Excellent article with a point of view I had not considered before! I did have a clarification question though: do you have a source for British/French troops in the canal zone finding Nasser’s orders to prepare for an Israeli invasion? I believe it given Nasser’s actions but if possible I’d like to read further on it
Thanks Brian. The quote about annihilating Israel comes from the Professor's lecture posted in the sources. I will have to listen through to get the exact quote.
1) The Israelis conquered the Sinai too quickly thus rendering the British’s raison d’etre to take Port Said implausible. 2) The United States stabbed the Tripartite Alliance in the back and refused to support them because it was an election year and Eisenhower couldn’t risk disturbing the international peace. As Richard Nixon would later explain in the classic documentary “Israel: A Nation is Born” hosted by the incomparable Abba Eban, had it not been an election year, the United States would’ve supported the actions of the Tripartite Alliance. 3) Even if the Tripartite Alliance had accomplished their goals, they would’ve had to deal with a hostile populace that would’ve revolted and committed terrorist attacks against Tripartite forces who sought to drive the Europeans and the Israelis out of their country. At the end of the day, the international community then and now, chose peace over order and pressured the Tripartite Alliance into withdrawing. Nasser won a huge political victory. The world would soon find out what a huge mistake that had been. Nasser would go on to cause all sorts of chaos in the region. He tried to form a unified Arab state with Syria, helped topple the Iraqi monarchy, toppled the Yemenite monarchy in 1962, launched a war in Yemen that lasted from 1962-1970, caused havoc in Lebanon, and launched a war of annihilation against Israel in 1967.
Eisenhower would later privately conclude Nasser had duped him. Eden had been proven right all along. Today we need to restore his place of honor among the great leaders of his time and give him the respect he deserves! Fortunately in time, Nasser would be brought down by his and his allies’ catastrophic defeat at the hands of the very Jewish state he tried to annihilate in 1967 and his very own Vietnam in Yemen. He was never the celebrated leader he’d been in the Arab world after that and died in 1970 of a heart attack in disgrace. But the damage had been done and the ramification of Eisenhower and the UN’s mistake can still be felt today. This is the TRUE story of the Suez Crisis! This is how we need to remember it! Not a naked act of imperialism by two former empires and the Israelis. But as a heroic mission to keep the peace in the region and stop a genocidal dictator with grandiose visions of himself as the God-like ruler of all the Arab peoples who wished to perpetrate another Shoah. In my honest opinion here’s what should’ve been done in 1956. The British and Israelis should have more precisely timed the conquering of the Sinai so Britain could’ve had a plausible raison d’etre to do an amphibious invasion and take Port Said. The Israelis would secure the Sinai and the British and French would secure the Canal Zone. The United States under Eisenhower listens to John Foster Dulles, throws caution into the wind and decides to take a risk and support the Tripartite Alliance. The United States uses its influences to kill the ceasefire resolution. Nasser and his government are pressured by the international community to resign, are arrested and imprisoned under heavy guard in Tel Aviv. The Crown Prince Mohammed Abdel Moneim cousin of Farouk, is crowned King Mohammed I of Egypt and the new Kingdom replaces Nasser’s old republic. He will serve under British and French tutelage and be friendly to the United States, the West and Israel. Britain and France will maintain a troop presence at the Canal Zone for decades to come. Israel will keep the Sinai. Nasser and his cronies are tried in an Israeli court for crimes against humanity and all sentenced to death. Nasser will be executed by hanging at the end of the year. In order to keep the peace and put down any uprisings, the British and French send the Gurkhas and the French Foreign Legion respectively who are supplemented by foreign and loyal Egyptian volunteers as well as colonial soldiers from both empires. Nasserism would remain a potent ideology with a significant following in Egypt but would never rise again. Britain takes control back of the Suez Canal and continues to run it to this day. That’s what should’ve happened! I call on the British government to officially honor Anthony Eden with a statue outside parliament in London! As to Egypt, I believe in exchange for foreign aid, military and government building assistance and the sale of British arms and military equipment to Egypt, Egyptian dictator Abdul Fattah el-Sisi should consent to the opening of British charter cities in Egypt and in exchange for a defense pact with London, control over the Suez Canal and a British military buffer zone. As to your idea of a federation of nations to keep peace in the world I think it’s a splendid idea, Daniel! I think the United Nations should undergo a massive reformation. Meanwhile, a new international organization called the Global Peacekeeping Federation (GPF) which would include the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, India, Singapore, Japan, and the other Asian Tigers, should be formed. I think Israeli President Isaac Herzog would be a good choice as it’s first Chairman.
