Jacob C. Lefkowitz When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser

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Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance

Jacob C. Lefkowitz

The most critical period of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s tenure as President came in October, 1956 during the Suez Crisis. Less than two weeks before a presidential election, Eisen- hower was faced with an invasion of Egypt by Israel, which was working with France and Great Britain to free the Suez Canal after it had been nationalized by Egyptian President Gamal Nasser. Conventional wisdom holds that Eisenhower’s deft handling of the crisis at the height of the Cold War avoided a third World War in which the United States and the Soviet Union would have supported their respective proxies in the Middle East. This article argues that Eisenhower’s decision-making was short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive to the long-term interests of the United States. Specifically, the author argues that Eisenhower’s decision to act as an “honest broker” between Egypt and the United States’ traditional western allies had lasting negative effects on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The article examines the flawed assumptions that underpinned Eisenhower’s approach, including his misapprehension of Soviet aims and intentions, as well as his conviction that the U.S. would gain goodwill in the Arab nationalist world by distancing the U.S. from the “taint” of Western colonialism. In actuality, Eisenhower’s conduct during the crisis had significant repercussions that harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East for decades to come, including elevating Nasser into a Pan-Arab nationalist hero and inciting a wave of radical anti-Western nationalism. In short, this article argues that Eisenhower picked the wrong partner at a critical moment in U.S. history.

I. Introduction When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower faced a stark choice—to support Egypt’s increasingly popular president, who had emerged as the embodiment of Arab nationalism, or to side with America’s traditional global allies, Britain and France, as well as one of its newest friends, Israel. Driven by his desire to avoid an escalation with the Soviets and limit their influence in the Middle East, Eisenhower tried to adopt an “honest broker” approach to the conflict, though when war broke out, he sided with Egypt, pressuring America’s NATO allies and Israel to withdraw their forces from the canal and confirming Egyptian sovereignty over the waterway. This paper asks whether Eisenhower’s decision to back Nasser and work against the interests of America’s traditional allies was strategically wise. Most schol- arship on this issue falls into two basic camps. The first camp argues that Eisenhow- er employed thoughtful and pragmatic decision making, effectively leading the U.S.

Jake Lefkowitz is a member of the class of 2022 at Dartmouth College majoring in Government Mod- ified, with a focus on international relations. Jake attended Ramaz High School in New York City, as well as The Mountain School, in Vershire, Vermont, where he spent a semester working and living on a self-sustaining farm. He has worked as a foreign affairs intern at the office of the Mayor of Jerusalem and as an intern at 25 Madison, a venture capital firm in New York City. Jake is planning on attending law school after graduating from Dartmouth in 2022. In his free time, Jake is an avid rock climber and skier and has scaled routes in Yosemite, Nepal, and throughout the East Coast. Jake enjoys spending time hiking and climbing with friends and exploring the Upper Valley. Jacob C. Lefkowitz through a challenging diplomatic imbroglio and expanding its influence in the Mid- dle East while avoiding an escalation with the Soviets, who were also seeking to expand their influence in the region.1 The second camp argues that Eisenhower, bogged down by flawed assumptions about the potential of Arab nationalism to be a bulwark against communism, backed the wrong horse and both weakened America’s Cold War allies and undermined America’s regional interests in the long term.2 I will evaluate the evidence and demonstrate that Eisenhower’s decision making during the crisis was short-sighted. Instead of turning Egypt into an ally of the U.S. and a partner in its effort to repel the spread of communism, Eisenhower’s strategy promoted increased nationalism throughout the Arab world and led to greater instability and Soviet influence in the region. Eisenhower picked the wrong partner at a critical moment.

