When the US (and Israel, but it’s very much in parentheses here) dropped bombs on Iran and didn’t pull the victory it was expecting out of fate’s grab-bag, a number of British papers asked, Is this America’s Suez moment? I doubt US papers asked that, since (stereotype alert) Americans can’t be counted on to know what the hell the Suez Crisis was. Why should they? It was someone else’s crisis. it happened way back there in history, and we don’t do history in the US–at least not much and not well. 

Which is a shame, because it’s the kind of comparison that makes a person think about–oh, you know, the last gasp of a dying empire, an impaired head of state, that kind of thing. 

But don’t think about it too long, because whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. (If you’re old enough, you remember that from a poster on someone’s wall, and it seemed hopelessly profound.)

Of course, it’s entirely possible that even if the universe is unfolding as it should, that doesn’t mean it gives a rip about our welfare. We may turn out to be disposable.

Have I cheered you up yet? Good.Let’s talk about what a Suez moment consists of.

Irrelevant photo: Either an ornamental cherry (that’s my bet) or a plum tree (that’s from my phone’s plant identification app).

The Suez Crisis

In 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal. It had been built in 1869, when Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire. Then in the late 19th century, the country–canal and all–came under British control and in 1914 became a protectorate, which is a politely uncolonial name for a colony. In 1922 it became independent, although British influence “remained significant,” as the BBC ever so diplomatically puts it, emanating the polite scent of eau de colony. 

That significant involvement explains the years of anti-British riots that followed, along with a coup and finally a new and uncolonized government. But we’ll skip all that–sorry; we’re in a hurry–and pick up again when the last British soldiers poured the sand out of their boots and left. Egypt was now not only independent, it wanted to nationalize that canal. It planned to pay for it, but still. 

Cue sounds of outrage, please, especially from Britain and France, who’d been running the canal.

While negotiations over the fate of the canal plodded on (negotiations are so boring), Britain, France, and Israel planned an invasion, then jumped from plan to practice. Israel invaded, giving Britain and France an excuse to invade and demand that both the Israeli and Egyptian troops step away from the canal. Aren’t Britain and France acting nobly and peacefully by protecting it? 

According to the plan, this would be enough to pull the US in. 

Meanwhile, in reality

From the start, the British were short on ships and landing craft, and when it added tanks to the invasion force it had to hire a commercial outfit to move them to the embarkation point because it didn’t have any whatever it took of its own. The National Army Museum calls the commercial outfit a removals firm–the kind of company you’d call if you were moving from, say, London to Birmingham and didn’t have room for all your stuff in your car, but instead of moving a couch, a bed, and a file cabinet, the armed forces were asking if the company could move a few tanks, please.  No, not many.  Just, you know, the normal amount.

Once it solved the tank problem, Britain had to change its landing point because it didn’t have enough landing craft, making it sound like they were short not just on equipment but on people who knew how to plan as well. 

In spite of all that, militarily speaking the invasion went well. Israel invaded, stopped short of the canal, and waited for the British and French to show up, which they did, breezing past the Egyptian troops.

It was on the diplomatic side that things fell apart. Instead of being pulled in, the US put its hands in its pockets and chewed bubble gum. For one thing, Eisenhower (remember him? US president back in the stone age?) had just denounced the Soviet Union for invading Hungary. Following that with an invasion of Egypt would be awkward. And for another thing he could see where the US getting involved in Egypt could draw in the Soviet Union, which would be dangerous. 

That left Britain nose to nose with some consequences it hadn’t expected. In a Gulf of Hormuz moment, Britain’s oil supply was stuck on the wrong side of the canal. Its financial system was stretched thin. When it asked the International Monetary Fund for a loan, the US refused unless it agreed to a ceasefire. The US also threatened to sell its sterling bond holdings, which could’ve devalued the pound and undermined Britain’s foreign exchange reserves.

If that wasn’t enough, public protests in Britain were large enough that the government couldn’t pretend not to see them.

Britain and France backed down. Israel went home. A ceasefire came into effect at the moment when November 6 became November 7 (the invasion had started on October 30) and the United Nations granted Egypt sovereignty over the canal.

It all proved that the UK could no longer play with the big kids–the US and the Soviet Union.

Who was in charge in Britain?

The prime minister who led Britain into and through this mess was the Conservative Anthony Eden. Eden had been in the background for years, waiting for his turn to be prime minister. (The English are big on waiting in line and taking their turn.) He was urbane and charming, according to the Financial Times. He’d been foreign secretary in three different decades, and he was Churchill’s acknowledged successor. The problem was that Churchill wasn’t in any hurry to see his successor success, and by the time he did, in 1955,  Eden’s health had gone sour and he was angry and unpredictable and drug-addled. He took barbiturates to help him sleep and  pethidine, a morphine derivative, only hours before cabinet meeting, then Drinamyl, a relative of amphetamine to pick him back up. 

Drinamyl’s side effects include impaired judgement and loss of “contact with  reality.” To use a medical term, he was a mess. 

But we were comparing the Suez Crisis with Operation Epic Fuckup. Since Donald Trump deals only in superlatives, we could argue–convincingly, I think–that he’s in worse shape than Eden was. As far as I know, he doesn’t need drugs, prescription or otherwise, to lose touch with reality. He can do that all by himself, and better than any human ever has. What’s more, no prime minister or president before him has ever tweeted a picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick. None of them ever accused the pope of being soft on crime. In fact, none of them ever thought the pope was in charge of fighting crime. 

If there’s an advantage to living in a country led by a drug addict, it’s that they can, at least in theory, stop using drugs. Someone whose loss of contact with reality is self-induced is less likely to return. 

Britain’s Suez moment

The Suez Crisis marked the end of Britain as an imperial power and as a player on the world stage. It also marked the end of Eden’s career. He was replaced by Harold Macmillan, who reduced the size and expense of Britain’s armed forces and ended National Service–what Americans would call the draft.

When those newspaper headlines I mentioned all those many paragraphs ago asked about the US’s Suez moment, I don’t think they were suggesting the Iraq War will necessarily bring Trump down. Not yet, anyway, if I read the tea leaves correctly. (Tea leaves are annoyingly hard to read, so don’t place any bets based on my predictions. Or if you do, don’t blame me if you get skunked.) They were talking about the kind of turning point where everyone notices that a major power is now playing in the safer corner of the playground, where the younger kids cluster together and hope the big kids don’t notice them.