SUEZ: Angry Challenge & Response

Britain and France reacted last week to Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal with white-lipped anger. The dictator of the Nile had laid hands on Britain’s lifeline to the East, and jeopardized Britain’s Middle East oil supplies; he was laying a threat to Britain’s very existence. The moral outrage at Nasser’s action was matched by an acute awareness of a vital interest involved. The British government sent flattops, cruisers and squadrons of jet bombers flying off to the eastern Mediterranean, and at week’s end thou sands of reserves, hastily called from their summer pursuits, boarded troop transports bound from Britain for Cyprus. A British committee even banned Egyptian swimmers (including last year’s winner) from the annual Channel race.

A sense of incongruity went with the anger. No sooner had Queen Elizabeth solemnly proclaimed “a case of great emergency” than she went off to the Duke of Norfolk’s box at the fashionable race meeting that traditionally winds up Lon don’s social season. After cheering Sir Anthony Eden’s Palmerstonian boast that the Royal Navy “will take care of” any Egyptian warships on the loose, the House of Commons, like the French Assembly, adjourned for the summer. But the urgency was real. Air Marshal Sir John Slessor, great airman turned topflight military strategist, spoke for many Britons when he said, “We are faced today with a challenge in the Middle East potentially no less mortal than that in the Europe of 1938—though far more easily countered if we have the courage.” The comparison on everybody’s lips was Hitler. This man Nasser, they said, is also insatiable and will grab more if he is not stopped early.

Serpent’s Head. The French were, if anything, angrier than the British. The Suez, after all, was French-built, and its expropriated company was one of France’s bluest chips. But this was not the real basis of the French reaction. The nation is deep in a costly and frustrating struggle in Algeria, and chief aider and abettor of the rebels is Dictator Nasser. When Premier Guy Mollet ordered two-thirds of the French navy and a Moroccan division to be ready “to impose” a solution in the Suez, one Parisian growled: “Well worth it. We’d be cutting the serpent’s head instead of hacking off its tail.”

In the strongest show of unity in the Fourth Republic’s history, the Assembly (150 Communists dissenting) voted to back the show of force, in a resolution condemning Nasser as “a permanent menace to peace.” Observing the all-Communist opposition, Socialist Mollet said bitterly: “It is sufficient for a cause to be anti-French for Communists to support it. It is a question now, if the Nasser-Shepilov pact will have the same result as the pact of Hitler and Molotov.”

When the State Department’s Bob Murphy, arriving for Big Three talks in London, reported how wrought up the French and British were, President Eisenhower ordered Secretary Dulles to London forthwith. The Big Three found their roles ironically reversed. Two years ago the British and French had sounded the alarm at U.S. “sabre-rattling” during the Indo-China crisis of Dienbienphu. Then Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had counseled the sweet uses of restraint and diplomacy. Now it was Eden’s government that talked of military action. Now it was the British, despite their past jeering at Dulles’ “brinksmanship,” who hovered in anger around the brink.

Lawyer’s Stand. Calm, bulky and phlegmatic, Lawyer Dulles took the position that Egypt as a sovereign nation had a legal right to nationalize the Canal Company—an Egyptian entity which he likened to a public utility with a government charter—so long as Egypt paid due compensation. But he also held that Nasser, in seizing the canal itself, had violated solemn treaties.* In the end, the Big Three duly called a conference of 24 nations “deeply concerned with use of the canal”* to meet in London Aug. 16. At Dulles’ insistence, those invited included not only Egypt but Russia (the British and French swallowed hard at first, having spent half a century trying to keep Russia out of the area). The conference would be held even if Premier-President Nasser’s Egypt should refuse to attend.

