How not to run international affairs - RICHARD TOYE* - Oxford Academic
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How not to run international affairs
RICHARD TOYE *
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This article explores three case-studies—the Munich crisis of 1938, the Suez
Crisis and War of 1956, and the Iraq War of 2003—as examples of ‘how not to
run international affairs’. On the face of it, all three affairs were disasters. The
outcome of Munich divided the British establishment.1 It ‘was at first thought by
many contemporary observers to be a successful or at least an acceptable solution’,
but ‘turned out to be generally regarded as a disastrous failure’.2 Suez has been
described as ‘the perfect failure’; the very word ‘Suez’ has been treated as ‘synony-
mous for disaster in the annals of the Anglo-American “special relationship”’.3
The Iraq War, for its part, has attracted the label ‘fiasco’.4 The episode represents,
on the one hand, ‘the major UK intelligence failure of the post-Cold War era’, and
on the other a political failure, given that leaders in Britain and the United States
failed to make correct use of intelligence and indeed ‘actively misused it’.5 In all
three cases, defences can and have been mounted. Yet although it is appropriate for
scholars to show appreciation of the difficult conditions in which decisions were
made, revisionism should not be taken too far. The Munich conference did not
lead to ‘peace for our time’. Anthony Eden failed to reckon with US opposition
to the Anglo-French attack on Egypt. Saddam Hussein’s regime did not possess
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Although the various protagonists consid-
ered themselves, retrospectively, to have been justified, events turned out in ways
that defied their hopes and expectations.6 Nevertheless, Chamberlain, Eden and
Blair all exercised a high degree of agency in these particular cases. They were also,
* This article is part of the International Affairs September 2022 special issue: ‘International relations: the “how not
to” guide’, guest-edited by Daniel W. Drezner and Amrita Narlikar. I am grateful to the editors of the special
issue, and to the editor of the journal, for their encouragement and guidance. Various workshop participants,
and Nazneen Barma in particular, provided invaluable criticism, as did three anonymous referees. Any errors that
remain are of course my own responsibility. The research data supporting this article are provided within it.
1
Arnold J. Toynbee, ‘After Munich: the world outlook’, International Affairs 18: 1, 1939, pp. 1–28.
2
Naomi Black, ‘Decision-making and the Munich crisis’, British Journal of International Studies 6: 3, 1980, pp.
278–303 at p. 280.
3
Robert M. Hathaway, ‘Suez, the perfect failure: a review essay’, Political Science Quarterly 109: 2, 1994, pp. 361–6
at p. 361.
4
Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: the American military adventure in Iraq (London: Allen Lane, 2006).
5
John N. L. Morrison, ‘British intelligence failures in Iraq’, Intelligence and National Security 26: 4, 2011, pp.
509–20 at p. 520.
6
Anthony Eden, Full circle (London: Cassell, 1960); David Dutton, ‘Living with collusion: Anthony Eden and
the later history of the Suez affair’, Contemporary Record 5: 2, 1991, pp. 201–16; Tony Blair, A journey (London:
Hutchinson, 2010). Chamberlain did not live long enough to write memoirs, but there is no evidence that he
experienced any regret over Munich.
International Affairs 98: 5 (2022) 1515–1532; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiac061
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. This is
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INTA98_5_FullIssue.indb 1515 24/08/2022 11.01Richard Toye
of course, constrained by external factors, including Britain’s role in the global
order and British and international public opinion.
It should be noted at the outset that defining ‘failure’ is not easy. It can be
considered in three different dimensions: (1) how poorly the specific policy goals
at issue were met; (2) how badly the pursuit of the policies in question undermined
Britain’s broader strategic objectives; and (3) how far the outcomes undermined
the reputations of the three prime ministers in question. In the short term, all
three secured their personal objectives. Chamberlain got his ‘piece of paper’; Eden
got his (militarily successful) invasion of Egypt; Blair could rejoice in the toppling
of Saddam and in the closeness of Anglo-American relations. These achievements
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quickly turned to dust, and all three men suffered severe reputational damage; but
each of them continued to believe that his actions had been justified.
There is scope in some cases for legitimate debate, for example whether Munich
and its aftermath helped educate international opinion about Germany’s aggres-
sive intentions and gave more time for rearmament, or whether a war launched at
that time could have stopped Hitler sooner.7 And time shifts perspectives. Thus,
in the wake of the 2021 Taliban victory, should the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan
be seen as a bigger mistake on Blair’s part? (Of course, as with Iraq, Blair did
not have the power to prevent an invasion; he could only influence whether the
UK participated.) Avoiding judgements about the morality of British actions over
Munich, Suez and Iraq, failure is defined here as powerfully negative outcomes
which were the product of disabling flaws in policy-makers’ assumptions. Irrespec-
tive of whether Chamberlain, Eden and Blair had righteous intentions, they all
misjudged the environment in which they were operating. These miscalculations
took place, as it were, with respect to three overlapping circles: British and inter-
national public opinion; the motivations and commitments of the UK’s chief
adversaries; and Britain’s standing in the international order.8
It might seem, then, that the Munich, Suez and Iraq episodes—all of which
are well documented—offer opportunities for policy learning. If we can see how
international affairs were mismanaged in the past, surely we can work out how to
manage them better in the future? However, in all three crises, policy-makers were
guided—or at least claimed to be guided—by historical analogies. At the time of
Munich, Neville Chamberlain had in mind the obvious parallels with 1914. But he
also cited the more positive example of Disraeli at the Congress of Berlin in 1878,
and claimed, like him, to have brought ‘peace with honour’.9 The leading politi-
cians of 1956, for whom Munich was a comparatively fresh memory, saw parallels
between Egypt’s President Nasser and both Hitler and Mussolini. (This was true
even of Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell, who opposed the Suez invasion.)10 The
7
Canadian Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King debated this issue with Churchill. See King’s diary for 21 Aug.
