European-American Relations and the Middle East

From Suez to Iraq

Victor Mauer, Daniel Möckli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136969461
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book examines the evolution of European-American relations with the Middle East since 1945.

Placing the current transatlantic debates on the Middle East into a broader context, this work analyses how, why, and to what extent European and US roles, interests, threat perceptions, and policy attitudes in the region have changed, relating to both the region as a whole and the two main issues analysed: Gulf Security and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. The contributors then go on to discuss the implications of these developments for Western policymaking.

The volume makes four key contributions. First, it examines the subject matter from a truly transatlantic perspective, with all chapters adopting a bi- or multilateral approach, taking into account the views from both the US and individual European countries or the EC/EU collectively. Second, the book takes a long-term view, covering a series of crises and developments over the past six decades. Third, it has a systematic structure, with the predominantly chronological order of the chapters being geared towards depicting trends and evolutions with regard to the key themes of the book. Finally, the book builds bridges between historians and political scientists/analysts, as well as between experts of transatlantic relations and Middle East scholars.

This book will be of great interest to students of transatlantic relations, the Middle East, US foreign policy, European politics, international history and IR in general.

Daniel Möckli is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich. He is also the editor of CSS Analyses in Security Policy.

Victor Mauer is Deputy Director and Head of Research of the Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich, and Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities at ETH Zurich.

Part I
Changing roles and interests

From Suez to Iraq

1
Suez 1956

European colonial interests and US Cold War prerogatives

Tore T. Petersen

Introduction

The Suez Crisis was a low point in transatlantic relations. The intensity of the intra-Western strains was comparable to that surrounding the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Indeed, some have argued that the scale of the allied division in 1956 and its significance in terms of its long-term effects on Western cohesion were even bigger. Whereas France, Germany, and other Europeans proved incapable of preventing the US from intervening in Iraq, US measures to stop the Franco-British intervention in Egypt were successful and had a lasting impact on the subsequent strategic posture of Paris and London.¹ One notable feature of the Suez Crisis is that France and Britain jointly stood in opposition to the US, rendering this one of the few Middle Eastern crises where intra-European differences were less glaring than the European–American split. Another one is the fact that, in 1956, it was the Europeans who pursued an agenda of regime change and ended up in defiance of the UN. Washington, by contrast, was eager to avoid a military confrontation, subordinating the grievances of the European colonial powers to its Cold War prerogatives.

The story of Suez has been told many times.² The crisis erupted when Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, nationalised the Suez Canal in July 1956. With international efforts to resolve the crisis over this strategic waterway making little progress, the British and the French, each for their own reasons, decided to intervene with troops. Together with Israel, they forged a secret ploy: Tel Aviv would attack Egypt, giving Britain and France a pretext for sending in their own forces to take control of the Suez Canal and, if possible, topple Nasser. Launched at the end of October 1956, ‘Operation Musketeer’ turned into a political disaster for both Paris and London. The US publicly condemned the intervention and compelled its allies to withdraw their troops. With the US pulling the plug on the European intervention, it was Nasser who emerged victorious from the crisis, his prestige as the champion of an anti-Western pan-Arabism receiving a considerable boost.

This chapter does three things. First, it places the transatlantic split over Suez into the context of Western policies on the Middle East in the early and mid-1950s. This will reveal that, whereas the Anglo-American turmoil did not come out of the blue in 1956, the Anglo-French alliance that emerged was the exception rather than the rule. Second, it looks at British, French, and US interests and perceptions as the crisis unfolded in order to define what this intra-Western conflict was about. Finally, the chapter will discuss the consequences of the Suez Crisis, particularly with regard to transatlantic relations and NATO.

The European–American split in context

The degree of Anglo-American conflict and cooperation concerning the Middle East has varied considerably over time. In the early post-war period, there was a considerable degree of consensus, particularly with regard to the need of containing the Soviet Union. Yet, there were also frequent clashes over regional strategy, which resulted from the fact that Britain was eager to preserve its economic and military privileges in the region and tended to view the local challenges stemming from Arab nationalism in a different light than the US.³ As for France, it watched these Anglo-American debates on how to approach the Middle East as an outsider. Having lost much influence in the region after 1945, it was only sporadically included in the formulation of Middle Eastern policies in London and Washington. While it maintained its distance from both Britain and the US in the Middle East in the early 1950s, the Suez Crisis prompted it to align itself with London in an attempt to restore the regional order.

Britain and the US: allies and rivals

At the beginning of the 1950s, Britain was the dominant power in the Middle East and was determined to remain so. The British controlled oil reserves of enormous value, which helped stabilise their otherwise slumping economy. Equally importantly, they believed that their position as a Great Power depended on their continued influence in the Middle East. Among their considerable assets in the area were a huge military base along the Suez Canal manned by 80,000 troops; naval facilities in Aden; air squadrons in Iraq; the Arab Legion in Jordan; rear bases in Cyprus and Malta; and, finally, a string of protectorates along the Persian Gulf.

