Characters

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves."

Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956 was one of the most consequential acts of post-war statecraft. Speaking in Alexandria on the fourth anniversary of King Farouk's overthrow, he announced that Egypt was seizing the canal and used a secret codeword in his speech to trigger the simultaneous physical occupation of canal facilities. The reason was immediate and practical: the US and Britain had just withdrawn funding for the Aswan High Dam in retaliation for Egypt buying Czech weapons. Nasser needed canal revenues to build the dam. The nationalization transformed him into an Arab hero overnight. The military defeat that followed was rendered irrelevant by his diplomatic victory: US and Soviet pressure forced British, French, and Israeli withdrawal, confirming American primacy and ending European imperial pretension.

"We are not at war with Egypt. We are in armed conflict."

Anthony Eden was the most experienced British statesman of his era and the victim of his own experience. He had served three separate terms as Foreign Secretary and had long been Churchill's heir apparent. When he finally became Prime Minister in 1955, he was already ill — suffering from the effects of a botched bile duct operation that left him dependent on amphetamines. Nasser's nationalization triggered a visceral reaction rooted in the appeasement era: he would not be another Chamberlain. He entered the secret Sèvres conspiracy — where Britain, France, and Israel agreed that Israel would attack Egypt to provide a pretext for Anglo-French intervention — without fully informing his Cabinet or the Americans. When President Eisenhower threatened to destroy the pound sterling, Eden collapsed. He resigned three months after the debacle. The Suez Crisis ended Britain's pretension to independent great-power status.

"I just don't know what got into those people. It's the damnedest business I ever saw supposedly intelligent people getting themselves into."

Dwight Eisenhower's response to the Suez Crisis was the high point of American diplomacy in the Cold War era — and one of the most consequential acts of his presidency. The Supreme Allied Commander who had led the invasion of Europe found himself in October 1956 simultaneously managing Soviet suppression of Hungary and his own allies' attack on Egypt. Eisenhower was furious — not on principle, but because Britain and France had acted without consulting him, during the week before the US presidential election, in a way that handed the Soviets a propaganda gift. He made a single phone call threatening to destroy the British pound by selling US reserves — and the British folded within hours. His willingness to humiliate America's closest allies to preserve American credibility with the non-aligned world was his decisive Cold War strategic judgment: US legitimacy depended on opposing colonialism, even allied colonialism. He later expressed private regret that he had not let the operation proceed, believing Nasser to be a genuine threat.

"What matters is not what the gentiles say but what the Jews do."

David Ben-Gurion's role in the Suez Crisis was the most cynical of his career — and also, in narrow strategic terms, one of the most successful. Having built Israel from nothing in 1948, he was now focused on consolidating its strategic position. The Sinai Campaign had three goals: destroy the Egyptian army before it received Soviet weapons; open the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping (which Egypt had blockaded since 1948); and gain a buffer zone in the Sinai. He achieved all three — and then was forced to withdraw under American pressure. What he gained strategically was years of quiet on the southern border: Egyptian forces were broken and the Sinai demilitarized under UNEF until 1967. The operation also sent a clear signal to the Arab world that Israel could and would use pre-emptive force against strategic threats.

"Not only did Suez not work, but it blew up in our faces."

Lester Pearson was the Canadian diplomat who turned the Suez Crisis's aftermath into one of the UN's finest hours. When Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt in November 1956 and the world faced a diplomatic catastrophe — with the US and USSR on the same side against its own allies — Pearson devised the concept of a UN Emergency Force: neutral peacekeepers interposed between the belligerents to allow face-saving withdrawal. The idea was not entirely new, but Pearson's diplomatic skill in selling it to all sides, and the UN's rapid implementation of it, created the template for modern peacekeeping. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his role. The UNEF patrolled the Israel-Egypt frontier for 11 years until Nasser expelled it in May 1967 — precipitating the Six-Day War and demonstrating both the value and fragility of peacekeeping operations.

"Whenever you accept our views, we shall be in full agreement with you."

Moshe Dayan was thirty-nine years old when he planned and commanded the Sinai Campaign — one of the most brilliant military operations of the Cold War era. As IDF Chief of Staff, he designed a multi-axis offensive that would overwhelm Egyptian forces before they could react, using speed and initiative to compensate for Israel's numerical disadvantage. His operational concept was the Sinai blitzkrieg: multiple simultaneous thrusts from different directions, each moving faster than Egyptian commanders could respond. The campaign succeeded beyond his own estimates — the IDF covered 170 miles in eight days, destroyed three Egyptian divisions, and captured the entire Sinai Peninsula. The result was a spectacular military triumph and a political catastrophe: Dayan watched US pressure force the withdrawal of everything he had won. He drew the obvious lesson — Israel could not rely on anyone but itself — and spent the following decade building the military that won even more decisively in 1967.

"Nasser is Hitler on the Nile."

Guy Mollet was France's Socialist Prime Minister during Suez — and arguably the most hawkish of the three Sèvres conspirators. His motivation was different from Eden's: while Eden was obsessed with Nasser's threat to British prestige and canal access, Mollet was focused on Algeria. The Algerian War of Independence had been tearing France apart since 1954, and Nasser was supplying, training, and supporting the FLN rebels from Cairo. Mollet calculated that destroying Nasser would decapitate the Algerian rebellion and end the war. He was the driving force behind French arms supplies to Israel in the 1950s — the fighter jets, tanks, and warships that would prove decisive in 1956 and even more so in 1967. When the ceasefire came, Mollet was furious: France had committed its prestige and its paratroopers and received nothing. His government fell in May 1957. The Algerian War continued for five more years.

"Nasser is the dictator who threatens European civilization in the Middle East. We cannot allow another Munich."

Christian Pineau was France's Foreign Minister during the Suez Crisis and one of three men who physically signed the Protocol of Sèvres — the secret document that launched the war. A decorated Resistance fighter who had survived Mauthausen concentration camp, Pineau brought a visceral anti-fascist conviction to his confrontation with Nasser. He negotiated directly with Eden and Ben-Gurion at the secret villa in Sèvres, hammering out the precise sequence of events: Israel would attack, Britain and France would issue an ultimatum, and Anglo-French forces would intervene as 'peacekeepers.' Pineau understood better than Eden that the entire operation's legitimacy depended on the fiction that Britain and France were not in collusion with Israel — a fiction he helped construct and that was publicly exposed almost immediately. He later wrote a frank memoir about the Sèvres conspiracy, becoming one of the first participants to confirm what the British government denied for decades.