Eisenhower (39 page)

12

On the Edge

T
he trouble began, as it would so often, in the Middle East. Its origins in some ways resembled the Iran crisis that greeted Eisenhower when he first took office. Britain found itself in escalating conflict with a charismatic statesman in a struggle involving Communism, imperialism, and access to resources and shipping. In Iran, oil was the commodity, and Mossadegh was the adversary. This time, the battleground was Egypt, the issue was the Suez Canal, and the threat to Britain’s hegemony was Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Stern, brave, literally and figuratively scarred by his struggle against British imperialism, Lieutenant Colonel Nasser was a galvanizing figure in the Middle East, a uniting leader who sought for decades to ally Arab nations in a struggle against foreign domination. Even Eisenhower was grudgingly impressed by Nasser, describing him as dynamic and personable, a tip of the cap to a fellow military man who puzzled Ike but interested him, too. The son of a postal inspector raised in southern Egypt, Nasser lost his mother as a young boy; she died giving birth to his brother. His father remarried, and Nasser went to live with relatives, eventually joining the rising student movement directed against the presence of British troops on Egyptian soil. Literate, articulate, and dashing—Nasser’s broad face and grin belied his ferocious will—he eventually landed a place in the Egyptian military academy (one of his classmates was Anwar Sadat). Driven to expel the British from his homeland, Nasser conferred with Italian leaders during World War II on a plan to overthrow his government and expel the British forces. The coup plans were dropped, but Nasser’s ambition burned.

By the 1950s, he had orchestrated the fall of King Farouk and helped General Mohammed Naguib assume the mantle of Egyptian authority, though it was Nasser who commanded genuine power in the new government. An attempt on Nasser’s life in 1954 gave him the excuse to sentence Naguib to house arrest—as well as to authorize a brutal repression of rivals and dissenters. From that point on, Nasser ruled Egypt.

His ouster of Naguib, however, left Nasser with bitter enemies inside Egypt, making his hold on power uncertain. To solidify his base, establish his leadership over the Arab world, and modernize his nation, Nasser proposed the construction of the Aswan High Dam in southern Egypt. The mammoth undertaking would, he believed, control flooding of the Nile, boost Egyptian agriculture, and raise his nation’s international stature. Eisenhower supported the plan and offered American assistance, reasoning that the project would aid Egypt, and that American backing would help win friends in the region, tightening the United States’ grasp on oil flowing from the Middle East.

Eisenhower had another objective as well: to foil Soviet influence. The administration insisted that in return for its loans for the dam, Nasser refuse offers of Soviet assistance. That pushy attempt to force Nasser into the Western orbit offended the Egyptian leader, steeped as he was in anti-colonialism and determined as he was to strike a neutralist position akin to that of India’s Nehru. Rather than respond immediately, Nasser took the Eisenhower proposal under advisement, considering it for months while conspicuously cultivating his relationship with the Communist world. At the same time, Eisenhower faced domestic pressure, as supporters of Israel, critics of mutual aid, and growers of American cotton found common ground in questioning use of American money to subsidize an Egyptian dam that would expand the agricultural capacity of a nation whose products competed with American goods.

Nasser did not help his own case. With America’s offer still on the table, he recognized China’s Communist government, purchased weapons from Czechoslovakia, and fortified his military presence along the border with Israel. By July, when he decided to accept American support for the dam, he had exhausted Washington’s patience, and the offer was effectively withdrawn. Nasser was furious. He publicly denounced the United States on July 24. Two days later, he seized the Suez Canal, announcing that Egypt would henceforth operate the canal and use revenue from it to help pay for the dam. He ordered canal employees to stay at work or face imprisonment.

The Suez Canal Company was an international institution, but the government of Britain and French investors were its principal owners, and trade through the canal was vital to the economic and security interests of both nations. Consequently, Nasser’s action was guaranteed to infuriate leaders of both countries. Eisenhower tried to head off a confrontation that he believed would lead to profoundly uncertain consequences for the world. On July 31, he wrote to Anthony Eden and urged calm in the face of provocation. Eisenhower had received word through an intermediary that Eden was already considering a military response, and Ike pleaded with his counterpart, whom he addressed as “Anthony,” to refrain. Eisenhower recommended convening an international conference to exert pressure on Egypt to insure continued, efficient operation of the canal, and he grimly warned against precipitous resort to force. “For my part,” he wrote, “I cannot over-emphasize the strength of my conviction that some such method must be attempted before action such as you contemplate should be undertaken.” The American people, Eisenhower warned, would balk at military action to resolve the crisis, as would those of other nations. The Western alliance would be sorely tested: “I do not want to exaggerate, but I assure you that this could grow to such an intensity as to have the most far-reaching consequences.”

