Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

the last British soldiers were duly evacuated from Suez on June 13th 1956. But by then Colonel Nasser—who had declared himself President of Egypt in November 1954—was becoming a problem in his own right. He was a prominent player in the newly formed movement of independent states from Asia and Africa, which met at a conference in Bandung (Indonesia) in April 1955 and condemned ‘colonialism in all of its manifestations.’ He was a charismatic beacon for Arab radicals across the region. And he was beginning to attract Soviet interest: in September 1955 Egypt announced a major arms deal with Czechoslovakia. By 1956, then, the British were coming increasingly to regard Nasser as a threat—both in his own right as a radical despot sitting athwart a vital waterway, and by the example he was setting to others. Eden and his advisers regularly compared him to Hitler; a threat to be addressed, not appeased. Paris shared this view, though French dislike of Nasser had to do less with his threat to Suez or even his growing friendship with the Soviet bloc, than with his disruptive influence on France’s North African subjects. The United States, too, was not well pleased with Egypt’s President. At a meeting with Tito in Yugoslavia on July 18th 1956, Nasser—together with India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru—issued a joint statement of ‘Non-Alignment’, explicitly disassociating Egypt from any dependence on the West. The Americans took offense: despite having initiated talks in November 19...