No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Suez Crisis and the Containment Policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
Since 1947 the major foreign policy of the United States government has been containment. This policy of creating situations of strength which would prevent the extension of Communist power and influence in the world was first proclaimed in the Truman Doctrine (March 12, 1947). The policy had been anticipated in 1946 when the battleship Missouri visited Turkey and some forty Mediterranean ports. In the course of this display the Missouri was joined by two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers, and eighteen destroyers. The early sensitivity to Soviet threats to the Middle East and its approaches, revealed in the Doctrine and that naval demonstration, was not consistently maintained at this time or later. Perhaps, indeed, American foreign policy only operates with fullest energy, when directly confronted with a serious Soviet threat. At any rate, it may be argued that for the period 1946–1955, when the Soviet Union was neither conspicuously active nor influential in the Middle East, United States policy contributed little to the solution or easing of the area's all but intractable problems. So to describe the problems is to propose a good excuse, but they were the problems, and, unfortunately, they did not wither from neglect or incantations.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1957
References
1 The policy has not been distinguished by doctrinaire consistency. It is, at best, an element common to a series of decisions, usually ad hoc responses to particular challenges. The policy was originally formulated in the first half of 1946 in a memorandum from George Kennan, then Charge d'affaires in Moscow. But practice diverged widely from Kennan's proposal to contain Soviet pressure “by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.” Kennan, George, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago, 1951), pp. 117–118.Google Scholar The quotation is from an essay based on Kennan's earlier memorandum. See Chapter VII of Osgood, Robert's important study, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago, 1957).Google Scholar
2 In 1938 Middle Eastern oil formed 19% of Western Europe's oil consumption; the figure is 69% for 1951, and 80% for 1955. Western Europe is using far more oil than in the past, and, at the same time, a greater percentage of the larger oil consumption comes from the Middle East. The total of Western Europe's energy requirements provided by oil was 8% in 1938 and 18% in 1955. An OEEC energy commission estimated that the 1960 figure would be 24%. See Patrick, Martin, “Oil and the Middle East,” Political Quarterly, XXVIII (04 1957), 168–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar That entire issue of the journal is illuminatingly devoted to the Middle East.
3 There is an unusual historical appropriateness in the prominence of T. E. Lawrence, in part a selfmade Protean myth, in these events. Lawrence's own writings, including The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and his letters, have made the history of the Arab nationalist rising peculiarly difficult to write. See Fitzsimons, M. A., “Agonizing Re-Appraisal of T. E. Lawrence,” The Commonweal (11 25, 1955, 63, 202–204)Google Scholar and the valuable chapter on Lawrence, in Kedourie, Elie, England and the Middle East (Cambridge [England], 1957).Google Scholar
4 For the almost schoolboyish lightheartedness of British Jordanian beginnings, see SirKirkbride, Alec, A Crackle of Thorns (London, 1956)Google Scholar, a tantalizingly incomplete series of memoir essays. Sir Alec notes that Abdullah refused to ride in an airplane with an Arab pilot because “I know my own people too well.” Ibid., p. 36. This not entirely unwise decision may help to explain the hatred of Arab nationalists for the shrewd Jordanian ruler.
5 The region was administratively united through the Middle East Supply Center. Through this agency efforts were made to ameliorate the condition of shortage of imports caused by the war and, from this starting point, various reforms were attempted. In 1944 a Middle East Development Conference was held at Cairo. Valuable studies of economic problems were made, notably Warriner, Doreen's Land and Poverty in the Middle East (New York, 1948).Google Scholar But such plans as were proposed failed to advance because of the lack of Anglo-American cooperation. Many American officials and commercial interests saw in the Middle East Supply Center an instrument for pushing and maintaining British interests including trade. Moreover, neither the United States government nor the American oil companies were prepared to formulate an overall policy for the Middle East in 1945. Thus, when the British replaced the Middle East Supply Center with the British Middle East Office late in 1945, the latter was expected to work closely with the Arab League—and the Palestine issue soon made it certain that the Arab League would be ineffectual for constructive purposes. For the earlier story see Mikesell, R. and Chenery, Hollis B., Arabian Oil: America's Stake in the Middle East (Chapel Hill, 1949).Google Scholar
6 Lord Altrincham, who, as SirGrigg, Edward, had been Minister Resident in the Middle East in 1944–1945Google Scholar, expressed these views on a number of occasions, for example, at the Sorbonne. See Politique Étrangère (07, 1947).Google Scholar See also a Foreign Office statement, The Times, 09 21, 1945Google Scholar, and Bevin's speech to the Anglo-Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, The Times, 11 2, 1945.Google Scholar
7 The Times, 11 15, 1945.Google Scholar
8 This first statement was in a Mansion House speech, delivered soon after Rashid Ali's rising against the British in Iraq.
