The Rise of Nasserism (Part 1) - The Rise of Nasserism (Part 3)
Suez War
Nasser's surprise announcement at
Alexandria was the
beginning of the
Suez crisis: a crisis which was to run a
course and have consequences which few involved foresaw
at the outset - certainly not Nasser. However, Nasser's move
in seizing the
canal was not wilful or ill-considered; on the
contrary he had not only harboured the idea for some time
but worked out both what he expected others to do and
the line to be adopted by
Egypt. With regard to the former
he clearly expected
Britain and
France to
huff and puff.
Britain he thought might act and he sought intelligence on
British preparedness in the region, especially
Cyprus, as
well as withdrawing Egyptian troops from
Sinai; but he also
felt the chances of a strike by Britain would diminish as
time passed. On Nasser's part his main concern was to
keep the canal open, since much was being made by Britain
and France of Egypt's alleged inadequacy to operate it itself (backed up by the effort of the company to encourage
pilots to withdraw and generally ensure the fulfilment of
the Anglo-French prophecy). In this endeavour Nasser was
successful, largely due to the prodigious efforts of the
minority of pilots of Egyptian origin, and indeed after that
there was never a serious question of Egypt's technical
ability to run the canal.
As the British and French governments realised that the
canal could still function, and that their own shipping lines
were not amenable to pressure to
boycott it, the thrust of
the reaction was against exclusive Egyptian control of an
international waterway. This included identifying Nasser as
the sinister personality behind the move, and pointing to
the danger of an individual
dictator having a finger on one
of the most vital arteries of
international trade. The two
prime ministers,
Eden and
Mollet, together with
Dulles
from the
United States, met early in August 1956, after
which they announced the convening of a meeting of
twenty-four leading canal-using countries in
London to
establish some kind of international system of control. After
it concluded
Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of
Australia,
and regarded as a
Commonwealth elder
statesman, led a
deputation to
Cairo to argue for the agreed internationalisation
of the canal. But Nasser saw the development of an Anglo-
French manoeuvre and that Menzies had little intention of
negotiating, and the mission duly failed. Worried by the
increasingly belligerent view of his major
European allies,
Dulles now took up the running urging the formation of a
Suez Canal Users' Association (SCUA), but Nasser was by
then becoming increasingly angered at the attempts of
others to arrange the future of the canal without negotiating with Egypt, and he swiftly aborted the proposal.
However, while Britain and France on the one hand and
Egypt on the other had been making increasingly uncompromising and belligerent noises, behind the scenes there
was a growing realisation that at some time the crisis would
have to be resolved by negotiation. Financially Egypt was
beginning to feel the pinch of some of the counter-measures being taken by Britain and France. At the same time there was growing pressure in the
Arab world, and amongst Egypt's new-found friends in the
non-aligned
movement, to avoid a possible conflict which neither they,
nor Nasser, thought Egypt had any chance of winning. In
Britain too the
Foreign Office and the military
Chiefs of
Staff were urging caution, and it seemed that until mid-
October Eden was inclined to recognise that in the long
run Britain too would have to negotiate. It was not that
Eden's view of Nasser was changing. If anything the reverse
was shown in his personalized attacks on the man he
increasingly identified as a potential
fascist of the
Middle
East to rival those of Europe whose appeasement he, Eden,
had opposed in 1938: the problem was that with the canal
functioning and Nasser endangering no one Eden lacked a
casus belli.
Israel and the Suez Crisis
This frustration was seen and targeted by those in
Israel, led by
Ben Gurion, the legendary founder of the
young nation, who in 1955 returned as Prime Minister and
Minister of Defence for the second time. These
Israeli
hawks had been looking for an opportunity to strike at
what they identified as a growing potential threat from revolutionary Egypt, as well as a chance to take
Sharm el-Sheikh
on the
Red Sea, from where Egypt blockaded the
Gulf of
Akaba preventing free movement of shipping to the Israeli
port of
Eilat. But plans emanating from
Israel directly were
unlikely to cut much ice with Britain which was concerned
particularly by a perceived Israeli threat to Britain's ally,
Jordan. The important intermediary was
France, which had
been having discussions since September with Israel, long
before involving Britain. For France the issue was not just
the canal but Nasser's promotion of
Arab nationalism, in
particular the encouragement he was giving to the nationalist
FEN in its growing struggle in
Algeria, which both the
French government and the
colons were then determined
to crush. A move against Egypt that aimed to bring down
Nasser would,
Guy Mollet believed, ensure the end of the
FEN threat in Algeria. It was at these meetings that a plan
was hatched that if Israel struck not just at
Gaza and
Sharm
el-Sheikh, but towards the canal itself, then France and
Britain could intervene to “save” the canal.
