10.4: International Crisis

The Suez Crisis  

It was across the contested Egypt-Israeli border in 1956 Israeli troops and tanks charged invading Egypt as the UN debated Egypt’s seizure of the canal sparking the Suez Crisis. If UN delegates were surprised by the invasion, they were shocked when the crisis escalated as Britain and France began landing troops in Egypt declaring they would reoccupy the Suez Canal to guarantee its safety from the newly-started war between Israel and Egypt. In secret, France had convinced both Israel and Britain to participate in a joint attack on Egypt using the Israeli invasion as diplomatic cover to justify British and French military intervention to seize back the canal.
 
 The ruse fooled no one and the global response was dramatic. In the days following the invasion, the Soviet Union threatened London and Paris with nuclear attack and the United States turned off the flow of financial aid to Britain and France. The Americans were especially angry; Anglo-French collusion made a mockery of the new UN international order and alliances the United States sought to build. Under pressure from both superpowers, Britain and France withdrew their troops from Egypt. The Suez Crisis made clear to the peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East that the British and French were no longer the great powers of the world nor could they stand up to the military or economic might of the superpowers. With the Suez Canal in Egyptian hands, Egyptians were now more united than ever behind Nasser who ordered the expulsion of thousands of foreign nationals stripping Cairo of its once-cosmopolitan aura. As United Nations troops landed in Egypt to secure both the canal and the Egypt-Israel border, the arrival of blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers seemed to make visual a retreating imperial world and a rising new international one.

Pan-Arabism

After the Suez Crisis, adoration for Nasser and a sense of optimism swept across the Arab world. With Nasser’s seeming success at modernizing Egypt and defying the West, many Arabs came to believe in Pan-Arabism – the unification of all Arab countries into a single state – and saw Egypt the natural regional leader. In Egypt, rapid economic growth seemed only to confirm an industrial, secular, socialist-oriented future awaited the Arab people. Little thought was given to the thousands of political prisoners Nasser jailed who resisted his one-party rule, most notably members of the Muslim Brotherhood like Sayyid Qutb whose writing would later inspire a generation of Islamic radicals. From Cairo, Voice of the Arabs Radio urged anti-imperialism and Pan-Arabist revolution to the illiterate poor in cities and villages across the Arabic speaking world listening in on cheap transistor radios. Such rhetoric helped inspire Pan-Arabist military coups in Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, some of which were successful. 

Primary Sources: Pan-Arabist Speech by President Nasser of Egypt to the Officers' Club Excerpt (1959)

Discussion Questions

• How does Nasser use the history of the Middle East to advocate for Arab unity?
• What forces, according to Nasser, are working against Arab unity?

We men of the [Egyptian] Armed Forces… have a great responsibility, as our country has always been the target of the ambitions of the big powers, those big powers that always seek power and think they can have it through dominating our land.

However, we have resolved to follow an independent policy and to maintain the independence of our country. We made that known when we declared that our policy is based on positive neutrality and nonalignment, for this means that we shall not submit to power politics, and shall not, under any circumstances, accept the role of a satellite or allow our fate to be decided in a foreign country or our policy to be planned in a foreign capital.

As soon as Cairo achieved its independence through freeing the country from British occupation and domination the banner of Arab nationalism and Arab solidarity was raised in Cairo and we felt that we could not really feel free or enjoy our independence until each and every Arab country became independent. The independence of all Arab countries is a closely knit entity and we consider that there is a serious threat to our independence if any Arab country remains under foreign domination.

The call for Arab nationalism is not a racial call, it is not the call of any one person, neither is it a new call; the call of Arab nationalism rang throughout the centuries and showed its strength whenever the Arab countries were independent or whenever they felt the threat of danger. The banner of Arab nationalism was raised in the 11th Century, when the Arab countries were threatened with invasion and outside pressures they realized that their very existence depended on their strong belief in and adherence to Arab nationalism, to protect the Arab world and its civilization. The united Arab army was then able to defeat the Crusaders who occupied the Arab world for over 80 years.

During the First World War, when the Arabs wanted to rid themselves of the Ottoman occupation which lasted for over 500 years they resorted again to Arab nationalism and unity. The Arab revolution rallied round the banner of Arab nationalism but committed the error of allying itself with Britain instead of depending only on the Arab people to reach its goal of independence and freedom. After the First World War Britain did not fulfill its promises to the Arab people—instead the Arab world was divided under British and French rule.

