Regime change à la Iraq. Saddam Hussein captured in Tikrit in December, 2003. Wikicommons/ US army photo. Some rights reserved.An Arab leader defies the west and a plan is devised
to invade his country and remove him. But everything goes wrong. The invasion is
bungled, provokes outrage at home and abroad, and spawns a progeny of
unintended consequences. Its western authors are derided and humiliated. No two international crises are identical. But the
similarities between Suez in 1956 and Iraq in 2003 are uncanny.
No two international crises are identical. But the
similarities between Suez in 1956 and Iraq in 2003 are uncanny. In each case a
British prime minister took precipitous action to overthrow a Middle East
leader deemed to be an intolerable threat to western interests. In each case
that threat was grossly exaggerated. In each case the prime minister misled the
nation and kept much of his cabinet in the dark. In each case he acted with
scant regard for international law – or for the morning after.
End of an
era
In 1956 the prime minister was a Conservative, Anthony
Eden, and the defiant Arab leader was Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser. Nasser had
had the temerity to nationalise the company that operated the Suez Canal, thereby
taking control of a vital international artery. Convincing himself the Egyptian
ruler was a threat on a par with Hitler, Eden plotted with France and Israel to
invade Egypt and overthrow him. But in this case regime change failed.
The United States was appalled at Eden’s action, and
the duplicity that surrounded it, and forced him to withdraw. Far from being
toppled, Nasser survived and became the hero of the Arab street. The Suez war,
brief as it was, had long-lasting effects. It achieved the opposite of its
objectives, strengthening Arab nationalism and weakening the British and French
empires, whose end was nigh. The era of European colonial power was about to be
replaced by an era of superpower rivalry, as the United States and the Soviet
Union competed for mastery of much of the world, including the Middle East.
Almost half a century later, a Labour prime minister,
Tony Blair, plotted with George W. Bush to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein,
deemed to have weapons of mass destruction, primed for use, and to be in league
with Al-Qaeda – both claims which turned out to be false. But Saddam, unlike
Nasser, was overthrown, his country was plunged into anarchy and sectarian
strife, and the regional balance of power was overturned, to Iran’s advantage. We
have been living with the consequences – which include the emergence of ISIS,
or Islamic State – ever since.
Getting
in, getting out
"No end of a lesson" was the title of Anthony
Nutting’s book about Suez. (Nutting resigned from Eden’s government, as Robin
Cook did from Blair’s.) The same is true of Iraq. Both wars tell us hard truths
about the Middle East – and about ourselves – if we are willing to grasp them. The Middle East seems to serve as a standing invitation
to outside meddling of the most ignorant kind.
The five great disasters of British foreign policy in
the last 70 years were all in the Middle East – Palestine (1948), Iran
(1953), Egypt (1956), Aden (1967) and Iraq (2003). Two were fateful withdrawals (Palestine and Aden) from
situations which Britain was unable to manage, and as such were painful
imperial humiliations. Three were fateful interventions
– the overthrow (by covert means) of a popular prime minister of Iran, Mohammed
Mossadeq; the attempted overthrow (through military means) of Nasser; and the
overthrow (through invasion and occupation) of Saddam Hussein – which, whatever
their short-term purposes, led to a train of unwanted consequences.
Regime change, in other words, has a history; it was
not invented after 9/11. In Europe’s imperial heyday, toppling rulers was taken
for granted. By the time of Suez, as Eden discovered, it had become an
anachronism (world opinion would not sanction it, and its short-term benefits
were usually outweighed by longer-term costs). By the twenty-first century it
should have become (at least in its full-blown form, à la Iraq) unthinkable.The war damaged the very fabric of our politics.
Be careful of what you get into, and be careful of what
you get out of, a seasoned American diplomat, Ryan Crocker, has warned. It
sounds banal. But how often has the warning been heeded? The Middle East seems
to serve as a standing invitation to outside meddling of the most ignorant
kind.
As to Britain, still struggling to define its
post-imperial identity, the Iraq war has been deeply corrosive. As Neal
Ascherson argued with eloquent passion on its fifth anniversary, the war
damaged the very fabric of our politics: we were lied to; we did not know who
to trust; official reports were dismissed as whitewash. Now, finally, more than a dozen years after the invasion of Iraq, and at inordinate
expense, we have the Chilcot report. Is a spoonful of catharsis too much to
hope for?
