As a matter of coincidence, I happened to come across a discussion of the Suez crisis in Whitehall, by Peter Hennessy (New York: Free Press © 1989), and of course it started me thinking about paths to invasion, and repercussions.
I have read bits from letters, newspaper columns, or diaries which show that several different people involved in UK foreign affairs were absolutely devastated by Suez, and never really recovered. Their views on it differed, of course, one to another, but they all felt betrayed. Britons who against the invasion from the beginning felt betrayed by the invasion, and those who were for it felt betrayed by the withdrawal. People felt betrayed by the untruths told by the Government, and people felt betrayed by the exposure of those untruths. People felt betrayed by the way in which Russia and the US got involved, and people felt betrayed by their tardiness in getting involved.
Of course, many Big Historical Events are like this; one could similar things about the Bolshevik Revolution, or the US Civil War, or the Munich Olympics. I do get the sense that people felt very strongly that they had been betrayed, not fatalistically, not cynically, not wearily, but with pain and outrage and distress. I understand all of that, now.
Honestly, the US-led invasion of Iraq last Spring is likely, in the long run, to be as minor an event as Suez, or even Vietnam. After all, the question of who holds Ho Chi Minh city is not, in 2003, of tremendous strategic importance. The cultural place is higher than the actual events may warrant, and that's because the number of people senselessly slaughtered in Vietnam or Iraq is (in the big picture) miniscule, and the number of people materially unaffected is enormous. The number of people who have had their understanding of the world changed, the number of people who are, angrily, rethinking their ideas about government structures and their own place in the world, is very high. Not just our own fellow citizens, but everywhere.
Oh, and since I don't really know anything about military history at all, can some Gentle Reader inform me—has any nation in the last 50 years invaded another nation against the will of the UN and not regretted it later?
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
On invasions — I don’t know what the U.N’s position on Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge was, but that strikes me that, if the U. N. did not endorse it, it is not now regretted in Vietnam or elsewhere. I can’t think of any other invasions for the purpose of conquest that have turned out well for the invaders, off-hand, but I suspect there have been African regimes that have profited nicely from military adventures against their neighbors.
On the invasion of Iraq’s importance in the long run — if you would classify Suez and Vietnam as in the long run (50 and 30 years after) as minor events, what counts as a major event in that time frame? Well, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the end of African colonialism, the Six-Day War, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe all leap to my mind as significantly more important than Vietnam and Suez.
Insofar as the invasion of Iraq could lead to sweeping changes in the politics of the Middle East, for better or for worse, it strikes me that the invasion of Iraq has the potential to be much more significant than Suez or Vietnam. Unless something really good or really bad happens, the Middle East’s oil will be at the center of global geopolitics for at least the next 30 years, and if the nature of that center is changed, that’s of great strategic importance. We probably won’t begin to see at all whether such changes will follow from for another few years at least.
But it appears that we’re pretty well trapped in the cycle of violence at the moment. Perhaps the Iraqi people, if truly empowered, will be able to put a stop to the types who are quite willing to kill anyone whom they find inconvenient to their designs for power; I don’t think that the U.S. Army will be able to do it.
It occurs to me that, had the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt successfully prevented the nationalization of industry, it might well have had massive long-run influence. It’s hard to gauge might-have-beens, but in some sense, the failure of Suez was hugely important for being unimportant, against expectations. So, as you say, the invasion of Iraq (and subsequent events) may well be ranked up with the Cuban Missile Crisis at the end of the day.
R.I.,
-V.