egypt, not Britain, to take the place of leader among the Arab nations of the Middle East. He discouraged other Arab states from joining the British-sponsored Baghdad Pact, an anticommunist defense organization. When PM Eden visited Cairo to promote the pact, he lectured Nasir on international relations like a master delivering a lesson to a schoolboy, which deeply offended Nasir. When rioters in Amman persuaded King Hussein of Jordan to reject a British envoy urging Jordan’s accession to the Pact, and after the king then followed up this snub by firing the British officer who had headed Jordan’s elite Arab Legion for 30 years and replacing him with an Arab officer, Eden flew into a frenzy. He blamed the move on Nasir and announced to a startled and horrified British Foreign Office minister that he would crush Nasir, the he wanted Nasir “murdered”. When the US and the UK refused to help Egypt build a huge dam on the Nile at Aswan, Nasir turned to the Soviets for aid and, as a counterblow to the West, calmly announced that he was nationalizing the Suez Canal; it would be Egyptian national property, not Western private property.
The third major skein in this ball would be Israel, perhaps represented by a sturdy khaki cord. Having survived the gradually escalating civil war in Mandatory Palestine and emerging as the self-proclaimed State of Israel, this newest of the world’s nations relied on no one but itself. Financial aid came from the United States, but mostly from private citizens, very little from the US government, which was concerned with promoting a pan-Arab alliance against the spread of communism and did not wish to offend oil producers like Saudi Arabia too much by seeming too close to Israel. Israel found itself frustrated by constant guerrilla attacks by Palestinians trained, equipped, and supported by Egypt. Retaliatory raids did not stop the cross-border attacks; a more permanent solution was needed. Egypt also promoted an Arab economic boycott of Israel and barred goods bound to or from Israel from passing through the Suez Canal or the Strait of Tiran, the route to Israel’s southern port of Eilat. To drive off the Egyptians’ Palestinian surrogates and to reopen the sea routes, Israel needed to drive the Egyptian Army out of the Sinai Peninsula. It had the land power to do it (thanks in part to its sole national arms supplier, France), but it needed airpower, heavy bombers that France was not willing to provide. Reluctantly (given Israel’s colonial experience), Prime Minister David Ben Gurion turned to Eden’s Britain.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 11:10 pm (UTC)And he succeeded in that. I remember vividly the weight that all other Arab nations put on the opinions of Egypt during the 1990-91 Gulf War.
Good essay. I'm looking forward to the conclusion.