Eisenhower, Suez Crisis, and Lessons for Today
good afternoon I am Joy Murphy director
of learning and engagement for the
Eisenhower Presidential Library I want
to welcome you to our monthly lunch and
learn program this year our programming
theme is waging peace in this series we
are looking at some of the ways that
presid Eisenhower stock Global Peak this
month is focused on Eisenhower’s use of
moral persuasion today we are pleased to
welcome Dr Mark bunam a professor at the
national War college in Washington DC
who will talk to us about the Suz Canal
Crisis before I hand it over to Dr
Buckman please note that there are pads
and pencils on the tables for you to jot
down questions that you want Dr Buckman
to answer at the end those of you live
streaming this event will be able to
submit questions via the chat function
at the end of the program
with that please welcome Dr
Buck I want to thank thank Joy Murphy
and also Samantha prior there at the
library for all they’ve done to set this
up and for inviting me today and uh I
want to make a special shout out to John
Anderson at kab the general 560 AM radio
uh for a terrific interview he did the
other day and it was terrific not
because he was interviewing me for sure
but because he had really done his
homework and um and I think helped his
audience understand the importance of of
what we’re going to talk about today
which is Eisenhower the Suz crisis and
lessons for today so if we could go to
the the next slide
please I want to start out by
highlighting the fact that where I work
today at the national War college and on
Fort McNair the home of the National
Defense University we’ve got a a
long um and deep connections to
President
Eisenhower that handsome building you
see in the upper left is Roosevelt Hall
that’s where I’m sitting speaking to you
from and it was built um in it started
in 1903 president Theodore Roosevelt
laid the
Cornerstone and it was to become the
army war col major I believe went when
he attended the army war College in the
class of
1928 so he he’d be well familiar with
the building I’m speaking to you from
and from this uh and with this
campus at the right you see a newer
building um and that is Eisenhower Hall
named for the
president and it began once upon a time
not here on Fort McNair but I believe it
was in the area somewhere but it started
out as the Army industrial college and
President
Eisenhower attended uh the Army
industrial College graduating in
1933 and then staying around on faculty
for for a year or two so um so again he
would he would feel right at home here
on Fort McNair and at the National
Defense University where I
work a couple other um items that that
connect us with the president president
you
see um down at the lower left you see a
picture of a book it called salarium at
70 and you probably can’t read it but
the subtitle is Project solariums
influence on Eisenhower historiography
and National Security
strategy and I’ll talk a little bit more
about that in a minute but it’s a recent
publication it just came out in December
and it’s part of the um one of the
monographs that the ndu Press National
Defense University press puts out and it
looks at at how our understanding of
project
salarium impacted our understanding of
President Eisenhower and his role in in
history now for those who who
um might not
remember project salarium was was one of
the first things that President
Eisenhower kicked off when he became
President when he took office
uh with within two months in March of
1953 he initiated this salarium project
named for the room allegedly where he
and John Foster dlls decided to to
undertake it the salarium room at the
White House the project salarium was
actually conducted here at National War
college at it wasn’t National War
College back then um but but here in
Rosevelt Hall and um they did it on a
summer break and they did it in secet
and what it was was um President
Eisenhower
commissioned three
teams uh to look at different ways of
doing containment and dealing with the
Soviets in the Cold War and team a was
was headed by the famous George Kennan
who was the first Deputy commant here at
the national War College back in
1946 uh and he’s the famous Diplomat who
wrote The Long Telegram from Moscow and
later the X article in foreign affairs
that talked about the sources of Soviet
con conduct and really really started
the whole idea of containment as a
policy and strategy for dealing with the
Soviet
Union um so Kenan headed team a and they
were going to look at continuing the
Truman policies of containment Team B
was going to look at a more a stricter
type of containment if you will where we
draw a line in the sand and and tell the
the Soviets don’t cross that so in other
words we weren’t going to try to push
them back but we’re we’re going to try
to keep the Soviets from advancing
around the world and then team C was to
look at roll back that was the term
right and there had been um some
campaigning done on this idea that that
actually we’re unsatisfied with the
Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern
Europe and and and around the world and
we want to try to roll back their
influence Ence so this was all um
undertaken in secret during the summer
when the students were away from the
national War college and it it was
briefed out to President Eisenhower in
July of 195 sorry
1953 and um after hearing all the
presentations reportedly the president
stood up and for about 40 minutes held
forth giving a summary of of all the
main points that had been made and then
explaining the way forward and that was
eventually uh captured in the document
you see at the bottom left there that’s
NSC 1622 or National Security Council
document
1622 the title of that is the our
national security
policy and it really set the tone for
the rest of the Cold War right down to
to the end and what it did was it it put
a higher um dependence on nuclear
weapons for our security but it also
