Today the United States is viewed in the Arab world as a too-often blundering and ill-informed imperialistic meddler, whose judgment of the Middle East is always distorted by its slavish support for Israel. Fifty years ago its reputation could hardly have been more different.
In October 1956, France, Israel and the UK conspired to invade Egypt and re-seize the Suez canal which had been nationalized by Gamal Abdel Nasser four months earlier. It was forceful intervention by Washington and President Eisenhower that brought this neocolonialist adventure to an end and forced London, Paris and Tel Aviv into a humiliating climb down. It was very probably the CIA which helped the Free Officers’ movement, led by Muhammad Najib and Nasser, overthrow the British-backed Egyptian monarchy in 1952.
Nasser certainly enjoyed very close relations with the Americans. He was probably leaked top-secret State Department documents by the CIA. Thus one evening Kermit Roosevelt was a guest in his Cairo home. The US diplomat and son of the wartime president had the task of impersonating Nasser in the State Department’s highly confidential role — playing games in which they tried to figure out how foreign leaders would react to given circumstances. Roosevelt was dining with Nasser precisely so he could learn his part better. Over coffee, as they were discussing the gathering Suez crisis, Nasser amazed Roosevelt by asking him “So tell me Kermit, what will I do next?”
Eisenhower’s decisive intervention after the Suez invasion was of high principle. Certainly Washington thought it time to cut the fading imperial European powers down to size. There was also a strong belief that the Middle East should be left to decide its own future without outside meddling.
How things have changed! Post-Suez the Americans were offended when Nasser chose to take Soviet rather than US aid to build the Aswan dam. Thereafter Moscow’s influence grew while Washington’s declined. Thus America, stung by its ultimate diplomatic failure after Suez has hobbled all its subsequent Middle Eastern initiatives. The transfer of its regional support to Israel has rendered useless so much of what it has tried to achieve. How very different Washington’s position in the Middle East might have been if it had not been carrying the Israeli albatross around its neck. How much more convincing would its campaign against an Iranian nuclear weapon be, if it had not connived and very probably assisted Israel to build its own nuclear arsenal?
As Americans struggle to understand the reason for their spectacular failure in Iraq, they appear busy blaming everyone and everything except their own highly partial record in the Middle East. What they apparently will not understand is that when they teamed up with Israel, the third aggressor against Nasser’s Egypt, they forfeited an immense degree of respect and trust. The lack of both lies at the heart of all their setbacks in the region, not least Iraq.