II. Literature Review The first school of thought asserts that despite the enormous challenges -Ei senhower faced during October 1956 (including the Soviet reprisal against the Hun- garian uprising, the hospitalization of his trusted Secretary of State, and the upcoming 1956 Presidential election), Eisenhower controlled the crisis masterfully, acting as an honest broker among Cairo, London, Paris, and Tel Aviv (Nichols 1956, 81, 231). Reflecting this view, David Nichols writes that Eisenhower’s conduct during the crisis “was a virtuoso presidential performance—an enduring model for effective crisis management” (Nichols 1956, 285). Peter Hahn writes that “the overriding objective during the crisis was containment of the Soviet Union, a strategic imperative, and not satisfaction of Egyptian aspirations,” and applauds Eisenhower for keeping the U.S. out of war (Hahn 1945–1956, 247).3 Scholars in this camp maintain that Eisenhower’s handling of the crisis sig- nificantly fortified the United Nations and the use of peacekeeping forces, put to rest the age of European imperialism and colonial rule, and brought about an age of unprecedented American dominance as the leader of the Western world order.4 For example, Rose McDermott writes that a “profound impact of the crisis was the shift in power in the Middle East,” and that “prior to the crisis, Britain had been the main outside force in the Middle East,” but “after the crisis, the United States emerged as the dominant outside power.” (McDermott 1998, 163). In the words of Professor Randall Fowler, the Suez Crisis “permanently changed the way the Middle East is articulated to the American public,” and enabled Eisenhower “to provide a new basis for U.S. engagement in the Middle East—the role of guardian and guarantor of liberty—which broke from previously articulated rationales for American engagement in the region, such as supporting the British Empire or providing aid to the Zionist project” ( Fowler 2017, 56.) The opposing camp in this debate argues that by siding with Egypt in 1956, Eisenhower not only weakened Britain and France’s global influence, but also embold- ened Nasser, making him a hero to the Arab world, which led to rising nationalism in the region and the overthrow of governments in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq by Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance Nasserists.5 They further maintain that despite Eisenhower’s hope that being seen as an honest broker would keep the Soviets from gaining influence in the region, Soviet influence in the Arab world expanded rapidly following the Suez War. Historian and former NSC staffer Michael Doran writes that “Eisenhower handed Nasser [a] political victory—the greatest of his career” and “helped transform the Egyptian leader into a pan-Arab hero of epic proportions,” without ever receiving the strategic payoff, in the form of widespread Arab goodwill, that he expected (Doran 2017, 11). And Gail Meyer writes that “American policy unified and strengthened Arab nationalist resis- tance while ignoring its tremendous popular appeal” (Meyer 1980, 194). These historians criticize not only Eisenhower’s conduct during the crisis but also his underlying rationale for trying to act as an honest broker. Robert McMahon points out that Eisenhower underestimated the damage to the U.S.-Egyptian relationship caused by his promotion of the Baghdad Pact and the U.S.’s withdrawal of support for Nasser’s Aswan Dam project (McMahon 1986, 465).6 And as Robert Stook- ey argues, Eisenhower’s honest broker approach led the U.S. into “actions that, far from shielding the Near East from the Cold War, actually tended to draw it into the confrontation and lent substance to Communist assertions, eagerly adopted by Arab nationalists, that the United States had become the leader of Western imperialism opposed to Arab freedom and progress” (Stookey 1975, 157). More recently, Dennis Ross, another former NSC staffer who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents and who has been intimately involved in U.S.-Middle East affairs for decades, writes that “Eisenhower failed on most of the objectives he set for himself in the Middle East, [as] he was unable to keep the Soviets out of the area, [weakened] U.S. and Western influence … [and] made no headway on peace” (Ross 2015, 5).

III. Research Design In the remainder of this paper, I demonstrate how evidence gathered from confiden- tial communications among the key participants in the Suez Crisis as well as contem- poraneous memoranda summarizing key meetings by the government officials most deeply involved support the critique that Eisenhower’s strategy during the war was shortsighted and harmed U.S. interests long-term. I make this argument in two parts. First, I evaluate the assumptions that guided Eisenhower’s honest broker strategy and conclude that many of them were flawed based on the facts on the ground at the time. Second, I look at Eisenhower’s actual conduct during the crisis and the state of affairs in the Middle East in the following years and explain how Eisenhower’s strategy backfired.

