Decision-Making in Great Britain During the Suez Crisis

Small Groups and a Persistent Leader

Bertjan Verbeek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351945974
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This radically new work provides an innovative approach to the question of why the Suez Crisis erupted. Bertjan Verbeek here applies foreign policy analysis framework to British decision making during the crisis, providing the first full foreign policy analysis of this important event. Moreover, the book offers a new interpretation on British decision-making during the crisis. Many existing studies of Suez emphasise the role of the Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, and often focus on the matter of collusion with Israel. This study demonstrates that small group dynamics in the institutional context of cabinet decision-making in the British political system are much more important. This study offers the possibility of determining more precisely the interrelationship between systemic constraints on states' behaviour and the actual behaviour of states under such constraints.

Chapter 1
Introduction: The Puzzle of Suez

Introduction

This book puts forward three major claims. First, decision-making in Great Britain during the Suez crisis of 1956 was concentrated in the hands of a small group of policy-makers, who met in different organizational settings. Throughout the crisis the group would sometimes meet as part of the full Cabinet. At different instances, it would gather as the so-called Egypt Committee. On other occasions different members of the group would convene informally. Second, the deliberations of this small group of policy-makers failed to meet important procedural criteria of high quality decision-making. This failure contributed to what in the literature generally is considered a policy fiasco: the Anglo-French bombing of Egypt and invasion of the area of the Suez Canal in October-November 1956. Small group dynamics, including the leadership style of Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden, constitute the major explanation of the group's poor performance. Moreover, parts of the contents of the group's decisions are related to its common perspective on Anglo-American relations regarding the Middle East and to the Prime Minister's individual beliefs regarding the conduct of international affairs. Third, the institutional setting of the British political system is conducive to promoting the impact of small groups and their leader on decision-making, especially in crisis situations. The hierarchy between Prime Minister, Senior Ministers, Junior Ministers, and backbenchers threatens the quality of decision-making, within the full Cabinet as well as in special bodies like the Egypt Committee.

The development of this threefold claim is prompted by the next section's description of Britain's failure to meet important procedural criteria of high quality decision-making and of their consequences for its foreign policy during the Suez crisis. This will result in the formulation of an empirical puzzle of Suez. The following section takes stock of the existing literature on Suez, both in history and in political science, in order to assess existing resolutions to this empirical puzzle. This will give rise to a theoretical puzzle of Suez, followed by an overview of the way in which the book's subsequent chapters will resolve both puzzles of British decision-making during the Suez crisis. This introductory chapter will be concluded with a short chronology of the events leading up to the Suez crisis, the crisis itself as well as its aftermath.

The Empirical Puzzle

For Great Britain the Suez crisis is usually portrayed as a major foreign policy fiasco. In the short run, Great Britain failed to reach its, as we will see, implicit and contradictory, immediate objectives. The Anglo-French military intervention did not undo Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal Company of 26 July 1956 or result in the downfall of its President Gamal Abdul Nasser. It also soured the ‘special relationship’ between Great Britain and the United States as well as Britain's standing among the international community. Moreover, Great Britain suffered economically. Supporting Sterling had cost the country a large portion of its financial reserves. Sunken ships blocked passage through the Suez Canal. Cargo had to sail pass Cape of Good Hope instead, thus increasing the price of many goods, including oil. In the long run, the Suez crisis ended Great Britain's influential position in the Middle East, although it would engage in limited military action in the region for at least four times between 1957 and 1963 (Wilkie, 1984). More generally, Suez implied the reduction of Great Britain, together with France, to the rank of secondary power. After Suez, Prime Ministers Macmillan, Home, and Wilson tried to maintain major power status for Great Britain. However, Great Britain no longer had the financial means to sustain this claim. In 1968, the Wilson government recognized the impossibility of conducting a major power's foreign policy and decided to abandon British military presence ‘east of Suez’ by 1971. Domestically, the Suez crisis produced a rift in the country. British citizens remained highly divided on the issue of military intervention. Even today, people over 60 still harbour very strong sentiments regarding the conduct of Great Britain and its Prime Minister at the time. Of course, for him, Sir Anthony Eden, the crisis resulted in a personal defeat with his resignation on 9 January 1957. Arguably this was not directly prompted by the aborted intervention itself, but by his poor health (James, 1986) or his absence from Whitehall at the end of 1956, which prevented him from affecting the decisions taken by the top of the Conservative Party (Carlton, 1981).

