2010 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

The Suez Crisis and Its International Context.

Research Project

Project/Area Number	20730114
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	International relations
Research Institution	Hitotsubashi University
Principal Investigator	IKEDA Ryo Hitotsubashi University, 外国語学部, 准教授 (60447589)
Project Period (FY)	2008 – 2010
Keywords	脱植民地化 / 冷戦 / 中東 / 米欧関係 / 北アフリカ
Research Abstract	This research project analyzed the reason why the British government decided to attack Egypt in the Suez Crisis in 1956. Most research agrees that Britain's going to war was the lion's last roar, i.e., Britain tried to resist Third-World nationalism by using force only to suffer a miserable failure. The research concludes that the British did so with the purpose of preventing France and Israel starting war against Egypt because, without British involvement, this would have been a heavy blow to British prestige in the Middle East. Britain had to show Arab countries that it was capable of acting as a police power when Israel attacked Arab. Thus Britain had every reason to attack Egypt in order to prevent chain reactions of the nationalization of oilfields by other Arab countries thereby retaining political control over other Arab countries. This research also examined the British perception of the Soviet threat in the Middle East from 1955 to 1956, and analyses how it contributed to British policies during the Suez Crisis and especially the British decision to go to war against Egypt. Existing research has so far contended that the British aim was to contain Egypt's influence but I argue that the British aim also lay in countering the Soviet's menace to British dominance in the region. The Egyptian-Czechoslovakian arms deal in September 1955 destroyed the Western monopoly of arms supply. Thus Britain feared that the Russians were undermining its political control over those countries. The British decision on the Suez War in October 1956 was motivated by retaining pro-Western Arab countries' credibility that Britain could act as a police force in the Middle East and thereby to prevent them from taking a neutralist course.