Suez Crisis of 1956

The leadership issues raised by the 2003 U.S.-led war on Iraq are strikingly similar to those raised by the Suez War in 1956. In both cases, government leaders misled their countries about the reality of the situation in order to obtain support for a unilateral military intervention in a sovereign Arab state. By exaggerating the threat posed by the Arab state and ignoring the values and concerns of the public, of other government officials, and of the United Nations, these leaders brought their countries into war. For Britain, the Suez War marked an abrupt decline in its influence throughout the Middle East and made party leaders aware that the state could no longer act on a global scale. As Charles Johnston, governor in Aden in 1961, wrote: “One of the worst things that has happened to us since the war, and most particularly since Suez, is that in the Middle East we have lost confidence in our own ability to deal with situations …. Our Suez fiasco seems, in effect, to have left a far deeper mark on ourselves than on the Arabs” (Ashton 1997). Warning Britain against joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, British Liberal Democrat Charles Kennedy told The Guardian: “God forbid we go down unilateral routes. Look at the history books and it is called Suez” (10 January 2003).