took a very holistic look at security
Eisenhower realized that it wouldn’t do
any good to buy security in terms of
weapons if that meant bankrupting the
country or if it meant changing who we
were as as a um a Democratic Republic
and so it’s a it’s a document that um
that we still use I’ll use it next year
in in the first course that our students
get next year they’ll read that document
um as an example of of strategy done
right so again that’s just just to
highlight um the uh the connections that
we have with President Eisenhower here
at Fort McNair and the National Defense
University and in particular the
national War College if we could go to
the next slide
please all right I mentioned this little
publication on the left salarium at 70
it’s a SL little volume and uh just came
out and what the the the thesis of the
publication is
that when the
documents um describing San were finally
Declassified in the 1980s it completely
changed the history of the Eisenhower
presidency the early
histories of the Eisenhower presidency
were really quite flawed and you see
some examples there these are just
quotes from that uh Solarium at 70
volume uh and there are many others like
it or several others like it I should
say um but but for instance the Columbia
Professor Richard noad uh in a book it
was noted was extremely critical of
Eisenhower’s approach and he described
um him his um as you said eisenh in part
of The Superficial symmetry in order uh
and his excessively formalized system
caused him typically to become the last
man in his office to know tangible
details and the last to come to grips
with acts of choice uh etc etc um
referring to him as being left helpless
by by this National Security strategy
system that he had set up at the White
House nothing could be further from the
truth right we know that now um another
example Herman finer dllas over Suz
notice is he’s giving all the all the
attention to to President Eisenhower
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles uh
because that was sort of the myth that
grew up after the Eisenhower presidency
after President Eisenhower left the
White House was that really the foreign
policy was being run by by do again
we’ll see today that that was not at all
the the case um but um that’s the sort
of thing that was being published in in
the the early
1960s since salarium has come out there
have been a number of um of volumes and
we’ll we’ll take a look at a couple of
them that U that really have gone back
and and examined Eisenhower and his
leadership style and as I was telling
Joy Murphy before we went on on
air a colleague of mine here at the
college actually put together a course
last year it’s all focused on on
Eisenhower and his leadership and it
uses um his granddaughter’s excellent um
work how Ike LED so um anyway on on to
the next slide if we
could all right what I’d like to do here
is just get us in the right mental frame
to think
about the summer and fall of
1956 is really not that long after World
War II right they were still very close
to to the events of World War II it was
only only about um 11 or 12 years since
the the war ended and if you look at the
left hand side of this slide you see at
the at the top left Cologne Germany
utterly destroyed save the
cathedral uh and at the bottom you see
Tokyo in
1945 those are just city blocks of of
nothing of rubble just completely
destroyed urban
area and just to the the right of that
you see the mushroom cloud from the
bombing of
Hiroshima
now I wanted to highlight that the fact
that as terrible as the the Hiroshima
bomb was and the nasaki bomb was and
they were awesome and
devastating uh they didn’t really breach
any new level of Destruction in World
War
II in fact if you look at the picture of
Tokyo next to the mushroom cloud the
first time I saw that picture was when I
was looking for photographs of
Hiroshima after the bombing and this
picture came up on the Internet so you
have to be careful about what you what
you find on the internet right um and
then later I was looking for for
photographs of Nagasaki and I found the
same
picture as being evidence of the
destruction wrought by the atomic
bombing of Nagasaki
and so I had to do some research to
figure out if it was Hiroshima or
Nagasaki and it turns out what you’re
looking at is the sumita river that runs
through Tokyo and that was after the
firebombing of Tokyo in May of 1945
several months before the atomic bomb
was
dropped so I I wanted to highlight the
fact that as awesome as the atomic bombs
of World War II were uh they’re they’re
not nearly as powerful as the bombs
we’re going to talk about in a minute
and and that
had an effect on Eisenhower I would
argue all right moving moving along to
the right if you look across the bottom
of the slide you see President Truman
and President Eisenhower and when their
terms ran and you see also the creation
of the United Nations there at the
bottom in October of
1945 above that you see the Marshall
Plan and this is really the the start of
the cold war between the Marshall Plan
you see at the at the top just um left
of center and below that the Berlin
airlift is really sort of the firing or
the opening shots being fired in in the
Cold
War uh the Berlin airlift ran from 48 to
49 and in in there you had
Israel recognized as a state in May of
1948 and before the the Berlin airlift
ended we had the creation of
NATO before 1949 was over
uh two other very important um
historical events happened one was that
the Soviets detonated their first atomic
bomb in August of
1949 and Ma and the Communist uh managed
to take control of China in October of
1949 so these are these any one of these
things um would be a huge historical
turning point and they’re all piled into
this this decade leading up to to
Suez we had the Korean War kickoff in
1950 while that was going on Britain
joined the nuclear club with its first
atomic bomb
detonation uh and then in March of
1954 as as a result of the
