The Suez Crisis

The Suez Crisis

President Eisenhower was deeply saddened when he had to rebuke his old
friends and allies, France and Great Britain, after they invaded Egypt, a
sovereign Middle Eastern nation. Ike was convinced, however, that his allies
were wrong, both as a matter of principle and of strategy. Here’s the way it
happened.

After World War II, many countries that had long been subjected to European
colonial control began movements to achieve independence. In places such as
India and Burma, national independence was achieved by relatively peaceful
negotiations with England. In Algeria and Indo-China (Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia)
bloody guerilla wars broke out when France refused to grant immediate
independence.

Egypt was a special case. Technically, Egypt became an independent nation
under a 1922 treaty with England but remained under British military control
until World War II ended. By 1953 the only European military power on Egyptian
soil was a military base, occupied by British forces, three miles wide and
sixty-five miles long beside the Suez Canal. Egyptian political and military
leaders announced their determination to throw out the “hated imperialists” and
by 1955 the British had almost completely evacuated the military base and turned
the facilities over to the Egyptians.

That evacuation left unsettled, however, some important control issues
involving the Canal. Since its completion in 1869, no single nation had ever
exercised control of the waterway. It was always open to all ships, including
warships, of any nation. The Suez Canal Company, whose stock was owned by
several European nations, maintained the canal, but exercised no control over
its use. Unlike the Panama Canal which has a very intricate series of locks to
be operated and maintained, Suez is an open waterway without any locks or
obstructions from end to end. Egypt clearly had the capacity to operate the
canal and the nation’s political leaders demanded sole authority over those
operations. The British and French leaders insisted that no single nation had
the right to control unilaterally the world’s most important waterway.

The true reason that European countries were so determined to have
international control of the Suez Canal was oil. Almost all of their oil came
through the canal, and they were afraid of dire economic consequences that might
result if Egypt should choose to disrupt their fuel supply. The negotiations and
bickering went on from 1952 to 1956 without resolution.

The Suez Canal

Egypt’s leader, a former army colonel, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, had come to power
in the spring of 1954 and proclaimed Egypt to be the greatest Arabic socialist
state. One of his earliest acts was to ask the United States to sell $27 million
worth of military arms and equipment to Egypt. When informed that he would have
to pay cash for American arms, Nasser quickly dropped the matter and quietly
opened negotiations with the Soviet Union for his military hardware.

The following year Nasser approached the United States for a major loan to
help in constructing a huge Nile River dam at Aswan. Negotiations proceeded and
a tentative agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the
World Bank was reached in June, 1956. But at the same time he was dealing with
America and England, Nasser was secretly negotiating a combined arms and Aswan
dam financing arrangement with the Soviet Union. Satisfied that he would have
full Soviet support for his needs, Nasser began to make outrageous public
demands on the United States and Great Britain, demands that he knew they would
never accept. Finally, in July, the Eisenhower administration notified the
Egyptian leader that the dam financing agreement was withdrawn.

Nasser responded with a vitriolic public attack on the United States and two
days later announced that Egypt had nationalized the Suez Canal and imposed
Egyptian military law in the Canal Zone.

America and its allies were alarmed by the prospect of having a
Soviet-sponsored nation control the canal. European leaders were quite concerned
with the possibility of Arabian oil shipments being delayed or denied. France
and Britain shared these fears, but also saw the Suez situation as a symbol of
their diminishing position in the Middle East. They turned to military action in
an effort to restore their control.

President Eisenhower believed that “…the Canal was, in effect, a global
public utility.” He thought the United Nations, or an alliance of the maritime
nations, should determine the status of the canal. In his view, military action
by one or two European nations acting without substantial world sanction would
not achieve a stable settlement. Unilateral military action would incite Arab
hatred and destabilize the Middle East. He steadily urged calm diplomacy and an
abstention from military action unless it was sanctioned by the Untied Nations.

But the negotiations made no progress and by October 25th both Britain and
France had terminated talks with America. At the same time Egypt renewed its
incursions into Israel and established a joint military command structure with
Syria and Jordan, surrounding Israel with coordinated armies. In late October
Israel launched a preemptive attack invading the Sinai Peninsula. By nightfall
of the first day, Israeli troops had advanced to the Suez Canal.

Having good reason to believe that France and Israel were secretly acting in
concert, Ike directed his diplomats to secure a resolution of the United Nations
Security Council stipulating that no member nation could use military force in
the Middle East. Even the Soviet Union joined the U.S. in voting for the
resolution – but France and Britain vetoed it.

A few days later British and French military forces invaded Egypt at Port
Said and along both sides of the canal. Egypt retaliated by sinking ships at
critical points in the canal, completely blocking the waterway.

President Eisenhower was outraged at the behavior of America’s allies. When
he addressed the American people, he completely disassociated the United States
from the conflict and explained that America had no prior knowledge of the
attacks on Egypt: “We cannot – in the world, any more than in our own nation –
subscribe to one law for the weak, another for the strong …. There can only be
one law – or there will be no peace.” In addressing the United Nations,
Eisenhower’s Secretary of State said, “It is nothing less than tragic that … we
should be forced to choose between following in the footsteps of Anglo-French
colonialism in Asia and Africa or splitting … away from their course.”

Over the next several weeks Eisenhower led the negotiations for a cease fire
followed by a United Nations resolution requiring the British and French to
withdraw from Egypt rapidly and unconditionally. The Europeans had won the
battles and lost the war, weakening the western alliance and achieving nothing.
Eventually, Ike also convinced the Israeli government to withdraw from Egyptian
territory. It took six months to clear the wrecks and reopen the Suez Canal.
Egyptian sovereignty had been affirmed by Eisenhower and, through American
diplomacy, by the United Nations.