The Suez Crisis

The Suez Canal and Its Strategic Importance

The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, was one of the most strategically important artificial waterways in the world. By connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, it eliminated the need for ships travelling between Europe and Asia to sail around the Cape of Good Hope — cutting the journey between Britain and India by approximately 6,000 miles. For Britain, which still governed a global empire and depended on Middle Eastern oil, the canal was not merely commercially important but strategically vital.

The canal had been built by a Franco-Egyptian company, the Suez Canal Company, with British and French shareholders holding the majority of the shares. Britain had purchased a 44% stake in 1875, when the financially pressed Egyptian Khedive sold his shares to raise immediate cash. By 1956, approximately two-thirds of the canal's traffic was European, and Britain's military position in the Middle East depended significantly on its ability to move forces rapidly through the waterway.

Nasser and Egyptian Nationalism

Gamal Abdel Nasser had come to power in Egypt following the 1952 revolution that overthrew King Farouk. He was the dominant figure in a generation of Arab nationalism — a movement that sought to end Western imperial presence in the Arab world, assert Arab political and cultural independence, and modernise Arab states on terms defined by Arabs rather than by European powers.

Nasser's relations with Britain and the United States deteriorated through 1955 and 1956. His decision to purchase weapons from Czechoslovakia — a Soviet bloc country — alarmed Western powers who saw it as evidence of Soviet penetration of the Middle East. When the United States and Britain subsequently withdrew their offer to finance the Aswan High Dam project, citing concerns about Egyptian reliability, Nasser responded with a decision that shocked the world.

On 26 July 1956, in a speech at Alexandria, Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company. The canal's revenues would be used to finance the Aswan Dam. Egypt would compensate shareholders at current market prices. The move was entirely legal under international law — Nasser had simply done what Bolivia, Mexico, and Iran had done with oil companies — but it struck at what Britain and France regarded as a vital interest.

The Secret Plan

Britain's Prime Minister Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill in 1955, reacted to the nationalisation with what many of his contemporaries and subsequent historians have regarded as disproportionate anger. Eden compared Nasser to Hitler and Mussolini, and became convinced that Nasser's removal was essential to British interests. President Eisenhower, who was facing a presidential election in November 1956, cautioned strongly against military action.

Eden's solution was a secret conspiracy with France and Israel known as the Protocol of Sèvres. Under the plan: Israel would invade Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula; Britain and France would then issue an ultimatum to both sides to withdraw from the canal zone; when Egypt inevitably refused, Britain and France would intervene as "peacekeepers" to separate the combatants — and in the process, seize control of the canal.

The plan was designed to give Britain and France a legal pretext for intervention while concealing their prior arrangement with Israel. It was, in short, a deception — and a deception that fooled no one of significance, including the Americans.

Eisenhower's Intervention

The American response to the Anglo-French operation was swift and decisive. Eisenhower was furious — not because he had any particular sympathy for Nasser, but because the operation had been conducted without American knowledge or consent, because it provided the Soviet Union with propaganda ammunition at exactly the moment Soviet tanks were crushing a rebellion in Hungary, and because it undermined the American position in the Arab world that the United States had been carefully building.

The economic weapon Eisenhower employed was straightforward but devastating. The pound sterling was under speculative pressure, and Britain's foreign exchange reserves were running low. The United States indicated that it would not support a British application to the International Monetary Fund for emergency credit unless Britain agreed to an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal. Without American support, the pound would collapse.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan, who had been one of the strongest advocates for military action, now told Cabinet that without American support, the British economy faced catastrophe. On 7 November 1956, Britain agreed to a ceasefire. France, which could not continue alone, followed. The withdrawal was complete by December.

The Political Consequences

The Suez Crisis had immediate and lasting consequences for British politics and foreign policy. Eden resigned in January 1957, his health broken and his political position destroyed. Harold Macmillan, who had flip-flopped from hawk to dove as the crisis developed, became Prime Minister — a succession that struck many as remarkable given his role in the debacle.

The crisis accelerated the process of decolonisation that was already underway. British governments after Suez recognised more clearly that military action to protect imperial interests was no longer feasible without American support — and that American support could not be assumed. The "special relationship" between Britain and the United States continued, but on terms that were explicitly asymmetrical: Britain was the junior partner, and American interests took precedence.

For France, the lesson was different. The humiliation of Suez convinced de Gaulle — who returned to power in 1958 — that France needed an independent nuclear deterrent and could not rely on American protection. France subsequently developed its own nuclear weapons, withdrew from NATO's integrated military command, and pursued a foreign policy explicitly designed to maintain independence from both superpowers.

What the Crisis Revealed

The Suez Crisis revealed something that had been true for some years but had not been publicly acknowledged: that Britain was no longer capable of unilateral great-power action in the world. The Second World War had left Britain exhausted and indebted; the American Lend-Lease programme had financed the war effort but at the cost of enormous obligations; the process of decolonisation was consuming resources and political capital. The empire that seemed to make Britain a great power was increasingly a burden rather than an asset.

None of this was new in 1956. What was new was that it had been demonstrated publicly and humiliatingly. Britain had been forced to back down not by military defeat but by financial pressure from an ally. The image of British power — which was partly what made Britain powerful — had been shattered in a way that could not be repaired.