Lessons for Australia from the Suez Crisis

Sunken ships litter the Suez Canal during the Suez Crisis in 1956

How to deal with a rising China and changing global order are the questions du jour for Australian foreign policy makers. China’s claim to 90 per cent of the South China Sea and its militarisation of artificial islands in the region put at risk a maritime trading route that covers an estimated 60 per cent of Australia’s exports. Any deliberate impediment to freedom of navigation in these waters poses a fundamental problem for Australia’s national interest and starts to sniff of a declaration of war.

History never repeats, but it often rhymes. The 1956 Suez Crisis reminds us of the difficulty of navigating great power relations in the face of shifting global power structures, and the usefulness (or not) of the United Nations and international law. As then-Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies said, “No nation does well to forget its past; but no nation can live on its past. It is on what we do now and in the future that somebody else’s history will someday depend”.

Sixty-five years ago, on 29 October 1956, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula joined by Britain and France, escalating the Suez Crisis. Australian PM Menzies played a pivotal role in the lead up to the Suez Crisis, but his performance and judgment when it came to supporting the British over the US position has been criticised. Some judge it as the nadir of his over 16 years in government and claim Menzies led with his heart (firmly with Britain) rather than his head (which would have told him the Empire was over).

In 1956, Australia’s economic ties were still firmly with Britain. The Suez Canal in 1956 was for Australian trade what the South China Sea is now. Around sixty per cent of Australia’s exports travelled through the Suez Canal, making Australia one of the 18 countries most affected by Egyptian President Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal in July 1956.

The United States initially sided with Britain, France, Australia and others in trying to wrest back control of the Suez Canal from Nasser’s Egypt. Menzies, who happened to be in Washington at the time, took part in international meetings to find a solution which would persuade Nasser to return control of the Suez. With a US-endorsed proposal in his hands, Menzies was chosen to lead a five-nation delegation to Cairo in August 1956 to negotiate with Nasser. While Menzies did not hold great hope of success, he felt his position was sound. Nasser had illegally repudiated the 99-year concession given to the Suez Canal Company and therefore Egypt was in breach of international law.

While in Egypt and during talks with Nasser, Menzies was dismayed to hear US President Dwight Eisenhower rule out the use of force to take back the Suez Canal. Menzies knew then his appeals to Nasser were doomed. Menzies left without an agreement and two months later Israel conspired with France and Britain to invade the Sinai. In his retirement Menzies reflected in his typical realist way that “in a world not based on academic principles, a world deeply affected by enlightened self-interest and the instinct of survival, but nevertheless a world struggling to make an organization for peace effective, force (except for self-defence) is never to be the first resort, but the right to employ it cannot be completely abandoned or made subject to impossible conditions.”

The US position was based on national interest and a reading of Middle East geopolitics, but defended on the basis of international law. The US condemned the actions of France and Britain as a breach of the UN Charter. Anglo-American relations greatly soured. The UN General Assembly ordered the withdrawal of British and French troops from Egypt which, according to Menzies, “built up Nasser’s position and prestige, fatally damaged the regional influence of Great Britain and France

and made the position of Israel desperately precarious.” The geopolitics of the Middle East were changed irrevocably.

Menzies is criticised for his loyalty to old but fading allies over Suez and failing to recognise the shift in global power. But Menzies, even in retirement, never resiled from his position. He thought it legally right and that the US’s changed position was disloyal to its allies and merely fed Arab nationalism. While the US pleaded the primacy of international law and the United Nations, Menzies queried what the US position would have been if US interests had been more directly impacted, for example, if the Panama Canal had been nationalised.

In retirement, when Menzies asked former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles whether the US would take a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to the United Nations or “order in the United States fleet”, Foster responded “Order in the fleet, of course!” Realpolitik indeed.

By Georgina Downer, Chief Executive Officer, Robert Menzies Institute

Originally published in the Australian Financial Review, 29 October 2021.