1941, in Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King—Library and Archives Canada, Item: 23132 (bac-lac.gc.ca).
(Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 4 March 2022.)
8
Anders Wivel and Caroline Howard Grøn, ‘Charismatic leadership in foreign policy’, International Affairs 97: 2,
2021, pp. 365–83; Juliet Kaarbo, ‘New directions for leadership personality research: breaking bad in foreign
policy’, International Affairs 97: 2, 2021, pp. 423–41.
9
Hansard (Commons), 28 Sept. 1938, col. 5; ‘It is peace for our time’, Daily Mail, 1 Oct. 1938.
10
Hansard (Commons), 2 Aug. 1956, col. 1613.
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advocates of the Iraq War argued that the experience of the 1930s taught the dangers
of appeasement—and Blair claimed to know a lot about history.11 By contrast,
Blair’s opponents urged him to ‘remember what happened to Anthony Eden’.12
It is not obvious, then, that failure in international relations in general, and in
these cases in particular, can be blamed on lack of historical awareness as such. It
may be objected that when politicians deploy history they are not really showing
‘historical awareness’ but are rather abusing the past for their own purposes. In
this analysis, decision-makers only use analogies to justify choices that they have
made for other reasons. Certainly, it is not hard to find examples of egregious
distortion. And politicians’ choice of analogies is influenced by their ideology and
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interests. But Yuen Foong Khong makes a persuasive case that use of analogies
does actually function as a genuine form of reasoning, albeit a highly problematic
one that can lead to poor outcomes.13 Reasoning through analogy can be seen as
a form of ‘fast thinking’, a type of mental shortcut (or heuristic) that allows rapid
processing but comes at the cost of systematic cognitive bias.14
If this is correct, two propositions suggest themselves. First, we should not be
excessively cynical about politicians’ motivations when they ‘reason through history’,
even if we should expect the process to lead to sub-optimal results. Second, though,
we might be relatively pessimistic about the prospect of reforming the conduct of
international affairs in a rational way so as to avoid the errors of the past. If the
issue were simply that politicians make mistakes because they are poorly informed
about history, we could either give the existing politicians better information or
choose new politicians who are better informed. If, however, even well-informed
and intelligent politicians and officials make catastrophic errors on account of deep
cognitive biases—as was the case, for example, with respect to American decision-
making over Vietnam—then the problem is significantly larger.15
This article on ‘how not to run international affairs’, then, is not written in the
naive expectation that those in positions of power will internalize its lessons and
mend their ways. Rather, it acknowledges that prime ministers—in the context of
a shift in policy-making from the Foreign Office to Downing Street in the modern
era—will often be tempted to disregard advice and act recklessly. They may do
so because of a sense of personal mission, out of political survival instincts or out
of a simple desire to ‘get things done’. In so acting, they may breach established
diplomatic practice, which can appear to them as an obstacle to action. In a book
published in the 1970s, William Wallace wrote:
The two major occasions within living memory when the formal structure was deliber-
ately by-passed became the two most widely regretted actions in British foreign policy:
the period of appeasement of Germany leading up to and including the Munich crisis, and
11
Blair, A journey, p. 224.
12
Robin Cook, The point of departure (London: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 203; Peter J. Beck, ‘“The less said
about Suez the better”: British governments and the politics of Suez’s history, 1956–67’, English Historical
Review 124: 508, 2009, pp. 605–40.
13
Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at war: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam decisions of 1965 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992).
14
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011).
15
Khong, Analogies at war, p. 13.
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the Suez intervention. Part of the remembered shame of Munich and Suez, among politi-
cians and commentators as well as among officials, is specifically attached to the clandestine
way in which the Foreign Office and foreign missions were ignored—and in the Suez
case actively misled—in preference for informal advisers and extraordinary channels of
communication with other governments.16
Iraq, too, fell into this pattern: in studied language, the 2004 Butler Report
noted that ‘the informality and circumscribed character of the Government’s
procedures which we saw in the context of policy-making towards Iraq risks
reducing the scope for informed collective political judgement’.17 The question,
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then, is how to create robust institutional restraints without creating policy paral-
ysis. Specific reforms—of the kind that were in fact passed in the wake of the
Iraq affair—may be helpful. But the more elusive issue is how to create a culture
in which poor decision-making by the principals can be effectively challenged by
officials and political colleagues.
Munich, Suez and Iraq were all crises that involved multiple states and actors;
and various other states chose, in significant ways, not to act. This article looks
at the events through the lens of British policy-makers’ decisions, but it must be
recognized that there were important constraints on their choices. These increased
across the entire period. In 1938, Britain sat at the head of a powerful empire.