IV. Evidence A. Assumptions Underpinning Eisenhower’s Honest Broker Approach Several key assumptions led Eisenhower to posture the U.S. as an honest broker during the Suez Crisis. First, Eisenhower’s paramount concern was to avoid war with the So- viet Union.7 He believed that if the U.S. opposed Egypt during the crisis, it would Jacob C. Lefkowitz push Egypt firmly into the Soviet orbit and could potentially bring the Soviet Union directly into the conflict as Egypt’s protector.8 Second, Eisenhower was concerned that an Egyptian blockade of the canal could have devastating effects on Europe’s access to oil and make the Europeans more dependent on the Soviet Union.9 Third, he believed that distancing the U.S. from European colonialism and Israel would help the U.S. forge a closer relationship with Nasser and expand the U.S.’s influence in the Middle East.10 Finally, he had a steadfast belief that the shared monotheism of Christianity and Islam made the Arabs more natural allies of the U.S. than the Soviet Union.11 I will evaluate each of these assumptions. There is no question that concern about war with the Soviet Union influ- enced Eisenhower during the crisis. As early as April 1956, CIA Director Allen Dulles reported to Eisenhower that “Russia is prepared to support Egypt all the way, even risking World War III.”12 As British and French forces approached the Canal Zone in November of 1956, Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin even sent letters to Prime Min- isters Eden, Mollet, and Ben Gurion containing veiled threats of nuclear annihilation (Nichols Eisenhower 1956, 244).13 To be sure, the specter of war was not something Eisenhower could take lightly, and any critique of Eisenhower’s conduct that does not take this threat seriously does not do justice to the issue. A 1956 Net Evaluation Subcommittee report on the implications of a nuclear war with Russia concluded that nuclear war would result in the death of approximately 40% of the U.S. population, the serious injury of another 13%, and the total disruption of the political, social and economic structure of the U.S.14 Based on these catastrophic predictions, scholars view White House Chief of Staff Jim Hagerty’s statement on October 8, 1956 that “peaceful settlement must be the only answer in these days of nuclear weapons” as evidence that Eisenhower’s key priority was avoiding a nuclear escalation with the Soviets.15 A closer inspection of the evidence, however, suggests that Eisenhower did not actually deem the risk of such a war with the Soviets to be very serious. On July 28, 1956, only two days after Nasser’s move to nationalize the Suez, Eisenhower said he felt it was “very clear that the Soviet Union was not going to get into a major war” over the Suez Canal.16 Even during an NSC meeting on November 8, at the most critical period of the conflict, Eisenhower stated that he “couldn’t help believing that the Russians would play their game short of anything which would induce the United States to declare war on them.”17 Eisenhower’s intuition about Soviet intentions was rooted in the CIA’s estimation that the “main Soviet emphasis would be on keeping the pot boiling,” but that Russia would stop short of any actions that “they believed likely to induce general war.”18 Indeed, the very same Net Evaluation report that projected dire consequences for the United States in the case of a nuclear war determined that “the massive nuclear retaliatory capability of the United States is an indispensable deterrent to Soviet attack.”19 And a diary entry by Eisenhower on January 23, 1956 in- dicates that U.S. intelligence projected the damage resulting from a U.S.-Russian nuclear war to be three times greater for the Soviet Union.20 Thus, it’s clear that the spec- Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance ter of nuclear war, though a serious matter, was not something Eisenhower deemed a realistic threat, as many scholars in the pro-Eisenhower camp argue.21 Soviet actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, only 6 years after the Suez affair, bolster Eisenhower’s assumption that the Soviets were just as fearful as he was of a nuclear confrontation.22 Oil was also on Eisenhower’s mind, and that was certainly a legitimate concern. Though the U.S. was far less dependent on oil from the Middle East than was Western Europe, the U.S. would have been harmed if it no longer had access to Mid- dle Eastern oil (McDermott 1998, 137)23. As Dulles observed at an NSC meeting on July 31, 1956, “rationing of oil would be an immediate result, with curtailment of automobile production, and a severe blow to the United States economy.”24 The more serious concern to Eisenhower, however, was the impact closing the canal would have on Europe. As Henry Brands points out, “[t]he whole point of worrying about Soviet penetration of the Middle East was to ensure that Middle Eastern oil continues to flow to Britain and the other European allies” (Brands; Justice 2013).25 Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff Sherman Adams recalls that Eisenhower spoke directly to this concern when he remarked in a meeting that “[a]ny outbreak of major hostilities in the region would be a catastrophe for the world. . . . [A]ll of Western Europe had gone to oil instead of coal for its energy, and that oil comes from the Mideast” (Adams 1961, 286). What was foremost on Eisenhower’s mind, and played the most important role in shaping his decision to try to act as an honest broker, was his desire to keep the Soviets from gaining influence in the region. Importantly, a section of a CIA National Intelligence Estimate issued five days before Eisenhower’s first inauguration, entitled “Obstacles to U.S. Influence in the Middle East,” provides support for some of Eisen- hower’s other assumptions. The NIE states that the “U.S. association with Israel is a continuing irritant in U.S.-Arab relations and [is] the major obstacle to the acceptance of U.S. influence in the Middle East.”26 The report further recognizes that the “U.S. alliance with the U.K. and France, the most important former colonial powers in the area, also arouses Arab distrust.”27 Several months later, on May 29, Secretary of State Dulles returned from a trip to the Middle East and confirmed both views, writing to Eisenhower that “the Israel factor and the association of the United States in the minds of the people of the area with French and British colonial and imperialist policies are millstones around our neck.”28 Although Eisenhower tried to act as an honest broker when it came to the Middle East from the start of his presidency, it should have been evident to him by 1956 that the U.S. and Egypt were unlikely allies and that his approach might not succeed. Following the Egyptian revolution of 1952, Egypt viewed the evacuation of British forces from Egyptian territory as a necessary step to free itself from the yoke of colonial rule and establish complete independence. In the first meeting between Sec- retary of State Dulles and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi in 1953, Fawzi leveraged Dulles’ fears about the Soviets to incentivize the U.S. to support Egypt in its efforts to oust the British from the Canal Zone. Fawzi stated that “perhaps we are not Communist now … but this situation might change.”29 He further warned Jacob C. Lefkowitz that “delay in solving the problems in the Middle East … is one of the best ways to make Communists.”30 Following this meeting, Eisenhower pressured Britain to show deference to “the very strong nationalist sentiments of the Egyptian government and people,” even going so far as to threaten to supply Egypt with military aid (Foreign Relations of the United States 1952–1954, vol. IX). The British agreed to withdraw their troops, but only one year later, Nasser announced a massive arms deal between Egypt and Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite state. Clearly, Eisenhower’s honest broker policy during the Suez base negotiation had failed to bring Egypt under American influence. The years leading up to the Suez Canal crisis also produced two instances in which the U.S. clashed with Nasser—first regarding the Baghdad Pact and then during negotiations over funding the Aswan Dam project. The Baghdad Pact was the U.S.’s effort to create a regional alliance of countries along the northern tier of the Middle East, “stretching from Pakistan to Turkey,” who felt “the hot breath of the So- viet Union on their necks.”31 Because of the “constant friction” between the Egyptians and the British, Dulles said he “foresaw a lot of problems in making Egypt the military center of a defense pact.”32 The U.S. instead chose to focus on Iraq, Turkey, and Paki- stan, countries that were “more alert to the same danger the United States and United Kingdom feel and [were] less preoccupied with the colonialism aspects of the past and the existing feud with Israel.”33 Nasser viewed the Baghdad Pact as a great affront to his prestige,5F and U.S. Ambassador Parker Hart later recollected in an interview that the Baghdad Pact caused Nasser to be “absolutely furious with the United States” and created a “cloud” over American-Egyptian relations that “never dissipated” (Hart 1989).34 If the first straw was the Baghdad Pact, the second was the Aswan High Dam project, which was one of Nasser’s signature initiatives in 1956 and would have enabled Egypt to irrigate 1.3 million acres of arid Egyptian land and produce enough electricity to sustain half of the Egyptian population (Caruthers 1956). The Eisenhow- er administration, in conjunction with Britain and the World Bank, initially set out to fund the project in an effort to bring Egypt back into the fold after the 1955 arms deal with the Soviets. But when a majority in the U.S. Congress opposed the plan, due to “a feeling that the Egyptian Government was working closely with those hostile to [the U.S.],” an implicit reference to the USSR, the U.S. rescinded its support.35 Not only did this further alienate Nasser and push him decidedly in the direction of the Soviets, but it also provided him with the pretext to nationalize the Suez. Exactly one week after the U.S. formally withdrew its offer to finance the Aswan project, Nasser announced his intention to nationalize the Suez Canal.36 Finally, there was the issue of Israel. Eisenhower saw the Middle East as the testing ground for U.S.-Soviet relations (Ross 2015, 27). And from day one of his tenure, he sought to create some distance between the U.S. and Israel in order to appeal to the Arabs. In his first years, he reduced the total amount of aid the U.S. gave Israel, and even suspended assistance when the Jordanians complained that Israel Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance was diverting water from the Jordan River to create hydroelectric power (Ross 2015, 29). He refused to lift the U.S. arms embargo to Israel even after the Egyptian-Soviet arms deal, explaining to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion in April, 1956, that arms sales to Israel would not “serve the cause of peace and stability.”37 But with the U.S. arms depot closed to Israel, Ben Gurion turned to France for the very weapons and aircraft that would be used to attack Egypt later that year (Ross 2015, 53). Once again, Eisenhower’s efforts at being an honest broker failed; indeed, they promoted the military cooperation between France and Israel that months later Eisenhower con- demned during the Suez Crisis.

