WILL THE MIDDLE EAST GO WEST?
Chapter III
BACKGROUND TO SUEZ
Rarely has any issue been so obscured by prejudice and passion, ignorance, misinformation and malice, as the Suez Canal controversy. Those who denounced Nasser most vehemently as a violator of treaties and offender against international law did not deem it necessary to ascertain the facts or preferred not to know them. Instead of studying the terms of the treaties and conventions which the Egyptian President was held guilty of violating, the majority of American editorial writers, columnists and commentators of the right, left and center, spluttered with indignation and engaged in vituperation instead of argument. Old Guard Republicans to whom “nationalization” signifies “creeping socialism,” which they deem more dangerous than Communism, reacted like bulls confronted with a red flag. “Liberals,” who would no doubt have hailed Nasser’s nationalization decree as a sign of his “progressive” policies, h ad he not been an enemy of Israel, similarly poured out the vials of their wrath against the “Arab Hitler” or the “dictator on the Nile.” The Anglophiles and Francophiles swelled the chorus. Former fellow travelers and friends of the Soviet Union, suspected of still being soft on Communism, welcomed the opportunity to cover themselves with whitewash by denouncing Nasser as a Communist puppet, stooge or agent. “Progressives” and “conservatives”; followers of Truman and Stevenson, together with Senator McCarthy and his adherents; columnists such as George Sokolsky and Henry Hazlett, together with Stewart Alsop, Marquis Childs, Drew Pearson and Max Lerner – all vied in the vehemence of their denunciation and abuse of “that man” Nasser. William F. Buckley’s National Review and Frank Hanighen’s newsletter, Human Events which, on almost every other issue, would have disassociated themselves from the New York Times and the New York Post, found themselves in general agreement with these newspapers. Only occasionally could the still, small voice of reason and truth be heard above the din of denunciation. The Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers, the Luce publications upon occasion, an odd conservative commentator such as John T. Flynn, a few real liberals and internationalists as distinct from the phony brand – notably Norman Thomas and Dorothy Thompson – and a few brave reporters such as Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune, Homer Bigart of the New York Times, and Wilton Wynn of the Associated Press, endeavored to enlighten the American public concerning the facts. But their voices were almost drowned out. With the greatest degree of unanimity known in America since World War II, when conservatives and “reactionaries” joined liberals and “progressives” in grasping Stalin’s hand in order to force the Germans to surrender unconditionally, the American press accused Nasser of having seized, grabbed, stolen or expropriated the Suez Canal, branded him a “proved treaty breaker leagued with the Communists,” as “an unscrupulous dictator backed and actively supported by Moscow,” as an “Arab Hitler,” and so on and so forth.
Like Chiang Kai-shek a decade ago, Nasser got the full smear treatment – only this time the smear came from both sides. In both cases the result was to obscure the facts from the American people and strengthen the Communists. The important difference was that whereas the United States Administration had helped to undermine the Chinese Nationalist Government and make way for the Communists, in the case of Egypt the Administration strove to be fair and objective and thus avoid pushing the Arab world into Moscow’s arms – in spite of the ignorant or prejudiced clamor in the American press and Congress.
Most editorial writers, columnists and commentators confused the Suez issue by making no distinction between nationalization of the status of the Suez Canal Company and observance of the Constantinople Convention of 1888, which are in fact two separate and distinct issues. As the State Department made clear at the time, Nasser’s nationalization decree had not given any indication on Egypt’s part of intending to flout the Convention by ceasing to operate the Canal as an international waterway. Alfred Lilienthal in his book There Goes the Middle East (New York: Devin-Adair, 1957) quotes one Administration source as declaring:
There is no doubt that Egypt has the right, if it wishes, to nationalize
the Suez Canal Company, assuming that adequate payments are made.
If Nasser does not go further and does not disrupt the operation of the
Canal, then everything will be all right.
No one who examines the juridical evidence and the historical record can legitimately accuse Nasser of having broken any treaty, or contravened international law, when his government nationalized the Suez Canal Company and started to operate the Canal itself. Reprehensible or not, this action was as legal as that of the British Labor Government in nationalizing British mines and railways and the steel industry. For the primary fact, ignored or denied by Nasser’s enemies and critics, is that the Suez Canal Company is an Egyptian company, incorporated under Egyptian law, which was given a concession to operate a canal running through Egyptian territory, which had been built by Egyptian labor.
Far from having emulated Stalin’s, Tito’s, or the Chinese Communist Government’s confiscation without compensation of foreign assets and the property of their own nationals, the Egyptian Government undertook to pay full compensation to the shareholders of the Suez Canal Company, at the price of their shares on the Paris Bourse on the day preceding the nationalization decree.
In the words of James P. O’Donnell in his article in the January 26, 1957, issue of The Saturday Evening Post: “In comparison with certain other statesmen who have been performing on the world stage, the Colonel seems to be Abdul Legalite.”
If anyone doubts that the Suez Canal is Egyptian, not foreign, property and that it is therefore incorrect to accuse Nasser of being “a lawless treaty breaker,” he need only look up the terms of Egypt’s original concession to the Suez Canal Company, as also the legal arguments presented by the British themselves, when they enjoyed a “Protectorate” over Egypt.
When Egypt gave a concession to the Universal Suez Maritime Canal Company to construct and operate a canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, she was a part of the Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish Government, as a prerequisite to its approval of the concession to the Suez Canal Company, insisted upon clarification of its status.
This was accomplished by an agreement signed on February 22, 1866, “determining the final terms as ratified by the Sublime Porte.”
Article 16 of this document reads:
Since the Universal Company of the Maritime Suez Canal Company
is an Egyptian Company, it remains subject to the laws and usages of
the country.
The same paragraph states that disputes between the Company and the Egyptian Government must be “referred to the Egyptian judiciary and settled according to Egyptian law.” It is also stated:
As regards the disputes that arise in Egypt between the Company
and individuals of whatever nationality, these must be referred to
Egyptian courts, and their procedure be subject to Egyptian law,
usages and treaties.
The only exception made concerns the “constitution” of the Company and “the relation of shareholders among themselves.” These, “in virtue of a special convention,” were to be “governed by the laws regulating joint stock companies” referring disputes among the shareholders or between them and the Company, to “arbiters in France for judgment and with appeals before the Imperial Court of Paris as being a superarbiter.”