in super right a thermonuclear weapon
using um Fusion as well as fision and
uh this wasn’t the exactly the first
test but it was the first test of a
weaponized system or
device and it’s it’s still to this date
the most powerful explosion that the
United States has set off at 15 megatons
now it’s really hard to get your brain
around this I I won’t try to um go into
a lot of detail but but maybe if we
think about it in these terms that is
1,000 times more
powerful than the atomic bombs dropped
on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki okay it’s not not 10 times more
powerful not a 100 times more a thousand
times more
powerful all right within days of that
being dropped um Joseph Stalin died I
don’t think it was as a result of
finding out about our test but at any
rate he he Departed the scene and before
long the the um the Korean war ended
with Eisenhower in the white house
having having campaigned on a pledge to
end the war in Korea to go to Korea and
then to end the war in Korea both of
which he
did you’ll see there in
1955 the formation of the Warsaw pack
there at the top between the the
pictures of those different uh
explosions and while it took the the
Soviet Union five years to catch up to
us in terms of fision weapons it only
took them a little over two and a half
years before they detonated their first
thermonuclear device so by the end of
195 55 both the United States and the
Soviet Union have true City busting if
you will weapons right there there’s no
defense against these weapons if you’re
in the vicinity of one of these things
going off it’s a it’s game
over and then finally at the bottom
there you see kushev uh with sort of a
red and a big bracket he he managed to
consolidate control over the Communist
Party pretty quickly but it was a long
time before he declared himself Premier
so he didn’t have anything close to
Stalin’s power so as we head into the
Suz crisis it’s important to realize
that Kev was more of a a first among
equals or at least among some other
contenders or people with a voice unlike
his predecessor Stalin he’s still
working on consolidating power so that’s
all backdrop to the very eventful year
of 1956 so if we could go to the next
slide please
now we’ve all heard about uh or maybe
some of us uh can remember and
participated in ARA drills uh or or
familiar with civil defense and civil
defense exercises but I I suspect that
most of the people in the audience today
whether online or in person really have
very little experience and no memory of
what 1956 was like and what the Cold War
was like it’s history to them right it’s
something you read about in a book and
it’s hard to get the sense for what it
was really like how
psychologically stressful it was to to
live with this idea that you could be
obliterated and there’s really not a lot
you could do about it so what I’d like
to highlight here uh we just talked
about the the fact that the Soviets had
tested a thermonuclear weapon and I
think I think that changed everything
now back then there were no missiles
right so it wasn’t they weren’t going to
get here in 30 minutes like like in the
missile age Sputnik is still a year into
the future after the sus
crisis um so it it really came down to
delivering these things um by
bombers and there was supposedly a
bomber Gap in which the US was Gravely
inferior to the Soviet Union in terms of
the number of bombers available to
deliver these horrendous
weapons um and across the bottom of this
picture what you see are a couple of of
civil defense posters and then three
book covers
and I show these because um they’re
because they’re very relevant to the
summer of 1956 in the middle you see
eyes in the sky and that’s a book about
the U2 Eisenhower gave permission or
approval for the first U2 flights over
the Union to try to find out if the
bomber Gap was real and we’ll come back
to that
later uh but he was being pushed very
hard to to take risk and to fly this
thing over the Soviet Union by the by
the people at the CIA who had developed
this
plane and then to the left of that you
see this book ravenrock and that’s the
one I really want to draw your attention
to
um I believe that the Advent of
thermonuclear weapons really changed
Eisenhower if you go back to
1953 you can find quotes of Eisenhower
saying that we need to use nuclear
weapons just like we would any other
weapon I don’t think I’ve ever seen uh
where he said the same thing about
thermonuclear weapons he really it
really seemed to to
um strike him deep in his core that that
that kind of thinking was was no longer
possible um
and so uh ravenrock is a story
about what the US government did to try
to ensure that if there were a nuclear
war that we would survive as a
country and uh it’s got lots of great
details lots of great history but
important for us today is the fact that
starting in 1955 the summer of 1955 we
did these annual EX exercise uh or
operation alert exercises so operation
alert they call them opal exercises
sometimes for short but these started in
1955 and didn’t go well as you could
imagine right so what’s happening the
whole government is trying to pick up
and move someplace else outside of the
Washington DC area where they can be
safe and
um uh some of you may be familiar with
um with uh some of the the sites that
around the country around the DC area
where where folks went there’s Mount
weather where much of the federal
government would would um relocate to in
Western Virginia uh there was
um site R up in
Pennsylvania um there is a a lovely
Greenbrier hotel just across the
Virginia West Virginia state line and in
the basement of that there was a nuclear
bunker right these things were all all
built in the 19 uh 50s and at any rate
in
1956 which is what we’re interested in
they held the second ever one of these
operation alert exercises and both the
1955 one and the 1956 one were complete
fiascos right as you can imagine um as
it dawned on the spouses of government