The need to defend that empire placed some limits on the country’s ability to
act in Europe, but these should not be overstated.18 The UK, moreover, had an
impressive technological, scientific and military capacity.19 By 2003, Britain was a
mid-ranking power with delusions of grandeur, albeit still with a permanent seat
on the UN Security Council. It may be that no set of decisions by British policy-
makers, however wise, could have arrested this (relative) decline. However, they
were not powerless to influence the course of events. In all three of our cases, the
principals demonstrated a high degree of agency. Chamberlain, Eden and Blair
all kept tight control of the decision-making process and all were guilty of high-
handedness or active deceit. Each man thought himself indispensable and took
actions to make himself appear that way. Even if all of them lacked the power they
required to reach their desired ends, all three took decisions which had a major
impact on what happened, and which in certain ways can be seen as surprising.
These decisions sometimes had a desperate quality, reflecting the losing gambler’s
tendency to double down rather than to cut losses by quitting. Sometimes such
gambles can pay off, as when Margaret Thatcher took the risky decision to deploy
a task force to the Falklands after the Argentinian invasion of 1982.
16
William Wallace, The foreign policy process in Britain (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1976), pp.
21–2.
17
Review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (London: The Stationery Office, 2004), p. 160.
18
G. C. Peden, ‘The burden of imperial defence and the continental commitment reconsidered’, Historical Jour-
nal 27: 2, 1984, pp. 405–23; Douglas E. Delaney, ‘The tattered ties that bind: the Imperial General Staff and
the dominions, 1919–1939’, in T. G. Otte, ed., British world policy and the projection of global power, c.1830–1960
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 226–44.
19
David Edgerton, Britain’s war machine: weapons, resources and experts in the Second World War (London: Allen Lane,
2011).
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But although the gambling metaphor has some utility, Daniel Kahneman has
reminded us that ‘the actions of a national leader caught in a contest of will’
deserve to be assessed on a different basis from those of a player in a game of
chance of defined probabilities. In the latter case, there is a simple set of choices,
and some courses of action can be defined as ‘rational’. In the former case, ‘choices
depend on guesses about a complex situation’. Indeed, experts may be unable to
agree on the ‘right’ choices even after decades of study. Moreover:
Many choices are made sequentially, rather than in isolation; important choices often
represent a commitment to a prolonged game of skill rather than to a one-shot roll of
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the dice; significant decisions are made in a social and emotional context, rather than in
experimental anonymity.20
Furthermore, the gambler has a single objective: to maximize his or her own
utility. Politicians have multiple objectives—and the interests of a country and
those of the politicians leading it are rarely perfectly aligned.
‘In the late thirties,’ wrote Maurice Cowling, ‘foreign policy was the form
that party conflict took.’21 This was a provocative exaggeration, but Cowling
made an important point. It would be naive to ignore domestic political consid-
erations and the competition for office as factors in the making of foreign policy.
It is possible to believe both that (many) politicians are sincerely concerned for
the national welfare, and that individual and party interests may subconsciously
influence them in their decisions. It is not cynical to suggest that (many) politi-
cians will prefer a sub-optimal outcome that sees them retain power to a better
outcome that sees them losing it. They may prefer short-term political wins to
long-term strategic ones. We must also remember that a long ‘failed’ war may be
more advantageous to some interest groups, such as the defence industry, than a
lasting peace. We should further recall that diplomacy—not only but especially in
democracies—has a strong performative element. Chamberlain, Eden and Blair all
needed, or felt they needed, to be seen to behave in particular ways, for the benefit
of their respective publics. This put important constraints on their actions, and
at the same time drove their behaviour in novel or unexpected directions. Each
made major errors, but each of them, in a different way, was an innovator. They
laboured, of course, under the legacies of history, but none of them can be accused
of simply repeating the mistakes of the past.
Munich
‘“Munich” has established a permanent place in the vocabulary of modern diplo-
macy,’ noted the eminent diplomatic historian Zara Steiner. ‘It has added a new
and pejorative dimension to definitions of the word “appeasement” now found
20
Daniel Kahneman, ‘Commentary: judgment and decision making: a personal view’, Psychological Science 2: 3,
1991, pp. 142–5 at p. 145.
21
Maurice Cowling, The impact of Hitler: British politics and British policy 1933–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1975), p. 5.
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in almost every modern Anglo-American dictionary.’22 In 1938, ‘appeasement’
was not a word of abuse. (Indeed, as late as 1950, even Churchill spoke positively
of ‘appeasement from strength’.23) What was intended, when the term was used
positively, was the ‘appeasement of Europe’—a process to which all countries
were expected to contribute—rather than the appeasement of a particular country
or dictator.24 The belief that rational adjustments of the post-1918 settlement were
both desirable and possible was fundamental to British policy-making at Munich.
A. J. P. Taylor later wrote, with some irony, that the Munich agreement ‘was a
triumph for all that was best and most enlightened in British life; a triumph for
those who had preached equal justice between peoples; a triumph for those who
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had courageously denounced the harshness and short-sightedness of Versailles’.25
Part of the irony lay in the fact that those who preached the enlightened values—
for example, the many adherents of the League of Nations Union (LNU)—could
in fact feel no enthusiasm for the Munich settlement.26 From the point at which
Chamberlain became prime minister in May 1937, there was, Helen McCarthy
has written, a ‘rapidly opening gulf between the collective League system and the
British government’s preferred course of action’. The LNU’s frustration grew.27
Though he paid lip service to League principles, Chamberlain was motivated more
by great power concerns than by idealism. Soon after he entered No. 10 he accepted
an invitation to become an honorary president of the LNU, and in the same breath
decried the tendency of the LNU rank and file to attack his government.28
So it is wrong to see Chamberlain as a naive idealist who approached diplomacy
like a curate entering a pub for the first time.29 It is equally wrong to see him as
weak: in fact, he was arrogant, controlling and quite able to stand up for himself
during his interactions with Hitler. At the same time, he was sensitive to public
opinion, and adept at manipulating the press.30 He believed himself to be in touch,
in particular, with the views of women voters.31 The public was not, for the most
part, pacifist, but there was an understandable fear of war, which was seen as a
threat to civilization itself.32 Chamberlain’s own horror of war was genuine, and
he was concerned about the impact of rearmament on the British economy, but
he did not favour peace at any price.33 He took a dismissive attitude towards the
22
Zara Steiner, The triumph of the dark: European international history, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), pp. 645–6.
