Budapest.
Nowhere was there more fury over this coincidence than in Washington. The fiercely anti-Communist administration of President Eisenhower and the two Dulles brothers — John Foster, the secretary of state, and Alan, the director of the CIA — saw in the events in Hungary a major milestone in the confrontation between the two world blocs. The Soviet leadership was clearly in a state of disarray. The process of de-Stalinisation which they had initiated had turned against them. To maintain their domination of Central and Eastern Europe, the only choice they had left was brute force. The time was ripe for the US to isolate the Russians, undermine their credibility on the international stage, and inflict a major political defeat.
By launching a military campaign against Egypt at this precise moment, the British, French and Israelis were giving the Soviets an unimagined opportunity to deflect the world’s attention away from their own punitive operation. The Americans were incensed. Whereas in the summer they had given their friends to believe that they would let them get on with it, they now begged them to stop, to cancel the operation and withdraw their troops. Suez could wait!
But the operation was already under way, and Eden neither could nor would call it off. Insistent calls from Washington made no impression. He believed he knew his habitually reluctant allies very well. Initially, they would drag their heels and find pretexts not to intervene — the English always had to go first, encouraging and prodding them — but the Americans would eventually get involved and fight better than anyone, he thought. But what efforts Churchill had had to expend in order to drag them into the war against Hitler! Hadn’t Great Britain had to hold on virtually alone for two and a half years before the United States joined the fray? In the Iranian crisis, the same scenario had repeated itself. Left to themselves, the Americans would have put up with Mossadegh’s government and their nationalisation of oil. They had, moreover, insisted that Great Britain accept a compromise which took into account the national aspirations of the Iranians. Once again it had been necessary for Churchill, Eden and many other representatives to go to discuss this at the White House and the State Department, explaining and arguing before the Americans would agree to act. Once again, US intervention had proved decisive; indeed, it was they who had so effectively orchestrated the overthrow of Mossadegh. Eden predicted that in the Suez Crisis the same thing would happen. In the end, Washington would understand that the fight against Communism is the same, whether in Egypt, Hungary, Iran, Korea or elsewhere.
The prime minister was sorely mistaken. Not only did the Americans have no intention of following him in his adventure, they were so irritated that they intended to publicly humiliate him. Since Eden refused to understand that his stupid little war was playing into the hands of the Soviets, he would be treated like an enemy — unheard of in two centuries of Anglo-American relations. The American Treasury began to sell huge quantities of sterling, which led the currency to fall, and when some of the Arab countries decided no longer to supply oil to France and Great Britain out of solidarity with Egypt, the Americans refused to make up the shortfall. At the UN Security Council, the US delegation sponsored a resolution demanding the cessation of military operations. When Paris and London exercised their veto, the same proposal was submitted to the General Assembly, which voted massively in favour. Even the large Anglo-Saxon countries of the Commonwealth, such as Canada and Australia, made clear to Eden that he could no longer count on their support.
In the end, the British leader and his French counterpart, Guy Mollet, gave in and recalled their troops. Despite their military success on the ground, their political defeat was complete. Having behaved as though they still possessed vast world empires, the two European powers had suffered a devastating blow. The Suez Crisis sounded the death knell for the colonial era; thereafter, the world entered a new age, with different powers and different rules.
As a result of revealing this seismic change and emerging victorious, Nasser became a major figure on the world stage overnight — and for the Arabs, one of the greatest heroes in their history.
Chapter 6
The Nasser era did not last long: eighteen years at a generous estimate, from his coup d’etat in July 1952 to his death in September 1970; and just eleven years if you count only the period during which the majority of Arab people believed in him, from the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in July 1956 until the Six Day War in June 1967.
Was it a golden age? Certainly not if you judge him on his record. Nasser was unable to raise his country out of underdevelopment, nor was he able to establish modern political institutions, and his plans for union with other states ended only in failure. The whole thing was crowned with a monumental military disaster in the confrontation with Israel in 1967. However, the abiding impression of those years among Arabs is that they were for a time actors in their own history, rather than powerless, insignificant and despised bit-part players, and that they had a leader in whom they saw themselves reflected. And even if their adored president was not a democrat, had come to power in a military coup and had remained there by means of dubious elections, he appeared legitimate far beyond the borders of his own country, whereas leaders who opposed him appeared illegitimate, never mind that they were the heirs of more ancient dynasties or even the descendants of the Prophet.
Under Nasser, Arabs felt as though they had recovered their dignity, and were able to hold their heads high alongside other nations. Until that time, and for generations and indeed centuries, all they had known were defeats, foreign occupations, unfair treaties, capitulation, humiliation and the shame of having sunk so low after having conquered half the world.
Every Arab carries within him the soul of a fallen hero, and the desire for revenge on all those who have treated him with contempt. If he is promised revenge, he listens with a combination of expectation and incredulity. If he is offered revenge, even in part, even in a symbolic form, he is transported.
Nasser had asked his brothers to raise their heads. In their name, he had defied the colonial powers; in their name, he had confronted the ‘tripartite aggression’; in their name, he had triumphed. Joy was immediate. Tens of millions of Arabs thereafter could see only him, thought only of him, and swore only by him. They were ready to support him against the entire world, and sometimes even ready to die for him. And, of course, to applaud him endlessly and chant his name with their eyes closed. When he was successful, they blessed him; when he suffered setbacks, they cursed his enemies.
In reality, there were both highs and lows. In hindsight, the Nasser years appear like a rapid game of chess in which the players would occupy a square, move from it when they came under pressure, only to reoccupy it a little later, then perhaps lose a major piece, then quickly take one of their enemy’s — until the final confrontation ended in a surprising checkmate.
So, in just this fashion, in February 1958, only fifteen months after the Battle of Suez, Nasser entered Damascus in triumph. Such was his popularity in Syria that its leaders had decided to hand power over to him. A United Arab Republic was declared, made up of a southern province, Egypt, and a northern one, Syria. The old dream of Arab unity seemed to be on the way to becoming a reality. Better still, Nasser’s great republic corresponded exactly to the kingdom built eight centuries earlier by Saladin, who, in 1169, had come to power in Cairo, and in 1174 had conquered Damascus, taking the free kingdom of Jerusalem in a pincer movement. (Incidentally, Al-Nasser, ‘he who gives victory’, was Saladin’s surname.)
In the months that followed the declaration of the United Arab Republic, a rebellion broke out in Beirut against President Chamoun, who was accused of supporting the French and British during the Suez Crisis. There were calls for his resignation, and some Nasser supporters even advocated that Lebanon should become part of the Egypto-Syrian state. Several other countries began to experience an intense ferment of nationalist activity.
In order to confront these challenges, the pro-Western kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan — which were both governed by young sovereigns of the Hashemite dynasty aged just twenty-three — decided to declare in their turn a united Arab kingdom. But this ‘counter-union’ lasted only a few weeks. On 14 July 1958, a bloody coup overthrew the Iraqi monarchy and put an end to the project. The whole royal family was massacred and Nasser’s old enemy, Nuri es-Said, was lynched by the mob in the streets of Baghdad.
Nasser’s nationalist tide seemed to be well on the way to overwhelming the entire Arab world from the ocean to the Gulf, and at high speed. Never had the theory of the domino effect worked so quickly. Every monarchy was shaken and on the point of falling, especially that of King Hussein, who seemed to be facing an identical fate to