officials that that um the government
officials were were going off to be
saved to carry on leaving behind their
families well that that didn’t sit well
with the spouses or with the government
officials some of them flat out refused
if there wasn’t going to be room for
their for their spouse that they weren’t
going to go either um the very first one
President Eisenhower surprised his staff
and and everybody by saying okay right
where’s I’m gonna sign a mock executive
order declaring martial
law they had to go back to the days of
Abraham Lincoln to see um uh a precedent
and what to do about that um and so in
in
56 President Eisenhower is trying to get
up to to uh the Camp David area and uh
his limousine gets stuck behind farm
equipment on the way up there so that
that’s he he gets there after all of his
uh staff and other um executive
department members who helicoptered up
the Secret Service didn’t want the
president on a helicopter or in a single
engine airplane that that changed after
1956 as a result of this operation alert
exercise um it’s I hope that gives you
just a small flavor for how seriously
our government took the threat of
nuclear war and what it would mean for
our country right could could we even
survive it was it was really I think an
open question all right with all that I
think we’re ready now to talk about 1956
so if we can go to the next slide
um this was an astounding
year on the 25th of February kushev gave
a secret speech to the 20th party
Congress of the Soviet Communist
party in which he completely denounced
Stalin this was unheard of this this
shook the the Communist world right and
it eventually um was was largely um a
factor in the split between Ma and China
and the Soviet Union but that didn’t
develop fully for a few years but but it
has Secret in quotes there
because kushev while he gave this speech
in secret he made sure that it got
out and um and it had a very big impact
on the Warsaw pack that is the the um
the alliance structure opposing NATO I
mean some of the satellite countries
thought wow this is great we’re moving
in a in a New Direction here maybe with
less um control from from
Moscow in June of that
year in Poland industrial workers rioted
and the Soviets had to go in and put
that down um later uh well before we get
to the U2 flights um you see there that
in June 7th of June President Eisenhower
had a elitis attack and that left him
either in the hospital or at least out
of Washington up in Gettysburg
recuperating all the way through to the
16th of July and that’s really important
um because um his one of the first
things he did when he came back to
Washington a after the elitis was to
have a meeting with John Foster Dulles
and let dullas tell dullas he could he
could handle the situ itu ation with
Egypt and unfortunately his secretary of
state Eisenhower Secretary of State
undiplomatic told the Egyptians that
they weren’t going to get any us funds
to build this Aswan High
Dam um we had first offered those funds
even after the
Egyptians had made a a bargain a deal to
buy Eastern block arms they’re going to
buy arms from the Czech Republic and in
fact I think an attempt to woo them away
from the Soviets and and the East block
the the US and Britain offered to fund
the ason higham well in
July secretary DS told him that that
money was not going to be forthcoming
all right also in July we had the very
first U2 flights and these flew over St
Petersburg and Moscow and he took
pictures of those those
cities and
um some of those pictures that were
taken showed Soviet Fighters
trying to climb up to intercept the u2s
now it was believed by the president and
others that the U2 was going to fly so
high that that Soviet radar would not be
able to detect it well they were
detected on their very first
flights um and the Soviets were were
stuck in a way because they didn’t want
to admit their weakness in their
inability to intercept the u2s but they
they didn’t want them to continue so
they eventually on the 10th of July they
protested the U2 flights uh but the the
important takeaway for us is that these
U2 flights well two things first the CIA
didn’t tell the president that their
U2’s flights were being intercepted he
only found out later when the Soviets
protested um probably not endearing the
CIA to the president uh but but more
importantly the the U2 flights proed
that that there was a bomber Gap it’s
just that it went the other way it was
the United United States that had the
big advantage over the Soviet Union but
Eisenhower couldn’t tell anybody that he
knew that he could now with confidence
push back on those who wanted to to
spend a lot of money building more us
b52s but he couldn’t really share
that as a result of that um that
decision to to not fund the Aswan High
Dam within a week Nasser decided to
nationalize the Suez Canal
and that just drove the the British and
the French
crazy uh the the French didn’t like
Naser because they were fighting their
own war in Algeria and they knew that
NASA was supporting the Algerian
Rebels
um the the French sorry the British
owned 44% of the Suz Canal company and
something like 70% of the oil from the
Middle East bound to Europe passed
through that Canal um and so the French
and the and the the British were
spring-loaded to take a hard stand
against Nasser and and to use
Force President Eisenhower did not
hesitate he he uh sent Dallas to London
he penned a letter to to British prime
minister Anthony Eden telling him look
you can’t use Force yet there’s we have
to find a different way and so that
ultimately led to to a couple of London
conferences the the Suez Canal
conferences at London there was one in
August and then another one in September
that sort of uh bracketed the Republican
National Convention so remember this is
an election year
1956
and uh the Republican National
Convention held out in San Francisco
took place from the 20th to the 23rd of
August and at that at the convention
President Eisenhower gave a speech