In view of France’s widely accepted claim to have brought civilization to backward peoples and to stand for the liberty of the individual, it is of interest to note that the first article of the agreement sponsored by Turkey in 1866, is entitled “Abolition of Forced Labor from the Canal Works.” Egypt then agreed to pay an indemnity of 38 million francs to the Suez Canal Company, in order to cancel the 1856 concession given to De Lesseps to use impressed Egyptian laborers on the construction of the Canal – a concession which had caused the death of many thousands of Egyptians for the benefit of French and British shareholders.
In return for Egypt’s payment of 38 million francs as compensation for annulment of the right of the French-directed Suez Canal Company to use forced labor, the latter graciously agreed henceforth to “employ the necessary workmen for the enterprise according to common law.”
In this and the previous agreements of 1854 and 1956 between Egypt and the Suez Canal Company, it was made clear that the Canal, and the lands adjacent leased to the Suez Canal Company, for the construction of installations necessary for the Canal’s operation, remained part of the Egyptian police, and the Government of Egypt reserved the right to occupy “any position or strategic point it judges necessary for the defense of the country.”
There can therefore be no doubt, as John T. Flynn pointed out in his broadcasts over the Mutual Network, that President Nasser of Egypt was exercising the same right of “eminent domain” when he established the Tennessee Valley Authority.
“The Porte,” meaning the Turkish Government, as overlord of Egypt, refused, on January 10, 1872, to agree to proposals for an international organization to run the Canal, saying that it “could not admit, even in principle, the sale of the Canal, or the creation of an International Administration on its own territory.”
The Constantinople Convention, signed on October 29, 1888, by Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, made Egypt, not the Suez Canal Company, the guarantor of unhampered traffic through whatever agency she might designate to control the Canal.
The Convention specifically states, in Article XII, that “the rights of Turkey as the territorial power are reserved,” thus preserving Egypt’s right of “eminent domain.” Nor did the Convention make any provision for the sanctity of the concession made to the Suez Canal Company. On the contrary, Article XIV expressly provides that the provisions of the Convention should operate independently of the concession to the Suez Canal Company. Thus there is no connection between the two, although the American public has been misled into identifying them.
As Mr. Robert Delson, an expert on international law, wrote in the June 27 issue of the Reporter:
The view of the Canal Company as the convention-bred, internationally
appointed and privileged guardian angel of free passage runs aground on
the terms of the convention itself, which provided that everybody ought to
be
able to go back and forth through the Canal, not
that everybody ought to
own and operate it. [Italics added.]
As Mr. Delson points out, there is no basis in the text of the Convention to justify the 1956 statement made by British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd that operation by the Suez Canal Company “formed part of the basis of the Convention.” Nor that of Mr. Dulles when he said that the 1866 concession to the Suez Canal Company “has been by reference incorporated into and made part of what is called the definitive system set up by the 1888 treaty . . . establishing the rights of the . . . company.” Mr. Dulles was evidently in too much of a hurry to study the text, and was misled by his experts, when he said that “the operating rights and assets of the company were impressed with an international interest” by the Constantinople Convention. For this treaty, far from incorporating or guaranteeing Egypt’s concession to the Suez Canal Company, was designed to “transform a discretionary right exercised by Egypt under a private arrangement (with the Suez Canal Company) into a legal obligation imposed by treaty.”
Whichever way it is interpreted, the Constantinople Convention has been honored more in the breach than in the observance, thanks to the contradictory provisions of its various articles, to Britain'’ refusal for more than two decades to ratify its main articles, and to the unilateral abrogation by Britain and France in 1904 of its most important clause guaranteeing the free passage of the ships of all nations even in time of war.
But in one respect its terms are clear enough to justify Egypt’s contention that she has the right to refuse to allow Israeli ships to pass through the Suez Canal, so long as there is only an armistice between her and the State of Israel. For in Article X it is written that the provisions concerning free passage of the Canal “even to ships of war of belligerents” shall not interfere with measures which Egypt or her suzerain (at that time the Sultan of Turkey) “might find it necessary to take securing by their own forces the defense of Egypt and the maintenance of public order.”
This same Article X also states that the provisions of Articles IV, V, VII and VIII of the treaty shall “in no case occasion any obstacle to the measures which the Imperial Ottoman Government may think it necessary to take in order to insure by its own forces the defense of its other possessions situated on the eastern coast of the Red Sea.”
Britain, after her army had occupied Egypt in 1884, maintained the same opposition to the internationalization of the Suez Canal as Turkey before her. At a conference held in Paris in June 1885, the British representative, Mr. Pauncefote, in indicating his Government’s approval of the Convention (subsequently signed in Constantinople in 1888), made the reservation that this “did not limit the freedom of action of England so long as she was in occupation of Egypt.” And Lord Salisbury (whose descendant was to resign from the British Cabinet in 1957 in protest at Prime Minister Macmillan’s enforced recognition of Egypt’s right to run the Canal), sent a circular to the Powers in 1887 reserving England’s freedom of action in Egypt irrespective of the terms of the Constantinople Convention. Eleven years later, on July 12, 1898, Mr. Curzon, then British Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, replied to a question in the House of Commons as to whether the Constantinople Convention was in force by saying:
It was certainly in existence. . . but has not been brought into practical
operation. This owing to the reserve made on behalf of H.M.’s Government
by the British delegates to the Suez Canal Commission in 1885, which were
reserved by Lord Salisbury, and communicated to the Powers in 1887.
Britain continued for nearly two decades in her refusal to permit the clauses of the Constantinople Convention guaranteeing free passage through the Canal at all times to the ships of all nations to go into effect. When she finally did so, in 1904 (as part of her bargain with France t give the latter a free hand in Morocco in return for a free hand for Britain in Egypt) the British Government made a reservation wh ich annulled, or indefinitely held in abeyance, its most important provision, namely, the last sentence of paragraph I, which reads: “The Canal shall never be subjected to the exercise of the right of blockade.”
