Nasser's Gambit
Marc, at American Future, has been exploring French policy in the Middle East as it has evolved in the last 50 years. Without coordinating our writing, we've both found ourselves drawn in the same direction. The same day I was writing about Algeria, he was writing about the Suez Crisis, which brought the Algeria crisis in France to a head.
The crisis itself, however, was not the fault of France, and the French seem to have kept their heads better than either the British or the Egyptians.
Nasser needed grand gestures and foreign enemies and big idea projects to distract his people from their grinding poverty and misery. Suez was a quick and easy target. He had already bluffed and blustered over it in 1954 and in response the weak-willed British leadership had pulled the military garrison from its Suez base.
Two years later, smarting under American refusal to fun the Aswan dam (a fiscal, environmental, and cultural disaster of a project), he needed another grand distraction. So he nationalized the Anglo-French canal.
Nasser's act may not even have broken the 1888 convention on the canal, especially if he indeed paid compensation, as he talked of doing. The arrangement only had another 12 years to run, anyhow.
The smart thing for the British and French to do would have been to let the CIA, or the Israelis, or both handle Nasser. That would have taken a little more time, though. The Americans were in the middle of an election season, and Eisenhower would be damned if he would involve the country in a military action at that point.
But at the same time, Nasser was embarked on a Soviet-backed military build-up and cobbling together an anti-Israel alliance with Syria and Jordan to attempt to reverse the decision of 1948 by winning a genocidal war. He had blockaded Israel's southern port -- itself an act of war, and denied Israel's ship's passage through the Suez Canal, a violation of the 1888 convention.
But Sir Anthony Eden, ruling Britain at last after years in Churchill's shadow, needed a dramatic moment of his own. He yearned to shed his image as too "soft" to be a leader. Eisenhower warned Eden as plainly as he could: "Nasser thrives on drama." But it was too late.
The French, too, were in the mood for a dramatic victory. The Fourth Republic was on its last legs: It had lost Indo-China and Tunesia, was in the process of losing Morocco, and was locked in a vicious and losing struggle against Algerian insurgents, whom Nasser openly supported.
The French had the best proposal among the beligerents; they proposed to let Israel handle Nasser via a pre-emptive strike. That, however, would require bombers to take out the Egyptian air force and prevent it from leveling Israeli cities. And Eden, vacillating as usual between scrupulous legality and action (and never a friend of Israel), refused to provide them.
The resulting Anglo-French-Israeli script for an Israeli attack, which would be a pretext for Anglo-French intervention in just the canal zone was so complicated it probably was doomed from the start. It certainly was doomed after Eisenhower furiously objected to the whole scheme when it was barely underway. Eden, wishy-washy as ever, caved in, and Nasser strutted as a hero in the Arab world and the Third World for humiliating the imperialists, despite the fact that his new Soviet-supplied army was hacked to pieces by the Israelis.
The crisis itself, however, was not the fault of France, and the French seem to have kept their heads better than either the British or the Egyptians.
Nasser needed grand gestures and foreign enemies and big idea projects to distract his people from their grinding poverty and misery. Suez was a quick and easy target. He had already bluffed and blustered over it in 1954 and in response the weak-willed British leadership had pulled the military garrison from its Suez base.
Two years later, smarting under American refusal to fun the Aswan dam (a fiscal, environmental, and cultural disaster of a project), he needed another grand distraction. So he nationalized the Anglo-French canal.
Nasser's act may not even have broken the 1888 convention on the canal, especially if he indeed paid compensation, as he talked of doing. The arrangement only had another 12 years to run, anyhow.
The smart thing for the British and French to do would have been to let the CIA, or the Israelis, or both handle Nasser. That would have taken a little more time, though. The Americans were in the middle of an election season, and Eisenhower would be damned if he would involve the country in a military action at that point.
But at the same time, Nasser was embarked on a Soviet-backed military build-up and cobbling together an anti-Israel alliance with Syria and Jordan to attempt to reverse the decision of 1948 by winning a genocidal war. He had blockaded Israel's southern port -- itself an act of war, and denied Israel's ship's passage through the Suez Canal, a violation of the 1888 convention.
But Sir Anthony Eden, ruling Britain at last after years in Churchill's shadow, needed a dramatic moment of his own. He yearned to shed his image as too "soft" to be a leader. Eisenhower warned Eden as plainly as he could: "Nasser thrives on drama." But it was too late.
The French, too, were in the mood for a dramatic victory. The Fourth Republic was on its last legs: It had lost Indo-China and Tunesia, was in the process of losing Morocco, and was locked in a vicious and losing struggle against Algerian insurgents, whom Nasser openly supported.
The French had the best proposal among the beligerents; they proposed to let Israel handle Nasser via a pre-emptive strike. That, however, would require bombers to take out the Egyptian air force and prevent it from leveling Israeli cities. And Eden, vacillating as usual between scrupulous legality and action (and never a friend of Israel), refused to provide them.
The resulting Anglo-French-Israeli script for an Israeli attack, which would be a pretext for Anglo-French intervention in just the canal zone was so complicated it probably was doomed from the start. It certainly was doomed after Eisenhower furiously objected to the whole scheme when it was barely underway. Eden, wishy-washy as ever, caved in, and Nasser strutted as a hero in the Arab world and the Third World for humiliating the imperialists, despite the fact that his new Soviet-supplied army was hacked to pieces by the Israelis.
