By John Green
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the abortive attempt by Britain, France and Israel to wrest control of the Suez Canal back from Egypt. This book is a timely reminder of the background to that desperate attempt to maintain imperialist domination of the Middle East.
Its title could perhaps be off-putting, which would be unfortunate, because it offers much more than a mere snapshot of that significant year. In using 1958 as the point of departure in their reviews and analysis of modern Middle Eastern developments, the authors take us on a revealing journey through the latter half of the twentieth century.
Editor Jeffrey Karam has assembled a distinguished cast of Middle Eastern experts from a range of educational institutions, each providing unique insights into Middle Eastern economics and politics and the impact of the big global players. It will undoubtedly become a key source of information on the area.
The Middle East is, as almost every school student knows, a key source of oil, with some of the richest reserves in the world. It also occupies a key geostrategic area, bordering some of the busiest sea routes and is a vital trading link between east and west.
Because of the vital importance of easy access to oil – an essential raw material in almost every area of life – domination and control of this area was seen as essential by the Western powers.
On July 14. 1958 military officers declaring their allegiance to Arab nationalism overthrew Iraq’s pro-Western regime. Over the next days, US and British troops landed in Lebanon and Jordan, ostensibly to help those countries’ governments withstand dissident pressures linked to what was happening in Iraq. These events were the conspicuous manifestation of a longer and deeper struggle unfolding in eh Arab world, pitting an ascendant and at times radical pan-Arab movement against a conservative, Western-dominated status quo.
As examples of those two tendencies, were two Arab mergers forged the previous February: the progressive United Arab Republic, consisting of Egypt and Syria, and the conservative Arab Union, combining the kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan.
Part 1 of this collection of essays, explores the outlooks and actions of what were then quaintly called ‘the great powers’: Britain, France, the USA and the Soviet Union. While at this time the influence of Britain and Fance was already waning, but that of the USA and Soviet Union was rising.
The first section focuses on how both the declining powers like Britain and France, as well as the rising powers, particularly the USA, realised the dangers of vigorously opposing Arab nationalism and other anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements in the Middle East. The foundations of the Anglo-French order had become untenable. France’s declining status as an imperial power in the Middle East was clearly visible through the experience of decolonisation in the Maghreb (North-West Africa) between 1955 and 1958. That revolutionary year of 1958, the editor of this volume argues, ushered in a new phase of Us policy that centred on coercion and military power. The USA, grasped the opportunity of replacing Britain and France as the dominant force in the region.
Today, it is widely accepted that the Suez debacle of 1956 was the signal event in Britain’s imperial decline but here Robert McNamara argues that the violent removal of Iraq’s Hashemite regime – the lynchpin of London’s strategy in the area – represented a much more decisive shift. Despite its defeat in the battle for control of the Suez Canal, Britain still attempted to thwart Egypt’s president Nasser and circumscribe his influence in the region. While Britain sent troops to shore up the Hashemite throne in Jordan, France was distracted by the Algerian crisis.
At the same time, the USA was on a strategic upsurge in this region. Over the two years preceding the marine landings in Lebanon, the Eisenhower administration also tried to rally a coalition of pro-US Arab regimes to combat Nasser’s influence.
The other ascendant super power t the time was the Soviet Union which since the mid-1950s had gained considerable influence in the region.
Although this time was one replete with revolutionary possibilities, they remained largely unrealised. And, certainly in Saudia Arabia – another of the key states in the region, the status quo held firm.
Lebanon and Jordan, too, became sites of extraordinary tumult, if not the sort of fundamental rupture experienced in Iraq. In both countries Western powers intervened to preserve the established order.
Murat Kasapsaraçoglu asserts that the revolutionary year of 1958, and specifically the revolutionary coup in Iraq, also forced the Turkish government to adopt harsher measures and oppressive policies towards the internal opposition and dissident press in an attempt to thwart a coup d’état there too.
In Jordan, the Hashemite monarchical regime also struggled to avoid the same fate as the monarchy in Iraq and was able to do so with US help. Jordan would take on a useful buffer role in the region, bolstered by US and Western support.
While all Middle Eastern countries enjoyed a semblance of national sovereignty after the Second World War, Palestine was not so fortunate, but became increasingly less willing to accept a fate of permanent subservience. Throughout 1958, in Kuwait, Yasser Arafat and Khalil al-Wazir organised to establish the PLO and laid the groundwork for a new and effective Palestinian organisation.
Another struggle for national sovereignty, this one ultimately successful, raged 2,000 miles away to the west. Although 1958 was not a decisive turning point in Algeria’s war for independence, it was the year in which the struggle spilled over into neighbouring Tunisia, dramatically aiding the independence movement’s campaign to internationalise its struggle.
Some states weathered he revolutionary storm, while others could no longer evade calls for reform.
All in all, this multi- and inter-disciplinary book, by explaining the significance of that pivotal year of 1958, in its global, regional and local contexts, contributes considerably to our better understanding of the region and its tumultuous recent history.
The Middle East in 1958 – reimagining a revolutionary year, Ed. Jeffrey Karam, Pubs. IB Taurus, Pps 226, Pbck. £26.09
John Green is a former trade union official, a journalist and former documentary film-maker, which in the 1970s involved clandestine filming assignments in South Africa in the 1970s aimed at helping bring the abhorrent practices of the apartheid regime to world attention. He is the author of numerous books, including Ken Sprague, People’s Artist, A Revolutionary Life: Biography of Friedrich Engels and Britain’s Communists: The Untold Story.
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