By Jeremy Kinsman

March 20, 2026

On October 29, 1956, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula, part of Egypt. The attack was naturally kept secret, except for Britain and France, which had been in intensive negotiations in Sevres in France with Israel since that July 26, when Egyptian President Gamel Abdul Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.

Nasser’s move had outraged Britain and France, which had financed and built the canal to ensure more convenient connection to their by now-depleting Asian empires. Though both formerly imperial powers had suffered major defeats as their colonies sought independence (a project supported by the US), they still maintained some sway in the Middle East and bore particular scorn for the populist-nationalist Nasser, who enjoyed great popularity in the Arab world. They also depended then (as now) on keeping in the “right” hands a narrow waterway vital to their economies, and to world trade.

The U.S. immediately tried to mediate between the antagonists, to keep the canal open, but Britain and France held to the fast-breaking secret scenario they had concocted with Israel: after Israel’s attack (on grounds that fedayeen guerillas were operating from the Sinai to attack Israel), Britain and France intervened to separate Israeli and Egyptian armies in the Sinai; then, after setting terms for a settlement obviously unacceptable to Nasser, on October 31st, Britain and France attacked Egyptian air fields and UK-French troops invaded and re-possessed the Canal Zone.

U.S. President Eisenhower was furious at the actions of the protagonists, whom he saw acting in large part from muscle memory of empire, not to mention disregard for other Western allies. The U.S. took a strong position in the United Nations that the Israeli/UK/France military action was illegitimate. The US also blocked the IMF from extending an urgently-needed loan to the UK, whose economy was in trouble; the US Treasury signaled it would sell its sterling holdings. It was the first time the US used its pre-eminent financial position to effect political change, and it worked.

Aged 14 at the time, I was on a family visit with my parents and my sister to New York, staying at the Biltmore Hotel, with its huge iconic clock in the center of the lobby, joyous to be able to wander autonomously in a fabulous city whose streets were numbered so I couldn’t get lost. But each day on re-entry to the lobby, I joined a hubbub of guests watching a kind of tickertape on the Suez crisis, and on the other two unfolding stories that week: the Hungarian Revolution, which began October 23 and was crushed by Soviet tanks November 4; and U.S. presidential elections November 6.

President Eisenhower’s ire was over the unwillingness of the UK and France to see beyond their own interests, to accommodate wider issues of the changing postwar world. He bitterly resented Western inability to denounce soviet “imperialism” in Hungary, when America’s two principal allies were conducting an imperialistic attack of their own.

U.S. diplomacy swiftly focused on de-escalation of the crisis, which risked unfolding more widely to the profit of the Soviets, but more importantly,  was flat-out wrong in terms of the emerging liberal order that had been set in the end days of the catastrophic World War caused by militant nationalism, which he had confronted as the Allies’  commander in Europe.

It is often written that the Suez Crisis, and notably the UK’s failure, signaled the “end of the British Empire.” It was one confirmation among several that the UK was no longer an autonomous strategic player in the world. France, which had already lost Indochina, and which was locked in a fateful repressive war to hold on to Algeria, faced the same downgrade.

Eisenhower wouldn’t stand for turning the clock backward. From this moment on, the U.S. would be calling the signals in the Western alliance.

Comparisons with the current Iran crisis demonstrate a similar need to secure maritime passage for oil blocked by a country able to do so for leverage, and even national survival. Israel is again a player, undertaking pre-emptive attack on a sworn enemy, but with the United States, whose joint action does not have unqualified support from NATO allies.

Awesome U.S. military-technological capabilities won’t alone displace the objectionable but entrenched Iranian regime. Surely the evidence from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan is clear about that.

They regard Trump’s attack on Iran as reckless, unprovoked, and without either a casus belli, a plan or an exit strategy.  Intoxicated by his power as commander of the greatest military “ever,” Trump has scorned U.S. allies who question the attack’s legitimacy.

When allies balked at deploying naval assets to protect tankers going through the Straits of Hormuz, except under “appropriate” circumstances, Trump declared: “We don’t need anybody. We’re the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world.” But awesome U.S. military-technological capabilities won’t alone displace the objectionable but entrenched Iranian regime. Surely the evidence from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan is clear about that.

As their economies begin to stagger because of the blocked Strait of Hormuz, now prohibiting shipment of up to 20% of the world’s trade of oil and gas, US allies back de-escalation — as Eisenhower’s America had imposed over the Suez conflict 70 years ago. Trump now seems instead bent on escalation because in a conflict he evidently thought would end in victory in 4-5 days, he apparently doesn’t know what else to do.

Even today, Hungarians resent that the world’s attention to the crime against them in the week of the Suez crisis in 1956 was deflected by an illegitimate and stupid war. Ukrainians see a similar distraction today from the urgency of repelling the criminal invasion of their country by the same bad actor.

In the Suez denouement imposed by Eisenhower, Britain and France withdrew their forces in a humiliating retreat. UK Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned two months later, replaced by Harold Macmillan, who, having felt “the winds of change,” committed the UK to full and swift decolonization. France remained mired in the Algerian War that caused its Fourth Republic to fall, replaced by Charles de Gaulle and a more authoritarian Fifth Republic.

Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula. The UN established its first peace-keeping operation to patrol the border, a plan launched by Canada and Lester Pearson, then President of the UN General Assembly, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. After Arab neighbours again attacked Israel in 1967, Israel re-occupied the Sinai, that eventually reverted to Egypt when Egypt and Israel famously established diplomatic relations under the aegis of President Jimmy Carter.

After the Suez Crisis, the United States became the unquestioned leader of the “West.” In the scholarly world, it is routine to term the US a global “hegemon,” though generally qualified now to be a “predatory hegemon”.

Now, Trump calls NATO allies “cowards” for not helping to open the Strait of Hormuz and threatens dire consequences for NATO.

Eisenhower, who had been NATO’s first Supreme Commander after leading allied forces to World War Two victory, became an internationalist and moderate Republican, a political sub-species whose extinction by MAGA is widely regretted. He won re-election that November 6th in a landslide.

He always spoke clearly to the American people to underline America’s credentials as a force for justice, and for global stability. By contrast, the current occupant of the gold-gilded Oval Office wreaks injustice and chaos. His daily communications are misleading, self-serving, and largely unreliable.

Trump snidely said of UK PM Starmer this week, “he’s no Winston Churchill.”

Trump is certainly no Eisenhower.

Policy Columnist Jeremy Kinsman served as Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.