speech accepting the party’s nomination
and the theme of the speech was ex was
principles overe
expediency in other words America needed
to do the right thing it needed to stand
on principle and and not give into
whatever seemed most expedient at the
moment and I think this plays into as
Joy Murphy mentioned at the beginning
the idea this month is uh Eisenhower’s
moral Authority right you’ll see this
come up again and again um he really was
a man of principle
it was also the 100th anniversary of the
Republican
party and so isenhower used that to to
play on some themes U from from
Lincoln’s time when when the party was
just getting started and we’ll we’ll um
we’ll see that in a bit but the idea was
the Republican party is the party of the
future and if it’s going to stand for
another 100 years and needs to do
certain things and again we’ll come back
to those all right moving on quickly now
after the second London
conference the uh what began uh some
some people called it the worst week in
Eisenhower’s presidency in in the first
chapter uh or in one of the early
chapters of his his um the second volume
of his Memoirs right waging peace he
talks about uh 20 busy days right but
whether it’s a week or 20 days this was
an extremely busy period he’s in the
he’s in the home stretch of a reelection
campaign and he’s got this crisis
brewing in the in the Middle East which
he thinks he’s he’s solved although he
continues through YouTube flights and
photographic evidence he contines to see
evidence there’s trouble but he thinks
that the British and the French are not
going to do anything before the election
he thinks he’s he’s kind of got that um
under control and then on the 24th of
October a revolution breaks out in
Hungary and at first the Soviet take a
fairly soft stand on this uh there there
are a lot of people killed on the 24th
itself but in the days that followed it
looked like the Soviets were not going
to crack down
hard uh that is until prime minister NJ
declared Hungary to be neutral that his
country had withdrawn from the Warsaw
pack uh and and now it looks like with
remember the the the riots in Poland
previously there were before even that
there were um protests in in Germany and
and that had to be put down violently by
the Soviets and
so um starting on the fourth of November
the Soviets come in and for the rest of
that month just brutally cracked down uh
on the up the um Rebels the
uprising and then on the 5th of November
Britain and France uh launch a ground
Invasion now I skipped over I think uh
yeah I didn’t mention the 31st of
October Britain and France had actually
started bombing in Egypt but then the
their Ground Forces go in on the 5th of
November and so this is the day before
the Americans go to the polls to decide
whether or not to reelect President
Eisenhower so you can see he’s got his
hands full with Hungary with um Suz and
with his
reelection and it was on the night of
the 5th or end of the 6th that um Nikita
Cru CH speaking through the Soviet
Premier oanon starts issuing so not not
so very veiled threats about World War
II he actually uses that terminology um
in in a a letter to Eisenhower and talks
about firing rockets at the British and
the French with the implication being
that these would be nuclear weapons and
so uh that’s that’s all on Eisenhower’s
plate as he as he heads into the
election
um but he’s got a lot of Leverage which
we’ll talk about and uh he’s able to to
use that bring that to Bear to get
Anthony Eden to agree to a ceasefire on
Election Day they had just gone in the
day before uh the French were extremely
disappointed um but um nonetheless the
president was able to um to without
using military force get the British de
back down next slide
[Music]
please all right so if we look at the
situation then when the ceasefire was
declared we see that um the the
Israelis have moved in and taken over
pretty much all the Sinai and meanwhile
the French and the British have gotten
control over the Canal Zone um they’re
they’re not um everywhere they’re not in
complete control I mean that the
operation on the ground just began on
the fifth uh but uh the the Egyptians
are are beaten the Egyptian Army is
beaten um and while Eden has agreed to a
ceasefire he still has what he wanted
which is he’s got French and British
forces on the ground there um in a
better position to control the Suez
Canal than than um than anybody else it
should be noted that uh one of the
reasons that the the British said that
they were going into to Suz was
to protect the Canal Zone protect
traffic through the canal Zone well it
turns out that Nasser and the Egyptians
when they took over the Canal Zone the
Egyptian Pilots managed to keep things
moving and in fact there was more
traffic flowing through the canal during
the time that Egypt was running the
canal than when than the months before
when the British were running it so uh
as a result of the attack Naser has sunk
some ships now to block the canal so it
it’s it’s completely the
the dishonesty the the pretense was was
exposed I mean from the very beginning
um but when this when Britain went to
war it was still in a bad shape from
from World War II it needed money it
remember it gets um nearly 70% of its
oil coming up through the um through the
canal and uh and Eisenhower could see in
advance that they’re going to need oil
and they’re going to need money and we
have leverage in that regard and so um
Eisenhower refused to meet with Eden
even though Eden asked to have a summit
uh he refused to send any oil to Europe
um he he blocked an international
monetary fund loan to the British and he
refused to support the the pound
sterling which was in in freef fall uh
until
the British agreed to remove their
troops from Egyptian soil and that
didn’t happen until the 3D of December
Eden actually left the country went on
vacation in Jamaica or someplace in the
Caribbean and um it was McMillan running
things back home in in the UK that
