1956, Eisenhower and Suez – 2024, Biden and Gaza

Jul 07, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – ‘Haul ass out of there and better be damn quick about it.’  There was the Suez Canal, the objects of that wrathful pronouncement were three of America’s closest friends and allies.  The clock was ticking on the ill-conceived and ill-fated joint British-French invasion with that Port Said airdrop of troops.  And with Israel rushing to join the fray and erect a ring of steel around Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser closure of the crucially strategic Suez Canal waterway.  It was an America that immediately discerned the anger of the Chinese and felt the heat of real threats from Soviet Russia. It was an America that pulled no punches, one that refused to dodge its responsibilities.  Things have changed since, taken a turn for the worse.

It was US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who almost three score and ten years ago had to set straight his mistaken allies, including the close cousins of Americans, the British.  For sure, a wider conflagration was threatened, but was averted by the decisive actions of President Eisenhower.  As a soldier, I am sure that the language he employed was saltier than mine.  No wonder America liked Ike.  A man of war like Eisenhower had a great grasp of all its uncalculated developments that could make plans go wrong, all its unintended consequences.  So, he put his foot down and shutdown the British, French, and Israelis.  Prime Minister Anthony Eden never recovered from the humiliation.  The French beat a hasty retreat, and the Israelis had to bide their time until June 1967.

I resurrect this piece of not-so-distant history to reintroduce and reinforce a few points.  It is how decisive statesmen, those at the helm of a leading world power, the sole serious contender for that coveted title at the time, know when they must move, and how they lay down the law.  And with no ifs, ands, or buts about it.  It is that there are times when there are those who are given the choice of moving out on own, or the alternative of being moved out in manner from which irreparable ruptures could result.  President Eisenhower did so then, when such leadership and decisive action could neither be delayed, nor avoided any longer.  It had to cause him some considerable grief, since among the combatants were the British, who he (Operation Overlord) and the America of Franklin D. Roosevelt (the Lend-Lease Act) rescued from the jaws of ignominious defeat, and the possible return of the Saxons to a future of slavery.

I scan the horizon and ask where is that America of old today?  I look longer and cast a wider arc, and seek one answer to a single question: where is the bold and potent equivalent of Dwight D. Eisenhower leading the way in today’s America?  What lobby could hobble his successor long after his time to such a degree that there is this vacillating, this disingenuousness, this utter failing at taking leadership? In the simmering powder keg that is Gaza and what it could unleash in the wider Middle East?  What consideration could be so crippling for the US Chief Executive and the US Congress that there is this shrinking from taking the bull by the horns and acting with urgency and authority?  Rather than drifting about and doing nothing but play unconvincing games, thus fastening a superpower and its credibility on the horns of a dilemma?  Some things are worth weighing.

What is going on in Gaza tests the patience, rents the self-respect of the Arab world, none more so than the Iranians.  A week or so ago, the Russians signed a mutual defense pact with North Korea.  Given the American isolation of Iran, and the tentacles of OPEC+ (and the significance of such), it is not beyond the sphere of country alignments and strategic interests for some form of mutual assistance arrangement be sealed between Russia and Iran.  Two components ought to be conspicuous.  There was great care taken to skirt around the signing of mutual defense pact, with the lower life form of mutual assistance apparatus being the substitute.  The second is that familiar saw from mafia lore: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  I think that that speaks for itself, and trumps anything that I can put on paper.  Russia has its back to the wall, and the Persians are reduced to kicking their heels in impotent futility.  This is a custom-made disaster waiting to express itself.  As the extraordinary excesses of Israel against the Palestinian people remain unchecked, a kick in the masculine quarters of every Arab, Persian, Bedouin, and God knows whoever else, the ever bubbling, ever volatile cauldron of the Middle East could blow into the unrecognizable, the unmanageable. I put this differently: it is that what is going on in Gaza is no longer contained to that area nor controllable as to where it could reach.  This may be too far out there for many to even bother.  But there is this cautionary note: far too frequently big things with bigger global impacts have had smaller beginnings.

The world needs a leader of strength and determination.  Some are still looking to America for that leadership.  The conditions in Gaza demand it.  A 21^st century Eisenhower is called for, and there are no two ways about it.  Enough of this walking on eggshells by the only existing superpower that is worth the name.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• Americas, British-French, Eisenhower, Gaza, Israel

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