B. Eisenhower’s Honest Brokerage During the Suez Crisis and its Effects Despite the failure of Eisenhower’s honest broker approach during the previous few years and the widening fissure between the U.S. and Egypt, Eisenhower remained committed to his approach throughout the Suez Crisis. Instead of recognizing the in- creasing level of collaboration between Nasser and the Soviet Union, Eisenhower continued to pursue a partnership with Nasser. He rationalized the 1955 Egyptian-Soviet arms deal by accepting Nasser’s justification that refusal to accept the arms package would have resulted in his overthrow by the weak Egyptian army, desperately in need of weapons and aid at the time.38 He also turned a blind eye to the clear interest Nasser and the Soviets shared in undermining the Baghdad Pact, which positioned them as natural allies (Doran 2017, 245). One explanation for Eisenhower’s continued faith in a relationship with Nasser is that the President simply could not conceive of a lasting strategic partnership between the Islamic, monotheistic Nasserites and the atheistic communists, as some scholars argue (Justice 2013, 3; Morrison 2009, 4; Inboden 2008, 290). Indeed, in a private letter Eisenhower wrote to his religious advisor, Reverend Edward L.R. Elson in 1958, the President noted that “I never fail in any communication with Arab leaders, oral or written, to stress the importance of the spiritual factor in our relationship. I have argued that belief in God should create between them and us the common pur- pose of opposing atheistic communism.”39 Regardless of the impetus for Eisenhower’s miscalculation, he proceeded with his honest broker approach, betting that it would strengthen the U.S.’s influence in the region and hold the Soviets at bay. Once Nasser nationalized the Suez, Eisenhower sought to settle the issue dip- lomatically. When the proposals resulting from the First and Second London Confer- ences during the summer of 1956 failed, war became a more likely possibility. Then, in a press conference on October 2, Dulles doubled down on Eisenhower’s honest broker policy by asserting that while the U.S. would stand by its traditional allies (Britain and France) in the North Atlantic arena, “any areas encroaching in some form or manner on the problem of so-called colonialism, [will] find the U.S. playing an independent role” (Eden 1960, 483–484). When Israel invaded Egypt later in the month and Britain and France followed suit less than a week later, Eisenhower de- nounced the military action as being irreconcilable “with the principles and purposes Jacob C. Lefkowitz of the United Nations to which we have all subscribed.”40 Eisenhower continued to work through the U.N. to force a cease-fire and the withdrawal from Egypt of foreign forces, and applied pressure on Britain and France in the form of economic sanctions and a refusal to supply them with oil (McDermott 1998, 139).41 On November 29, Britain, France and Israel officially ended the war and announced their intentions to withdraw their troops from Egypt. The depth of Eisenhower’s Suez miscalculation becomes clear when one an- alyzes Middle Eastern affairs in the years following the crisis. The U.S. never received the strategic payoff it expected in the form of increased Arab goodwill, and Arab nationalists became even more entrenched in the Soviet sphere. A 1957 NIE observes that “[t]he role of the U.S. in the passage of the [Suez Canal Crisis] Cease Fire Reso- lution in the U.N. was widely appreciated, but Soviet threats against the U.K. made an equal or greater impression on the Arab public.”42 The report recognizes that in the prior two years, “the Soviet bloc has established itself as a power with direct interests and influence in the Near East” and takes note of Nasser’s “steady drift toward the Communist Bloc.”43 The NIE also predicts (accurately) that the radical Arab nationalist states (Egypt, Syria, and to a lesser degree Yemen), which constitute “the most significant indigenous regional force in the Near East” will “persist in attempts to use the USSR as a counter to real or imagined Western pressure” and that “Sino-Soviet influence will expand” in the region.44 Eisenhower sought to address the troubling trends identified in the NIE by articulating the “Eisenhower Doctrine” in a Special Message to Congress on January 5, 1957, in which he pledged to defend and provide aid for any country seeking pro- tection “against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.”45 Asserting that he had “no intention of standing idly by to see the southern flank of NATO completely collapse through Communist penetration and success in the Mid-East,” Eisenhower sought, through his Doctrine, to fill “the existing vacuum that must be filled by the United States before it is filled by Russia.”46 But the very vacuum that Eisenhower was lamenting was a product of his own handling of the Suez Crisis. In the end, the rapidly rising tide of Arab nationalism in the Mid- dle East, spearheaded by Nasser, led to the demise of the Eisenhower Doctrine. And Eisenhower’s policies helped to establish Nasser as the undisputed “spokesman and symbol of radical Pan-Arab nationalism.”47 The Eisenhower Doctrine suffered its first loss when Arab nationalists over- threw the U.S.-friendly leader of Saudi Arabia, King Saud. Eisenhower initially had high hopes for the King, whom he sought to “build up … as a prospective leader of the Arab world—in the thought that mutually antagonistic personal ambitions might disrupt the aggressive plans [of] Nasser.”48 But when Nasser revealed in a March 1957 speech that he had foiled a conspiracy, formulated by King Saud, to murder the Egyp- tian President and dismantle the UAR, Arab nationalist members of the Saudi royal family forced Saud out and replaced him with his brother, Crown Prince Feisal (Dor- an 2017, 224). A special NIE on the implications of the Saudi regime change states Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance that Feisal’s “coming to power will be construed throughout the area as a repudiation of Saud’s open anti-Nasser, pro-West policy, and as a victory for Nasserism,” and by extension, Arab nationalism.49 A second blow to the Doctrine came when Syria and Egypt formed the Unit- ed Arab Republic (UAR) on February 1, 1958 (Hahn 2006, 43).50 The Egyptian-Syr- ian merger spelled trouble for the Western-aligned Arab states, such as Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel, as it served to further bolster Nasser’s status and provided him with a strategic base of operations in Syria, “the heart of the fertile crescent” (Doran 2017, 222). Yet, despite the strategic threat that the UAR represented to U.S. interests, American Ambassador James Moose reported that popular Arab nationalist Syri- an support for the merger was so energetic that the U.S. “would be wasting its prestige … [by] openly opposing so popular a cause.”51 Thus, on February 25, Eisenhower acquiesced and the U.S. formally recognized the UAR. The political upheaval of Iraq, which Eisenhower referred to as “the country that [the U.S. was] counting on heavily as a bulwark of stability and progress in the region” in his memoirs, was likewise detrimental to U.S. regional interests (Eisen- hower 1965, 265). On July 13, 1958, two Iraqi army officers launched a macabre coup, murdering the royal family and dragging the defiled corpse of the Crown Prince Abdel Ilah through the Baghdad streets. In place of the Western-aligned Hashemite regime, the Iraqi officers, who identified as Nasserite “Free Officers,” proclaimed the rise of a new Arab nationalist republic modeled on the Egyptian regime. A briefing by CIA Director Allen Dulles the morning after the coup notes that “Radio Cairo [and] Damascus are hailing these developments” and predicted that the revolution would “set up a chain reaction which will doom the pro-West governments of Lebanon and Jordan, and raise grave problems for Turkey and Iran.”52 The situation that developed in Lebanon that same month, and Eisenhower’s response to it, serve as perhaps the best evidence that his Suez strategy had failed. Fol- lowing the establishment of the UAR, Eisenhower decided to send troops to Lebanon to help defend Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, who was under attack from pro-Nasserites in Lebanon. Dulles noted at the time that U.S. involvement would bring “very threatening gestures” by the Soviets, “a very bad reaction through most of the Arab countries,” and that “most of Asia [would be] against it” too.53 But Eisen- hower concluded that the U.S. “must act, or get out of the Middle East entirely,” and judged that “to lose this area by inaction would be far worse than the loss in China, because of the strategic position and resources of the Middle East.”54 Eisenhower thus repudiated the very assumptions that had motivated his Suez policy, deciding to shore up one of America’s regional allies instead of appeasing Arab nationalists and trying to avoid escalating tensions with Russia. As Michael Doran notes, only two years after Eisenhower formulated a Suez policy that focused on appeasement of Nasser in an effort to gain influence over the Arab world, “the only Arab actors willing to work against Egypt were King Hussein of Jordan and President Chamoun of Lebanon – embattled leaders of diminutive and internally divided countries” who “hardly consti- Jacob C. Lefkowitz tuted a solid foundation for a regional strategy” (Doran 2017, 231). The evidence thus shows that Eisenhower’s Suez strategy did not bring him the benefits he anticipated but instead undermined the very interests he sought to promote.55