eventually um worked through the cabinet
and announced that they would in fact
remove their forces so that was that was
all Eisenhower’s doing or or planning or
or thinking all right next slide please
all right so
um in the in the
final seven or eight minutes here before
we go to question and answers I just
wanted to highlight a couple of really
really good
books on uh on Eisenhower one on the
crisis the sus crisis the other just on
Eisenhower himself the the age of
Eisenhower I think is is a terrific book
um and these these are just examples of
some of the more recent history
that completely
overturn the the unfair uninformed
inaccurate histories from the early
1960s the the Eisenhower and the Suez
Crisis 1956 is really a case study and
Leadership that’s what it’s all about
how did Eisenhower make the best use of
of his his staff his cabinet his
intelligence people’s military and and
all throughout these books and others uh
you can find based on unclassified what
have now been unclassified documents you
see things like um in the bottom if you
can see uh you’ve got Alan Dulles and
Richard pel from the CIA there was a lot
of pressure uh on the president to fly
the U2 over the Soviet Union and
Eisenhower was really really careful
about about how he used that he had no
problem pushing back uh on on these
loyal um but but maybe a little too
eager
subordinates it comes clear too
throughout the telling of the story that
Eisenhower was in charge of foreign
policy and dollis was a loyal
subordinate it wasn’t that that Dallas
was leading Eisenhower around and
deciding it was foreign policy it was
definitely the president in charge and
then with the Joint Chiefs
there their response to the Suz crisis
was we we should let Israel go it’s
going to be a fate compete they’re going
to quickly um take SI and defeat the
Egyptians and we should back
the British and the
French um because they’re our NATO
allies and so we we that’s important to
us and so we should back them and so
Eisenhower overruled them all and and
did it his way so next slide
[Music]
please so so back to the idea of moral
persuasion I think you can see
throughout the biographies of of
Eisenhower his
Memoirs uh
of course he had a deep familiarity and
importance of War right um like any
American he also opposed colonialism or
imperialism um and you see in his chance
for peace speech uh after the death of
Stalin his understanding of what it what
it really truly cost in terms of our
quality of lives and our values to have
to fund an enormous military and
and um going to war was even much much
more expensive than than than that sort
of thing so um if we move on there to to
the speech he gave at the Republican
National Convention on the 23rd of
August 1956 you’ve got some quotes from
the speech he finally again this is a a
speech about the party of the future on
the 100 anniversary of the the founding
of the party um and says we have to be
completely dedicated to to peace and I
like this this quote that I’ve
highlighted here we are in the era of
the thermonuclear bomb that can
obliterate cities and can be delivered
across continents with such weapons War
has become not just tragic but
Preposterous with such weapons there can
be no victory for anyone plainly in the
objective now must be to see that such a
war does not occur at
all right
um after the Israelis invaded Egypt
the president went on TV for a
15minute speech that he gave to the
American public and then he said there
can be no peace without law and there
can be no law if we invoke one code of
international conduct for those who
oppose us and another for our friends
and so again this is these are just
all um among the many examples of
Eisenhower standing on principle um and
not doing what some of his advisers were
telling him uh and and that goes for the
last bullet on this slide too which is
there are several instances of
Eisenhower telling people that you know
if I lose the election don’t you can
feel sorry for whever you want but not
don’t feel sorry for me and uh he he
clearly cared less about the outcome of
the election than in maintaining peace
and especially uh heading off anything
that might head towards World War I and
let me just read to you a really brief
uh excerpt from his his Memoir um waging
peace
um this is this is at a time when
Hungary is in in Uprising the Soviets
are cracking down and the Soviet Union
is threatening World War III and
threatening to attack Britain and
France
um he said he
wrote the Soviets I went on seeing their
he’s referring to back to what he said
at the time in his Memoir seeing their
failure in the satellites might be ready
to undertake any wild
adventure they are as scared and Furious
as Hitler was in his last days there’s
nothing more dangerous than a
dictatorship in that frame of
mind so in Eisenhower’s
mind in the days before the
election there really was a threat of of
nuclear war with the Soviet Union a
threat of slipping into um a war that
would eventually involve the United
States fighting against the Soviet Union
and that would likely lead to nuclear
war next slide
please all right these are these are
some lessons for today I think that that
uh any politician or Statesman could
could contemplate think about um we’ve
forgotten since the end of the Cold War
how to think about nuclear weapons and
deterrence and where I teach we’re
working very hard at the direction of
the joint chesa staff to try to help our
students these Rising National Security
Professionals to understand that
um how devastating nuclear weapons are
and and how to think about deterrents
it’s again something we haven’t done for
for about a quarter of a century
um we also are are reminded did
something that that fiddies wrote about
a long long time ago and that our
Founders our nation’s Founders
understood clearly because they read
their deities which is that um great
powers can be drawn into war with one
another through the actions of their