23
Hansard (Commons), 14 Dec. 1950, col. 1367.
24
Phrases such as the ‘appeasement of Germany’ or the ‘appeasement of Hitler’ were not much in use before
1939; after that point the ‘appeasement of Europe’ fell out of fashion.
25
A. J. P. Taylor, The origins of the Second World War (New York: Atheneum, 1962), p. 189.
26
See the comments of Alec Wilson, chief speaker of the LNU, quoted in ‘Munich peace criticised’, Cheltenham
Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1938.
27
Helen McCarthy, The British people and the League of Nations: democracy, citizenship and internationalism, c.1918–45
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), p. 219.
28
‘Prime minister and peace’, The Times, 7 July 1937.
29
The comparison comes from Harold Nicolson, Why Britain is at war (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1939), p. 106.
30
Richard Cockett, Twilight of truth: Chamberlain, appeasement and the manipulation of the press (London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1989).
31
Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘Guilty women,’ foreign policy, and appeasement in inter-war Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015), pp. 198–9.
32
Richard Overy, The twilight years: the paradox of Britain between the wars (New York: Viking, 2009).
33
G. C. Peden, British rearmament and the Treasury, 1932–1939 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979); Neville
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peoples of eastern Europe, and was sceptical about the possibility of collaborating
with the Soviet Union.34 He was, furthermore, a British exceptionalist, who
believed that his country had a special mission to shape the international order.35
Paul W. Schroeder has argued, in view of Britain’s tradition of seeking a balance
of power in Europe, that the outcome at Munich was ‘massively overdetermined;
any other policy in 1938 would have been an astounding, almost inexplicable
divergence from the norm’.36 But although it is true that Chamberlain was acting
in a way consistent with earlier British strategy, his tactics were very novel. The
Munich conference itself probably would not have happened under another prime
minister, and its specific results could not have been brought about via any other
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method. His personal sense of mission or destiny was crucial.
True, there were some similarities between Chamberlain’s technique and the
post-1918 conference diplomacy of Lloyd George (whom, ironically, he despised).37
But there was a sharp contrast with the approach of Chamberlain’s more recent
predecessors, and in particular his immediate precursor, Stanley Baldwin.38
Baldwin was strongly inclined to delegate in foreign affairs, and though he showed
an interest in meeting Hitler, notably in the wake of the German reoccupation of
the Rhineland in March 1936, he accepted advice that it would be better not to
do so.39 Although Baldwin supported Chamberlain over Munich, he would never
have launched ‘Plan Z’—the decision to travel by air to negotiate with Hitler
personally. Chamberlain was driven towards a proactive approach, not only by his
character, but by the cumulative pressure caused by successive Nazi actions. The
impact of the Anschluss of March 1938, which was quickly followed by signs of
brewing German aggression against the Czechs, made clear that the response to the
next crisis could not be merely passive. Chamberlain and the public were at one in
that; however much they loathed the prospect of war, they could not contemplate
(to quote Lloyd George during the Agadir crisis) seeing Britain treated ‘as if she
were of no account in the Cabinet of Nations’.40
As the crisis burgeoned in the autumn, then, Chamberlain was eager to estab-
lish his own and his country’s relevance. He was also committed to a form of
international order based on great power cooperation. If Britain’s vital interests (as
he conceived of them) were not affected, he could put up with any adjustment of
European borders, including the incorporation of the Sudeten Germans within the
Reich, as long as it appeared that Britain had been consulted. Robert Crowcroft
Chamberlain, The struggle for peace (London: Hutchinson, 1939), p. 6.
34
Robert Self, ed., The Neville Chamberlain diary letters: the Downing Street years, 1934–40, vol. 4 (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2005), p. 373.
35
Erik Goldstein, ‘Neville Chamberlain, the British official mind and the Munich crisis’, Diplomacy and Statecraft
10: 2–3, 1999, pp. 276–92. This was also true of Eden and Blair. The exceptionalist tradition continues today;
see the speech of Foreign Secretary Liz Truss at Chatham House on 8 Dec. 2021: https://www.gov.uk/
government/speeches/foreign-secretary-liz-truss-building-the-network-of-liberty.
36
Paul W. Schroeder, ‘Munich and the British tradition’, Historical Journal 19: 1, 1976, pp. 223–43 at p. 242.
37
Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘Lloyd George’s premiership: a study in “prime ministerial government”’, Historical
Journal 13: 1, 1970, pp. 130–57.
38
David Reynolds, Summits: six meetings that shaped the twentieth century (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. 31.
39
Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative leadership and national values (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1999), ch. 10.
40
‘The European situation’, The Times, 22 July 1911.