V. Conclusion This paper has argued that Eisenhower’s Suez policy was shortsighted and gave the Soviets an opportunity both to expand their scope of influence in the Middle East and create greater instability in the region, outcomes that Eisenhower had sought to avoid by coming to the aid of the Egyptians. While it is certainly true that Eisenhower avoided what could have been a catastrophic war with the Soviet Union, one can only defend his policy on that score if one assumes, contrary to the weight of the evidence, that this was a serious risk. I have focused in the first evidentiary section of this paper on showing that several of Eisenhower’s honest broker assumptions were faulty and in the second section on demonstrating that his strategy actually harmed long-term U.S. interests. An intriguing post-script that provides even further support for my conclusion is that it appears Eisenhower even acknowledged later in life that he regretted his Suez policies. President Richard Nixon revealed in 1988 that Eisenhower confided in him shortly after the Six Day War that his Suez decision was “his major foreign policy mistake” (Nixon 1987, 16). As Nixon related their conversation, Eisenhower admit- ted that “saving Nasser at Suez didn’t help as far as the Middle East was concerned,” and resulted in “Nasser [becoming] even more anti-West and anti-U.S” (Nixon 1987, 16). He further lamented to Nixon that “the worst fallout from Suez was that it weakened the will of [America’s] best allies, Britain and France, to play a major role in the Middle East or in other areas outside Europe” (Nixon 1987, 16).56 If this paper is correct that Eisenhower’s Suez policy was shortsighted and ultimately created more problems for the United States than it solved, this has important implications for presidents and policymakers navigating other conflicts. Eisen- hower based his decision-making on a set of assumptions about the Soviet Union, the rise of Arab nationalism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. When viewed in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, his policy appeared to have been successful. He waged peace, was easily re-elected, and elevated the United Nations. But the damage he caused by turning against the U.S.’s traditional allies did not only affect those nations. It also affected the standing of the U.S. among a wider audience. An interaction in 1959 between Lebanese Prime Minister Rashid Karami and President Eisenhower reveals one of the other costs of Eisenhower’s ill-fated approach to the Suez Crisis and has implications for preventing similar mistakes in the future. As Eisenhower recounted in his memoirs, Karami told Eisenhower that the U.S. response during the conflict led him to believe that it would never “resort to force to support friends” (Eisenhower 1965, 290). Dennis Ross notes that Eisenhower included this perspective in his memoirs to demonstrate how his decision in 1958 to intervene in Lebanon corrected this impression (Ross 2015, 49). But Karami’s observation serves as a powerful reminder Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance of the collateral damage that can be caused when the U.S. doesn’t stand by its friends. Eisenhower’s conduct during the Suez crisis sent the wrong signals to leaders in the Arab world at precisely the wrong time. Far from demonstrating that the U.S. was principled and could be trusted by its allies, Eisenhower instead proved that America could not be relied upon as a dependable partner. At a moment when both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were seeking to expand their influence in the Middle East and offering significant assistance to would-be allies, Eisenhower’s conduct was clearly seen as a red flag by Karami. This is a lesson well worth learning by future presidents and policymakers. Twenty years after the Suez War, the U.S. helped to facilitate a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and Egypt became a close ally of the U.S. and a recipient of billions of dollars in military aid. Importantly, that relationship developed not after the U.S. turned its back on its closest allies in the region, but rather after the U.S. re-armed Israel during its 1973 war against Egypt and helped it triumph. An important lesson from the Suez Crisis is that U.S. interests are often better served when it stands up for its principles and stands by its allies. Jacob C. Lefkowitz