allies right and so um that’s something
that we we see the risk of just pregnant
in the in the whole sua
situation Wars are are are very much
expensive and they they can cause
Nations to to fall and in fact the Suz
crisis was a real turning point right
Britain and France were never the same
after the Suez Crisis they were already
in Decline but that that decline quickly
accelerated in in all Wars It’s the
politics that’s Central the political
aim not who wins the battles because the
French I mean this the sus crisis the
French and the British won their battles
they won militarily but they
it was a debacle politically for them
okay um world affairs are highly
interconnected it’s it’s really hard to
divorce one part of the world from
another or isolate it wall it off right
and um we see that today uh as there’s
continued turmoil in the Middle East and
it and it does reverberate in how we act
and deal with other
situations with uh with all the current
concern about climate change I think
we’ve lost sight of the concern for
energy security but the importance of
energy security and sound National
finances come across loud and clear in
in this case
study um Eisenhower used non-military
instruments and so it’s a great case
study for understanding how to use
diplomacy and
economics U politics does not stop at
the water’s
edge uh um Adie Stevenson’s and and his
campaign were merciless in in attacking
Eisenhower politically during these
crises there was no rallying around the
flag or uniting behind the president um
and then
lastly the years in which America holds
its presidential elections are very
tempting for foreign opportunists very
tempting to to take actions believing
that the any Administration would be
paralyzed so we can go to the next slide
we’ll wrap up um this is just from from
President Eisenhower’s speech about the
future of the party that he gave at the
Republican National Convention in August
of
1956 right he quoted Lincoln quoting the
Bible about A House Divided and the last
last segment there it’s sometimes
forgotten Lincoln followed this
quotation with a note of Hope for this
troubled country I do not expect the
house to fall he said but I do expect it
will cease to be divided and I think if
President Eisenhower with us here today
that would still be his hope both for
our country to be less divided uh and
for the world to be less divided so let
me stop there and we’ll move on to to
questions and
answers all right thank you so much for
that great presentation uh we will be
taking questions from the audience if
you we have any um and also there are
some questions in the chat so we’ll
start there um the first question says
what was the significance of the Su
Canal for international trade and Global
politicism in the mid 20th
century yeah it was it was uh certainly
Central um if if you uh one one of the
other interests I have um is energy and
energy security and uh if you look at
World Bank
studies economic development tracks in
tandem with
um with the use of energy I mean that
that’s what makes today different from
the pre-industrial era we’ve replaced
the energy of our muscles or animal
power um or or windmills um to some
degree um we’ve replaced that with
fossil fuels with nuclear energy with
other forms of more modern energy um
that completely underpins economics and
our well-being and our standard of
living
right Europe was getting 70% of its
energy or nearly 70% of its its the oil
that it needed to run its economy for
transportation from the Middle East and
so it was extremely important in that
regard um as far as as other sorts of
trade it was obviously
important um the British no longer had
India as part of their empire so there
wasn’t that strategic concern that
Britain had had but but the the
trade um that that flowed between Europe
and
Asia uh without the canal is going is
going to have to go all the way around
Africa the southern tip of Africa right
adding huge cost to transportation and
that sort of thing so so it was it was
quite important
but I should remind you um when when um
when Nasser sees the canal President
Eisenhower was not that concerned I mean
he he didn’t like it but he pointed out
to the British and the French that this
was not illegal as long as Egypt justly
compensated the the the stockholders of
the the Suez Canal company um there was
nothing wrong with him nationalizing it
under international law law he could do
that what as long as he maintained the
flow of traffic through the canal and in
fact flow of traffic went up under the
Egyptian
Pilots so
um so so
there there really wasn’t um ever didn’t
it didn’t appear there really wasn’t a
threat Eden perceived it differently he
didn’t he he saw it as giving Nasser a
thumb on the British jugular right that
he could he could close it any time he
wanted to um but um yeah that it was an
important uh trade route but but um much
more so for the British and for the
Europeans than for
America I do want to Circle back to that
but first there’s another question in
the chat um it says did President
Eisenhower’s inter intermittent poor
health during this time impacted his
response to the crisis of the zth
canal I don’t think it did I mean it
it’s other than the the um recuperation
from iltis that took him out of the
picture in the early summer but but
really most of the the really um
problematic things came after that and
he was able to deal with them now that’s
not to say that he was feeling great
while he did it but it didn’t seem to
stop him a couple of the the
the books I read on this suggest that he
was um by one Observer he was talking to
his doctor Dr
Schneider every couple of
hours right because he was having he did
have some um high blood pressure some
episodes of high blood pressure
irregular heartbeat and some discomfort
from his abdominal surgery the after
effects of that so those were were
plaguing him troubling him during this
time but but didn’t seem to stop him
from doing what he thought he needed to