But the people of the Arab nations rebelled against this foreign rule and fought for their independence until the Palestine War broke out. The Arab countries entered the Palestine War, not under the unified flag of Arab nationalism, but torn by internal feuds, jealousies and rancor. We were seven armies fighting in Palestine under 6 or 7 different and separate commands. We know that the Arabs, the Palestinians, were kicked out of Palestine and became refugees after the victory of international Zionism.

And with this started a new phase in our Arab Nationalism battle.

The first phase was the struggle of Arab Nationalism with Zionism coupled with the struggle against the imperialist powers and their efforts to bring the Arab countries into spheres of influence.

We have a long struggle ahead of us before we can complete our independence. We are determined, rulers and people, to pursue a policy aiming at complete independence, non-alignment to either East or West and non-subjection to any foreign nation.

You men of the armed forces are the guardians of this country as you carry a great responsibility for a noble cause on which depends the destiny of every individual in the Arab nation, as well as the destiny of the Arab nation at large. It is the mission of Arab nationalism.

Khalil, Muhammad, ed. The Arab States and the Arab League: A Documentary Record. Vol. II. Rue Bliss, Beirut, Lebanon: Khayats, 1962.

Saudi Arabia

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the royal police raided cafés arresting anyone caught tuning in to Voice of the Arabs Radio. By the 1960’s King Faisal had spent a lifetime eliminating any challenge his family – the House of Saud – faced to their rule over Arabia. Rival royal families, Western oil companies, pro-democracy princes; each had been brought to heel by King Faisal with even his brother King Saud – the previous monarch – ousted when his incompetency threatened the country. Perhaps unsurprisingly King Faisal thwarted a planned Pan-Arabist coup and with the oil industry as the fountain of Saudi wealth, implemented a series of reforms to both modernize the desert kingdom and to keep the monarchy intact. Starting in the 1960’s, hundreds of thousands of foreign workers arrived in Saudi Arabia.  Kept in segregated enclaves some were Western expatriates – skilled technicians and teachers to train and educate the Saudi populace into a middle class of engineers, government administrators and businessmen. Most were migrant workers from across the Islamic world – manual labor and domestic help used to build asphalt highways, steel skyscrapers and to staff state-of-the-art hospitals and plush shopping malls. In time these reforms reduced poverty, became the economic model across the Gulf states, and were all implemented “in accordance with the Quran and the sharia.” 

In contrast to Nasser’s secular pan-Arabism, King Faisal advocated Islamic solidarity. With Saudi Arabia home to the two holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina, Faisal made the promotion of Islam and a unified Muslim world the center of Saudi foreign policy. Preaching a shared Muslim identity meant Saudi Arabia could find common cause with the countries of Africa and Asia as well as the Middle East and simultaneously strengthen the king’s authority at home. The Saud family had always shared their rule with the Ulema – religious scholars – and while deeply religious Faisal sought to limit the role this religious body played in actual governance. As the king had cleverly positioned himself as patron of the Islamic world, the Ulema had little choice but to adhere to Faisal and his modernization plans yet remained a notable force in the Saudi kingdom.   

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Arab Federation - Modified Art, Matthew Hacholski, in the Public Domain (In the 1960’s the Arab world was divided into two camps. Egypt under Nasser urged Pan-Arab revolution across the region and the unification of all Arab republics (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, North Yemen, South Yemen, and Libya), then under military rule, into a single state. Egypt and Syria even briefly united to form a United Arab Republic. In contrast, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab monarchies (Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Trucial States, Maskat, and Oman) allied together and preached Islamic solidarity.)

The rival visions offered by Saudi Arabia and Egypt came to a head in Yemen. In 1962 a Pan-Arabist coup overthrew the North Yemeni monarchy and the new military government pledged its loyalty to Nasser. Egypt rushed to support a revolution it saw as the first step to toppling the monarchies across the Arabian Peninsula while King Faisal in turn supported the Yemeni royalists who still held much of the country. As Egyptian troops occupied Yemen’s ports and cities, Saudi-backed royalists held the countryside and mountains. The conflict quickly evolved into a protracted insurgency – “Egypt’s Vietnam” – and after years of fighting Egyptian troops withdrew, the conflict unresolved. 

Review Questions

• During the Suez Crisis, why were France and Britain forced to withdraw from the canal?
• How did King Faisal modernize the kingdom of Saudi Arabia?
• What differing ideologies did Egypt and Saudi Arabia promote in the 1960’s?