In 1922, when the British granted nominal independence to Egypt, they reserved exclusive power to control and defend the Canal. Today, when Egypt is held guilty of treaty breaking on account of her refusal to permit Israeli ships to pass through the Canal, we should take note of the precedent set by England when she ruled over Egypt and expressly refused to commit herself or her Egyptian vassal to the non-exercise of belligerent rights.
Without any audible protest from any of the signatories of the Constantinople Convention, except Germany, Austria and maybe Turkey during the 1914 war, and Italy as well as Germany during World War II, Britain kept the Canal open only for Allied ships.
I am indebted to Mr. Delson’s article in the Reporter for knowledge of another interesting fact which I had not known. He writes that when Rommel was only fifty miles from the Canal in 1943, “President Roosevelt sought assurances that Britain was prepared to blow up the Canal if necessary – despite the provision of the Convention that the Canal was to remain open in time of war as well as in peace.”
While exercising her “protectorate” over Egypt, Britain was as emphatic in asserting that the Suez Canal Company was an Egyptian company, as in maintaining the contrary thesis in 1956.
For instance, in 1939, in a memorandum submitted to the Mixed Courts in Egypt which pronounced judgment in its favor in February 1940, the British Government maintained:
The Suez Canal Company is a legal person in accordance with
Egyptian law. Its nationality and character are solely Egyptian.
It is, therefore, subject to Egyptian laws.
It is true that the Company is given the name “The Universal
Company of the Maritime Suez Canal.” . . . this designation cannot
deprive
the Company of its Egyptian nationality. The Company is
Egyptian
in accordance with the established general principles of
law and in particular with the principles of private international
laws and the Company’s organic law.
It is Egyptian because it is granted a concession which has for
its object Egyptian private assets and because its principal center
is Egypt.
And because it cannot be Egyptian and non-Egyptian at the
same time. This would be a legal anomaly … and contradictory
to the general principles of law. [Italics added.]
Lastly, it should be noted that Article VIII of the agreement concluded between Egypt and Britain in 1954 states specifically that the Suez Canal is an integral part of Egypt.
In the 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty relinquishing British sovereignty over Egypt there is no mention of the Suez Canal Company; and the only reference to the Constantinople Convention to be found in this document is an affirmation to “uphold the 1888 Convention guaranteeing freedom of navigation of the Canal.”
Britain, obviously, could not demand that Egypt should undertake to interpret or observe the provisions of this convention in a different manner to His Majesty’s Government.
In 1914, when Britain barred the Suez Canal to German and Austrian shipping, Egypt was nominally a part of Turkey, which was still neutral, so that the articles of the Constantinople Convention, which exempted Egypt from the obligation to allow free passage for the ships of all nations in time of war and peace, when necessary in her own self-defense, were legally inapplicable. Nevertheless, when on August 18, 1914, an Austrian merchant ship, the “Carcadero,” which was unequipped with wireless, and whose master was consequently unaware of the outbreak of war, arrived unsuspectingly at Suez, British forces seized her and she was condemned as a prize.
As Mr. Delson remarks, “The Convention signers and current champions turned their back on the principles when it suited them to do so.”
If Egypt is held guilty of violating international law and the Constantinople Convention by barring Israeli ships from the Suez Canal, then the United States must be held similarly culpable with regard to the Panama Canal. For the neutralization provisions of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901 (to which the United States had to agree in order to rid herself of an obligation not to construct the Canal except in conjunction with England) are modeled on the Constantinople Convention of 1888, which Sir Julian Pauncefote had himself also negotiated, in Paris in 1885. Nevertheless, shortly after the United States entered World War I, President Wilson issued a proclamation forbidding the use of the Panama Canal to German and Austrian ships. Moreover, this proclamation remained in effect after the United States, together with her allies, had signed an armistice with Germany at Compiegne on November 11, 1918, and even after the signing of a peace treaty with Germany at Versailles in June 1919. Because the Versailles treaty was debated for many months in the Senate and finally rejected, peace was not made between the United States and Germany until the Treaty of Berlin on August 25, 1921. During this whole three-year period of “armistice” the Canal remained closed to German shipping (except, if one can call it an exception, those German ships which had been seized by the Allied Powers).
In view of these precedents it is impossible to maintain the thesis that Egypt in barring the Suez Canal to ships of the State of Israel during a state of armistice is contravening the Constantinople convention or international law. Moreover, Israeli ships had not been permitted to pass the Suez Canal before the British withdrew from Egypt, so that the nationalization decree had nothing whatever to do with the issue.
Nor can Nasser on other counts be accused of having contravened the Constantinople Convention of 1888, since Egypt, after nationalizing the Suez Canal Company, managed to keep the Canal in full operation in spite of the endeavors made by the French directors of the Company to sabotage its operations. It was France and England, not Egypt, which in 1956 endeavored to interrupt free passage through the Canal, when the directors of the Suez Canal Company offered their pilots a two-year salary bonus, and threatened those who stayed with loss of their pensions, to induce them to quit working. M. Georges-Picot, the Director General of the Suez Canal Company (as well as a French representative in the United Nations) stated on August 6 that nearly all the non-Egyptian pilots were “loyal” and said, “I could tomorrow end all traffic on the Canal if I chose to give the order for repatriation. The Company is now in a position to use the loyalty of its employees to paralyze the Canal at any time it chooses.” Thus, when on September 11 the pilots pulled out, London and Paris were confident that they had placed Nasser on the horns of an insoluble dilemma. In the words of the London Times correspondent in Paris: “Either shipping will be held up or the Egyptians will force the employees to remain, and it is felt here that either event could well provide Britain and France with a pretext for military intervention.” A different pretext had to be contrived when Egypt managed to keep as large convoys as before moving through the Suez Canal and also permitted passage even to the British and French ships which refused to pay dues to Egypt. It was not Egypt but England and France, who in collaboration with Israel eventually caused the blockade of the Suez Canal by their aggression against Egypt.
Egypt’s success was due mainly to the endurance and patriotism of the Egyptian pilots who worked round the clock; to the Greeks, whose support in this time of crisis was gratefully acknowledged by Nasser; and to the loyal service of some pilots of other nationalities who refused to be tempted by the large sums offered them to quit working. Also German pilots from the Kiel Canal came to Egypt to offer their services, in spite of the sudden increase in their salaries announced by Dr. Adenauer’s government, which, in pursuance of its policy of conciliating France, endeavored to prevent any assistance being given to Egypt. Nasser was also helped in his successful endeavor to keep the Canal open by American, Italian and Scandinavian volunteers who responded to his appeal for pilots to replace those withdrawn by France in her efforts to sabotage the working of the Suez Canal. Also some Russian and Yugoslav pilots were ordered to Egypt by their governments.
