Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965

by Burleigh, Michael

  Revealed Realities

  On 14 October Eden met with Albert Gazier, the acting French Foreign Minister, and General Maurice Challe, Chief of the French General Staff. Challe outlined a bold plan: Israel would strike into Sinai, with a feint towards the Suez Canal, the latter operation solely designed to win Anglo–French approval for its attack by giving London and Paris a pretext to issue an ultimatum demanding that an Anglo–French force insert itself into the Canal Zone to restore ‘peace’. Having sought a peaceful outcome for three months, Eden’s sensitivity to the fact that he was not his august predecessor led him to succumb to pressure to use force. This came from the French, the Suez Group and much of the Tory press. A particularly questionable role was played by Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, whose hawkish views on Nasser were influenced by postings to Rome and Berlin in the 1930s. He went against the consensus view of his department and ensured that warnings from missions all over the world went unaired in cabinet.47

  The cautiously deliberative processes of British cabinet government were abandoned. Eden and Selwyn Lloyd flew to Paris for more detailed discussions about the Franco–Israeli conspiracy to incite an Israeli attack on Egypt. These decisions were imparted to a narrow group of half a dozen key ministers and civil servants in Whitehall, who alone had access to all the facts and who then smoothed their passage through the full cabinet by being less than forthcoming about what was afoot. At a cabinet meeting on 18 October the Anglo–French–Israeli plot encountered no resistance, although the Leader of the House of Commons Rab Butler, who had the informal role of deputy prime minister, recommended pursuing the same course through an open alliance with Israel, while the Defence Secretary Viscount Monckton tried to dodge responsibility by requesting a lateral move to paymaster-general. Eden and his associates might, just, have got away with misleading their cabinet colleagues if they could have limited their role in the Israeli provocation.48

  But on 21 October a message arrived from Paris; the Israelis would not make their move against Suez without more explicit British involvement. Both they and the French suspected perfide Albion would leave them hanging out to dry and demanded that the RAF should make the first move from its bases in Cyprus to take out the Egyptian Ilyushins. Selwyn Lloyd was despatched for a secret meeting with the Israelis and French, the two peoples he most mistrusted, at a villa in Sèvres. Joking that he should have worn a false moustache, Lloyd did not conceal his distaste from Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion as they haggled over the timing of pre-emptive air strikes, which Ben-Gurion insisted must take place first. Lloyd’s instructions were to maintain the fiction that Anglo–French intervention was not the result of a conspiracy, but Ben-Gurion insisted he sign a protocol outlining the secret plan agreed at Sèvres. Lloyd did so provisionally, with the reservation of referring the matter back to his superiors in London. When he did so, he misled them.

  In a letter to the French Socialist Prime Minister Guy Mollet, Eden committed himself ‘in the situation therein envisaged [in the protocol] to take the action decided’. Eden was not a party to a further secret agreement between the Israelis and French that put French warplanes on Israeli airfields, and he sent an emissary to retrieve the French and Israeli copies of the protocol signed by Lloyd, who was rebuffed by Foreign Minister Christian Pineau and Ben-Gurion with well-deserved contempt.49 The Israelis were to attack on 29 October, wrongly believing that the prospect of alienating the Jewish vote on 6 November would prevent Eisenhower condemning them. In fact the Jewish vote was so overwhelmingly Democrat that the Republicans discounted it.

  At a meeting on 25 October, Eden’s cabinet acquiesced in arrangements about whose precise nature they were misinformed. Only some ministers were aware that the British could be charged with collusion, and that intervention lacked UN sanction or US support.50 Meanwhile the CIA had responded to being shut out by its closest partners by looking for major withdrawals of Israeli funds from Wall Street banks, noting a massive surge in encrypted radio traffic between Paris and Tel Aviv without being able to decipher the contents, and increased the number of U-2 flights over the Mediterranean and the Gulf, a programme begun in September, to gain advance notice of air and naval movements.51

