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 au- thor 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 ex- pand 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 influ- ence 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 cri- sis “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 out- side 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. en- gagement 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] politi- cal 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 relation- ship caused by his promotion of the Baghdad Pact and the U.S.’s withdrawal of sup- port 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 de- cades, 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.