British Military Intervention and the Struggle for Jordan

King Hussein, Nasser and the Middle East Crisis, 1955–1958

Stephen Blackwell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135765675
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Within two years of their abortive invasion of the Suez Canal zone in 1956, British troops once again intervened in a major Middle Eastern country. The Jordan intervention of July 1958 took place despite the steady decline of the British position in the country over the previous three years. This book examines why the government led by Harold Macmillan remained ready to use military force to prop up the regime of King Hussein even though the United States had emerged as the main Western power in the Middle East after 1956. Incorporating a variety of archival material, Blackwell provides new historical insights into the origins of the Anglo-American use of military power to protect their interests in the Middle East.

1 Introduction

Jordan, Suez and the Decline of British Influence in the Middle East

The Suez Crisis of 1956, which culminated in an abortive Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, was a decisive moment in the contraction of the British Empire. ‘Suez’ still resonates as a personal confrontation between Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister, and Gamal Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian president. The episode demonstrated the new vitality of postcolonial nationalism and brutally exposed Britain’s ‘great power’ self- deception.¹ What is often forgotten is that within two years of Suez, British troops once again intervened in the Middle East following the violent overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq. The Jordan operation in 1958 is generally portrayed as an isolated and anomalous incident within a gradual contraction of power and influence. In his seminal study of the Suez Crisis, Keith Kyle dismissed the Jordan incident as a ‘brief Indian summer’.² For Kyle, the Anglo-American interventions in the Levant in 1958 were merely belated attempts to shore up the remnants of a pro-Western elite already compromised by its association with British imperial pretensions. William Roger Louis has argued that the fall of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 spelt the ultimate demise of the old social and landed order in the Arab world. The subsequent crisis thus constituted Britain’s last confrontation with Nasser.³ Nigel Ashton portrays the Jordan intervention as a ‘loss of nerve’ set in the context of a ‘declinist’ interpretation of Britain’s withdrawal from the Middle East.⁴

If the crisis of 1958 was an anomaly, then this does not account for the subsequent longevity of King Hussein’s regime or the consistent Anglo-American support thereafter. In appearances at least, the British military intervention in 1958 suggests that Jordan would fit the ‘neocolonial’ model, which suggests that colonial powers are able to substitute formal control with dominance through informal political and economic means. This model is plausible in the case of the oil-rich states of the Gulf or commercial interests in Egypt, though Simon Smith and Steve Marsh have argued that in the cases of Kuwait and Iran, respectively, strategic objectives were rarely harmonised with the pursuit of economic interests.⁵ Although Jordan was not seen as valuable in terms of natural resources, the Kingdom has suffered from being perceived to be a puppet in the hands of London and Washington. From a critical perspective, Mark Curtis has argued that the 1958 intervention was explicitly designed to bolster Britain’s remaining imperial interests in the Middle East, and was based on a fabricated threat to Hussein’s regime.⁶ An implicit feature of this argument is that Hussein was duped into accepting the intervention of British troops when confronted with an illusory crisis. The problem with Curtis’s interpretation is that it denies any form of agency by local actors in the face of the elaborate machinations of external powers. A more detailed analysis of the Anglo-Jordanian relationship in the 1950s and 1960s suggests that far from occupying a ‘subaltern’ role’, the Jordanian monarchy was more adept at manipulating relations with Britain and the US than the radical critiques suggest. The Hashemite monarchy in fact showed considerable skill in reconciling the tensions between domestic political groups and the essential need for external assistance.⁷