Endnotes 1. See, e.g. Alex von Tunzelmann, Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary and Eisenhower’s Campaign for Peace (New York: Harper, 2016); David A. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis – Suez and the Brink of War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012); Herbert Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1972), 574; Peter Hahn, The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt 1945–1956: Strategy and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 247; Robert A. Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 154–55; Rose McDermott, Risk-Taking in International Politics: Prospect Theory in American Foreign Policy (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 164; William I. Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).

2. See, e.g. Dennis Ross, Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015); Gail E. Meyer, Egypt and the United States: The Formative Years (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980), 194; Michael Doran, Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East (New York: Free Press, 2017); Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Mid- dle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 85–86.

3. See, e.g. R. Gordon Hoxie, “Eisenhower and Presidential Leadership,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 13, no. 4 (1983): 604, where he writes that Eisenhower believed that “unless the Anglo-French and Israeli invasion at Suez were checked, the Russians, already in Egypt, would emerge as the protectors of the oil-rich Arab states and the whole Third World would turn against the West.” See, e.g. Rose McDermott, Risk-Taking in International Politics, 164, where she argues that “a major [nuclear] war was averted because of firm and consistent pressure by Eisenhower against his Western allies.”

4. See, e.g. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956, 262, where he writes: “the second [component of Ei- senhower’s Suez approach] was his commitment to principle, upholding the United Nations.”