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rightly notes that Chamberlain was mainly ‘concerned with how changes were
made’.41 But Chamberlain did have a bottom line. If his requirements over process
were not met—and if Germany thus revealed itself as a nation that meant to
dominate—he was in the final analysis prepared to go to war. He may have favoured
peace at a very high price, but not at any price. His repeated flights to Germany
risked making him look like a supplicant. But they also established, to his domestic
and global audiences, his unwillingness to leave any stone unturned.42
The crisis was not only a series of negotiations among elites but was shaped by
the impact of (or beliefs about) popular attitudes.43 Thus, although they were part
of a sincere pursuit of peace, Chamberlain’s efforts were also intended to prepare
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the public psychologically for the fact that the effort might well fail. Goebbels
wrote in his diary, after the surprise announcement of Chamberlain’s first meeting
with Hitler: ‘The cunning English are laying the groundwork. Getting themselves
a moral alibi. And thus step by step pushing war-guilt onto us if war were to come.
This is not comfortable.’44 As Chamberlain told the cabinet on 25 September, after
his return from his second visit to Germany:
It was clear that a position had arisen in which we might before long be involved in war.
If that happened, it was essential that we should enter war united, both as a country and
as an Empire. It was of the utmost importance, therefore, that whatever steps we took, we
should try to bring the whole country and Empire along with us, and should allow public
opinion to realise that all possible steps had been taken to avoid a conflict.45
This was, to a degree, a reasonable strategy, but Chamberlain pursued it to the
point of self-defeat. By attempting to avoid moral responsibility for the outbreak
of war, he ended up sacrificing Britain’s moral authority in another direction,
by abandoning the Czechs and obliging them to surrender the Sudetenland to
Germany. ‘After reading your letter I feel certain that you can get all essentials
without war and without delay,’ Chamberlain advised Hitler in a personal message
on 28 September.46 This was what led to his final, dramatic flight to Munich. He
could not credit that Hitler would risk a civilization-ending world war for the
sake of a few days’ delay in making a settlement. What he failed to appreciate was
that war, for Hitler, was in itself a desirable outcome.
But through his substantive concessions, Chamberlain was able to extract
Hitler’s compliance on process. The British and the French actually succeeded
in deterring Hitler from launching the (localized) war he had been planning for
months and thereby trapped him, if only briefly, into acknowledging the legiti-
41
Robert Crowcroft, The end is nigh: British politics, power, and the road to the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2019), p. 117.
42
On the targeting of US opinion, see Nicholas John Cull, Selling war: the British propaganda campaign against
American ‘neutrality’ in World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 21.
43
Julie V. Gottlieb, Daniel Hucker and Richard Toye, eds, The Munich crisis, politics and the people: international,
transnational and comparative perspectives (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021).
44
Ralf Georg Reuth, ed., Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher 1924–1945, vol. 3: 1935–1939 (Munich: Pier, 1992), p. 1268.
45
Cabinet Minutes, 43 (38), 25 Sept. 1938, CAB 23/95, The National Archives (TNA), Kew.
46
E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler, eds, Documents on British foreign policy 1919–1939, 3rd ser., vol. 2, 1938
(London: HMSO, 1949), p. 587.
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macy of the actions of a four-power conference.47 (Nazi journalists were told to
avoid the very term ‘conference’.48) The Führer could not tolerate being forced
to treat other nations with even notional respect. This is why he was so angry
with the outcome of Munich, in spite of having been given, in practical terms,
everything he wanted.49 Although there is some reason to think that Chamber-
lain sincerely believed that Hitler would stick to his bargain, there is counter-
vailing evidence that he realized he might not. Chamberlain nonetheless thought
he had secured a win–win result. He was gambling, but he thought he had placed
a two-way bet. Either Hitler would keep his word, or, by breaking it, he would
expose himself to the condemnation of international opinion.
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This explains the notorious ‘piece of paper’, which Chamberlain brandished
at Heston aerodrome upon his return. It stated that Britain and Germany would
settle all future disputes by peaceful means. According to Chamberlain’s parlia-
mentary private secretary,
He intended from the first, if Hitler should put his name to it, to give it the maximum
publicity on his return to England. He argued that if Hitler signed it and kept the bargain
well and good; alternatively that if he broke it, he would demonstrate to all the world that
he was totally cynical and untrustworthy, and that this would have its value in mobilizing
public opinion against him, particularly in America.50
What Chamberlain failed to appreciate was that, when Hitler broke his pledges,
he would be discrediting not only himself but those—including Chamberlain—
who had trusted him. Further, he seems not to have realized that the Munich
agreement would be read by many as a cynical betrayal of the Czechs, and also
by the Soviets as an attempt to isolate them.51 The greater miscalculation was
Hitler’s, as the Munich experience helped persuade him, a year later, that Britain
and France would not fight over Poland. But Chamberlain’s attempted pursuit of
moral leadership ultimately compromised his credibility, and that of his country;
not because he was ‘weak’, but because of his dogmatic expectation that others
would recognize his behaviour as reasonable and righteous.
Suez
Eden, in his own account, was trying to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s when he
launched his showdown with Nasser.52 In fact, he was hypersensitive about his own
record during that decade.53 He had served as foreign secretary from 1935 to 1938,
and though he resigned after falling out with Chamberlain over the latter’s pursuit
47
Richard Overy, ‘Germany and the Munich crisis: a mutilated victory?’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 10: 2–3, 1999,
pp. 191–215.