9 The Fertile Crescent scheme was presented about the time that Iraq declared war on the Axis. When Egypt declared war more than two years later, its Prime Minister was assassinated. At this time and later, the then Emir Abdullah of Transjordan sought to promote an Abdullah centered plan of union, the Greater Syria scheme.
10 The first Secretary General of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Azzam, had served as Farouk's minister and was a trusted associate. There is interesting material based on Arabic sources on this subject in Kedourie, Elie, “Pan-Arabism and British Policy,” Political Quarterly, XXVIII (04, 1957), 137–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 This viewpoint is very well expressed in a report of an Anglo-French conference on French-English relations in the Middle East published in Politique Étrangère (01, 1957), 95–106.Google Scholar In an exaggerated form it dominated the approach of Justice Douglas, William in Strange Lands and Friendly People (New York, 1951).Google Scholar Justice Douglas dealt with Middle Eastern governments only incidentally and as evils and concentrated mainly on social and economic matters. Many a diplomat in the Middle East must have wished that he could do the same.
12 During the Senate hearings on the Eisenhower Doctrine Senator Capehart asked a number of Ambassadorial witnesses why the United States policy had not been formulated with the careful attention that an area, now so vital, demanded. The replies usually stressed that on various occasions in the past the situation had not appeared in that light. Several times other senators followed Capehart to suggest the answer that the Indiana Senator's question was based on hindsight. The latter then, did not suggest that foresight may sometimes anticipate hindsight, even in an age of crisis. In recounting these exchanges I do not intend to criticize the diplomats, who on occasion appear to have misjudged matters. The diplomats usually recognized the difficulties of our later Middle Eastern position and had to work with very limited resources. Instead, the exchanges point to a central difficulty in the making of American policy. Dean Acheson's earlier call for “total diplomacy” was an impossibility. Nonetheless, it pointed to the necessity of a greater concern about the influence of America's domestic politics on the world and of taking American foreign policy more seriously at home and allowing it greater continuity.
13 In his memoirs former President Truman characteristically takes full responsibility for his Palestine policy. Upon becoming President he was presented with a statement of the thinking of the State Department on Palestine. This statement pointed to the “continual tenseness” in the Arab world, “largely as a result of the Palestine question.” It further warned that any response to Zionist pressure should be made “with a view to the long-range interests of the United States in the area.” President Truman added: “I was skeptical, as I read over the whole record up to date, about some of the views and attitudes assumed by the ‘striped-pants boys’ in the State Department. It seemed to me that they didn't care enough about what happened to the thousands of displaced persons who were involved.” The President, therefore, concluded that it would be possible to help the persecuted Jews and, at the same time, look to American long-range interests. The former President seems not to have recalled that in this area one displaced person created another. Truman, Harry S., Memoirs. Vol. I, The Years of Decision (New York, 1955), 68–69.Google Scholar
14 Quoted in Stebbins, R. P., The United States in World Affairs, 1951 (New York, 1952) p. 282.Google Scholar
15 This point was made by Sir Reader Bullard, who had long service as a diplomat in the Middle East, in his comments at the Anglo-French Conference on the Middle East mentioned in footnote 11. Foreign Minister Harold Macmillan sounded the same note at the first meeting of the signatories of the Baghdad Pact. He hoped that their association would prove “acceptable as a pattern for cooperation with other states in the Middle East.” Manchester Guardian, 11 22, 1955.Google Scholar The hope was reasonable but not realistic. If the Israeli issue had not been present to gather Arabs, otherwise divided, into a unity of opposition, the Pact, even with its challenge to pan-Arabism, might have been a much more likely bet.