  The Israelis invaded Sinai on schedule, dropping paratroops on 29 October in the distant vicinity of Suez, with which a larger force was supposed to link up after crossing the Negev desert. Even when told that collusion was suspected, Nasser could not believe that Britain and France could stoop so low, or that Israel would hook up with the old colonial powers, one of which it had forced out of Palestine. Ike was furious, saying ‘nothing justifies double-crossing us’, and instantly understood why the British Ambassador had returned home on 11 October, with his successor not due to arrive by ship until 8 November. While Ike suspected the worst of the French, he found it hard to credit that the British should have muddied the water when the Hungarian crisis was reaching its defining point. Eden pressed ahead regardless, and issued the agreed twelve-hour ultimatum to Egypt and Israel, but the subterfuge was exposed when Britain and France found themselves compelled to veto a US-sponsored motion at the UN Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire. The Soviets were delighted to support the motion and were loud in their denunciation of colonialism, even as they prepared to suppress Hungarian aspirations to self-determination.

  The Israelis encountered tough Egyptian resistance in Sinai, opposition which included Egyptian bombing raids. On the evening of 31 October the RAF attacked five different airfields around Cairo, hitting Cairo’s civilian International Airport by mistake and narrowly aborting a mission that would have hit the 1,300 Americans being evacuated from the city. ‘Bombs, by God,’ Ike exclaimed. ‘What does Anthony think he’s doing?’52 With Dulles in hospital for colon-cancer treatment, the President took sole charge and was especially shocked when a U-2 flight provided before and after images of the damage at Cairo airport, which coincided with the bad news coming in from Hungary. Ike ordered sanctions against Israel and told the British to expect no favours when they ran short of oil and the dollars needed to pay for it. The US Sixth Fleet also made a nuisance of itself as the slow British naval armada made its way across the Mediterranean from Malta, bearing the amphibious landing force that was supposed to reinforce Anglo–French airborne troops dropped at Port Said on the morning of 5 November.

  Amid violent confrontations in the street of London between opponents and supporters of the intervention, the cabinet worms turned at a meeting on 4 November. Butler and Salisbury took the lead in opposing further escalation and the duplicitous Macmillan, when he learned of Ike’s blunt warning, exclaimed: ‘Oil sanctions! That finishes it.’ Five or six ministers favoured deferring the airborne assault, but Eden overrode them.

  Meanwhile Ike had to deal with Soviet threats to send troops to the Middle East and to launch ‘rockets’ against London and Paris. Having been misled by the opinion of the defectors Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, and the visiting Labour MP and KGB agent Tom Driberg, that Eden would not have the nerve to attack Egypt, Khrushchev was provoked into a dangerous bluff. Ike called it with a message to Premier Nikolai Bulganin that he would support his allies if they were attacked. The London CIA station chief, Chester Cooper, reassured a fearful Joint Intelligence Committee that the Soviets had no missiles capable of hitting London.53

  Even as British amphibious forces landed in Egypt on 6 November, there was a US-driven run on sterling and the US blocked British efforts to draw on deposits held by the International Monetary Fund. That morning Ike spoke to Eden on the telephone. Whatever was said, within the hour Eden ordered a ceasefire. Later he informed the French, in conclave with the Germans at a Paris summit: ‘I don’t think we can go on. The pressure on sterling is becoming unbearable. The English can take a lot of things, but I do not think they would be willing to accept the failure of sterling which would have considerable consequences for the Commonwealth . . .
I cannot hold out any longer.’54

  The Suez Crisis was a remarkable advertisement for the impact of economic sanctions, although Macmillan played a part by deliberately painting the financial position a great deal blacker than it was. On 13 November he claimed in cabinet that gold and currency reserves had fallen by £100 million, whereas the real figure was £31.7 million.55 Petrol rationing was introduced in Britain and France after Nasser had sunk fifty ships to block the Canal. Finally Ike, although publicly describing it as a ‘family spat’, made his private and personal displeasure with Eden clear, by first inviting him and then disinviting him to celebrate his re-election to the presidency. The large British diplomatic and security community in Washington also found itself excluded from official events.