This
collusion was first put to Eden on 14 October 1956,
and in spite of warnings from officials he was persuaded
that such a secret agreement could be implemented. Once
Israel attacked and Britain and France intervened to seize
the canal, the alleged belligerents, Israel and Egypt, would
be issued with an ultimatum to cease fire and withdraw
from either side of the canal. While Israel would accept,
and have control of the two areas she sought, Egypt would
be bound to reject the ultimatum, thereby giving a pretext
to the two European powers to attack Egypt, take control of
the canal and destroy Nasser. Under cover of an apparent
move to take the dispute to the
United Nations, which
served effectively to distract the
international community at
large, including Egypt, the collusion plans of Britain and
France with Israel went ahead with a secrecy that Nasser
himself would have admired, and which in retrospect was
to serve him far better than its perpetrators.
Israel Attacks
It was only just over two weeks after Eden was first
brought in that Israel launched its attack on 29 October,
and the following day Britain and France were delivering
their prearranged ultimatum. The attack came as a total
surprise to Nasser, who could not initially believe what was
happening, thinking at first that it was no more than
another Israeli border raid. Even when its extent was recognised, the realisation of collusion did not dawn until the
British and French ultimatum, which, as anticipated,
Nasser speedily rejected. One or two of his
RCC colleagues
he consulted wanted acceptance, fearing that war would
destroy them all, but for Nasser there was no question that
Egypt should fight, though the odds against his forces
looked overwhelming. For Egypt to surrender would be to
bow once more to
foreign domination and lose the
achievements of the revolution. Nasser was determined to
die rather than
capitulate.
Realising early on that there would be no military assistance for Egypt - other Arab states were too weak and the
Soviet Union immediately made it clear it would not risk a
third world war - Nasser decided to play for time while the
British and French prepared; and he hoped that world opinion
would be outraged at the self-evident complicity and
aggression. Meanwhile, with its
airforce swiftly destroyed
by Britain (to protect Israeli cities from the danger of Egyptian bombing), Nasser looked to his army to resist as
strongly as it could when the invaders attacked
Port Said,
while making preparations to prolong the struggle through
guerrilla fighting when Egyptian forces were overwhelmed.
As Nasser anticipated, the sight of Egypt's forces resisting
against two such powers as Britain and France, did much to
swing international opinion to his side. Though Nasser had
not been directly in charge of the army, leaving it to his
close friend,
Abdel Hakim Amer, he did provide very direct,
cool and effective military leadership during the short
campaign, his experiences in
Palestine only eight years
earlier standing him in good stead.
In fact the most significant military decision taken by
Egypt was to
sink block ships in the Suez Canal. The whole
action of Britain and Egypt was allegedly to keep the canal
open, and Egypt had proved she could do so on her own.
Now, with what was rapidly being seen internationally as an
unprovoked assault the two major powers had achieved
precisely the opposite - a move which rapidly blocked oil
supplies from the Middle East, thus damaging Europe in
particular. The irony was not lost on the international community, and particularly the United States, where most of
the major international oil companies were based. Of more
immediate importance was the hostility of
President
Eisenhower in Washington. In the months preceding Suez,
Eisenhower had been unwell and policy was in the hands
of Dulles, a
Cold War warrior whose apparent hostility to
Egypt over the arms deal and
High Dam had encouraged
Eden. But the alarmed Eisenhower had intervened personally to establish that he would not support any use of force
to settle the canal question. Consequently, at the United
Nations America joined with the large majority of member
states in condemning the British, French and Israeli action,
and called for a
ceasefire. It was ironic that the two superpowers whose rivalry in the Middle East had contributed to
the background to the Suez crisis should finish up voting
together in opposition to the invasion. At the same time
Britain was left in no doubt by Eisenhower that America
disapproved of the action when a run on
sterling was triggered by the cutting of oil to Europe. British and French
troops were thus ordered to halt shortly after taking Port
Said and well short of the objective of forcing the downfall
of Nasser. Though a United Nations force was eventually
deployed it was little more than a face-saving device for the
international humiliation of the two major European countries which had so recently been the leading powers in the Middle East as well.