5. See infra, at p. 15–17 of this paper, for a discussion of the ways in which Eisenhower’s Suez policy helped lead to government overthrows in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq.

6. See infra, at p. 10–11 of this paper, for a discussion of the impact of both the Baghdad Pact and the Aswan Dam on U.S.-Egyptian relations.

7. See, e.g. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956, 286, where he states that “Ike’s paramount concern was that a Suez-type crisis might escalate into a nuclear holocaust.”

8. See, e.g. David Justice, “Communication Breakdown: The Eisenhower Administration, An- thony Eden, and the Suez Crisis,” North Alabama Historical Review 3, no. 7 (2013): 3, where he writes that “[t]he worst case scenario for Eisenhower and Dulles was for the Soviet Union to move into the Middle East and influence the Arab nations to join their cause.”

9. See endnote 23 for a more complete discussion of this concern. Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance 10. Adams, 1961, 286 vindicates this assertion.

11. See Ross, 2015, 32 for a list of scholarly articles that discuss this belief more comprehen- sively.

12. Notes from Bipartisan meeting, November 9, 1956, “Nov 56 Misc (3),” Box 20, DDE Diary-Whitman, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library.

13. Soviet Premier Bulganin’s letters equated the Israeli, French and British attacks on Egypt with hypothetical attacks on Britain and France by “more powerful states possessing all types of modern weapons of destruction,” including “rocket weapons.”

14. Memorandum of Discussion at the 306th Meeting of the National Security Council, December 20, 1956, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, vol. XIX, National Security Policy, eds. William Klingaman, David S. Patterson and Ilana Stern (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1990), doc. 100.

15. Memo, Hagerty to Eisenhower, October 8, 1956, “Dulles, F Oct 56 (2),” Box 7, D-h-Whit- man, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; see, e.g. Rose McDermott, Risk-Taking in International Politics, 158, for an example of a scholar using Hagerty’s statement to support such a claim.

16. Memorandum of a Conversation with the President, July 28, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. XVI, Suez Crisis, ed. Nina J. Noring (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1990), doc. 16.

17. Memorandum of Discussion at the 303d Meeting of the National Security Council, No- vember 8, 1956, FRUS, vol. XVI, doc. 554.

18. Refer to previous endnote.

19. Memorandum of Discussion at the 306th Meeting of the National Security Council, December 20, 1956, FRUS, vol. XIX, doc. 100.

20. Diary Entry by the President, January 23, 1956, FRUS, vol. XIX, doc. 53.

21. Indeed, in O. M. Smolansky, “Moscow and the Suez Crisis, 1956: A Reappraisal,” Political Science Quarterly 80, no. 4 (1965): 587–588, he notes that “The USSR had in fact no choice but to back Cairo. This is not to say that Moscow would have risked its annihilation for the sake of Egypt but that the Soviet government would seek by means of diplomatic and moral pressure to prevent the Western powers from crushing Nasser.” See also, Michael Peck, “In 1956, Russia Almost Launched a Nuclear War against Britain, France and Israel,” The Nation- al Interest (January 8, 2017), which notes that “the Soviet Union’s ICBM force was mostly a propaganda at th[e] time.”

22. See, e.g. Mark L. Haas, “Prospect Theory and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Studies Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2001): 265–266 for an assessment of how prospect theory and Jacob C. Lefkowitz risk-aversion explain Khruschev’s ultimate decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis to return the missiles to the Soviet Union.

23. Rose McDermott, Risk-Taking in International Politics, 137; “About 1.5 million barrels of oil a day transited the Canal, about 1.2 million of which were destined for Western Europe. This figure amounted to about two-thirds of Western Europe’s total oil supplies. About a third of the ships that passed through the Canal at the time were British and about three-fourths belonged to NATO countries. Relatively few vessels that passed through the Canal, however, were of American registry. American vessels only accounted for 2.7 percent of the total net tonnage that transited the Canal in 1955.”

24. Memorandum of a Conference With the President, July 31, 1956, FRUS, vol. XVI, doc. 34.

25. “Communication Breakdown: The Eisenhower Administration, Anthony Eden, and the Suez Crisis,” North Alabama Historical Review 3, no. 7 (2013): 6, where he writes that if the Soviets were to become involved in the crisis, “possibly by influence of Nasser and his Arab nation following, they would have control over oil that was being used to assist in the economic recovery of Western Europe.”

26. National Intelligence Estimate, January 15, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, vol. IX, part 1, The Near and Middle East, eds. Paul Claussen, Joan M. Lee and Carl N. Raether (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1986), doc. 114.

27. Refer to previous endnote.

28. Dulles to Eisenhower, May 29, 1953, Dulles Papers, Box 73, Mudd Library, Princeton University.

29. Memorandum of Conversation, Prepared in the Embassy in Cairo, May 11, 1953, FRUS, vol. IX, part 1, doc. 3.

30. Refer to previous endnote.

31. Memorandum of Discussion at the 153d Meeting of the National Security Council, July 9, 1953, FRUS, vol. IX, part 1, doc. 144.

32. Beale Minutes, July 11, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, vol. V, part 2, Western European Secu- rity, eds. John A. Bernbaum, Lisle A. Rose and Charles S. Sampson (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1983), doc. 301.