48
Ernest K. Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist propaganda (London: Cresset, 1965), p. 175.
49
Max Domarus, ed., Hitler Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945 (Leonberg: Pamminger & Partner, 1973), p. 944.
50
Lord Home, The way the wind blows (London: Collins, 1976), p. 66.
51
Gabriel Gorodetsky, ‘“What, no chair for me?” Russia’s conspicuous absence from the Munich conference’,
in Gottlieb et al., eds, The Munich crisis, pp. 90–111.
52
Eden, Full circle, pp. 431–2, 458, 465.
53
Peter Beck, ‘Politicians versus historians: Lord Avon’s “appeasement battle” against “lamentably, appease-
ment-minded” historians’, Twentieth Century British History 9: 3, 1998, pp. 396–419.
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of a rapprochement with Italy, he subsequently failed to offer a major challenge to
the policy of appeasement. Arguably, what he was most worried about in the
run-up to Suez was being accused of weakness himself. As foreign secretary once
more under Churchill after 1951, Eden was responsible for trying to negotiate a
replacement for the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, which was due to expire. The
best he could manage was an agreement that British troops would withdraw from
the Suez Canal base in 1956, with the right to return in time of war. Throughout
he faced sniping from the right-wing Suez Group of Tory MPs—and even from
Churchill, who actively sought to undermine the talks, ‘speaking of “appease-
ment” and saying he never knew before that Munich was situated on the Nile’.54
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Eden succeeded Churchill as prime minister in 1955 but operated very much in
his shadow. After the Conservative Party increased its majority at the general
election that followed Eden’s move to Downing Street, the Suez Group became
emboldened.55 In July 1956, after a period of worsening relations with Britain
and America, and just weeks after British troops had been withdrawn from the
Canal Zone, Nasser dramatically announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal
Company. Eden’s instinct was to act boldly. At the same time, he knew that if he
did not, his credibility with his own party would be at risk.
Simultaneously, though, Eden faced other problems. First, an invasion would
take time to prepare. Britain’s amphibious forces had suffered decline, which
ruled out a quick military strike.56 Second, such action would bring accusations
of ‘imperialism’ and ‘colonialism’. These would come, most predictably, from the
Soviet Union (which presented itself as the champion of the Third World); but
they would also have strong resonance in the United States and elsewhere. Third,
it was not clear that Nasser had acted illegally. Thus, the day after the nationaliza-
tion announcement, the cabinet staked out its rhetorical position:
Our case must be presented on wider international grounds. Our argument must be that
the Canal was an important international asset and facility, and that Egypt could not
be allowed to exploit it for a purely internal purpose ... It was not a piece of Egyptian
property but an international asset of the highest importance and it should be managed as
an international trust.57
In the Commons, Eden avoided talk of empire or ‘British interests’, but instead
described the canal as ‘this great international waterway’, and spoke of the ‘inter-
ests of international shipping’.58 This approach was calculated to appeal to public
opinion, which simultaneously disapproved of Nasser’s behaviour and favoured an
internationalist, UN-based solution to the crisis.59 It appealed to moderate Labour
figures, thus helping to split the opposition. And it also targeted US opinion.
54
Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: diaries, 1951–56 (New York: Norton, 1987), p. 75.
55
Benjamin Martill, ‘Over the threshold: the politics of foreign policy in majoritarian parliamentary systems—
the case of Britain’, International Politics, vol. 55, 2018, pp. 631–54.
56
Ian Speller, The role of amphibious warfare in British defence policy 1945–56 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001),
ch. 7.
57
Cabinet Minutes, CM (56), 54th conclusions, 27 July 1956, CAB 128/30, TNA.
58
Hansard (Commons), 30 July 1956, cols 918–21; 2 Aug. 1956, cols 1602–9.
59
See the polls published in the News Chronicle on 10 Aug. and 11 Sept. 1956 (found in PREM 11/1123, TNA);
also Anthony Adamthwaite, ‘Suez revisited’, International Affairs 64: 3, 1988, pp. 449–64 at pp. 455–7.
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John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s secretary of state, hoped that the situa-
tion could be solved by ‘moral force’ rather than military force.60 In August, an
international conference was held in London to discuss the future of the canal. Its
proposals were presented to Nasser, but he rejected them. The British were talking
the language of internationalism, but only in order to prepare the way for sending
troops. As Dulles rightly noted, the ‘essential difference’ between the British and
American positions ‘was that, while the United States considered that all possible
efforts should be made to reach a satisfactory solution by collective consultation,
the United Kingdom regarded such efforts as a matter of form’.61
Jonathan Pearson, in his book on Suez, has challenged the notion that Eden was
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committed from the start of the crisis to invade Egypt come what may.62 Eden, no
doubt, would have been happy to avoid military intervention if he could achieve
some other result that would recover Britain’s lost prestige. In effect, this required
a solution to be imposed upon Egypt of a kind that Nasser would find humili-
ating—or that would perhaps even lead to his downfall. As discussions dragged on
into the autumn, there seemed no prospect of this occurring. One hope expired
when Dulles confirmed that the Americans did not intend to back up the proposed
Suez Canal Users’ Association with force.63 Throughout, Eden was obliged to play
a double game. Edward Heath, the government chief whip, recalled:
While negotiations were going on, my task was to reassure the right of the party that it
was necessary to continue with diplomatic action, but that a military solution was not
excluded. At the same time, I had to reassure the left that the diplomatic effort was genuine
and not just a holding operation while the military got ready.64
Eden was keen to stoke up support at home for military action, but wanted to
avoid accusations of warmongering. In private he encouraged the press to take a
hawkish attitude while in public he maintained his pose of negotiation.65 This,
however, raised the stakes for Eden personally. If he sowed the demand for a blow
against Nasser, he would reap the whirlwind if he failed to deliver. He was in
search of the seemingly impossible—a strike against Egypt that could be presented
as a principled, internationalist move rather than as a piece of atavistic imperialism.