Nasser’s “Victory in Defeat”
Egypt's
army had lost the
battle, but there was no doubt
that Nasser personally had scored a great victory. He had
successfully nationalized the Suez Canal, and insisted that it
could not be reopened until the invading forces left. He
had not only survived an attack intended to overthrow him
personally, but had greatly strengthened his own position
in Egypt by his cool command throughout, first politically
and then militarily. He had also won acclaim in the Arab
world for having successfully seen off the two powers that
had until so recently dominated the region.
Meanwhile Britain and France were shaken. Britain's
prime minister, Eden, resigned within weeks from “ill-
health”. One consequence of Suez was that it marked the
start of the acceptance in mainstream
Conservative Party
circles that the end of the
empire was at hand: from then
on British overseas defence commitments were steadily
reduced and nationalists in many parts of the empire
received a fillip to their efforts. As for France, the Suez
fiasco gave a great boost to the
FLN in Algeria, which in
turn contributed to the collapse of the
fourth republic in
1958, and subsequently to
de Gaulle's decision formally to
leave Algeria and most of the rest of
French Africa.
Internationally Suez was to prove a major point in post-
war history. Britain, hitherto the leading power in the
Middle East, had suffered a setback that was to weaken her
permanently within the region. In her place a relatively
unknown, young Egyptian
soldier-
politician had risen as
the champion of
pan-Arabism against the attempted
reassertion of past
Western domination. The Arab world
had long been prepared to acclaim an outstanding and
successful personality - and Nasser had proved himself on
both counts. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the developing world
Nasser's new-found stature as the major figure in the
Middle East swiftly elevated him to become one of the leading personalities of the emerging non-aligned movement.
But his political victory over Britain and France had been
attained partly as a result of the attitudes of the two
superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Though
both had opposed the British, French and Israeli intervention to seize the Suez Canal, they were still intense rivals
in the Cold War, which, with Britain and France weakened,
they were now more free to pursue in the Middle East, as
elsewhere on the globe.
The consequences were thus far greater for both Egypt's
new president and his adversaries than any of those
involved in the Suez crisis thought likely when Nasser first
took the move that seemed to him to be a vital step in his
and Nasser clearly favoured the former, regarding the latter
as naturally exploitative. Thus though Egypt was evolving a
mixed
economy in which both
public and
private sectors
received a boost from the outcome of Suez, the relationship was not happy, with each side showing suspicion of the other.
Arab Nationalism
While economic policy was of prime concern domestically
after the Suez war, internationally the major development
lay in the world of Arab politics. Having emerged as clearly
the dominant figure in Egyptian politics, Nasser had also,
by virtue of the Suez war, been projected as the Arab
nationalist leader
par excellence. Much has been made of
Nasser's relatively late conversion to the Arab cause, Egyptian nationalism having been an end in itself for most
young men of his generation, and it has been suggested
that Nasser took up the Arab cause as a result of his experience in Palestine, though he himself referred to his
student consciousness. Yet Egyptian and Arab nationalism
were compatible. An Egyptian to his fingertips, it would
have been unimaginable for Nasser not to have been an
Egyptian nationalist, but, as an avid reader of
popular history,
the Arab empire was a part of his culture. Perhaps his comments in the
Philosophy of the Revolution sum it up: “There is
no doubt that the
Arab Circle is the most important of
those three circles and the circle most closely connected
with us. Its history merges with ours... neighbourliness
has welded us all into a
homogeneous whole, strengthened
by all those spiritual, historical and national factors.” That
does not mean though that he believed in immediately
creating an Arab state, rather that there should be cohesion
of the Arab countries in the opposition to foreign domination: a process in which Egypt, led by Nasser, had a central
part to play. Speaking shortly after the formation of the
union with
Syria in 1958 he was to say “this does not
necessarily mean that Arab Unity means that all Arab
countries should be combined in one country. What I care
for is the creation of Arab
solidarity as well as a unified
Arab struggle because the Arab destiny and future are similar. The most important thing is that solidarity should
prevail among Arab countries under any circumstances.”
It was inevitable that Nasser should become embroiled
in the complex
politics of Arab nationalism after
1956 for
reasons that were at one and the same time ambitious but
also prudential. On the side of ambition, whatever Nasser
may have felt initially, the very adulation accorded to him
across the Arab world as a result of what was perceived as
his victory over the
aggressors, gave him a role such as no
other had in modern times - a kind of
Saladin of his day.
As he put it himself, “I always imagine that in this region
there is a role wandering aimlessly about in search of an
actor to play it.”
The Rise of Nasserism (Part 1) - The Rise of Nasserism (Part 3)