Interestingly, throughout the crisis British decision-makers had anticipated several of these negative consequences. Senior Ministers, such as Harold Macmillan, had made it clear that failure to undo Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, if necessary by force, would reduce Great Britain's international status to that of Denmark. Members of the Cabinet and the Egypt Committee regularly warned that British weakness would inevitably lead to the end of its influential position in the Middle East. It is thus reasonable to assume that in the autumn of 1956 British decision-makers must have been convinced that the Anglo-French intervention was going to be a success. In that light it becomes all the more puzzling why on 6 November 1956 they decided to halt the advance of their troops, scarcely 36 hours after the invasion. Their troops had captured Port Said and were almost halfway along the isthmus that would bring them to Suez, so close to accomplishing their operational objectives. The reasons for stopping military operations reveal the fundamental puzzle of British decision-making during the Suez crisis. Why did British policy-makers fail to anticipate the lack of American support?

Lack of American support was the main reason why the Cabinet decided to halt invasion. Throughout the crisis until the Cabinet meeting on 6 November had tish policy-makers counted on the United States to deter the Soviet Union from perfering, as well as to provide diplomatic and financial support. It the end the cited States was helpful on the first count only. Diplomatically, the United States lively worked against France and Great Britain at the United Nations during the ek between the sailing of the Anglo-French Armada from Gibraltar, Oran, alta, and Cyprus on 30 October and the actual assault on Port Said on 5 November. France and Great Britain's legal fig leaf had been to separate Egyptian 1 Israeli troops fighting near the Suez Canal in order to protect international pping and had co-ordinated their plans with Israel to that effect. One day after agreed-upon Israeli attack on Egypt, the United States, however, introduced a olution in the Security Council calling for Israeli withdrawal, thus removing the his for Anglo-French intervention. On 30 October France and Great Britain had case their veto in the Security Council for the first time ever. Later that night, the ited States lent crucial support to a Yugoslavia-sponsored Uniting for Peace solution, calling for an emergency session of the General Assembly on 1 November.¹ Over the next five days the United States tried to muster enough international support to isolate Great Britain and France diplomatically.

The final blow, however, was dealt on 6 November. In the middle of the binet meeting, Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan was informed t the United States would use their veto power at the International Monetary and to ensure that the procedure for a British request for a loan could not be ted. From mid-September the position of Sterling had weakened. In several fernal memoranda that month, Sir Edward Bridges, Permanent Secretary to the asury, had pointed out to Macmillan that Sterling would only survive a military centure in the case of American support ‘and a fairly united Commonwealth’. If eat Britain and France decided to go it alone, ‘we can expect little or nothing’ to port the currency.² Until mid-October Sterling still seemed strong enough. Shortly before the start of hostilities, however, on 26 October Sir Leslie Rowan, a h Treasury official, warned Macmillan that towards the end of the year gold and lar reserves would be below $2,000 million, ‘which has always been regarded as eather crucial dividing line’.³ Nevertheless, on 30 October, two days into the his, a party of Macmillan, Rowan, and Sir Roger Makins, the new Under-secretary at the Treasury,⁴ decided not yet to turn to the IMF for help.⁵ As a matter fact, during the Cabinet meeting that morning, when the decision was formally learn to issue an ‘urgent communication’ to Egypt and Israel to withdraw from the Canal zone within 24 hours, American financial assistance was discussed. The inet expected it to be forthcoming if the United States were not alienated ‘more in was absolutely necessary’.⁶ Even mounting American opposition at the United ions did not particularly worry them. Indeed, an IMF loan was not asked for ill 5 November. The fact that Great Britain waited for a whole week despite the id weakening of Sterling (cf. Kunz, 1989; Kyle, 1991), and despite clear signals American opposition to Anglo-French policies, suggests that British decision-makers counted on American support until the very last moment. This is all the fire puzzling because from the outset of the crisis American policy-makers had given at best very mixed signals about American support. At no point, however, did the United States promise explicit support for a military solution to the crisis. As a matter of fact, the British Embassy in Washington persistently sent warnings to London not to count on American support for the use of force.

The persistent belief that American support would be forthcoming played a crucial role in British decision-making. As a matter of fact it served as the basis for several implicit and explicit choices that would contribute to the outcome of the crisis. These choices ensured that British decision-making failed to meet at least three criteria of high quality decision-making. In the decision-making literature criteria have been developed to judge the procedural quality ‘of decision-making. Their application makes it possible to investigate the relationship between the quality of decision-making and specific outcomes of the policy eventually chosen. Such an analytical focus prevents the scholar from inadvertently pronouncing a verdict on a specific policy. Indeed, what constitutes a policy fiasco is never obvious, but rather the product of a variety of political and social factors (Bovens and ‘t Hart, 1996). Table 1.1 presents the seven procedural criteria of high quality decision-making that are commonly distinguished in the literature (cf. Herek et al., 1987).⁷

Table 1.1 Procedural Criteria of High Quality Decision-Making

Survey of objectives Survey of alternatives Search for information Assimilate and process new information Reconsider originally rejected alternatives Evaluate the costs, risks, and implications of the preferred choice Develop implementation, monitoring, and contingency plans

Source: Adapted from Janis (1989, p. 91) and Haney (1997, p. 48).