All in all, the success of the Egyptian Government in keeping the Canal operating afforded proof that Egypt could stand on her own feet without help from Britain and France, and win in spite of Anglo-French efforts to sabotage the operations of the Canal. I was also told in Egypt that the new German pilots with typical efficiency had offered advice enabling the new Egyptian management to shorten by two hours the time formerly required for convoys to pass through the Canal.
Either by reason of their lack of knowledge, or because their editorial writers and pundits were too angry to study the evidence and the historical record, many American newspapers, in particular the New York Times, continued falsely to accuse Egypt of being a violator of treaties and international law, and of having thus “provoked” the Anglo-French attack.
Ignorance, or belief in things which “just ain’t so,” can be as harmful as a big lie, since if untrue statements are reiterated often enough in the press and over the radio they come to be believed and lead to a perversion of policy.
Whether President Nasser was wise, even though legally justified, in prematurely abrogating the concession given to the Suez Canal Company which would have expired in 1968, is a different question. Had he not lost his temper and let his desire to make America “choke on her own fury” drive him to precipitate action, he could have got what he wanted with comparatively slight opposition, and would not have undermined the influence of his Western friends or lost their support. For it was not so much what he did as the way he did it which affronted public opinion in America and England.
If the Egyptian Government had followed acceptable Western procedures for the nationalization of private enterprise, the world would have known what it never learned – namely, the valid grounds for the decision in 1956 to cancel the Suez Canal Company’s concession which was due to expire in 1968. Had Nasser and his advisers not lacked knowledge of the art of public relations, or had they not themselves been blinded by their fury, they would have proceeded along some such lines as the following:
First there could have been appointed a commission of lawyers, engineers and other experts to study the problem of modernizing the Canal to accommodate the large tankers being constructed by the oil companies. This commission would naturally have recommended that the Canal be deepened and widened to make it possible for the new “super tankers” to pass. The Suez Canal Company would then have been put on the spot. If it agreed to invest the huge sums necessary for the widening and deepening of the Canal, it would never be able to reimburse itself by tolls collected from the big new tankers, since its concession was due to expire in 1968. If it refused, Egypt would have been justified in exercising her right of “eminent domain” to nationalize the Canal Company, in order to promote not only her own interests but those of the “users” of the Canal.
By adopting some such procedure as this, Egypt would not only have placed the Suez Canal Company in an unfavorable light, but also have enlisted the “users” of the Canal on her side. She could also have embarrassed England by proposing that the millions of pounds of Egyptian sterling credits, created by Egyptian loans to Britain during World War II, which Egypt was permitted to realize only little by little, be applied to the transfer to Egypt of Britain’s holdings in the Suez Canal Company. If Britain agreed to such a transfer of stock, Egypt would have dominated the Suez Canal Company. If she refused, Britain would have seemed to be a dog in the manger, and Egypt’s nationalization decree would have been regarded in a more favorable light.
In addition to the case which Egypt could have made out of the failure of the Suez Canal Company to utilize part of its revenue to widen and deepen the Canal to meet modern requirements, she had other just causes for complaint, as well as valid economic reasons which if advanced would have made her nationalization decree less clumsy.
The Canal tolls, which in 1955 amounted to approximately 100 million dollars, had shown an ever-increasing revenue, but Egypt was reaping little benefit. The Canal carried three times as much traffic as the Panama Canal. Nasser, if he economized on all government expenditures and if he could obtain aid from the Soviet Government or other sources, might have been enabled to construct his High Dam out of Canal revenue and still leave enough over to compensate the shareholders and keep the Canal in working order. He knew that a large proportion of the revenues collected by the Suez Canal Company was being dissipated by the fantastically high sums paid to its directors in Paris, some of whom were receiving $100,000 a year for their “services,” which, valuable as they might be in increasing the assets of the Company by speculation or investment in other fields, were of little or no value to Egypt. Egypt also had abundant grounds for the supposition that, in anticipation of the coming end of its concession, the Suez Canal Company was neglecting its obligations concerning the normal repairs and upkeep of the Canal.
According to the Egyptian Government’s indictment, which seems never to have been refuted by the Directors of the Suez Canal Company, it had failed to carry out the following commitments:
The conversion of Lake Timsah into an inland harbor capable of receiving vessels of the highest tonnage as provided for in the Act of Concession.
To keep Port Said harbor, which it administered, in a suitable condition to meet the requirements of transit trade. “Despite the commercial importance of this harbor,” the Egyptian Government states in its White Paper on the Nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, “it lacks quays for the landing of vessels,” so that “loading and unloading are still carried on in the open sea by old fashioned methods which contribute to the high cost of commerce, transit trade in particular."
Certainly the Egyptian Government had cause to complain that the Suez Canal Company was not utilizing a sufficient share of its increasing revenues to enlarge its carrying capacity or to improve and modernize its harbors and installations. Instead it was paying absurdly high salaries to its directors in Paris and using the Canal’s profits for investments outside Egypt to increase the assets abroad whose ownership is now in dispute between Egypt, France and Britain. The Egyptian Government was also concerned with the failure of the Suez Canal Company to train Egyptian pilots to take the place of the foreign ones who were being retired or were due for retirement with pensions soon after the expiration of the concession to the Suez Canal Company.
In a word, Egypt had a very good case against the Suez Canal Company which justified the nationalization decree, but failed to present it to the world, owing to Nasser’s angry and thoughtless reaction to the insult and injury he sustained when in July 1956 the United States Administration withdrew its offer to help finance construction of the Aswan High Dam.