Although the British action in 1958 was undertaken in coordination with a parallel intervention by the United States in Lebanon, the Jordan operation has generally been treated as something of an afterthought in the context of the Eisenhower administration’s landmark decision to authorise the first major US statement of military intent in the Middle East. In January 1957, the new prominence of the United States in the region was codified by the ‘Eisenhower Doctrine’, which announced that the Americans were ready to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Anglo-French prestige after the Suez crisis. America’s new regional interest arose from the sense that the battle for influence between the Western and Eastern blocs was spreading from Europe into new fertile areas for ideological competition in what was popularly known at the time as the ‘Third World’, the decolonised states of Asia and Africa.⁸ The belief that the Soviet Union was seeking to undermine Western influence was a source of growing anxiety by the mid-1950s. In the Middle East, Egypt and Syria were seen as the regional states most susceptible to Moscow’s influence.⁹ Washington’s quest to secure its regional interests meant that its policy was active as well as reactive. In the case of Lebanon, Irene Gendzier has argued that the US military intervention in 1958 was the culmination of sustained, if often covert, American interference in the country’s internal politics. Through the co-option of the local elite and the manipulation of complex confessional politics, the US steered Lebanon to the broader goal of serving overall US strategic interests in the Middle East.¹⁰

This growing interest in the region was thus based on a combination of hard interests as well as the global ideological struggle against communism and leftist nationalism. From a British perspective, Jordan was caught between the Anglo-Egyptian antagonism that grew from early 1955 onwards. Nasser was seen as the embodiment of a radical pan-Arab nationalism that was dangerously susceptible to Soviet influence.¹¹ As regards the United States, the Eisenhower administration’s concern with the containment of radical political groups, the protection of oil supplies and the management of the Arab-Israeli conflict set the parameters of a regional policy that has on the whole remained consistent to this day. Stability and support for pro-Western elites in the Arab capitals helped facilitate access to oil, whether this was transported west by oil pipelines from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean coast or shipped from the Gulf. Anglo-American policy evolved from ‘Operation Ajax’, the 1953 coup that led to the overthrow of the nationalist government in Iran led by Mohammed Mossadeq, and paved the way for the restoration of the pro-Western shah.¹² This episode gave both British and American policymakers the confidence that in addition to military intervention, they could achieve their goals through a range of covert tools including informal political pressure, bribery and propaganda.¹³ The Lebanon intervention of 1958 signalled a new era in that it demonstrated the new willingness of the US to use overt force, in addition to political influence and covert action, as a means of protecting Western interests in the Middle East. The Lebanon intervention and the regional tensions that formed the backdrop to the crisis have as a result received detailed treatment from American diplomatic historians.¹⁴

In contrast, the parallel British intervention in Jordan in 1958 has only been systematically examined in relation to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s management of the renewed Anglo-American relationship after Suez. William Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson have stressed that the Jordan intervention was one example in a range of instances of the skill with which the British manipulated US policy to cut commitments while pursuing an orderly decolonisation process in the Middle East and Africa.¹⁵ With regard to the 1958 Middle Eastern crisis, Ritchie Ovendale has argued that British policy was a success in that the Eisenhower administration was persuaded to take on the bulk of the Western burden in the region.¹⁶ Other authors take a more critical view of Anglo-American relations and point to the inconsistencies in the ‘transfer of power’ thesis. These qualifications include Macmillan’s attempted turn to Europe and the fact that Britain, with American encouragement, retained significant commitments ‘East of Suez’ in the 1960s despite an initial urge after the Suez Crisis to severely cut the military forces that underpinned a continued ‘world role’.¹⁷ All of these interpretations nevertheless assume that London accepted a newly subordinate role in its relations with the US after Suez. By accepting that the broad parameters of policy had to be agreed with Washington, the British were able to partially restore their Middle East position after 1957 through their old alliances with the Hashemite monarchs of Jordan and Iraq and the sheikhs who ruled in the Gulf and Southern Arabia. This was feasible because America’s basic interest in securing access to oil was identical to that of Britain’s. Although the Suez Crisis shook the Anglo-American relationship, the perception that the Middle East was becoming a vital theatre of the Cold War ensured that the dispute was brief. The speed with which relations were reestablished after Suez demonstrated the essential continuity of both parties’ primary regional interests.¹⁸