The British decision to go ahead with the so-called Challe-plan failed to meet at least three such criteria, all of which were related to the crucial assumption that American support for the use of force would be forthcoming. This plan, put forward by the French General Maurice Challe, envisaged an Anglo-British ‘policing action’ to separate Egyptian and Israeli forces in order to protect the free flow of traffic through the canal. It was originally presented to British policy-makers as a contingency plan in case Israel was to attack Egypt. Later on, British policy-makers became aware that collaboration between French and Israeli officials already existed and grudgingly had to engage into detailed planning with Israel themselves (cf. Challe, 1968).

Explicit Identification and Ranking of Objectives

om the outset of the crisis British policy-makers had been caught in a dilemma garding their objectives. Officially, they had declared the restoration of international control of the canal as their official aim. At the same time, they wanted the downfall of Nasser and the end of Egypt's meddling with British licies in the Middle East. Of course, this was never officially proclaimed. Neither the Arab world nor the United States would ever agree to an occupation of large proportion of Egyptian territory. However, military action that would nain confined to the canal area might not be sufficient to provoke Nasser's moval from power. This dilemma was more acute, once on 12 October the so-called Challe-plan had been adopted. This plan drew its justification from protecting the free flow of traffic through an international waterway rather than from toppling a ‘dictator’. The only way out of the dilemma was not to raise the ssible incompatibility of the official and non-official objectives, to limit any cupation to the area of the canal and believe that Nasser's regime would fall mediately after the start of military operations.

ck of Contingency Plans

’ consequence, British policy-makers were not prepared to face the various ntingencies of such a move. First, they were very reluctant to consider the ssibility that Anglo-French troops might have to stay longer in Egypt than visaged in order to protect a new, presumably anglophile, government. Indeed, the Chiefs of Staff warned that this might require the occupation of Cairo and ssibly Alexandria.⁸ Second, the assumption that quick and successful military erations would provoke the fall of Nasser,⁹ prevented British policy-makers from examining the contingencies of the military time table. At no point was there any discussion of the dangers of the lack of speed of the Anglo-French Armada. They fever considered the possibility that international (and domestic) public opinion ght turn against France and Great Britain with the ships at sea and aircraft climbing targets in Egypt. British policy-makers assumed that procedures at the United Nations would amount to going through the motions. Instead, they must five felt entrapped in their operational plans. The only way out was the decision to vance the drop of paratroopers as much as possible in order to present the world earth a fait accompli.

nited Search for, and Selective Processing of, Information

e adoption of the Challe-plan was a way out of a crucial dilemma as will be argued in chapter five (see pp. 108 ff.). It provided a legalistic justification for a litary intervention in the canal area. British policy-makers feverishly looked for tifications of the plan in international law, convinced that international public union and, especially, American officials would be persuaded as well. On 29 tober, the Lord Chancellor presented such an international legal argument to the binet in a memorandum entitled ‘The Right of Intervention’.¹⁰ Advice from the Law Officers at the Foreign Office that the arguments used were invalid under international law were ignored (Johnman, 2000). More importantly, as will be shown in Chapter five, British senior policy-makers ignored or misread incoming information on 30 and 31 October that the Americans would not support military intervention, not even remain neutral, but would actually work hard against French and British plans.

All in all then, the Challe-plan seemed to offer a justification of the use of force in Egypt without the risk of alienating the actor whose support was deemed essential for the success of the operation, the United States. At the same time, the adoption of the plan implied that one had to stick to that justification. By consequence, it implied that Anglo-French troops could not march to Cairo, in order to put an end to General Nasser's grip on Egypt and on British influence in the Middle Eas...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: The Puzzle of Suez
• 2 Theory: Crisis Decision-Making
• 3 Images Held by the British Political Elite
• 4 The Worldview of Sir Anthony Eden
• 5 Six Decisional Conflicts
• 6 Resolving the Puzzle of Suez
• 7 Conclusions
• Appendix 1 Who is Who?
• Appendix 2 Who Met Whom at Whitehall?
• References
• Appendix 3 The Impact of Sir Anthony Eden's Health
• Index