The previous December the United States had offered to give 54.6 million dollars toward the 400 million of foreign exchange required for this 1.2 billion dollar project; and to consider sympathetically future aid which would have brought the American and British total contribution to 200 million dollars spread over ten to fifteen years with America supplying 75 percent. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development promised to loan 200 million dollars and Egypt herself undertook to provide the remainder of the cost in the form of service and material. At this point it seemed that Russia'’ sale of arms to Egypt had galvanized the West to offer to finance this gigantic project which would increase the cultivatable area of overpopulated Egypt by 25 per cent and supply electric power for her industrial development. Substantial aid was to be given to the country which had hitherto received far less than her “fair share” of foreign aid, although her need was so much greater than that of other countries far more generously aided by the United States. Egypt, which had received only 34 million dollars out of a total of 53 billions of grants and credits given to foreign countries up to the end of 1955, could well claim to have been slighted. Nasser had previously offered objections to some of the requirements of the World Bank for the loan, and he now endeavored to secure more favorable terms by hinting that Russia had made him an offer of a loan of 300 million dollars for the project with no strings attached.
In thus attempting to exert pressure on the United States, Nasser made a bad blunder, or was at least very unlucky. His use of the method hitherto effectively employed by other countries came at a moment when the United States Administration had decided that it was losing friends and alienating allies by being nicer to neutrals, and that it was time to call Russia’s hand by making an example of Egypt. He can hardly be blamed for his costly miscalculation in view of America’s previous record of giving aid more generously, or with fewer strings attached, to “uncommitted” nations or to such friends of our enemies as Yugoslavia and India, than to those committed to our side – with the exception, of course, to our old allies, France and England. In 1956 the United States was giving more than a third of the total of its economic aid to the uncommitted nations or to those who were neutral against us. Nasser himself had been offered financial aid for the building of his High Dam only after he had entered into trade relations with the Soviet Empire by bartering Egypt’s cotton for Czechoslovak arms. He had also, no doubt, taken note of the fact that the first Western reaction to his arms deal with the Soviet Empire had been a futile appeal by Macmillan, Pinay and Dulles to Molotov (in September 1955 in New York) to preserve “the spirit of Geneva” by stopping the shipment of Czech arms to Egypt. Since the Western Powers were so ready to make a deal with Moscow at his expense, it was hardly surprising that Nasser reacted by telling America that he too could act in accordance with the spirit of Geneva by making his own bargain with the Kremlin.
Whether or not Nasser was so foolish as to believe that Soviet Russia was capable of competing economically with the United States by giving Egypt a huge loan, the United States Administration knew better and took the opportunity to call the Soviet bluff. Hence, apparently, the brusque withdrawal of America’s ten-month-old offer to help finance the construction of the Aswan Dam, when the Egyptian Ambassador to the United States called on the State Department in July 1956 to accept the offer on our terms.
This, at least, is the only plausible explanation which has been offered for the rude rebuff to Egypt which led to Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal and the Suez War. While this interpretation, given in Time magazine’s John R. Beale’s semi-authorized biography of John Foster Dulles published in 1957, provoked a denial by Dulles, Mr. Beale’s account of what happened and why it happened appears substantially correct. Answering the question, “Why did Dulles turn down Nasser so brutally, without a chance to save face?” Beale writes:
As a calculated risk his decision was on a grand scale . . . .
It risked opening a key Middle East country whose territory
bracketed the strategic Suez Canal, to communist economic
and political penetration. It risked alienating other Arab nations,
controlling an oil supply without which Western Europe’s
mechanized industry and military defenses would be
defenseless.
Dulles’ bet was placed on the belief that it would expose the
shallow character of Russia’s foreign economic pretensions . . .”
If, in spite of Mr. Dulles’ diplomatic denials this is the correct explanation, one wonders why he chose Egypt, instead of Yugoslavia, or Ceylon, or Indonesia, or Nehru’s India – all of which were far more friendly to the Moscow-Peking axis than Nasser’s Egypt?
In view of the Eisenhower-Dulles record in the conduct of American foreign policy, before as well as during the Suez crisis, it is unlikely that Zionist or Anglo-French pressures caused the Secretary of State to choose Egypt to make an example of the perils of flirtations with Soviet Russia. It would rather seem that Mr. Dulles, in his preoccupation with America’s worldwide struggle against Communist tyranny, failed to realize the consequences of picking on Egypt to prove that America is not to be influenced by blackmail. But whatever motivated the Secretary of State, the fact remains that by suddenly withdrawing America’s offer to help finance the construction of the Aswan Dam, the State Department placed Nasser’s government in an intolerable position and caused it to react in a manner which immensely benefited Soviet Russia. The reason given by the State Department – namely, that the condition of the Egyptian economy did not justify the loan - seemed a gratuitous insult.
The subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, appointed in January 1957 to review our Middle East policy since 1946 with a view to ascertaining how and why the Suez crisis had arisen, failed to issue a report. The reason given was that the State Department had not provided the subcommittee with a white paper, or chronological statement with supporting documents, and because the volume of papers, measuring more than a foot high on the subject of the Aswan Dam alone, was not only indigestible but consisted for the most part of secret or top secret documents. However, Senator Fulbright, the chairman of the subcommittee, took time out to discover the facts buried in the huge pile, and on August 14 told the Senate that on the basis of the evidence, which he was precluded from quoting on account of its being classified, he had come to the following conclusion:
The Aswan Dam project was a sound project from the point
of view of engineering feasibility and it was a reasonable risk
for economic development loans. Sources of capital other than
those involved in the offer which was made to Egypt, both
private sources and other government sources, were definitely
interested in pursuing the project.
…it was recognized that the Aswan Dam…was vital to the
future of Egypt…without such a development, Egypt with its
increasing population, may be expected to suffer a constantly
lowering standard of living . . . [causing] social and political
unrest in Egypt… [and endangering] the unstable peace of the
Middle East.
The Administration’s decision to withdraw the offer to Egypt
was made against the advice of the United States Ambassador
to Egypt, and the President of the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development.
Mr. Dulles’ stated reasons for the withdrawal of the offer were demolished by Senator Fulbright one by one.
The major drain on Egypt’s resources, payment for Czech arms, had occurred prior to the time of the United States offer to help finance the Aswan Dam. It therefore could not justify the withdrawal of the offer seven months later. On the contrary, as he remarked in the course of his argument with Senator Knowland in the Senate, “the arms deal was one of the principal reasons which motivated our government and the British, and was the principal reason for the offer being made.” There was, he continued, no evidence of any radical worsening of Egypt’s economic position, and the American Chairman of the International Bank, which would have contributed a 200 million dollar loan, was still in favor of the project. Nor was there any evidence that the Sudan or other “Nile riparian states” would have refused their consent to the construction of the Aswan Dam, since they too would have derived substantial benefits.