I really appreciate your comments Noah which must have taken a lot of effort on your part and do a great justice to the article. As an American, I am heartened by your call for a GPF which can ensure safety on the seas and bountiful trade for the benefit of all!
👏👏👏 A standing ovation for this article packed with some very important forgotten history that we would do well to learn from today, Daniel! I knew little of Anthony Eden and had only heard bad things about him before reading this splendid article. Anthony Eden was without question one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th Century. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to be British Prime Minister longer. Indeed, Eden is a forgotten giant who finally gets his due in this stupendous article! He, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, and their colleagues were definitely correct in taking the stance they did against negotiating with Hitler and Mussolini in 1938. Appeasement was a policy that flopped badly. I understand where Neville Chamberlain was coming from and why he took part in the negotiations. He and many in Britain dreaded another war after the bloody First World War of 1914-18 which killed off a large portion of Britain’s young men and most talented officers. But Chamberlain was not the naive, bumbling fool he’s been portrayed as. He was a competent and underrated in my opinion, Prime Minister who started the process of rearming Britain so it would actually have the chance to win a future war with Germany if it came while hoping for the best that a peace treaty could stave off another blood bath and the transfer of the Sudetenland would be done peacefully and orderly according to international law. But sadly, Hitler double crossed Britain and France and took over the Sudetenland by force and then went and took the rest of Czechoslovakia as well. Eden, Churchill and their colleagues were ultimately proven right. With Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, it would be no different. Sadly, the British Empire by this point was on the decline. This is because of two factors. 1) Britain came out of the two world wars worse for the ware and 2) Colonial peoples were pushing hard for self-autonomy. Decolonization for the most part as we know now, would turn out to be a total disaster. But there was no stopping it. All Britain could do was help try to preserve the international order and assist the world’s new leading superpower the United States. This is why when the Korean War broke out, Britain joined under the banner of the UN and backed the U.S. up. Clement Attlee increased British defense expenditures for the same reason despite the great deal of criticism he’d take for it. By the way, this is something Britain needs to do today as well. Given that the U.S. can’t keep the peace in the world alone and that Russia remains a looming threat to all on the European continent. At the same time, the United Nations showed promise as a possible vehicle to keep order on the international stage. The problem was, once the Soviet Union returned the United Nations would be gridlocked and severely limited in what it could do. As for the United States, the British would soon find out the Americans couldn’t always be relied upon to do the right thing if it wasn’t in their national interest at that particular moment. Anthony Eden was a visionary who saw Gamal Abdel Nasser for what he was-an Arab Hitler with dreams of conquest and restoring Egypt to the great power it was in ancient times. Nasser dreamed of being a modern day Pharaoh. Eden knew immediately that this man was NOT to be trusted under any circumstances. Surely leaving the all important Suez Canal in the hands of an unstable dictator who saw himself as a modern day Ramses the Great was not a good idea! Britain had done a great job keeping the peace in the Middle East and keeping the canal open for international traffic and trade. This proved true when Nasser and his cronies refused to let Israel use the waterway for international trade because of their animosity towards the Jewish state. When the UN tried to get him to comply, he refused outright. When British-backed King Farouk was in charge and Britain had a buffer zone this was not an issue. The same was true in Iraq until that monarchy fell and in Jordan under King Abdullah I and the Hashemite Dynasty. Britain was a friendly neighbor and staunch ally of Israel. Under the 1950 Tripartite Agreement between America, England and France, the western powers hoped to hold off Arab aggression and keep the peace in the region. With King Farouk’s fall and Nasser forcing out General Mohamed Naguib and rising to power that goal looked unlikely to say the least. Still, Britain tried to extend an olive branch to Nasser and build diplomatic relations with his regime. Eden even went as far as to make a deal with