  Troops were withdrawn even as others landed, prompting the overall British commander (Sir Hugh Stockwell, whom last we saw in Malaya) to comment: ‘We’ve achieved the impossible. We’re going both ways at once.’ To complete the disaster, the ‘wogs’ rounded up the entire British intelligence network in Egypt, which SIS was shocked to learn had been thoroughly penetrated for years but left intact as a means of feeding London disinformation. Over the ensuing month a UN force was transported by the US Navy to replace the British and French. Nasser vetoed Canadian participation on the grounds that Canada shared the Queen and had a British-styled army, while insisting that the non-European elements be increased.56

  Eden and his wife left for Jamaica on 21 November for a period of medically decreed rest at Goldeneye, the home of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond thrillers. Even Ann Fleming knew this was a political error, commenting: ‘Torquay and a sun-ray lamp would have been more peaceful and patriotic.’ There was no telephone at Goldeneye, and Eden had effectively abdicated. The Americans concentrated on the succession. Macmillan had two advantages over his younger rival Rab Butler. He knew many of the key US players from the war, and he had a camouflaged deviousness that the equivocating Butler clearly lacked. On the 20 November Ike had the following conversation with Winthrop Aldrich, the genial Republican businessman who was his Ambassador to London:

  Eisenhower: You are dealing with at least one person – maybe two or three – on a very personal basis. Is it possible for you to get together, without embarrassment, the two you mentioned in one of your messages?

  Aldrich: Yes, one of them I’ve been playing bridge with. Perhaps I can stop him.

  Eisenhower: I’d rather you talk to both together. You know who I mean? One has the same name as my predecessor at Columbia University Presidency [Rab Butler]; the other was with me in the war [Macmillan].

  Aldrich: I know the one with you in the war. Oh yes, now I’ve got it.

  Eisenhower: Could you get them informally and say of course we are interested and sympathetic, and as soon as things happen that we anticipate, we can furnish ‘a lot of fig leaves’.

  Aldrich: I can certainly say that.

  Eisenhower: Will that be enough to get the boys moving?

  Aldrich: I think it will be.

  Eisenhower: Herb [Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover] will send you a cable later tonight. You see, we don’t want to be in a position of interfering between these two. But we want to have you personally tell them. They are both good friends.

  Aldrich: Yes, very much so. Have you seen all my messages? Regarding my conversations with them all?

  Eisenhower: Yes – with at least two.

  Aldrich: That is wonderful. I will do this tomorrow.

  Eisenhower: Yes, first thing in the morning.

  Aldrich: I shall certainly do it. And then I will communicate with you at once. I can do it without the slightest embarrassment.

  Eisenhower: Communicate through regular channels, through Herb.57

  On 22 November Macmillan turned in a bravura performance at the influential Tory 1922 Committee; unable to rise to this occasion, Butler faded from contention. Eden returned to London on 14 December, his deep suntan only accentuating the sick man within. His cabinet colleagues coldly informed him that he had until Easter to improve his health. On 20 December he sank further into ignominy by assuring the House of Commons that ‘there [had been] no plans to attack Egypt’, and that ‘there was no foreknowledge that Israel would attack Egypt’. On 9 January 1957 Eden resigned and did nothing of note save breed prize Hereford cattle and take exotic holidays for the remaining twenty years of his life.

  The British, inevitably, take a solipsistic view of the Suez Crisis, viewing it in terms of end of empire. The wider ramifications of Eden’s decisions in 1956 were much more serious than that. The first reform Communist government to declare formally that it was leaving the Warsaw Pact would have been crushed anyway, but Suez so reduced the cost the Soviets paid for the violence they inflicted on Hungary, for the Americans had to deal with this totally unwanted distraction in Egypt. British and French influence in the Arab world was destroyed and, save for Jordan and some minor autocratic Gulf states, trust has never recovered; nor has it been between France and Britain, not that there was much in the first place. France threw its influence behind Israel, equipping it in 1957 with its Dimona nuclear reactor, which it would use to produce an arsenal of atomic bombs it pretends it might not possess. In Arab eyes Israel would be indelibly identified with Western imperialism – a latter-day crusader state – and Nasser’s mere survival was construed as a victory, which became a wider impediment to political realism in the Middle East.58