As regards Mr. Dulles’ final argument, that “congressional opposition” was a factor causing the withdrawal of United States financial aid to Egypt, Senator Fulbright was on less sure ground. Since he failed even to mention Israel, and had nothing to say concerning the Truman Administration’s responsibility for the Middle East muddle by reason of its sponsorship of the United Nations partition of Palestine, he can be accused of playing politics by concentrating his fire on the Republican Administration’s Egyptian blunders. However, the Arkansas Senator must, at least, be given credit for having admitted that the Senators from the cotton-growing states, one of which he himself represents, were opposed to the construction of the Aswan Dam, which they feared would mean increased competition from Egypt. In his view, their fears were “insubstantial”; but he also said that their interests should not, in any case, be permitted to stand in the way of a project of benefit to the United States as a whole. Moreover, he was of the opinion that their objections could have been overcome if the overriding argument of American interest had been presented to them by the State Department.
Construction of the Aswan Dam with United States financial backing would have provided the whole of the Middle East with such “a dramatic example of the West’s ability and willingness to undertake major developments for the improvement of the standard of living, that it would have been of great importance in the settlement of the differences, political and social, in that area.”
More important still was Senator Fulbright’s perception that Dulles “confused Egyptian nationalism and neutralism with communism,” thus delaying “the day when the Egyptian people might seek to build a democratic government on a solid economic basis.” If we had helped Egypt concentrate on internal development instead of foreign adventures, we could have helped “to create stability throughout the Middle East.” In Senator Fulbright’s words:
Despite the judgment of able State Department career officials
indicating that Nasser had some appreciation of the dangers of
dealing too closely with the Soviet Union, Mr. Dulles seemed to
believe that Nasser had become a Soviet puppet. He did not
recognize that Egyptian nationalism was a powerful force which
could, if recognized for what it was and carefully handled, be
directed toward political freedom instead of communism. . . . He
also failed to appreciate the tremendous emotional importance
which all Egyptians attached to the building of the dam. He did
not appreciate the effect the building of the dam would have had
upon the entire Arab world as an example of our willingness to
help them help themselves.
As subsequent events have proved, Senator Fulbright was also right when he said that the withdrawal of the offer to help finance the Aswan Dam led to the Suez War,* and enabled the Soviet to place "“ hammer lock on a country which otherwise might well have stayed relatively free from influence by the Soviet orbit."”
* America’s proposed contribution to the cost of the construction of the Dam – 15 million dollars a year for ten years – was chicken feed as compared with the billion we gave France for her futile war in Indochina; or to the hundreds of millions we have given to the Yugoslav and Polish Communist Governments over the past decade. Moreover, we have already expended 174 million dollars in 1957 in the Middle East under the Eisenhower Doctrine in our attempt to annul the advantages gained by Moscow by the Suez War.
Undoubtedly, a more farsighted, rational and diplomatic handling of American interests in the Middle East could have prevented our relationship with Egypt from deteriorating to the point that “Nasser was prompted to abandon the possibility of friendship with us, and to turn instead to the only large nation still proferring what must have seemed to him to be a hand of friendship.”
These words, from Senator Fulbright’s speech to the Senate on August 14, 1957, express a view of the situation in the Middle East crisis so similar to my own that I have inserted them in my text at the moment of going to press. The fact that I have differed from his views, and those of other eminent Democratic and Republican liberals on other issues, notably as regards China, is of less importance than our present common recognition of the basic realities in the dangerously explosive situation in the Middle East. How those fundamental principles which made America great and free and strong can be applied in a changing world is a matter of debate. But knowledge of the facts is t he prerequisite of any intelligent discussion, whatever the motives of those who reveal them. And the evidence, as presented by Senator Fulbright, gives substance to the argument that John Foster Dulles is as guilty as Gamal Nasser of having been influenced more by emotion, or by immediate political considerations, than by hard-headed realism in the pursuit of vital national objectives. One thing is certain: the Secretary of State displayed a fatal lack of understanding of the susceptibilities of newly emancipated nations when he not only deprived Egypt of the hope of freedom from starvation by means of American assistance in construction the Aswan Dam, but added insult to injury by telling her that she was unworthy of our aid.
Dulles not only shattered Nasser’s dream of securing American financial aid in solving, or alleviating, Egypt’s desperate problem of overpopulation and increasing poverty, intensified by the ever-diminishing demand for her cotton in America and England, thus impelling him to attempt to get the means to construct his Dam by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company. The United States rebuff was also taken to mean that the United States had reversed its former policy of supporting Nasser’s reformist and progressive regime. Having lost America’s backing, it seemed doomed to destruction from its enemies at home and abroad unless it could secure Soviet backing, or unless it could at least prevent the threatened alliance of right and lest-wing Egyptian extremists against it by means of an understanding with Moscow.
Nasser’s land reform had alienated the Egyptian landowners who had waxed fat on the misery of the Egyptian fellahin. This and other reforms aiming at a new deal for the Egyptian peasants and workers, together with the institution of a cleaner and better government than Egypt had known for hundreds of years, had secured him the support of the majority of the population and given him popularity and influence all over the Arab world. But he had likewise incurred the hostility of both Egyptian and foreign vested interests in the polygot business community of Cairo and Alexandria. His opposition to the fanatics of the Moslem League, as also to the Communists and their dupes who were dissatisfied with his gradual reforms, had made him still more enemies. In a word, Nasser’s attempt to steer Egypt along a course enabling her to progress along Western democratic lines was beset with dangers from both the right and the left, and now it seemed that he had lost his American pilot.
A United States Secretary of State whose global view took far too little account of the needs, necessities, feelings and aspirations of any of the pawns in the chess game between the United States and the USSR had played into Russia’s hand by his rebuff to Egypt. No pawn likes to be regarded as expendable, or to have his dignity and worth denied. Each one of them dreams of reaching the end of the board and becoming a queen, bishop, castle or knight. The United States which is so careful of the feelings of its favored allies in Europe, and of such neutrals as Nehru, has displayed a singular lack of regard for the dignity and susceptibilities of the Arabs. We have continued to play idiot’s chess, by labelling Egypt a pawn of no potentiality and by willfully sacrificing her as a horrible example to other ambitious pawns who might wish to play a stronger role in the deadly game between the free world and Communism.
