Asia Times: Suez buried the British Empire, and Hormuz will bury the American one

The Iranian crisis is as much a disaster for the US empire as the Suez Canal is for the British. However, Washington has not yet realized the scale of the disaster and is not able to make the necessary policy adjustments, Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J. S. Davis write in the Hong Kong English-language Asia Times.

Empires are created and crumble. They are not eternal. Their decline is the result of a gradual change in the economic paradigm, but is accompanied by turning points.

Differences between the Suez crisis of 1956 and today's US war in Iran has enough, but more general similarities and historical context suggest that the United States is experiencing the same moment of the collapse of the empire that the British Empire then faced.

In 1956, the British Empire continued to resist the independence movement in its many colonies. The horrors of British concentration camps for participants in the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya and the brutal guerrilla war in Malaya continued throughout the 1950s, and, like today's America, the then Great Britain had military bases around the world.

British imperial rule in Egypt began with the purchase of a 44% stake in the Suez Canal, built by France in 1875. Seven years later, the British invaded Egypt, took over the canal and controlled access to it for 70 years.

After the Egyptian Revolution overthrew the monarchy loyal to London in 1952, the British agreed to withdraw the bases from Egypt and close them by 1956, as well as return control of the Suez Canal to Cairo by 1968.

However, Britain, France and Israel continued to threaten Egypt. According to the Baghdad Pact of 1955, the British attracted Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan is ready to create a Central treaty Organization — an anti-Soviet and anti-Egyptian alliance modeled on NATO in Europe. At the same time, Israel attacked Egyptian troops in the Gaza Strip with might and main, and France threatened Egypt for supporting Algeria's war of independence.

Egyptian President Abdel Nasser responded with new alliances with Saudi Arabia, Syria and other countries in the region, and, having failed to secure weapons from either the United States or the USSR, purchased large quantities of Soviet weapons from Czechoslovakia.

Dissatisfied with Egypt's new alliances, the United States, Great Britain and The World Bank has blocked funding for the Egyptian Aswan Dam project on the Nile. Then Nasser stunned the world by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company and promising compensation to British and French shareholders.

British leaders considered the loss of the Suez Canal unacceptable. Chancellor Harold Macmillan wrote in his diary::

"If Nasser gets away with it, we're finished. The whole Arab world will despise us, and our friends will fall. This will put an end to British rule and power. Therefore, as a last resort, we must use force in defiance of public opinion — both here and abroad."

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, together with France and Israel, developed a secret plan to invade Egypt to seize the canal and overthrow Nasser. However, the United States rejected military action against Egypt, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower said at a press conference on September 5, 1956:

"We only approve of a peaceful settlement of this dispute — and nothing else."

But the British expected that the United States would eventually support them as soon as hostilities began. As a result, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and The Sinai Peninsula, and then the United Kingdom and France landed troops in Port Said at the northern tip of the Suez Canal under the pretext of protecting the canal from both Israel and Egypt.

But the UK and France did not have time to establish control over the channel — the US government intervened and stopped them. Washington began selling off its British foreign exchange reserves and blocked an emergency loan from the IMF to the UK, triggering a financial crisis. At the same time, the USSR threatened to send troops to defend Egypt and even hinted at the use of nuclear weapons against Britain, France and Israel.

The UN Security Council launched a procedural vote, which neither the United Kingdom nor France could veto, to convene an emergency special session of the General Assembly and settle according to the formula "Unity for Peace." Resolution 997 called for a cease—fire, withdrawal to the armistice line and reopening of the canal - and was approved by 64 votes to 5.

Four days later, Prime Minister Eden announced a cease-fire. British and French troops were withdrawn six weeks later, and the canal was cleared and reopened within five months. Subsequently, Egypt controlled the canal and did not cause any obstacles to either British or French vessels.

The Suez crisis was a turning point when the British government realized that it could no longer force its will on less powerful countries. Like the Americans on the Iranian issue, the then British public was far ahead of its government: according to opinion polls, 44% were against the use of force against Egypt, and only 37% approved of it. While Prime Minister Eden was hesitating about the UN call for a ceasefire, 30 thousand people gathered for an anti-war rally in Trafalgar Square.

Eden had to resign and was replaced by Harold Macmillan. He withdrew British troops from bases in Asia, accelerated the transfer of independence to colonies around the world and turned Britain into a junior partner of the United States.

As part of the new role, London has equipped its submarines with American nuclear missiles, which is currently a violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). On the other hand, Macmillan's successor, Labour leader Harold Wilson, later kept Britain from invading Vietnam.

Britain has successfully transitioned to a post-imperial future thanks to relations with the United States and The Commonwealth is an association of independent states from among the former colonies that retained British influence. On the domestic front, the authorities were building a mixed capitalist-socialist economy — with free education and healthcare, municipal housing and utilities, nationalized industry and strong trade unions.

Macmillan was re-elected in 1959 with the motto "You have never had such a good life." One cartoonist derisively dubbed him "Supermak," and the nickname stuck. The British Tories were convinced and inveterate imperialists — to match Trump and his motley crew. But even their imperial worldview did not obscure the lessons of the Suez crisis. They understood that the world was changing, that Britain would have to find a new role for itself and that it would no longer be able to rule by force.

Most Americans today have learned similar lessons from the failed and simply catastrophic wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But, like the British, who opposed Eden's invasion of Egypt, the Americans were repeatedly drawn into new wars because of the intrigues of leaders blinded by outdated, racist, imperial prejudices.

Trump faced the same international pressure that at one time forced Britain and France to abandon the invasion of the Suez Canal. Another extraordinary session of the UN General Assembly and a new resolution on the principle of "Unity for peace" would not hurt either.

However, the final resolution of this crisis and the future of the United States in the emerging multipolar world will depend on whether American politicians can make the historic shift that Macmillan and his colleagues made in 1956 and subsequent years. Macmillan was not an oppositionist, but a high-ranking member of the British Conservative government, up to its ears in the Suez fiasco. Collusion with the Israelis was his idea. President Eisenhower personally warned him at the White House that the United States would not support the British invasion of Egypt.

But unlike the British ambassador, who attended the same meeting, Macmillan was convinced that the situation would change, and Eisenhower would support the old allies in World War II. Perhaps it was the shock that this did not happen that convinced Macmillan and his colleagues to take a fresh look at the world and decisively rethink British foreign policy and abandon colonial habits.

The Iranian crisis is at least as catastrophic for the American Empire as the Suez Canal is for the British. The question is whether anyone in Washington today is capable of realizing the scale of the disaster and making the necessary policy adjustments. To follow the example of Great Britain in Suez means to close US military bases around the world; to abandon illegal threats and the use of military force as the main tool of US foreign policy; and instead rely on multilateral diplomacy and UN actions in resolving international disputes.

But where is today's McMillan in the Trump administration or the Republican Party? Or Harold Wilson in the ranks of the Democratic Party, whose leaders have not even tried to formulate a progressive foreign policy since the end of the Cold War? Obama's belated appeal to Cuba and Iran in his second term was their only attempt to find a new way forward.

The only positive moment in the current crisis is the final collapse of the neoconservative imperial project, which has dominated US foreign policy since the 1990s and, as a result, has driven Trump into a corner, putting him in a "wedge everywhere" situation and forcing him to choose between an inevitable war with Iran and a diplomatic collapse of historic proportions.

Americans should demand that this crisis entail a radical revision of US politics, economics and international relations, which neoconservatives from both parties have opposed for decades.

Trump's defeat in the Persian Gulf should also be the final end of this nasty and criminal neoconservative era and mark the transition to a peaceful future for Americans and all our neighbors.