16 In 1956 Sovetskoye Vostokovedeniye expressed the policy in this characteristic Communist fashion: “A characteristic of the national liberation movement of today is the participation in it of all patriotically and anti-imperialistically inclined representatives of widely varying social strata and religious and political convictions. These range from workers and peasants, who constitute the chief driving force of the movement, to the national bourgeoisie and to some extent even to the landowners: and all of them are united in their aim of freeing their countries from the colonial yoke.” Quoted in Wheeler, Geoffrey, “Russia and the Middle East,” Political Quarterly, XXVIII (04, 1957), 134–135.Google Scholar
17 It is remarkable that the Communist offer had not been made earlier. At any rate, the offer probably reflected a Soviet belief that the Middle Eastern situation had become unfavorable for the Western powers. It is some measure of Soviet success and a reflection on Western policy makers that within fourteen months the Western powers had even ceased the pretense of cooperation— in the Suez expedition.
18 Manchester Guardian, 10 27, 1955.Google Scholar
19 Dr. Hussein, the Egyptian Ambassador in Washington, told reporters that he had conveyed to the State Department “President Nasser's personal reaction to Sir Anthony Eden's proposals, which is that they constitute an objective and constructive approach constituting a basis for negotiation of a peace settlement.” Manchester Guardian, 11 17, 1955.Google Scholar
20 Manchester Guardian, 11 7, November 3, 1955.Google Scholar
21 New York Times, 02 10, 1956Google Scholar; The Times (London), 02 11, 13, 1956Google Scholar; International Organization, X (1956), 194.Google Scholar Possibly, the State Department proposed conditions similar to the. Bank or, more likely, linked its offer with that of the International Bank. Excerpts from unpublished International Bank reports on the economy of Egypt and the financing of the Dam as well as from a letter of the Bank's governor to Nasser, are printed in Cooke, M. L., “Nasser's High Aswan Dam: Panacea or Politics?”, A Public Affairs Institute Pamphlet (Washington, 1956).Google Scholar
22 The Times, 07 14, 1956.Google ScholarThe Times leader continued “Arabs who have been affronted by “Victorian” proconsuls, Arabs who hate Israel, and Arabs who want to improve the prosperity of the Middle East are encouraged to admire a leader who has turned out the proconsuls from Suez (and claims that he did so in Amman), who has reduced Israel's military preponderance, and who is fluent in using the language of social revolution … skilfully handled and properly organized, these feelings could unify the middle ranks of Arab opinion where the Arab League could not. And they could establish in most countries in the Middle East a long-term hostility to Britain, which would ruin whatever chance there still is of maintaining by peaceful cooperation on reasonable terms access to the oilfields and communications which are Britain's chief interests in the area.”
23 New York Times, 06 24, 1956.Google Scholar
24 John Beal, an admiring biographer of Dulles, who gave him important assistance in collecting material, writes: “As a calculated risk the decision was on a grand scale,” John Foster Dulles (New York, 1957), pp. 258–261.Google Scholar But the evidence available does not reveal serious calculation, and there is the nagging doubt that the risk was unnecessary.
25 Of five books which I have read, two very different ones are valuable. Wint, Guy and Calvocoressi, Peter, Middle East Crisis (Penguin Books, 1957)Google Scholar and Merry, and Bromberger, Serge, Les Secrets de Vexpedition d'Égypte (Paris, 1957)Google Scholar, the latter based on information supplied by the French Ministry of Defense; Foot, Michael and Jones, Mervyn, Guilty Men: 1957 (New York, 1957)Google Scholar, a strong Laborite indictment of the Suez policies; Utley, T. E.'s Conservative reply, Not Guilty (London, 1957)Google Scholar, is inferior even to the Leftist omniscience of Johnson, Paul, The Suez War (London, 1957).Google Scholar
26 See Dulles, ' speech at the Second Suez Conference in London, 09 19, 1956Google Scholar in The Suez Canal Problem, July 26-September 22, 1956. A Documentary Publication of the Department of State (Washington, 1956), pp. 362–363.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., p. 84.
28 See the article by Higgins, Marguerite, “Colonialism and Mr. Dulles,” in New York Herald Tribune, 10 8, 1956.Google Scholar It might be interesting to learn how much Dulles knew of British-French decisions, when he made these remarks.
29 Excerpts from the two speeches in Time, 11 12, 1956.Google Scholar
30 This assurance was inevitably less precise than the statement of SirChurchill, Winston made in 04, 1956.Google Scholar “If Israel is dissuaded from using the life force of their race to ward off the Egyptians until the Egyptians have learned to use the Russian weapons with which they have been supplied, and the Egyptians then attack, it will become not only a matter of prudence but a measure of honor to make sure that they are not the losers by waiting.” New York Times, 04 14, 1956.Google Scholar
31 The Times (London), 03 12, 1957.Google Scholar