do we are having a little bit of um
audio concerns however we’re gonna try
to power through we’re almost finished
um so first I’ll ask are there any
questions in our inperson
audience from our inperson
audience good
afternoon my question is you had said
earlier that war is very expensive and
since France and England was already at
War and their funds were being taken up
by the War uh who funded the US Canal
did us do it by
themselves
um I’m I’m not I’m not sure exactly what
you mean by that let me try to take a
stab at an answer but but please come
back at me if I missed missed the point
so the operating of the Suez Canal pays
for itself right the the the um ship
shipping companies that used the canal
paid fees just like you and I would pay
a toll on on a on a toll road or cross a
bridge that had a toll right and so the
canal was a money maker so so nobody had
to fund the operation of the canal um it
it was it was self self-funding it was a
money
maker but but I but maybe I missed your
your
question you you’re my second question
is that you stated that Israel am I
wrong that Israel attacked Egypt is that
correct yes that’s right um
so part and this was only a few years
after I’m sorry yeah yeah right this was
only a few years after Israel became a
country right so what what happened the
history of that that is is that
when Israel declared itself a country
the US quickly recognized that and
Israel was IM immediately attacked by
its neighbors and so the first Arab
Israeli War began in May of 1948 with
with Israel becoming a
country this is often called the
second uh Arab Israeli War that is the
Suz War now
um doesn’t mean there was peace in
between time the Gaza Strip was
used by uh
Palestinian um entities who were not
happy with Israel and wanted to make
Israel pay for for
having taken taken area that they
thought was theirs and so there are
these fetene who attacked regularly out
of the Gaza Strip and sometimes fled
back across the Egyptian border into the
SI so Israel had a an an and actually
Nasser the Egyptian president actually
wanted to kind of help Israel he didn’t
want to go to war with Israel he he sort
of didn’t really want these these fetene
um using his territory to provoke
Israel but they did they continued to
and Nasser really couldn’t control them
and so it wasn’t that is Israel decided
on its own to go to go attack Egypt what
happened
was um the British and the French went
to Israel and put put Israel up to this
the British and the French at a meeting
in sever
France um on the 22nd of October I
believe like very close to the event the
fact that they tried to pull this off on
such a short timeline it’s just
mindboggling but they they went to
Israel and convinced Israel listen you
attack and then we’ll use that as as our
excuse to come in and say hey we’re just
here to break up the the fighters the
the the you know th those who are
fighting and you know and when we do
that then we’ll we’ll have to keep the
peace and we’ll that way we we’ll
establish our military presence there on
the canal so it wasn’t like Israel was
was on its own going out to pick a fight
with Egypt um and in fact on the 1 of
November
Israel agreed to a
ceasefire and Egypt tentatively agreed
to the ceasefire and yet it was still
almost a week later was it was the sixth
before Eisenhower pressured Eden enough
to finally get the British to agree to a
ceasefire so the whole reason that they
were going in there in the first place
to secure the canal and and to bring to
keep the the the combatants apart and
bring stability was was completely shown
to be a lie from the get-go
but yeah they they were all the Israelis
were in cahoots with the British and the
French the British and the French put
them up to it it was the British and the
French idea and they used the Israelis
to to help execute their
plan all right so again we continue to
have some audio um issues so I’m
actually going to go ahead and wrap us
up uh right now so first of all let me
say thank you again to Dr Buckman for uh
your wonderful
presentation
um and thank you to each and every one
of you for joining us today we do have a
few closing
announcements you’ll just bear with
us all right our 2024 public programs
are made possible by the Eisenhower
foundation and the Jeff Co Memorial
Foundation we are certainly appreci
appreciative to both both of these
organizations because without them we
would not be able to continue to provide
these programs for
you and we would like to invite you back
for next month for our uh next two
programs um our evenings at ease which
will be um sort of a mini version of um
a hilarious that Dr
Buck bucknam talked about earlier today
so we would love for you to join us for
that um and then of course our our lunch
and learn will we will welcome David Hay
uh if you’d like to learn more about our
programs you can join our email list we
are happy to get that information out to
you thank you so much I hope that you
enjoyed your our programming today and
have a wonderful afternoon
Guest speaker Dr. Mark Bucknam will join us virtually from the National War College located in Washington, DC. Professor Bucknam will talk about President Eisenhower and the Suez crisis of 1956 in context of the Cold War. Coming in the final days of Eisenhower’s reelection campaign, the Suez crisis also coincided with a Soviet crackdown in Hungary and turmoil across North Africa and the Levant. Eisenhower strove to restrain Israel, Britain, and France as they mobilized for war. He took a principled stand against military aggression by Israel and America’s allies despite warnings it could cost him at the polls. President Eisenhower’s handling of the Suez crisis powerfully illustrates his use of moral persuasion and holds valuable lessons for political leaders and statesmen of today.
The 2024 Waging Peace program series is made possible courtesy of the Eisenhower Foundation with generous support from the Jeffcoat Memorial Foundation.