President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles believed that Nasser should be overthrown — some day. Repeatedly they told the British and French that it would be a mistake to use force, at least at the moment. But Britain and France were already planning how they might use force. Frenchmen imagined that Algeria’s revolt against them, launched in 1954, was inspired by Nasser, and that without him it would collapse. Britons found themselves losing control of Jordan because of Nasser, and believed that without him they could regain control.

Image Credit... Edel Rodriguez

There was more to it. The Western leaders had irrationally come to regard Nasser as dangerous, a Hitler or a Mussolini. Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Britain was typical: a Foreign Office Arabist by background who moved in circles where it was felt that Arabs loved Englishmen, Eden believed that Nasser had somehow stolen that love. It was Nasser, he thought, who had taken away Jordan’s famed Arab Legion from its British officers. “I want him killed,” Eden said. So for months the allies had been conspiring. They would return to the Middle East, and they would invade Egypt. The confiscation of the canal company spurred them into action.

Eden, Prime Minister Guy Mollet of France and his foreign secretary, Christian Pineau, joined by a number of colleagues, hatched a plot based on an earlier plan for France and Israel to act together, and in which Britain now joined. In October 1956, Israel attacked Egypt through Sinai and drove to Suez. Britain and France then invaded, occupying the canal and claiming to be separating the Egyptian and Israeli Armies. The British, French and Israelis stuck to their prefabricated story, but their collusion was evident; soon they had to admit the truth.

The Americans had been kept in the dark, and they took it personally. Eisenhower in particular was angered by British wartime colleagues who had lied and deceived him. “What does Anthony think he is doing?” Eisenhower demanded. “Why is he doing this to me?” He refused to listen to excuses, claiming that “nothing justified double-crossing the United States.”

The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, grandstanded, threatening the Western imperialists. That enabled him to take credit for stopping the Europeans — even though it really was America that did it. The United States acted quietly but effectively. The Treasury Department threatened to withdraw support of the British currency unless the British Army left Egypt. Within 10 days, England would have collapsed financially. The British — and the invasion — stopped. To keep from being thought imperialists, the Eisenhower administration saved Nasser. The Suez crisis was over.

Britain and France had gone to war in order to keep their empires; instead, they lost them. The United States had aimed to keep Russia out of the Middle East, but the Suez crisis, and Khrushchev’s rhetoric, brought the Russians in. Eisenhower and Dulles believed that by their actions at Suez they were showing the nonaligned nations that, unlike the British and French, Americans were not imperialists — but the third world remained unconvinced. And in Europe, skeptics claimed the episode showed that the Americans intended to steal the empires of Britain and France.