After America - Mark Steyn [96]
If there is any single event that marked the end of Britain as an imperial power of global reach, it’s the Suez Crisis of 1956. Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and London intervened militarily, with the French and Israelis, to protect what it saw as a vital strategic interest, a critical supply line to and from the Asian and Pacific members of the Commonwealth. In the biggest single disagreement between Britain and America since the Second World War, Washington opposed the invasion. We can argue another day about what prompted Nasser to seize the canal and whether the American reading of the situation helped lead to the late twentieth-century fetid “stability” of the Middle East and, among other things, 9/11. But for now just concentrate on one single feature—what Eisenhower opted to do to the Brits once he’d decided to scuttle the Suez operation. He ordered his Treasury Secretary to prepare to sell part of the U.S. Government’s Sterling Bond holdings (that is, the World War II debt).
In London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan, reported to the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, that Britain could not survive such an action by Washington. The sell-off would prompt a run on the pound, and economic collapse, very quickly. Britain, humiliated, withdrew from Suez, and from global power.
It starts with the money. But it won’t end there. It never does.
And this was the friendliest shift of global hegemony—the one between family, from an elderly patriarch to its greatest scion, two great powers speaking the same language and with a compatible worldview. Its leaders were not just allies, but chums, wartime comrades, Sir Anthony as Churchill’s deputy and Foreign Secretary, Ike as Supreme Allied Commander in London.
But Eisenhower had the money, so he called the shots. Eden’s widow, the Countess of Avon, told me years ago that Ike came to regret his actions over Suez. Too late.
Britain accepted its diminished status with as much grace as it could muster. Like an old failing firm, its directors had identified the friendliest bidder and arranged, as best they could, for a succession in global leadership that was least disruptive to their interests and would ensure the continuity of their brand—the English language, English law, English trade, English liberties. It was such an artful transfer it’s barely noticed and little discussed.
But we’ll notice the next one.
“Next time ’round” is already under way. And one day Washington will be on the receiving end of Beijing’s Suez moment.
AFTER THE BALL
To point out how English the globalized world is, is, of course, a frightfully unEnglish thing to do. One risks sounding like the old Flanders and Swann number:
The English, the English, the English are best.
I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest.
Which is the point of the song: English braggadocio is a contradiction in terms. You need some sinister rootless colonial oik like me to do it. No true Englishman would ever descend to anything so vulgar. But there’s a difference between genial self-effacement and contempt for one’s own inheritance. In 2009, Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian and soi-disant Islamophobe, flew into London and promptly got shipped back to the Netherlands as a threat to public order.15 After the British Government had reconsidered its stupidity, he was permitted to return and give his speech at the House of Lords—and, as foreigners often do, he quoted Winston Churchill, under the touchingly naive assumption that this would endear him to the natives.16 Whereas, of course, to almost all members of Britain’s current elite, quoting Churchill approvingly only confirms that you’re an extremist lunatic. I had the honor a couple of years back of visiting President Bush in the White House and seeing the bust of Sir Winston on display in the Oval Office. When Barack Obama moved in, he ordered it removed and returned to the British.17 Its present whereabouts are unclear. But given what Churchill