Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The United States Department of State was wild with rage at what it regarded as British perfidy and Anglo-Israeli collusion to engage in war outside the Western alliance and collective security system (actions which had always seemed acceptable to Dulles if applied by the United States to the Formosa Strait or other areas of primary American concern). On October 30th Dulles tried to force through the Security Council of the United Nations a resolution condemning Israel and asking all United Nations members to cut off military, economic, or financial assistance to Israel. This was killed by Anglo-French vetoes, 7-2. Britain, the Commonwealth, and the London Cabinet itself were badly split, while world opinion was strongly against the use of force by any state. In London two ministers resigned, and others threatened to do so.

On November 2nd the Assembly of the United Nations, by its largest majority to date, accepted, by a vote of 64-5, a Dulles resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Near East. Egypt and Israel accepted on November 5th, while the Anglo-French forces stopped their advance the following day, twenty-three miles south of Port Said. The Israel forces were already across Sinai. Of more permanent significance, the petroleum pipelines and pumping stations bringing oil to Levantine seaports across Syria were destroyed, and a number of blockships sunk by Egypt in the Canal had cut off all Near Eastern oil supplies to western Europe by the direct routes. Most important of all, the parallel American-Soviet threats to France and England and the simultaneous Soviet attack on Hungary had made permanent splits in the two great super-Power blocs and had given a greatly increased impetus to the growth of an independent third bloc between them. This development of an increasingly independent Buffer Fringe between the two disintegrating super-Power blocs became the outstanding feature of the next seven years of world history under the awesome canopy of the Soviet-American missile and space race (1956-1963).

Liquidation of the Suez crisis was not completed until the end of 1958, but in the interval the continued confusions of the whole Near East almost totally concealed the process of liquidation. Much of this confusion arose from inept handling by the Western Powers of the very real problems of the area. These problems were four in number: (1) the economic poverty of the area, especially the food crisis in Egypt; (2) the Israel issue; (3) the decline of British power leading to political instability; and (4) the challenge to the French position in Muslim North Africa, especially in Algeria. The decline in British and French influence was a consequence of World War II and especially of the decisions of the British and French peoples to devote their wealth to social welfare rather than to efforts to retain their imperial positions. This left a power vacuum, as the Arab states were obviously unable to maintain order in the area or even to govern themselves, and neither the United States nor the Soviet Union was willing to move into the almost insoluble problem of maintaining political stability in the area or to allow the other super-Power to make the effort to do so. Britain made feeble efforts to retain its influence in Jordan, Iraq, southern Arabia, and the Persian Gulf. In the case of Jordan and Iraq, at least, this was not worth the effort, and was doomed to failure, as became clear with the expulsion of Glubb Pasha in March 1956, and the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy and of Nuri al Said in July 1958.

American policy in the Near East was based on a series of assumptions which were so remote from the truth that no successful policy could be based on them. These were: (1) that the Near East was an area in which the Soviet Union had plans for immediate penetration and subversion in order to communize it; (2) that the Arab world was a unified bloc, with significant intrinsic power of its own, which would join the Soviet bloc (or at least contribute to increase its strength) if not constantly placated by concessions; (3) that no policy of neutralism of the Near East was feasible or acceptable to the West; (4) that the public opinion of the masses of Arab peoples was of some significance in the formulation of policy in the Arab states; and (5) that the arming of the Arab states would contribute to their ability to resist Soviet penetration and to the political stability of the area.

All five of these assumptions were untrue. The Soviet Union had no significant plans to communize, to subvert, or to penetrate the Near East after 1948, and was eager to see it become a stable and neutral area in order to deprive the United States of any excuse to intervene there. Moreover, the Arab states were neither united nor strong, but were diverse, filled with mutual hatreds and petty jealousies, and almost totally incapable of acting as a bloc even when their primary interests were threatened. In fact, their only common interests were hatred of Israel, desire to be independent and neutral, and the desire for economic handouts (without any accompanying political commitments) from anyone who would give them. The public opinion of the Arab peoples, described in the previous sentence, was of little influence in the face of the concentration of local political power in the hands of the local armed forces, which were, with perhaps the exception of Nasser himself, corruptible. Efforts to arm these forces against a nonexistent Soviet armed threat contributed nothing to their ability to defend the area itself, and merely increased their corruption, their economic burden on the people, and the political instability of the area by increasing their abilities to threaten each other or Israel.

Dulles’s policies in the Near East were consistently the opposite of what they should have been. No possible alliance or rearming of the Arab states could have contributed anything to the area’s ability to resist Communism, nor could the Arab states have contributed anything but headaches to the Kremlin if Washington’s policies had “driven them into the arms of Russia.” Over-all defense of the area should have been based on Ethiopia, Israel, and Turkey; the Arab states should have been given the independence, neutrality, and economic aid they wanted. The latter should have concentrated on the Aswan Dam and a Jordan Valley Authority (similar to TVA) for the mutual benefit of Jordan, Israel, and Syria, in return for the Arab states’ acceptance of (1) a peace treaty with Israel and (2) resettlement of the Arab refugees from the Israeli war on the new agricultural lands provided by the Jordan Valley project. And, finally, the United States should have declared unilaterally that it would use any force necessary to prevent any Soviet intrusion into the Near East or any attack on the independence of Israel. As a supplementary, but probably unachievable, project the United States should have sought a pooling of the enormous oil revenues of the whole Near East to provide funds for the economic reconstruction of the area as a whole within the framework of an Arab economic community based on free trade and free immigration within the Arab world.

Instead of some such progressive solution of the Near East problem and the Suez crisis, the United States, acting through the United Nations, sought to restore the basically precarious status quo ante bellum without any guarantees. The real difficulty was Israel, which refused for several months to yield up the areas it had occupied without obtaining in return some solution of its grievances. These grievances were: (1) the refusal of the Arab states to make a peace treaty or to accept the existence of Israel by ending the 1948 war, (2) the Arab economic, social, and political blockade of Israel, which included boycotts of all world business firms which did business with Israel, (3) the denial of the Suez Canal to Israeli ships or identifiable Israeli goods since 1948, (4) constant harassment of Israeli shipping or fishing on the Gulf of Aqaba and the Jordan River, and (5) the use of the Gaza Strip, non-Egyptian territory occupied by Egypt under the 1948 armistice, as a basis for guerrilla raids on Israel.