The French were less concerned than the British about appearing to act ‘imperi-
alistically’, but were prepared to play along with Britain’s internationalist rheto-
ric.66 It was they who provided the (apparent) solution. In mid-October, Eden
was visited by two French representatives, Maurice Challe and Albert Gazier. The
plan, as outlined by Challe,
60
‘Dulles predicts “moral force” will solve Suez Canal crisis without use of troops’, News and Courier (Charles-
ton, SC), 4 Aug. 1956.
61
Record of a meeting held in the foreign secretary’s room, Foreign Office, 1 Aug. 1956, FO 371/119090, TNA.
62
Jonathan Pearson, Sir Anthony Eden and the Suez crisis: reluctant gamble (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003).
63
Keith Kyle, Suez: Britain’s end of empire in the Middle East (London: Tauris, 2011), p. 246.
64
Edward Heath, The course of my life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1998), pp. 167–8.
65
Tony Shaw, Eden, Suez and the mass media: propaganda and persuasion during the Suez crisis (London: Tauris, 1996),
pp. 24–30.
66
Martin Thomas, Fight or flight? Britain, France, and their roads from empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014), pp. 164–89; Martin Thomas and Richard Toye, Arguing about empire: imperial rhetoric in Britain and France
1882–1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 221.
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was that Israel should be invited to attack Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula and that France
and Britain, having given the Israeli forces enough time to seize all or most of Sinai, should
then order ‘both sides’ to withdraw their forces from the Suez Canal, in order to permit
an Anglo-French force to intervene and occupy the Canal on the pretext of saving it from
damage by fighting.67
This was Eden’s gamble—reluctant or otherwise.68 He bet that the UK’s inter-
national reputation stood so high that even a transparent pretext could carry him
through in the court of world opinion.
This scheme was put into effect at the end of the month. It had serious flaws. To
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begin with, it was very easy to see through (although some people were fooled).
Second, in order to maintain the façade of ‘separating the combatants’, the British
and French issued an ultimatum to both sides, and launched their own invasion
only once it had expired. The delay gave Nasser a much-needed breathing space
and allowed time for international opinion to mobilize against Britain and France.
From the start of the crisis it seemed clear that, in spite of their anti-colonial
rhetoric, the Soviets were keen to lower the temperature.69 According to one
back-channel source, ‘In the event of hostilities between the West and Nasser,
Russia would not be found on “that black man’s” side.’70 The Soviets—who were
now engaged in suppressing the uprising in Hungary—made some empty threats
after the invasion started, but in effect left the British and French a free hand.71
However, it is likely that Eisenhower’s fear of ‘the possibility of Russian interven-
tion on the side of Egypt’ had an impact on his approach.72 For Eden had seriously
misread the attitude of the Americans.
The invasion was launched almost on the eve of the US presidential election.
Eisenhower was running for a second term, claiming a record as a man of peace.
From the beginning, the Americans had made clear their opposition to the use of
force, even though they deplored Nasser’s action. Dulles might have been happy
for Britain and France to go it alone, but did not feel able to condone the action,
even tacitly, once it had begun. Furthermore, he was hospitalized just as the
Anglo-French attack was starting.73 Eisenhower’s outrage was palpable. Speaking
of Britain, he said ‘he did not see much value in an unworthy and unreliable ally’.74
The United States joined the condemnation in the UN, blocked Britain’s access to
emergency oil supplies and prevented the UK from gaining access to IMF funds.75
67
Anthony Nutting, No end of a lesson: the story of Suez (New York: Potter, 1967), p. 93.
68
Pearson, Sir Anthony Eden and the Suez crisis: reluctant gamble.
69
Telegrams nos 1051 and 1053 from Moscow to Foreign Office, 1 and 2 Aug. 1956, FO 371/119082, TNA.
70
G. P. Young, ‘Soviet Union and the Canal’, 31 July 1956, FO 371/119082, TNA.
71
Khrushchev gave a misleading account in his memoirs in which Soviet (rather than US) pressure caused the
Suez operation to be halted: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev remembers (London: Sphere, 1971), pp. 394–400.
See also Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev: an inside account of the man and his era (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1990), p. 56; William Taubman, Khrushchev: the man and his era (New York: Norton, 2003), pp. 359–60.
72
Foreign relations of the United States, 1955–1957: Suez crisis, July 26–December 31, 1956, vol. 16 (Washington DC:
Government Printing Office, 1990), doc. 419.
73
Irwin F. Gellman, The president and the apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952–1961 (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2015), p. 464; Selwyn Lloyd, Suez 1956: a personal account (London: Cape, 1978), p. 219.
74
Foreign relations of the United States, 1955–1957, vol. 16, doc. 419.
