More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
March 2 - March 31, 2019
Eisenhower’s orders, Dulles announced that the United States would suspend all shipments of military supplies to the “area of hostilities.” Since the United States had already suspended military sales to Egypt, this effectively meant cutting off military aid to Israel.40 This was an unprecedented, even shocking step: one week before the presidential election,
Israel should not assume “that winning a domestic election is as important to us as preserving and protecting the interests of the United Nations and other nations of the free world in that region.” Eisenhower did not veer from this belief.41
“The United States must lead,”
“the Soviets must be prevented from seizing the mantle of world leadership.”
Dulles
told the General Assembly, “The United States finds itself unable to agree with three nations with which it has ties of deep friendship, of admiration and of respect, and two of which constitute our oldest and most trusted and reliable allies.” It was a public slap in the face for Britain and France.
But if, “whenever a nation feels it has been subjected to injustice, it should have the right to resort to force in an attempt to correct that injustice, then I fear that we should be tearing the [UN] Charter into shreds, that the world would again be a world of anarchy, that the great hopes placed in this Organization and in our Charter would vanish.”
The world had rallied to America’s leadership.43
Eden had brought world opprobrium on Britain and placed his country on the brink of an economic crisis.
Even reliably pro-Tory newspapers such as the Times of London and the Observer denounced Eden’s policy as ill-conceived and illegal.
Britain and France, then, would move ahead with their plans for a land invasion of the Suez Canal.
Khrushchev and the Soviet Presidium ordered the preparation of Operation Whirlwind: the repression of the Hungarian Revolution by over 60,000 Soviet troops.48 The blow fell savagely at 4:00 a.m. on November
The Hungarian Revolution, which had electrified captive peoples across Europe, lay crushed beneath Soviet tank treads.
Eisenhower understood there were no measures the United States could take to halt Soviet aggression.
Any intervention there would certainly lead to a wider war.
Coming at the very moment the Soviets were slaughtering Hungarians in the streets of Budapest, Bulganin’s outrage at Anglo-French aggression in Egypt revealed the worst kind of cynicism.
Eisenhower’s mind turned to the prospect of war.
‘You know,’ he said tautly, ‘we may be dealing here with the opening gambit of an ultimatum. We have to be positive and clear in our every word, every step. And if those fellows start something, we may have to hit ’em—and, if necessary, with everything in the bucket.’ ”
The UN already had agreed to send a peacekeeping force to Suez once a cease-fire had been accepted. That decision must be respected.
The message did not state unequivocally that the United States would use force to oppose a Soviet move to aid Egypt, but, as the New York Times noted, “that was the implication.”
On November 5 the Great Powers seemed closer to a world war than at...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Eisenhower remarked that “if the Soviets attack the French and British directly, we would be in war.”
Ike agreed that “we should be in an advanced state of readiness,”
Eisenhower approved Radford’s suggestion to send two aircraft carriers, the newly minted USS Forrestal and the USS Franklin Roosevelt, to the eastern Atlantic. He also approved putting the Continental Air Defense Command on increased readiness, thus sending more interceptor aircraft in the sky above the homeland. Eisenhower did not want to be the victim of a surprise Soviet attack.
The Israeli government told the UN secretary-general that it would agree to a cease-fire. And why not? By that time Israel occupied all of the Sinai Peninsula and had destroyed much of the Egyptian Army and Air Force. Its military aims had been achieved. Egypt, desperate to stem its losses, tentatively agreed to a cease-fire as well.
Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd, however, could see the game was up. He reluctantly concluded that Britain must accept the cease-fire,
Soviet Union might well join the hostilities in the region,
British had claimed all along that their invasion was mainl...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
no plausible excuse to continue an armed invasion of Suez.
third and most pressing reason was that Britain had come under terrific economic pressure as a result of the crisis.
Britain’s dollar reserves were evaporating at an alarming rate. Markets do not like war, and Britain had started one.
British economy teetered on the brink, and only the Americans could help pull it back.60 Yet the Americans showed no inclination to help. The U.S. Treasury kept the pressure on the British government by blocking what in normal times would have been a simple request: the repatriation of dollars that Britain had supplied to the International Monetary Fund. The previous night Macmillan had frantically called American officials to get them to release these British-owned dollars, but Treasury Secretary Humphrey refused to allow the transaction.
Humphrey never would have taken such an unfriendly position without the president’s approval.
Before approving any economic aid to Britain, Eisenhower wanted Eden to withdraw his troops from Egypt.
Eisenhower was on his way to a great reelection victory. He won 41 states to Stevenson’s 7, giving him 457 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 73. He took 57 percent of the popular vote, the biggest share since FDR’s landslide in 1936 over Alf Landon. Even in Stevenson’s home state, Illinois, Eisenhower won 60 percent of the vote. Stevenson won only states that had once been part of the Confederacy—the
Eisenhower became the first Republican in the 20th century to win two consecutive presidential elections.
“Not since the election of 1944, when the Second World War was reaching its decisive phase with the American armies deep in Germany, have the American people gone to the polls so preoccupied with alarming foreign policy developments.”
The falloff in oil deliveries due to the blocked canal and the destruction of the Iraq pipelines had been so severe that rationing of gasoline would soon have to start in Europe.
Ike refused to send Eden any reassuring signals. Instead, in a short and terse cable on November 11, he urged Eden to withdraw all British troops from the Canal Zone “with the utmost speed.” Only then would there be any Anglo-American reconciliation.69
Did Ike not perceive that Britain was suffering? If Britain had to withdraw its forces now, without winning some kind of new international agreement to control the canal, “the loss of prestige and humiliation would be so great that the Government must fall.”
Macmillan, who was prone to rhetorical flights, told IMF president Eugene Black the next day that they “were probably witnessing the end of western civilization, and that in another 50 years yellow and black men would take over.”
On December 3, while Eden swam in the warm, silky waters of the Caribbean, Foreign Minister Lloyd announced to the House of Commons Britain’s intention to withdraw its forces from Egypt. The Suez Crisis had ended; the British Empire was not far behind.
Within hours of Lloyd’s announcement, the U.S. government activated plans drawn up by the Office of Defense Mobilization to increase shipments of oil to Europe.
by Christmas, Britain had received almost $2 billion in U.S.-backed loans.
few weeks after his return from Jamaica, a ruined Anthony Eden resigned.75
The British and French, in Eisenhower’s eyes, had forfeited any claim to influence in the Middle East. They had to leave, and the United States must now replace them.
Fears of Soviet interference fueled Eisenhower’s anxiety about the need to move fast to replace the discredited Europeans.
Ike wanted a clear message sent to Moscow that the Middle East now formed part of America’s beat in the world, and from now on America would police it.
The United States would expand its sphere of influence to ensure unfettered access to the black gold beneath the sands of Arabia. In early March Congress overwhelmingly passed the resolution.79
In January 1957 Eisenhower declared that the United States would fight to protect its interests in the Middle East; more than six decades later it is fighting still.