Nasser in 1954 to do a phased evacuation of British troops from their Suez Canal base. Had Britain’s maintained this military presence, your right Daniel, the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War would never have happened. Nasser had a golden opportunity to pursue peace in the region. He didn’t. He immediately assisted Palestinian Fedayeen fighters in doing terrorist attacks against the fledging state of Israel. Nasser was a madman bent of doing a second Holocaust. This was made clear by the orders he conveyed to the Fedayeen fighters the British discovered. Britain, France and Israel knew a new monster had been born and they needed to do something to stop it. British imperialism was not what Arab heads of state feared in the mid-1950s but rather Arab imperialism led by Nasser’s Egypt. International waterways and oil reserves were in grave danger and friendly monarchies were scared to death of the new kid on the block and his grand ambitions for an Arab Empire with him as its undisputed leader. The straw that broke the camels back as it were was when the Egyptians seized the company that controlled the canal in the middle of the night by force thus gaining de facto control over the the crucial waterway. Nasser was a madman bent on conquest and Jewish genocide who now 100% controlled the most important waterway in that part of the world. This gave Eden the pretext he needed to make a case for war and take military action to put a stop to Nasser’s shenanigans once and for all. Britain, France and Israel knew the time for action was now. Eden took a great risk doing this. He would be lambasted for invading and was to be sure d***ed if he did and d***ed if he didn’t. But he, Guy Mollet and David Ben-Gurion knew now was the time to take a stand and stop this Middle Eastern Hitler. But sadly Operation Musketeer as it came to be called, would ending up failing miserably.
Thank-you for your kind feedback. The reputation of Anthony Eden needs to be revived in my view with his positions on dictatorships and world affairs a model of decency and morality.
Some solid work. I recall learning in school that the 1956 War came about through a conspiracy hatched by the UK, France, and Israel; that nefarious political theater brought the nations together to end Nasser's control of the Suez.
From what archival material is available, the three did seem to have some Machiavellian backroom plotting, but it this essay that makes a compelling case as to why. Nasser's control of the the canal was a question mark for the entire world economy, and his revolutionary militarized chauvinist style and approach worried commerce the world over.
Daniel Clakke-Serret is very knowledgeable. His posts are comprehensive
You are very kind John.
Thank you so much - I feel like I just finished a year-long master class, though obviously this will require several more readings.
Thanks EFS! Glad you found it interesting.
Excellent
Thanks Mark!
The best. Thank you for the history links included.
Thanks so much!
Excellent article with a point of view I had not considered before! I did have a clarification question though: do you have a source for British/French troops in the canal zone finding Nasser’s orders to prepare for an Israeli invasion? I believe it given Nasser’s actions but if possible I’d like to read further on it
Thanks Brian. The quote about annihilating Israel comes from the Professor's lecture posted in the sources. I will have to listen through to get the exact quote.
1) The Israelis conquered the Sinai too quickly thus rendering the British’s raison d’etre to take Port Said implausible. 2) The United States stabbed the Tripartite Alliance in the back and refused to support them because it was an election year and Eisenhower couldn’t risk disturbing the international peace. As Richard Nixon would later explain in the classic documentary “Israel: A Nation is Born” hosted by the incomparable Abba Eban, had it not been an election year, the United States would’ve supported the actions of the Tripartite Alliance. 3) Even if the Tripartite Alliance had accomplished their goals, they would’ve had to deal with a hostile populace that would’ve revolted and committed terrorist attacks against Tripartite forces who sought to drive the Europeans and the Israelis out of their country. At the end of the day, the international community then and now, chose peace over order and pressured the Tripartite Alliance into withdrawing. Nasser won a huge political victory. The world would soon find out what a huge mistake that had been. Nasser would go on to cause all sorts of chaos in the region. He tried to form a unified Arab state with Syria, helped topple the Iraqi monarchy, toppled the Yemenite monarchy in 1962, launched a war in Yemen that lasted from 1962-1970, caused havoc in Lebanon, and launched a war of annihilation against Israel in 1967.