The restoration of the ‘Special Relationship’ in 1957 did not mean that freedom of action in the Middle East was ruled out in London. Although the US replaced Britain as Jordan’s main external sponsor in early 1957, the military intervention to support King Hussein in July 1958 provided further evidence that the Macmillan government was still ready and able to protect its traditional allies. The most important factor in London’s restored confidence was a continued sense of a residual imperial mission in Jordan, Iraq and the wider Arabian Peninsula. Those who advocated active intervention in regional affairs were often influenced by the conviction that support for an individual ruler bolstered the faith of other rulers in British and Western protection. A sense of imperial pride and responsibility played a part in the formulation of policy, a feeling that was paradoxically sharpened in the 1950s as Britain’s influence in Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia declined. At the dramatic cabinet meeting that sanctioned the despatch of troops to Jordan on the evening of 16 July 1958, Harold Macmillan warned his ministers and Chiefs of Staff that ‘we would not forgive ourselves if the King were murdered tomorrow, like the Royal Family of Iraq’.¹⁹ This highly personalised British interest in Jordan stemmed from the relationship between Cold War tensions and a legacy of paternalist oversight from the years of the Transjordan mandate. Jordan, perceived as a British client state, occupied an uneasy position in which the regime of King Hussein oscillated between the two poles of Cairo and Baghdad. While seen as a poor and artificial state in itself, Jordan had the potential to tip the regional balance of power in favour of pro- or anti-Western regional hegemony.²⁰

The question of whether King Hussein could follow a Nasserist or pro-Western path underlay the British decision to launch ‘Operation Fortitude’ in support of the Jordanian monarchy in July 1958. The central theme in the chapters that follow is that the Macmillan government, conscious of Britain’s key role in the creation of the Transjordanian mandate after World War One, felt bound to support King Hussein if only to maintain Jordan as a counterpoint to the dangerous currents of Nasserism and communism. The intervention was the culmination of a period of profound turbulence in Anglo-Jordanian relations that commenced with the Templar mission in December 1955, which was aimed at persuading Hussein to join the British-led Baghdad Pact. In the turbulent weeks that followed the Suez war in November 1956, Jordan’s apparent alignment with Egypt and Syria led London to practically abandon the country to its fate. In the event, Hussein was able to face down Nasserist politicians and military officers and once again tack to a pro-Western course. Britain and the US welcomed this development because it gave them hope that Jordan, along with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, could represent a moderate model of development based on traditional legitimacy and historic continuity in the Arab world. The hope was that such a promotion of the old guard would offer an alternative to the dangerously leftist and secular nationalism represented by Nasser.

Pan-Arab aspirations originally became evident among the Francophile intelligentsia of the major urban centres of Cairo, Beirut and Damascus during World War One. Until then, Arab grievances had focused on local resistance to Ottoman rule. The eventual leaders of the British-backed ‘Arab Revolt’, the al-Hashem tribe (the ‘Hashemites’) of the Hijaz region, derived their Arabist legitimacy primarily from their guardianship of the holy places of Mecca and Medina. The Hashemites could trace their ancestry back to Hashim ibn Abd al-Manaf, a sixth-century notable who was also the great-grandfather of the Prophet Mohammad. Some Europeans enthusiastically promoted the cause of Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca on the basis of this lineage.²¹ In truth, the Hashemites’ claim to Arab leadership did not evoke any evident groundswell of support in the wider Arab world. Sharif Hussein nevertheless declared himself the ‘King of the Arab Nation’ in 1916. The famous McMahon-Husayn Correspondence of 1915 fed the Hashemites’ dreams of ruling a an enlarged ‘Fertile Crescent’ entity incorporating parts of present day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. This aspiration was negated by an Anglo-French plan to divide the former Ottoman territories into new spheres of influence. Perhaps the most systematic analysis of the alleged British promise to Sharif Hussein in 1915 concluded that McMahon’s letters to the Sharif were not, strictly speaking, incompatible with the May 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration of November 1917.²² In any case, there was too great a divide between the Hashemite desert sheikhs and the Levantine intelligentsia. Regardless of the degree of unity or fragmentation in the Arab world, the imperial requirements of London and Paris ultimately came first.²³