In my notes of my interview with Nasser, as in his speeches, and those of other Arab leaders, the words “national dignity” recurred again and again. Peoples who have smarted under the indignities they have suffered under Western domination, irrespective of whether alien rule improved or worsened their material condition, are acutely sensitive to affronts to their dignity or self-respect and national pride. Americans who have for so long enjoyed the independence and liberty their forefathers fought and die3d to win, who have no experience or memory of being treated as inferiors, and who have never even suffered from the class distinctions which still cause heartache and bitterness in Europe, are naturally inclined to disregard, or fail to understand, the sensitivity of less fortunate peoples still smarting under the slights and humiliation endured under the rule of foreign conquerors, or occupation forces.
“The refusal to treat Egypt as an equal” was the main objection raised to the Dulles plan to set up a Suez canal users’ association by the Middle East Research Center in Cairo, which denounced it as “conceived as a closed body with a definite membership, set apart from the scores of other countries using the Canal.”
Perhaps if Mr. Dulles had had greater appreciation of the lingering resentment of African and Asiatic peoples toward the Europeans who formerly humiliated them by treating them as an inferior race, he would not have picked on Egypt as the country to punish for its dealings with Moscow, while he continued to support the Communist dictator of Yugoslavia.
When asked by Look correspondent William Attwood, in the interview published in its June 25, 1957, issue, why he had not waited until 1969, when the Canal would automatically have reverted to Egypt, Nasser replied:
For two reasons. When you said you would not help us to build the
High Dam, we had to show you that you cannot insult a small country
and get away with it. If we had accepted the slap in the face, you would
have slapped us again. Also we needed to raise money to build the dam
ourselves. The Canal tolls were a logical source of income. … We were
studying the question of nationalizing the Canal, but had not reached a
decision. You made up our minds for us.
The Egyptians are particularly sensitive to affronts by the West on account of the wrongs and indignities inflicted upon them by the British during most of the period of their eighty-year occupation. As the British Labor M.P. Michael Foot has said: “The Egypt of 1956 with all its poverty and prickly nationalism was made in England.”
The British occupation, which was supposed to be only “temporary”, began in 1882 when Prime Minister Gladstone sent warships to bombard Alexandria, and landed 25,000 British troops in order to destroy Ahmed Arabi Bey, the Egyptian nationalist leader of that time who sought to end the corrupt and oppressive regime of the spendthrift Khedives ruling in the name of the Turkish Sultan. Arabi, who pinned his faith on Gladstone’s liberal professions and desired friendship with England, was defeated and put on trial for his life, and his country returned to its oppressors. As Michael Foot and Mervyn Jones say in their book, Guilty Men (New York: Rinehart, 1957), “The gentle Arabi was the 1882 model of an Egyptian nationalist, not the toughened, embittered type of 1956. . . and was no match for British Imperialism [which used] the ‘resources of civilization,’ lying, treachery and fraud.” It is of interest to note that Arabi refused to follow the advice of his strategic advisers to blockade the Suez Canal as soon as Britain attacked.
Winston Churchill, who three quarters of a century later was to oppose the British withdrawal from Egypt, and to favor the attach on Suez to destroy Nasser and reestablish British imperial rights, records in his life of his father that Lord Randolph Churchill sympathized with Arabi’s revolt and subscribed 50 pounds to the expense of the Egyptian’s defense before a court martial, because Lord Churchill believed Arabi to be “the head of a real national movement directed against one of the vilest and most worthless governments in the world.”
To Sir Winston Churchill’s father, England’s use of her power to stamp our Arabi’s movement and hand back the Egyptians to the Khedive, and to the extortions of his creditors, was “an odios crime” and the war on Egypt “a wicked and unjust bondholders war.” Three quarters of a century later the son backed Eden in just such another war on Egypt.
During the ensuing years, up to and after World War II, indignities as well as injuries were inflicted on those whom their British overlords contemptuously referred to as “Wogs,” and to whom they brought few of the benefits which British colonial rule brought to other lands. Britain, while exploiting Egypt for the benefit of “the bondholders,” maintained the corrupt and inequitable social and economic structure inherited from the Turks which had made of Egypt a country in which a ruling class of wealthy Pashas owned almost all the land, and where cultivators became progressively poorer with the increase in population and the failure substantially to increase the irrigated land by public works. When the Egyptian Nationalists ousted King Farouk and started their land reform, less than two thousand landowners owned a quarter of the cultivatable land, while another three or four thousand owned another quarter. This in a country where fourteen out of twenty million strive to get a living from the land and where, according to a 1952United Nations report, the amount of cultivatable land per head of the population was only a quarter of an acre, making Egypt the most overpopulated country in the world. Yet it is Nasser, not the British, who is usually held responsible for the semi-starved condition of the Egyptian fellahin, whose misery he had hoped to alleviate by construction of the High Dam at Aswan.
All in all, the facts bear out the contention of such Left Wing British writers as Michael Foot and Mervyn Jones, in their book entitled Guilty Men, in which they admit that in England’s dealings with some other nations “liberal Britain has fulfilled its nobler aspirations,” but add, “Second only to Ireland, our story in Egypt is one of deceit and shame and of brute force failing to achieve its brutal ends.”
Even if British rule had brought material benefits instead of increasing poverty for the mass of the population, the personal humiliations inflicted on the Egyptians would nevertheless have produced the sensitivity and suspicion of “the West” which give Nasser his mass support when he defies us. As a British contributor to the conservative British weekly, the Spectator, wrote in the December 28, 1956 issue:
During the Second World War, no leadership from the Residency
in Cairo restrained the racial conceit and zoological xenophobia of
the hundreds of thousands of the British bearers of the white man’s
burden, both commissioned and non-commissioned, which ran amok
in the Middle East in the Forties. . . .
No gesture was made to underline at least some community of aims
and ideals with Egypt when the war against Germany was won. . .
