What did the Suez crisis of 1956 make?

Answer 1

The Suez Crisis was a Superpower stand-off that took place from late 1956 to early '57. The Egyptian military ruler, Colonel Abdel Nasser, did not think it fair that Western nation should have free access to use the Suez Canal in order to import oil from the Middle East, so he imposed a system of tariffs upon foreign shipping using the canal. In response to this, Israel launched an invasion of the Egyptian Sinai on 29th October 1956, resulting in both Britain and France issuing a ceasefire ultimatm, which was ignored. The British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, then pledged to come to Israel's assistance and coerced the French Government to do the same via diplomatic pressure by the British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd. Thus on 5th November a huge joint Anglo-French invasion of the Canal Zone was undertaken, supported by Israel- it achieved it's objectives in defeating Egypt and was intended to go on to lead to an Egyptian counter-revolution that would topple Nasser's Government, but this failed to materialise. The Soviet Union then threatened to intervene to support Egypt unless the occupying forces withdrew, backed up by Arab countries who began an oil embargo of Britain and France, leading to fuel shortages in these nations and petrol rationing. Although France was not then a part of NATO, Britain WAS, and a Soviet attack upon the UK would have inevitably obliged the other nations to support the British under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty- also, any Russian attacks upon Britain would have included strikes upon US air bases stationed in the country, which Washington would have seen as a direct attack upon the US itself. A serious threat of Superpower conflict, that could have escalated into a nuclear war, hung over the world between the end of '56 and the beginning of '57- it was diffused, however, by US pressure upon the British Government, with President Eisenhower threatening to damage British financial strength by selling off it's pound sterling bonds. This resulted in the humiliating withdrawal of Anglo-French forces, and the resignation of Anthony Eden in March 1957, who was replaced by his Chancellor, Harold MacMillan. Israel had achieved some of it's objectives, such as achieving freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, which Egypt had blocked to Israeli shipping for the previous seven years, but Nasser's Government remained in power and the incident may have emboldened the USSR to crush the Hungarian Uprising, which began at about the same time as the Suez Crisis began.

The Suez Crisis is seen as one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War, at which global nuclear war seemed for a while to be imminent and even probable.