Those were the prudent words of a wise military leader, but Eden ignored them. Although Britain, France, and other nations—though not Egypt—agreed to attend an August conference in London, Nasser rejected the conference’s recommendation for an international oversight board to supervise the workings of the canal. Dulles scrambled to negotiate a solution but succeeded mainly in alienating his allies. Angry nations now hurtled toward the confrontation that Eisenhower most feared. Israel called up troops; Britain and France became suspiciously quiet.

Then, just as the Suez conflict came to a boil, another crisis erupted. This one flared from Khrushchev’s famous secret speech on the depravity of Stalin’s reign. Washington had been cautiously hopeful that a thaw in relations might follow and had hoped the measured Soviet response to Polish demands suggested progress. Still, American analysts saw no prospect for fundamental change in Moscow, merely for a gentler era of confrontation.

In Hungary, nationalists had no way of knowing that the Eisenhower administration lacked any realistic plan to assist their struggle for liberation. They imagined that Khrushchev was providing an opening, that the events in Poland indicated that Moscow might now tolerate limited dissent, so long as it was within the broad ideological rubric of advancing Communism. Hungarians began to speak openly of a break with Moscow, increasingly unsettling Russia’s ambassador to Hungary, Yuri Andropov. As the Suez crisis escalated, Andropov warned his superiors in Moscow that the situation had “sharply deteriorated. Hostile elements, who see Hungary as one of the weakest links among the countries of the socialist camp, have stepped up their activities, and have spoken openly against the Hungarian Workers’ Party leadership.” Andropov correctly sized up the threat posed by the growing popularity of Imre Nagy, a son of peasants and a dedicated Communist who was determined to lead his country to a Marxism free from Soviet domination. Nagy had already been ousted as prime minister, but students and intellectuals saw him as their best hope. Andropov’s recommendation: persuade Nagy to issue a self-critical statement of his past party failings—his misunderstanding of collectivization or his unwillingness to cede ultimate authority to the Communist Party—and then reinstate him to the party and give him “some insignificant work.” If Nagy refused, Andropov’s chilling cable concluded, “it would be necessary to expose him in the eyes of Communists as a member of the opposition and as a dissenter.” Whatever “peaceful coexistence” or candor about Stalin meant to Moscow, it clearly did not include liberation of Hungary.

Andropov’s recommendations were not known to the students or their allies, much less to Nagy. In the long days of Hungary’s warm summer, passions intensified. In July, the Hungarian Writers’ Union openly criticized the Hungarian Workers’ Party; the head of the party resigned eight days later and fled to Moscow. A group of dissidents executed in 1949 after a show trial were posthumously rehabilitated and reburied in October—100,000 people attended the funeral.

How distant those tribulations seemed to Americans in 1956, as “peace, prosperity and progress,” Eisenhower’s reelection slogan, dominated the national discourse. This was the year of “Howl,” Allen Ginsberg’s rollicking announcement of America’s bohemian culture, not to mention the mounting urgency of civil rights and the incipient force of Betty Friedan and the women’s movement, whose foundations Friedan laid in 1957. Still, there was a surface ease about American life that summer.

In October, exhilaration flared around the World Series, an epic contest between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees. The series that year lasted seven games, and Eisenhower traveled to New York to attend as a fan. In game 5, the Yankees’ Don Larsen pitched his perfect game. Don Newcombe, the Dodgers’ great ace, had won twenty-seven games that year, but lost two, including game 7, in the series. Eisenhower rooted for the Yankees but felt for Newcombe. “I think I know how much you wanted to win a World Series game,” the president wrote upon returning to Washington. “I for one was pulling for you. But I suggest that when you think over this past season, you think of the twenty-seven games you won that were so important in bringing Brooklyn into the World Series.” Newcombe, no doubt flabbergasted to receive a note from the president, touchingly replied: “I don’t think you’ll ever know what [your letter] has done for my confidence, which was at a very low ebb. I was very pleased to learn that you were pulling for the Dodgers and me personally, and I’m very sorry I didn’t do better, and through your letter I think I understand more clearly about the bad breaks in sports.”

