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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: c.hinton who wrote (230110)	5/8/2007 3:20:45 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I think that may be abit of hyperbole.......could you detail the "irrivocable" damage? Yes ,we all know how the USSR came to dominate the middle east during the cold war. :-) You're joking, right? Nasser entered the Soviet camp from 1955 on, when the US and Britain refused to pay for the building of the Aswan dam: In 1955, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser imported arms from the Soviet bloc to build his arsenal for the confrontation with Israel. He announced it on August 31, 1955: Egypt has decided to dispatch her heroes, the disciples of pharaoh and the sons of Islam and they will cleanse the Land of Israel. ... There will be no peace on Israel's border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel's death. Then in 1956 Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal which instigated the Suez crisis. Nasser remained solidly in the Soviet camp until the day he died in 1970, and kept the Arab world there with him. The USSR paid for the building of Aswan High Dam. More on the results of the Suez Crisis from Wikipedia: Thus, the Eisenhower administration forced a cease-fire on Britain and France which it had previously told the Allies it would not do. The U.S. demanded that the invasion stop and sponsored resolutions in the UN Security Council for a cease-fire to stop the invasion. Britain and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, vetoed the resolutions in the UN Security Council. The U.S. then appealed to the United Nations General Assembly and proposed a resolution calling for a cease-fire and a withdrawal of forces under the terms of Uniting for Peace (UfP). The General Assembly held an emergency session and passed the UfP resolution. Britain and France withdrew from Egypt within a week.[19] Part of the pressure that the United States used against Britain was financial, as President Eisenhower threatened to sell the United States reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. After Saudi Arabia started an oil embargo against Britain and France, the U.S. refused to fill the gap, until Britain and France agreed to a rapid withdrawal.[20] There was also a measure of discouragement for Britain in the rebuke by the Commonwealth Prime Ministers St. Laurent of Canada and Menzies of Australia at a time when Britain was still continuing to regard the Commonwealth as an entity of importance as the residue of the British Empire and as an automatic supporter in its effort to remain a world power. The British government and the pound thus both came under pressure. Eden was forced to resign and announced a cease fire on November 6, warning neither France nor Israel beforehand. Troops were still in Port Said when came the order from London. Without further guarantee, the Anglo-French Task Force had to finish withdrawing by December 22, 1956, to be replaced by Danish and Colombian units of the UNEF.[21] The Israelis left the Sinai in March, 1957. ... The imposed end to the crisis signalled the weakening of the United Kingdom and France as Global Powers. Nasser's standing in the Arab world was greatly improved, with his stance helping to promote pan-Arabism and reinforce hostility against Israel and the West. The crisis also arguably hastened the process of decolonization, as the remaining colonies of both Britain and France gained independence over the next several years. .... After retiring from office Eisenhower came to see the Suez Crisis as perhaps his biggest foreign policy mistake. Not only did he feel that the United States weakened two crucial European Cold War allies but he created in Nasser a man capable of dominating the Arab world.