33. Refer to previous endnote.

34. Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Department of State, February 24, 1955, FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. XIV, Arab-Israeli Dispute, ed. Carl N. Raether (Washington: Govern- ment Printing Office, 1989), doc. 29; Nasser viewed the Baghdad Pact as a threat to his pursuit Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance of a “position of leadership in the Arab world.”

35. Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, July 19, 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, vol. XV, Arab-Israeli Dispute, ed. Carl N. Raether (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1989), doc. 478. See, e.g. William J. Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy toward Egypt, 1955-1981 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 214, where he explains that the U.S. justified its decision publicly by framing Egypt as a credit risk and questioning “the ability of Egypt to devote adequate resources to assure the project’s success.”

36. Editorial Note, FRUS, vol. XVI, doc. 1; Nasser asserted that the money Egypt would collect in the form of transit fees from ships passing through the canal would be reallocated to fund the construction of the Aswan Dam.

37. Letter From President Eisenhower to Prime Minister Ben Gurion, April 30, 1956, FRUS, vol. XV, doc. 315.

38. Telegram From the Embassy in Egypt to the Department of State, September 21, 1955, FRUS, vol. XIV, doc. 293; Nasser subdued Eisenhower’s apprehension of the 1955 Egyp- tian-Soviet arms deal by cunningly deceiving him into believing that, in light of the recent Israeli raid on Gaza (in February, 1955) and the disparity in arms between the Egyptian and Israeli militaries, his rejection of the Soviet arms offer would have led to military revolt. For a more complete explanation of Nasser’s deception, see Doran, Ike’s Gamble, 106–122.

39. Dwight D. Eisenhower to Reverend Edward L. R. Elson, July 31, 1958, in The Nation- al Security Archive, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB78/propaganda%20133. pdf.

40. Address delivered to the Nation over radio and television on October 31, 1956 (White House press release).

41. At the time of the Suez nationalization, both Britain and France only had access to about a six-week supply of oil. By mid-to-late November, the oil shortages in these countries were becoming severe and their economies were deteriorating at an alarming rate.

42. National Intelligence Estimate, February 30, 1957, FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. XII, Near East Region; Iraq; Iran, eds. Paul Claussen, Edward C. Keefer, Will Klingaman, and Nina J. Noring (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1991), doc. 266.

43. Refer to previous endnote

44. Refer to endnote 42.

45. The Eisenhower Doctrine, 1957, FRUS, 1953–1960, Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations.

46. Message From the President to the Secretary of State, December 12, 1956, FRUS, vol. Jacob C. Lefkowitz XVI, doc. 650; Memorandum of a Meeting, January 1, 1957, FRUS, vol. XII, doc. 182.

47. National Intelligence Estimate, February 2, 1957, FRUS, vol. XII, doc. 266.

48. Diary Entry by the President, March 28, 1956, FRUS, vol. XV, doc. 226.

49. Special National Intelligence Estimate, April 8, 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. XII, Near East Region; Iraq; Iran; Arabian Peninsula, ed. Edward Keefer (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1993), doc. 315.

50. This union occurred against the backdrop of mounting U.S.-Syrian tensions, as Eisenhow- er had recently sent the Sixth Fleet to the Eastern Mediterranean and stationed NATO planes in Turkey in response to rising signs of Communist influence in Syria. Nasser responded by sending Egyptian pilots and soldiers into Syria to fortify Damascus, which eventually led to the establishment of the UAR.

51. Telegram From the Embassy in Syria to the Department of State, January 15, 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. XIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute, eds. Suzanne E. Coffman and Charles S. Sampson (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1992), doc. 183: In this telegram, U.S. Ambassador to Syria James Moose classifies the formation of the UAR as “obviously far from attractive” and notes the “increased pressure” that the “domination of Syria by Nasser” would impose on “west-oriented neighbors of Syria.”

52. Briefing Notes by Director of Central Intelligence Dulles, July 14, 1958, FRUS, vol. XII, doc. 110.

53. Memorandum of a Conference With the President , July 14, 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, ed. Louis J. Smith (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1992), doc. 124.

54. Refer to previous endnote; the reference to China is to the fall of mainland China to communism in 1949.

55. In an interview that I conducted with Michael Doran, author of Ike’s Gamble, on Novem- ber 27, 2020, Doran suggested that Eisenhower should have advocated for a cease-fire in place resolution in the UN, rather than the calling for unconditional retreat by Britain, France, and Israel that he achieved. This, according to Doran, would have allowed the U.S. to negotiate with Egypt from a position of strength, given the threat of nearby Western-aligned forces, and might well have resulted in additional concessions from Nasser, which would have dampened the impression that he emerged from the Suez Crisis having smitten the West.

56. Notably, Eisenhower historian Stephen Ambrose questions Nixon’s account of the conversation (in Stephen E. Ambrose, “Review of Nixon: A Life by Jonathan Aitken,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 4 (July/August, 1994): 168). But even if the veracity of Nixon’s account cannot be corroborated by other sources, Eisenhower’s actions with respect to Lebanon certainly make it clear that by 1958, he had adopted a position very much at odds with his Suez strategy. Between a Canal and a Hard Alliance

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