Events in Europe moved with gathering speed. Nagy succeeded in convincing the Hungarian Workers’ Party to readmit him. Three days after that, students formed the Hungarian Association of University and College Unions. In Poland, Gomulka was named first secretary of that nation’s Communist Party, and one week later Hungarian protesters released the “Sixteen Points,” a blueprint for the nation of their imagination. The first demand was for withdrawal of all Soviet troops; the twelfth was for “freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, a free press and radio and a new daily paper.”

The Sixteen Points rallied Hungarians, and marches the following day demonstrated the depth of animus toward Soviet rule. A crowd of some 200,000 people gathered in Lajos Kossuth Square, a grand set of monuments on the banks of the Danube, named for the man who proclaimed Hungarian independence from Austria; elsewhere in Budapest, other assemblies grew and turned increasingly confrontational. That evening, Hungarian secret police fired into a crowd, estimated at twenty thousand to thirty thousand, assembled in front of a local police station. Three died. Another band of protesters knocked over a statue of Stalin (partially fulfilling one of the Sixteen Points, which called for removal of that hated artwork and replacement of it with a monument to Hungary’s war of independence). Dissidents evolved into rebels, attacking government buildings and police. Authoritarians took stock. At 11:00 p.m., Khrushchev met with his inner council in Moscow. Twelve men attended; eleven favored immediate deployment of Soviet troops to restore order. The first units of the Red Army rolled into Budapest the following morning.

Washington watched, transfixed but paralyzed, as Hungarian freedom fighters confronted Soviet tanks. At first, the struggle went shockingly well for the Hungarians. Some Soviet tank commanders sympathized with Hungarian rebels who desperately argued that they, too, were Communists, fighting only to practice Communism in their own national fashion. Hungarians boarded a few of the tanks and paraded through Budapest. But Hungarian nationalism, encouraged by the United States and other Western powers, now met the real Soviet might. Shots were fired—to this day, it is disputed who fired first—and a tense but festive face-off descended into a bloody melee. Some one hundred people were killed, another three hundred wounded. Over the next several days, Soviet and Hungarian forces wrestled for control of the capital and surrounding cities and countryside. “Within Hungary,” Dulles told Eisenhower, “the revolt has become widespread.”

Then, with the world’s attention focused on this extraordinary challenge to Soviet power, Israel stunned that same world by pivoting away from Lebanon and attacking Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula. Overnight, Israeli forces penetrated seventy-five miles into Egypt and by daybreak were just twenty-five miles east of Suez. The day before, Eisenhower had urged the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to “do nothing which would endanger the peace.” Now Israeli forces parachuted into position and out-maneuvered the Egyptians. Not believing that Britain was behind this assault, Eisenhower asked Britain’s UN ambassador to consider UN action against Israel. “We were astonished to find that he was completely unsympathetic,” Eisenhower wrote to Eden. In fact, Britain’s ambassador was openly hostile, “virtually snarling,” in Lodge’s words.

Even that brusque dismissal was not enough to jolt Ike into realizing Britain’s complicity, though the actions of both Britain and France were tellingly suspicious. The two nations urged a cease-fire and suggested that Israeli and Egyptian forces back up ten miles each, leaving a safe zone around the canal. “Anglo-French” forces would then fill in the gap and secure the peace—while, coincidentally, wresting control of the canal from Nasser, as they had been attempting to do since July. The French-British communiqué was backed by a threat: if Israel and Egypt did not agree, the joint forces would attack Suez. Israel predictably agreed—the proposed withdrawal still left its troops deep in Egyptian territory—and Nasser just as swiftly refused. Ike urged Eden and Prime Minister Guy Mollet of France to reconsider what he described as “drastic action,” advising instead that the nations pursue “peaceful processes.” On October 31, without so much as a warning to Eisenhower, British bombers attacked airfields in Egypt. The United Nations convened in emergency session.