Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Doran reviews Eisenhower’s Middle East strategy mainly from a US perspective. It is a riveting read. When Eisenhower became president in 1953, the Arab world was still tied to the West. Britain and France still had significant influence. The Soviet Union did not have any allies in the region. By the end of his second term, Britain and France were no longer players in the region and Egypt, Syria, and Iraq had moved into the Soviet camp. Doran believes that Ike misunderstood the Middle East and later admitted to Nixon and the Israeli ambassador that he made a mistake in backing Egypt over Britain, France, and Israel during the Suez Crises of 1956. Doran criticizes Ike for abandoning America’s friends.
John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. Dulles believed that there were three problems in the Middle East: Soviet communism, European imperialism, and Zionism. He wanted to move the Arabs into America’s orbit. Ike and Dulles concluded that the Arabs hated the imperialists (e.g., Britain and France) and the Jews. They concluded that the US had to side with Arab nationalists like Egypt’s dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser. Ike and Dulles decided that for the US to win friends in the Arab world they had to throw Britain, France, and Israel under the bus. Eisenhower assumed that the Arabs behaved as a unified bloc, especially with respect to Israel.
Ike and Dulles wanted Nasser to be their partner, like the Shah of Iran. Nasser came to power via a coup in 1952. Ike and Dulles gave Nasser everything he wanted. However, Nasser wanted to be more than an American puppet. He wanted to lead the Arab world and believed in pan-Arab nationalism. He also sought to eliminate other Arab rivals. Ike persuaded the British to leave Egypt. The British had a military base which guarded the Suez Canal. Doran does not stress the importance of the canal to the Europeans. The Suez Canal was built by the French in 1869 and was owned by French and British investors. The canal was 100 miles long and an important waterway between Asia and Europe. Two-thirds of Britain and France’s oil came through the canal.
The US built Nasser a powerful, state-of-the-art broadcasting system, expecting that Nasser would use this equipment to help unify the Arabs behind the US. Instead, Nasser used it broadcast his pan-Arab propaganda, which was anti-Western and anti-Israeli. Every Arab household in the region heard his message. Nasser was undermining the Western position in the Middle East and Ike was helping him.
Nasser wanted to destroy Israel and was the instigator of the Six Day War in 1967. In 1956 Israeli intelligence believed that Nasser planned to attack Israel. Egypt was acquiring military equipment and a new Air Force from the Soviets. The Israelis wanted to strike before the Egyptian military became too powerful. Two weeks after British troops had left Egypt, Nasser nationalized the canal. Britain and France decided to help Israel and also retake the canal. The three countries met in Paris to coordinate the use of military force against Egypt. Britain was worried that the pro-Soviet Nasser would interrupt Europe’s oil supplies. Nasser was also stirring up trouble in France's North African colonies. The three countries did not tell Eisenhower what they were doing although the CIA claimed that Ike knew what was going on. The Israelis launched a ground attack. Britain destroyed Egypt’s air force which had Russian fighter bombers. Britain and France followed up by landing troops in Egypt. Britain was a third of the way through capturing the canal when it pulled the plug on the operation because of American pressure.
Eisenhower went ballistic. He demanded that the attacking forces evacuate Egypt immediately and imposed crippling economic sanctions on France and Britain. Against Israel, Ike threatened sanctions. At the United Nations, he sided with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower pondered “How could we possibly support Britain and France if in doing so we lose the whole Arab world?” Eisenhower brought Britain’s economy to the verge of collapse and it cost British Prime Minister Anthony Eden his career.
Nasser emerged from the conflict much stronger and more hostile to American interests. The president expected gratitude from the Arabs, instead, Nasser got the credit and became a pan-Arab hero. The main problem was that Nasser had already decided to work with the Soviets. Empowered and emboldened by his “victory” over the imperialists, Nasser immediately began to undermine other pro-Western countries in the region, particularly Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. Eventually, the US woke up to Nasser’s duplicity. Dulles noted in 1958 following the fall of the Iraqi government that Nasser “enjoyed an unbroken series of success, due largely to our support…Our actions had enabled Nasser to emerge as a great hero, who seemingly took on the great powers and came out with a victory.” Ike came to regret his policies. “Years later,” Richard Nixon wrote in the 1980s, “I talked to Eisenhower about Suez; he told me it was his major foreign policy mistake.”
Anthony Eden was concerned about maintaining world order in a post-colonial world which contained nationalist third world dictators. Eden had been British foreign secretary 1935-1938 and resigned over Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Eden spoke German and had met Hitler in 1935. He and Hitler discovered at a dinner that they had served in trenches opposite one another in WW1. They happily sketched out their respective positions on the back of a dinner card. Eden was a captain and Hitler a corporal. However, Eden realized that Hitler was a threat. His French counterpart at the dinner suggested that had Eden shot Hitler at the time it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. Eden also spoke Farsi and Arabic and understood the Middle East. He met Nasser in 1955 and compared to him to Mussolini. He believed that appeasing Nasser, just like Hitler, was a mistake.
According to Doran, the US would continue to pay for its mistake and not just in the Middle East. Doran notes that when the United States was stuck in Vietnam, Britain and France had refused to help. Doran does not discuss how Suez was viewed in Europe. The lesson that the French, Germans, and Israelis took away was that they could never fully trust the Americans.
German Chancellor Adenauer completely supported the attack and was appalled that the Americans had sided with Nasser and the Soviets. The Soviets threatened Britain and France with nuclear war and that seemed OK with Ike. The creation of the EU started out as a reaction to Suez. Germany and France concluded that the only way to have influence and avoid being bullied was to work together. France left NATO in 1966. Israel has kept its distance as well. In the words of Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general who delivered victory in the Six Day War: "Our American friends give us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms but we decline the advice." Doran implies that many people in Washington still don't understand the Middle East. He mentions that Chuck Hagel, who was a US Senator and Obama’s Defense Secretary, believed that Ike handled Suez brilliantly.
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