Eisenhower would later privately conclude Nasser had duped him. Eden had been proven right all along. Today we need to restore his place of honor among the great leaders of his time and give him the respect he deserves! Fortunately in time, Nasser would be brought down by his and his allies’ catastrophic defeat at the hands of the very Jewish state he tried to annihilate in 1967 and his very own Vietnam in Yemen. He was never the celebrated leader he’d been in the Arab world after that and died in 1970 of a heart attack in disgrace. But the damage had been done and the ramification of Eisenhower and the UN’s mistake can still be felt today. This is the TRUE story of the Suez Crisis! This is how we need to remember it! Not a naked act of imperialism by two former empires and the Israelis. But as a heroic mission to keep the peace in the region and stop a genocidal dictator with grandiose visions of himself as the God-like ruler of all the Arab peoples who wished to perpetrate another Shoah. In my honest opinion here’s what should’ve been done in 1956. The British and Israelis should have more precisely timed the conquering of the Sinai so Britain could’ve had a plausible raison d’etre to do an amphibious invasion and take Port Said. The Israelis would secure the Sinai and the British and French would secure the Canal Zone. The United States under Eisenhower listens to John Foster Dulles, throws caution into the wind and decides to take a risk and support the Tripartite Alliance. The United States uses its influences to kill the ceasefire resolution. Nasser and his government are pressured by the international community to resign, are arrested and imprisoned under heavy guard in Tel Aviv. The Crown Prince Mohammed Abdel Moneim cousin of Farouk, is crowned King Mohammed I of Egypt and the new Kingdom replaces Nasser’s old republic. He will serve under British and French tutelage and be friendly to the United States, the West and Israel. Britain and France will maintain a troop presence at the Canal Zone for decades to come. Israel will keep the Sinai. Nasser and his cronies are tried in an Israeli court for crimes against humanity and all sentenced to death. Nasser will be executed by hanging at the end of the year. In order to keep the peace and put down any uprisings, the British and French send the Gurkhas and the French Foreign Legion respectively who are supplemented by foreign and loyal Egyptian volunteers as well as colonial soldiers from both empires. Nasserism would remain a potent ideology with a significant following in Egypt but would never rise again. Britain takes control back of the Suez Canal and continues to run it to this day. That’s what should’ve happened! I call on the British government to officially honor Anthony Eden with a statue outside parliament in London! As to Egypt, I believe in exchange for foreign aid, military and government building assistance and the sale of British arms and military equipment to Egypt, Egyptian dictator Abdul Fattah el-Sisi should consent to the opening of British charter cities in Egypt and in exchange for a defense pact with London, control over the Suez Canal and a British military buffer zone. As to your idea of a federation of nations to keep peace in the world I think it’s a splendid idea, Daniel! I think the United Nations should undergo a massive reformation. Meanwhile, a new international organization called the Global Peacekeeping Federation (GPF) which would include the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, India, Singapore, Japan, and the other Asian Tigers, should be formed. I think Israeli President Isaac Herzog would be a good choice as it’s first Chairman.
I really appreciate your comments Noah which must have taken a lot of effort on your part and do a great justice to the article. As an American, I am heartened by your call for a GPF which can ensure safety on the seas and bountiful trade for the benefit of all!
👏👏👏 A standing ovation for this article packed with some very important forgotten history that we would do well to learn from today, Daniel! I knew little of Anthony Eden and had only heard bad things about him before reading this splendid article. Anthony Eden was without question one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th Century. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to be British Prime Minister longer. Indeed, Eden is a forgotten giant who finally gets his due in this stupendous article! He, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, and their colleagues were definitely correct in taking the stance they did against negotiating with Hitler and Mussolini in 1938. Appeasement was a policy that flopped badly. I understand where Neville Chamberlain was coming from and why he took part in the negotiations. He and many in Britain dreaded another war after the bloody First World War of 1914-18 which killed off a large portion of Britain’s young men and most talented officers. But Chamberlain was not the naive, bumbling fool he’s been portrayed as. He was a competent and underrated in my opinion, Prime Minister who started the process of rearming Britain so it would actually have the chance to win a future war with Germany if it came while hoping for the best that a peace treaty could stave off another blood bath and the transfer of the Sudetenland would be done peacefully and orderly according to international law. But sadly, Hitler double crossed Britain and France and took over the Sudetenland by force and then went and took the rest of Czechoslovakia as well. Eden, Churchill and their colleagues were ultimately proven right. With Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, it would be no different. Sadly, the British Empire by this point was on the decline. This is because of two factors. 