How was the Suez Crisis a defeat for Britain and France?

The short answer

• The canal and Egyptian authority. Washington’s withdrawal of its Aswan Dam loan left Nasser seeking another source of money. Nationalizing the canal offered revenue for the project and asserted Egyptian authority over Egyptian territory. Britain and France saw their prestige, oil supplies and route to Asia at stake. Control of the waterway thus became a test of whether European powers could still command events in the postcolonial world by force.
• Financial pressure on Britain. Eisenhower opposed an invasion that had been concealed from Washington, and feared it would drive Arab states toward Moscow. British forces could succeed in the field, but Britain needed support for sterling and emergency oil. As the pound came under speculative pressure, the United States withheld both. Faced with currency collapse, Britain folded within days. Military strength had not removed its financial dependence on its ally.
• France concentrates on Algeria. France granted independence to Tunisia and Morocco in 1956 after relatively little struggle. Both were protectorates rather than settled French soil. Releasing them freed troops and legitimacy for the fight over Algeria, which Paris would not yield: it consisted of three French départements and housed a million pieds-noirs. French leaders gave up two possessions to concentrate on a third.
• Nasser’s example travels. Three armies attacked Egypt, yet Nasser remained in power. His survival turned battlefield defeat into political victory and made him almost overnight a hero across the Arab and African world, and a model of militant, non-aligned nationalism. Radio Cairo’s “Voice of the Arabs” carried the example abroad. Egypt became a training ground and megaphone for liberation movements from Algeria to Angola.

What it changed

A lesson for London. Harold Macmillan had been Chancellor during Suez. As prime minister three years later, he told South Africa’s parliament that “the wind of change is blowing through this continent.” The subsequent British retreat from Africa reflected part of the crisis’s lesson: fighting to hold colonies against that tide could put the nation’s finances at risk.

Different exits in the Maghreb. France’s possessions in the Maghreb followed sharply different paths. Tunisia and Morocco became independent in 1956; Algeria was already two years into a war that lasted until 1962. The presence and political strength of settlers help explain the contrast, which returns in the next chapter.

A non-aligned alternative. Nasser, Nehru, Tito and Sukarno helped make the “Third World” a bloc outside both Cold War camps, offering allegiance in exchange for aid and arms. Over the next thirty years both superpowers courted, armed and subverted decolonizing African states. Their rivalry would make several later chapters of this atlas Cold War battlefields.