The creation of the Anglo-French mandatory system at the San Remo Conference in April 1920, in which the main concern of London and Paris was to obtain a League of Nations sanction for their separate spheres of influence in Palestine-Iraq and Syria-Lebanon, installed Hussein’s third son, Feisal, as king of Iraq and his second son, Abdullah, as amir of Transjordan. Once installed in Amman, the Colonial Office in London kept Abdullah on a very tight leash. He was only confirmed as amir in 1924 after the Palestine authorities forced him to accept a British resident to oversee his finances and a British commander for a ‘Reserve Force’, a unit that would later evolve into the Arab Legion.²⁴ The diminution of the Hashemites appeared complete when the Hijazi kingdom collapsed under pressure from Ibn Saud and his marauding Wahabi tribes in the 1920s, with the last of their raids being repulsed by the RAF only as late as August 1924. In the years following the post–World War settlement, the division of the Arab world into mandates could not entirely dispel the sense that an opportunity had been missed. A Palestine civil servant, George Antonius, brought the failure to honour pan-Arab aspirations at San Remo to wider public attention in the late 1930s. Born into a Lebanese Christian family, Antonius was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria and King’s College, Cambridge. In many senses the classic ‘Anglo-Arab’, he was a man who felt comfortable enough within British officialdom before resigning in disillusionment at the career ceiling he felt was imposed by his origins. Antonius’s 1938 book, The Arab Awakening, revived the cause of pan-Arab nationalism in the West.²⁵

Antonius’s book is still considered a seminal text by many, though its value was increasingly criticised from the 1960s onwards. Although it was essentially an elegantly written polemic, Edward Said has stressed that the book has ‘historical force’ and has made an ‘enormous contribution’ to knowledge, not least because it provides a counterpoint to T. E. Lawrence’s account of his own role in the Arab Revolt.²⁶ Antonius argued that the Arabs deserved political sovereignty because they possessed the three essential qualities required for a nation: ethnicity, shared tradition and language. His main purpose was to explain the historical origins of Arab nationalism and expose the mendacity of the British promises made to the Hashemites during World War One. Most controversially, he portrayed Arab nationalism as a mass movement and emphasised the supposedly widespread support in ‘Greater Syria’ for Sharif Hussein’s revolt in 1916. Antonius’s account was tailored for an audience increasingly concerned with the negative effects of the mandatory system, especially with regard to the increasing tensions between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish settlers who were arriving in that territory in increasing numbers. The book was a success in that it was widely reviewed and distributed among British and US diplomats in the 1940s. According to one view, The Arab Awakening is an example of the ability of a writer to ‘imagine’ a nation regardless of the historical, political and social premises on which it is based.²⁷

Although it is hard to assess the precise impact that Antonius’s book had in official circles, it can be safely assumed that it did much to articulate and promote pan-Arabist aspirations. Among the signific...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: Jordan, Suez and the Decline of British Influence in the Middle East
• 2. Glubb’s Jordan: The Arab Legion, the Hashemites and the Nationalist Challenge, 1948–1956
• 3. Amman Under the Shadow of Nasser: Jordanian Nationalism and the Suez Crisis, April–November 1956
• 4. The British Abandonment and the American Retrieval of Jordan, November 1956–April 1957
• 5. The Kings Against the Colonels: Jordan and the Anglo-American Plot to Overthrow the Syrian Government, 1957
• 6. Combating Nasser: Anglo-American Support for Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, November 1957–June 1958
• 7. The Baghdad Coup and the Macmillan Government’s Decision to Intervene in Jordan, 14–17 July 1958
• 8. A Tenuous Foothold: British Paratroops Deploy in Amman, July–August 1958
• 9. Managing the International Crisis: Creating a UN ‘Mantle’ for Jordan, September–November 1958
• 10. Belated Reappraisals: Anglo-American Policy, Regional Nationalism and the Future of Jordan, November 1958–March 1959
• 11. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index