  11. WITH US OR AGAINST US: THE SUB-CONTINENT

  Out of Sight, Out of Mind

  After independence, despite containing a fifth of the world’s population – India was a nation of 361 million people, and there were seventy million more in Pakistan – the sub-continent was of limited importance to the US, which was mainly preoccupied with Western Europe, Japan, the Middle East and South-east Asia, in that order. Stalin regarded India and Pakistan as reactionary stooges of their former colonial power and his only interest in the area seems to have been to monitor the ideological purity of the Indian Communist Party aided by the British Communist Party, which assumed a role of tutelage as though the Raj lived on.1 The US and USSR alike mistrusted the neutralism professed by the Indian leaders.2

  The British had expected greater American commitment after Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime preaching, but their attempts to get the US involved fell on stony ground. In particular the Americans slighted an opportunity to play a constructive role in resolving the Kashmir dispute, which had India and Pakistan at each other’s throats from the start, and which poisons relations between them to this day. Kashmir was a princely state, its ruler Hindu but the majority of his subjects Muslim. Perhaps more to the point, the family of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, were Kashmiri Hindu Brahmins. At partition the Prince opted to join India, a decision Pakistan sought to overturn by sending armed tribesmen into Kashmir to rouse the inhabitants to rebellion. New Delhi sent troops to secure the province and Britain, disqualified by its own history, vainly tried to get the US to act as mediator.3

  In July 1948 Loy Henderson came to take up his last post prior to the Tehran appointment reviewed in Chapter Nine. He had been eased out of the Near Eastern and African Affairs department at State because of his refusal to subordinate US policy in the Middle East to the vocal Zionist lobby. On the way to New Delhi he stopped off in London. During a relaxed dinner with Foreign Secretary Bevin and senior Foreign Office officials, Bevin said of India: ‘There is a country where we must keep together, although you must let us be in the shop window.’ Aware that being seen to collaborate with the former imperial power would be the kiss of death in Indian eyes, Bevin joked that ‘If it is ever convenient for you to have a public row with [Sir Archibald] Archie Nye [Britain’s High Commissioner to India] then I’ll be happy to play that game with you.’ An early sign that Henderson’s new adventure would be difficult came when he called on Krishna Menon, the Indian High Commissioner
to the Court of St James’s, who rose from his desk but did not offer to shake hands. He informed Henderson that he was ‘the first US ambassador to darken his door’, a theme he kept repeating, and would revert to when they met again six months later.4

  Initially there were good grounds for a US tilt towards India. The new nation’s democratic and legal institutions were truly impressive, whatever complaints many had about a ‘licence-payer raj’ run by pedantically inefficient jobsworths. Almost all shades of political opinion were encompassed by the ruling Congress party, which in some respects resembled the catch-all Liberals of nineteenth-century Italy, as an organization through which an educated elite managed the largely illiterate mass. For, although its record was allegedly superior to those of other colonial powers, Britain’s legacy to India was a literacy rate of only 14 per cent (1 per cent higher in Pakistan).5

  There was nothing akin to the Congress party in Pakistan and unlike India, which broadly made do with the governing structure it had inherited from the Raj, the tribalist political factions in Pakistan could not even agree how the country should be governed. It took almost a decade to devise a constitution, perhaps because they sought the advice of American political science theorists from the Dearborn Foundation, whose well-meaning suggestions prioritized the optimum over the workable. Although Pakistan was technically a democracy, elections were rare and political legitimacy elusive. Its corrupt civilian politicians were despised by an efficient army, whose rituals and uniforms would not have seemed alien in Surrey or Wiltshire. The fundamental problem was that Pakistan came into existence as an Islamic state and the vast majority of the people were conservative and religious – yet the Western-educated feudal elite was secular, as it remains today.