The Suez crisis coincided almost to the hour with the Soviet occupation of Hungary. By indulging in so patently imperialist a plot against a single Arab state, ostensibly in retribution for the exercise of its territorial sovereignty, London and Paris had drawn the world’s attention away from the Soviet Union’s invasion of an independent state and destruction of its government. They had placed their own—as it seemed to Washington, anachronistic—interests above those of the Western alliance as a whole. Worse, they had given Moscow an unprecedented propaganda gift.