[Egypt was] evacuated a couple of years later under circumstances
which convinced the Egyptian leaders that the British, for all their
fine talk about human rights and democracy, respond only to a kick
in the teeth, preferably a strong one.
The lesson learnt by Egypt from the West - namely that only force counts - was reinforced when Winston Churchill, reluctantly agreeing in July 1954 to the withdrawal of British forces from Egypt, said he was doing so only because the hydrogen bomb had convinced him that the Suez base was obsolete. Thus Britain herself laid the groundwork for the Egyptian supposition, powerfully substantiated during the Suez War, that liberation from British occupation and defense against British attack, were due to Russia and her possession of the atomic bomb. “The West” itself taught Colonel Nasser that England respects force far more than the liberal principles she teaches but too often ignores.
It would be tedious to recount all the backing and filling, negotiations, claims and counter-claims which preceded the Suez War. But if one studies the record it seems clear that the British and French governments wanted a showdown instead of a peaceful settlement.
In September when Sir Anthony Eden mistakenly understood that Dulles was agreed that the “Users Association” would, if necessary, shoot its way through the Canal, the Tories in Parliament exulted that they were going back to Suez with America behind them. This dream was shattered when President Eisenhower made a trans-Atlantic call to Eden, and Dulles told a Washington press conference that he knew nothing about any plan to take over the Canal by force. Subsequently Egypt agreed to the six points proposed by the United Nations as the basis for negotiating a settlement, and it was precisely then that England and France attacked her.
As the London Economist, whose reports on the Suez crisis were particularly well informed and objective, said on May 18, 1957:
British and French policy after the seizure of t he Canal suffered
from the fundamental defect that its underlying intention was not to
negotiate a Canal settlement but to bring about the downfall of
Colonel Nasser.
After Britain and France launched their attack, broadcasts to Egypt left no doubt that Nasser’s overthrow was the primary war aim. As quoted in the House of Commons on November 5 by Sir Wedgewood Benn, a broadcast to Egypt from Cyprus early that morning had said:
It means that we are obliged to bomb you wherever you are.
Imagine your villages being bombed. Imagine your wives,
children, mothers, fathers and grandfathers escaping from their
houses and leaving their property behind. This will happen to
you if you hide behind your women in the villages….If they do
not evacuate, there is no doubt that your villages and homes will
be destroyed. You have committed a sin . . . that is, you placed
your confidence in Abdul Nasser.
Another M.P. quoted from a leaflet dropped over Egypt by the R.A.F. which according to the B.B.C., said, “We have the might and we shall use it to the limit if you do not give in.”
As Aneurin Bevan said in the debate which followed, “We have here, not a military action to separate Egypt and Israeli troops, but a declaration of war against the Egyptian Government in the most brutal terms.”
Another leaflet said:
Your choice is clear. Either accept the Allied proposals. Which will
bring you peace with honor and prosperity, or accept the consequences
of Nasser’s policy, which will bring heavy retribution not only to the
few who are guilty but also to you – the many – who are innocent.
A later broadcast, following the British landing at Port Said said:
Very soon it will be dark. Soldiers in Port Said, you are in a
hopeless situation. Protect your lives. It is not your duty to die for
your country. You have seen the Commandos fight by day. Have
you ever seen them fight by night? The first thing you will know
is when you feel cold steel in your back.
According to British reports, although there had been tough fighting at the airfield, resistance in the city came mainly from snipers and ill-armed civilian levies in the Arab quarter, to whom this ferocious warning was addressed. Meanwhile the city was being wrecked by naval bombardment and rocket launching planes.
Having seen the devastated city of Port Said for myself, I was appalled at the hypocrisy or sublime ignorance of the British politicians who claimed that the British and French commanders were hampered by their instructions to make sure that as few civilians as possible should be hurt, that the damage should be as small as possible, and that “air raids were restricted to Egyptian air fields.”
Far from this being the truth, the whole Arab quarter of Port Said resembled one of the ruined cities of Germany in the immediate post-war era. I looked over a vast expanse of flattened, charred remains and even larger areas of partially destroyed streets and gutted houses where the inhabitants who had escaped with their lives were poking about among the ruins. The total number of civilian casualties was not yet known when I visited Port Said on December 22, but was estimated at close to 10,000. Women and children had been machine-gunned as they fled from their burning homes, as witness the photographs taken by the Swedish photographer, Per-Olow Anderson, who managed to slip into Port Said while the carnage was on and counted the bodies of seventy children slain by bullets. His pictures were published almost everywhere in the world, including England, but excepting the United States, I met and talked with him in Cairo.
The British had cut off the water supply and there was no electricity, and he saw doctors operating by candlelight with only one bucket of water in which to wash their hands. Meanwhile, the British-Cyprus radio was telling the Egyptians that they would continue to be slaughtered unless and until they got rid of Nasser.
British correspondents on the spot flatly contradicted Butler’s statement to the House of Commons that only a hundred Egyptians had been killed and only 540 wounded. Two weeks after the fighting ended, the London Times correspondent reported from Port Said that “everybody here is still utterly at a loss to account for the official statement in London . . . when anybody could walk through the hospitals to see the wounded or past the cemetery where the bodies lay too long.” Even the Daily Express correspondent wrote:
The official figure of 100 Egyptians killed is stupid. Unfortunately
I saw many more. I believe a fair estimate is around 1,000 killed,
military and civilian; 5,000 wounded; 25000 homeless. It would have
been better to tell the truth.
This same newspaperman also described the “horrible situation” at a hospital he visited” “Two thousand casualties with no water and no medical supplies.”
The terrible vengeance taken by the British when their commandos were fired upon, after the cease fire but before the Arab quarter knew about, was reported by Denis Pitts in the Daily Herald. He wrote:
The Commandos left and the bloody slaughter began. British and
French tanks went into the Arab quarter. If a sniper was sighted, a
shall was fired at the window where he had been seen…. Many
people were killed in this way. Many more were burned to death.
The Egyptians had been told by the ‘Voice of Britain’ to stay
indoors. ‘You won’t get hurt,’ they were told. . . . The Army
could well have given the Arab quarter time to know that a
cease-fire had been called.
I spent a day in Port Said with Lydia Oswald of the Hearst press the day the British and French forces withdrew from Suez.