By 1952, however, the British position was threatened both in Egypt and Iran, as revolutionary officers under Nasser sought a British withdrawal from Suez and Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq of Iran nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Struggling to maintain their regional position, the British deemed US support essential. They felt that such support was their due, given faithful British support of NATO policies in Europe. Yet, things were not that straightforward as far as the US was concerned. Seen from Washington, Britain’s unwillingness to come to terms with Arab nationalism was bound to spur anti-Western sentiments in the Middle East, which in turn would pave the way for Soviet expansionism. The Americans believed they were forced into a delicate balancing act between supporting the European colonial powers and encouraging a pro-Western kind of Arab nationalism and Third-World independence as a bulwark against Communist advances.

For many Americans, Britain’s reliance on kings and pashas to keep order in the Middle East was outdated. Unavoidable social change in the region was to be encouraged and steered in a pro-Western direction. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower put it:

My own belief is that colonialism should be militantly condemned by the colonial powers, especially Britain and France: the attempt should be made to transform a necessity into a virtue, so each should insist upon the independence of all these peoples and announce in glowing language a great program of preparing these people to support independence, with all its obligations and costs, as well as its satisfaction of the spirit of nationalism.⁴

Hence, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles warned that unless Britain showed greater flexibility on Egypt and Iran, the US would take unilateral action there and elsewhere in the Middle East. Washington indeed came to play a significant part in Britain’s loss of these possessions. The US pushed London towards signing the Anglo-Egyptian agreement of October 1954 that forced Britain to evacuate the Suez base complex by June 1956.⁵ As for Iran, the US threat of establishing an international oil consortium to replace the AIOC without British participation made Britain cave in to US demands once more. London reluctantly accepted a 40 per cent share of the new consortium and ended up with an agreement that left it almost completely devoid of political influence in Iran.⁶

Washington’s growing political involvement in the Middle East went along with mercantile ambition, with the US trying to supplant British with American oil companies. The British even suspected that commercial considerations were a key driving force behind American policy, as they did not consider the evidence of either Soviet or indigenous Communism expanding in the area as alarming as the US did.⁷ Moreover, they could not fail to notice that while the US harshly condemned colonialism, the most backward of all nations in the region was Saudi Arabia, an American client state, where slavery was still a legal institution.⁸

Despite the loss of British pre-eminence in Egypt and Iran, British politicians had no intention of withdrawing from the Middle East: they planned to increase Britain’s influence, contemplating intelligence operations in 1955–6 that were aimed at overthrowing the governments of at least Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria.⁹ By that time, Anthony Eden, who had consistently advocated a Middle East policy independent of the US, had succeeded Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. In October 1955, he told the Cabinet:

Our interests in the Middle East were greater than those of the United States because of our dependence on Middle East oil, and our experience was greater than theirs. We should not therefore allow ourselves to be restricted overmuch by reluctance to act without full American concurrence and support. We should frame our own policy in light of our interests in the area and get the Americans to support it to the extent we could induce them to do so.¹⁰

While this position, in hindsight, may already point to the Anglo-American clash over Suez, dissention under Eden already got underway well before that. Britain’s chosen vehicle for preserving its influence was the Baghdad Pact, which it adopted with Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan in the spring of 1955. Having encouraged the formation of the pact as an anti-Communist alliance, the US eventually refrained from joining, so as not to alienate Egypt. When Britain, against US advice, tried to entice Jordan to join the Pact, fierce tensions erupted again. Dulles opposed including Jordan because Nasser would consider it an affront to his plans of forging an Arab nation, whose support, Dulles argued, was indispensable in any negotiations for a comprehensive Arab–Israeli peace. The British scheme backfired when the plan became public and provoked anti-Western riots in Jordan that left its pro-British King Hussein barely able to cling to the throne, which further weakened Britain’s standing in the region and greatly irritated Washington.¹¹

France: on the sidelines

Although France was aware of the Anglo-American differences with regard to Middle Eastern strategy, the predominant impression in Paris was that Britain and the US jointly dominated Western policy formulation towards this region. After France had withdrawn from Syria and Lebanon in 1945, its influence in the Middle East had diminished. While there were still strong economic and cultural ties, the French presence on the politico-strategic level was largely restricted to arms sales. This was partly due to the chronic domestic instability of the Fourth French Republic. More importantly, the major colonial possessions France sought to protect lay in North Africa and Southeast Asia.¹² Moreover, French relations with Britain and the US were rather difficult at the time.

With regard to the Middle East, it was the feeling of being deliberately excluded from Anglo-American policy deliberations that caused frequent annoyance in Paris. Even in those few cases where there was cooperation between the three powers, such as the Tripartite Declaration on the Middle East in 1950,¹³ France felt treated as a junior partner. Some resentment also erupted about specific regional initiatives by the ‘Anglo-Saxons’. For instance, France was strongly opposed to the Baghdad Pact, both because there was no seat for Paris and because this organisation was bound to deepen the split of the Arab world into two camps.¹⁴

The Franco-American controversy about colonialism and about the nexus between European colonial polices and the Western strategy of containment was less specifically related to...

Table of contents

• CSS Studies in Security and International Relations
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Changing roles and interests
• Part II The Arab–Israeli conflict and the West
• Part III Gulf security and transatlantic relations
• Index