1) Britain came out of the two world wars worse for the ware and 2) Colonial peoples were pushing hard for self-autonomy. Decolonization for the most part as we know now, would turn out to be a total disaster. But there was no stopping it. All Britain could do was help try to preserve the international order and assist the world’s new leading superpower the United States. This is why when the Korean War broke out, Britain joined under the banner of the UN and backed the U.S. up. Clement Attlee increased British defense expenditures for the same reason despite the great deal of criticism he’d take for it. By the way, this is something Britain needs to do today as well. Given that the U.S. can’t keep the peace in the world alone and that Russia remains a looming threat to all on the European continent. At the same time, the United Nations showed promise as a possible vehicle to keep order on the international stage. The problem was, once the Soviet Union returned the United Nations would be gridlocked and severely limited in what it could do. As for the United States, the British would soon find out the Americans couldn’t always be relied upon to do the right thing if it wasn’t in their national interest at that particular moment. Anthony Eden was a visionary who saw Gamal Abdel Nasser for what he was-an Arab Hitler with dreams of conquest and restoring Egypt to the great power it was in ancient times. Nasser dreamed of being a modern day Pharaoh. Eden knew immediately that this man was NOT to be trusted under any circumstances. Surely leaving the all important Suez Canal in the hands of an unstable dictator who saw himself as a modern day Ramses the Great was not a good idea! Britain had done a great job keeping the peace in the Middle East and keeping the canal open for international traffic and trade. This proved true when Nasser and his cronies refused to let Israel use the waterway for international trade because of their animosity towards the Jewish state. When the UN tried to get him to comply, he refused outright. When British-backed King Farouk was in charge and Britain had a buffer zone this was not an issue. The same was true in Iraq until that monarchy fell and in Jordan under King Abdullah I and the Hashemite Dynasty. Britain was a friendly neighbor and staunch ally of Israel. Under the 1950 Tripartite Agreement between America, England and France, the western powers hoped to hold off Arab aggression and keep the peace in the region. With King Farouk’s fall and Nasser forcing out General Mohamed Naguib and rising to power that goal looked unlikely to say the least. Still, Britain tried to extend an olive branch to Nasser and build diplomatic relations with his regime. Eden even went as far as to make a deal with Nasser in 1954 to do a phased evacuation of British troops from their Suez Canal base. Had Britain’s maintained this military presence, your right Daniel, the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War would never have happened. Nasser had a golden opportunity to pursue peace in the region. He didn’t. He immediately assisted Palestinian Fedayeen fighters in doing terrorist attacks against the fledging state of Israel. Nasser was a madman bent of doing a second Holocaust. This was made clear by the orders he conveyed to the Fedayeen fighters the British discovered. Britain, France and Israel knew a new monster had been born and they needed to do something to stop it. British imperialism was not what Arab heads of state feared in the mid-1950s but rather Arab imperialism led by Nasser’s Egypt. International waterways and oil reserves were in grave danger and friendly monarchies were scared to death of the new kid on the block and his grand ambitions for an Arab Empire with him as its undisputed leader. The straw that broke the camels back as it were was when the Egyptians seized the company that controlled the canal in the middle of the night by force thus gaining de facto control over the the crucial waterway. Nasser was a madman bent on conquest and Jewish genocide who now 100% controlled the most important waterway in that part of the world. This gave Eden the pretext he needed to make a case for war and take military action to put a stop to Nasser’s shenanigans once and for all. Britain, France and Israel knew the time for action was now. Eden took a great risk doing this. He would be lambasted for invading and was to be sure d***ed if he did and d***ed if he didn’t. But he, Guy Mollet and David Ben-Gurion knew now was the time to take a stand and stop this Middle Eastern Hitler. But sadly Operation Musketeer as it came to be called, would ending up failing miserably.
Your best yet.
Thanks Happy Days! Please share it.
Thank you for this insightful article. I now see Anthony Eden and the Suez Crises in a new light.
Thank-you for your kind feedback. The reputation of Anthony Eden needs to be revived in my view with his positions on dictatorships and world affairs a model of decency and morality.
Some solid work. I recall learning in school that the 1956 War came about through a conspiracy hatched by the UK, France, and Israel; that nefarious political theater brought the nations together to end Nasser's control of the Suez.
From what archival material is available, the three did seem to have some Machiavellian backroom plotting, but it this essay that makes a compelling case as to why. Nasser's control of the the canal was a question mark for the entire world economy, and his revolutionary militarized chauvinist style and approach worried commerce the world over.