Arabism’s Hope. Nasser’s position was not without its own strength. In Egypt and the Arab world, the 38-year-old strongman who boasts that he will “extend the Arab homeland from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf,” became overnight the most vaunted hero since Saladin. Thirty-two governments, said his semi-official news service, acclaimed his deed, ranging from Communist China to Franco’s Spain. Saudi Arabia’s King Saud sent Nasser a personal message: “I am with Egypt with all I possess.” Jordan’s young King Hussein cabled that Nasser’s victories must bring “Arabism’s hopeful tomorrow when our flag will fly proudly and dearly over the [Palestine] they have stolen from us.” The only sour note emanated from a clandestine radio that began calling for “the ouster of the mad tyrant Nasser” and presumably sending code messages to underground agents.

At the start of the week, in the heat of its own fury, the Egyptian government ordered four ships loading cotton for Britain to discharge their cargoes, in reprisal for Britain’s freezing of Egypt’s sterling assets. In a speech to students training to fight for an Egyptian Suez, Nasser jeered at the expropriated company as “an instrument of imperialism . . . formed by a number of French counts and unemployed Englishmen,” and shouted that if the British tried to return, “we know how to repel pirates.” Hours later, calming down a little, the government ordered the British cotton loaded again, and Nasser announced in ringing statesman’s tones:”We are as ever determined to honor all our international obligations. Freedom of navigation in the Suez Canal is not affected in any degree.”

By week’s end no fewer than 455 vessels, most of them, as usual, British, passed through the 103-mile channel, safely steered by the old company’s staff of 200 Egyptian and non-Egyptian pilots (including two Americans). Owners paid mostly by checks drawn on London or Paris. Since all funds thus paid to any Egyptian account are frozen, this meant that Nasser’s new Suez Canal Authority was getting little cash. Presumably it is this pressure, and the force of world opinion, that Dulles hoped would lead Nasser to accept some international supervision of the Suez Canal.

Eyes on Pipelines. Nasser was in possession of the canal, and at the moment that constituted nine-tenths of the law if very little of the cash. Against this fact stood Sir Anthony Eden’s challenge: “No arrangements . . . could be acceptable to Her Majesty’s Government which would leave it in the unfettered control of a single Power which could . . . exploit it purely for purposes of national policy.” The trouble with this carefully phrased dictum, as a moral stand, is that Britain (which owns 44% of the Suez Company’s stock) has for years condoned just such nationalistic behavior by Egypt. Since 1948 Egypt has barred Israeli ships from entering the canal.

When Nasser said last week that he would be happy to continue to assure free international passage, the Russians, acting the part of pious moderator, asked the British what more they could ask than so peaceable a pledge. Britain’s answer was that it asked effective international guarantees, not just the word of a man they no longer believed.

Even should Nasser consent to some sort of international supervision, the Canal Company would remain his. On this all sides agreed. This fact was what was hard to get at with gunboats. If Nasser got away with it, the air might soon be rent with cries to nationalize the oil companies and pipelines of the Middle East. Already there was talk of nationalizing the oil wealth of such Arab lands as Kuwait—the tiny principality whose yearly oil profits are $250 million—and with the money forming an Arab pool to finance such projects as the Aswan Dam. Two vital statistics illustrate the fact that this is a U.S. as well as a British and French problem: 1) two-thirds of all the world’s proved oil reserves are in the Middle East; 2) U.S. -dominated companies control two-thirds of these reserves.

It had become clear that Nasser, from whom so much was once hoped, was in creasing in power and popularity as an Arab leader in -direct proportion to his lowering of the power and prestige of the U.S., Britain and France. No one was sure — yet — just how to handle him, but all had the conviction that something must be done. First the matter of the Suez Canal had to be settled.

* The 1866 agreement with the Canal Company defines it in Article XVI as “an Egyptian company subject to the laws and customs of the country.” As recently as 1954, however, Nasser in behalf of Egypt conceded that the canal “is a waterway economically, commercially and strategically of international importance,” and expressed “the determination to uphold the convention guaranteeing the freedom of navigation of the canal signed at Constantinople on 29th of October, 1888.” * Australia, Ceylon, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Great Britain, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Soviet Union, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, U.S., West Germany.