75
William Stivers, ‘Eisenhower and the Middle East’, in Richard A. Melanson and David Allan Mayers, eds,
Reevaluating Eisenhower: American foreign policy in the 1950s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp.
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Unable to withstand the pressure, Eden declared a ceasefire on 6 November. The
invasion had been a military success; the decision to halt it was political.
Barnaby Crowcroft has argued that British thinking was less flawed than is
often assumed. It was realistic to think that Nasser’s regime could be replaced,
and that military action could work. Thus, ‘the planning reflected some aware-
ness of the changed world in which British officials found themselves’.76 Ironi-
cally, Eden’s rhetoric also reflected an awareness that nineteenth-century-style
gunboat diplomacy was likely to cause outrage in the dawning era of decoloniza-
tion. Hence his insistence on cloaking the invasion in the language of international
order rather than British interests, and his continued claim that he was ‘a United
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Nations man’.77 What if Eden had decided to throw off this disguise and pursue
an even more naked form of imperial atavism? It seems doubtful it would have
worked, but discarding the cloak of hypocrisy could hardly have made the opera-
tion less successful than it was. The prime minister’s insistence on the pretence of
virtue was strangely revealing of his psyche. On the one hand, he found damage to
Britain’s prestige intolerable; on the other, he could not openly avow the methods
which he thought were necessary to arrest it.
Iraq
Although careful to deny that Suez was a colonialist venture, Eden never disguised
the fact that Britain’s interest in the canal lay in its importance to Europe’s oil
supply.78 By 2003, no politician could admit any such motivation for an interven-
tion in the Middle East, in spite of the obvious implications that unrest in the
region always has for energy security. The slogan ‘no blood for oil’ had become
popular in the run-up to the Gulf War of 1991. The unresolved aftermath of that
conflict, which left Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq, was inevitably going to
be a preoccupation for British policy-makers, but not necessarily a dominating
one. In February 2001 the secretary of state for defence, Geoff Hoon, stated in
the Commons that the policy of containment had been successful: ‘Without our
efforts, Saddam would have been free to maintain and develop his weapons of mass
destruction and conventional military capability, and free to bully and threaten his
neighbours with impunity, as he did in the past.’79 However, the British were also
aware that the incoming US administration of George W. Bush would be inclined
‘to seek ways to unseat Saddam rather than to accommodate him’.80
During his visit to the United States in February 2001, Blair told the Ameri-
cans that although the sanctions regime was imperfect, it had imposed restraint
192–219 at p. 197.
76
Barnaby Crowcroft, ‘Egypt’s other nationalists and the Suez crisis of 1956’, Historical Journal 59: 1, 2016, pp.
253–85 at p. 266.
77
Anthony Eden, ‘The government’s policy in the Middle East’, Listener, 8 Nov. 1956.
78
‘Full text of speech’, Daily Telegraph, 9 Aug. 1956.
79
Hansard (Commons), 26 Feb. 2001, col. 600.
80
John Sawers to Sherard Cowper-Coles, 27 Nov. 2000, quoted in The report of the Iraq inquiry, vol. 1 (London:
House of Commons, 2016), p. 203.
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on Saddam.81 But he would soon change his position dramatically, taking the
view that Iraq posed a unique and present danger. His change of heart cannot be
plausibly ascribed to a change in the intelligence assessments of Saddam’s regime.
Although he seems to have persuaded himself that the intelligence suggested a real
threat, the real reasons for his decision to talk up the menace lay elsewhere.82 The
terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed the international landscape. According to Blair,
What changed for me with September 11th was that I thought then you have to change
your mindset ... you have to go out and get after the different aspects of this threat ... you
have to deal with this because otherwise the threat will grow ... you have to take a stand,
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you have to say ‘Right we are not going to allow the development of WMD in breach of
the will of the international community to continue.’83
By the end of 2001 the US government had decided to pursue regime change
in Iraq. Blair was determined to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the Americans,
in line with his enthusiasm for the ‘special relationship’, and also because of his
changed assessment of risk.84 He did, nevertheless, have some differences with
the Bush administration. As Christoph Bluth has argued, he feared the emergence
of a post-9/11 ‘international order in which the US, increasingly divorced from
the rest of the world, unilaterally pursued its own agenda’, disdaining the UN
and the idea of international community. ‘By contrast, the international order
that Blair envisaged for the twenty-first century was one that would rest on the
foundation of international norms and principles, on the United Nations as the
locus of legitimacy and international security, and on a united western world
that would propagate these principles, with more and more states joining and
working towards the gradual elimination of totalitarianism, terrorism and global
poverty.’85 Thus, while the idea of Blair as Bush’s puppet was unfair, the prime
minister greatly overestimated his ability to channel the impulses of the Ameri-
cans in the direction he favoured.
Blair despised the brutality of Saddam’s regime, and—as already evident in
respect of Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Afghanistan—had a predilection for interven-
tion in the name of humanitarianism and morality. These, for him, were impor-
tant positive precedents. He may have reached easily for the Munich analogy, but
arguably he was more influenced by his own track record of apparently successful
military ventures than he was by folk memories of the 1930s. As Oliver Daddow
has noted, ‘as his time in office progressed and he successfully deployed military
force to achieve his strategic objectives Blair became more ready to consider it
as an early policy option rather than a last resort’.86 As Blair outlined in his 1999
‘doctrine of international community’ speech, ‘war is an imperfect instrument
81
The report of the Iraq inquiry, vol. 1, p. 231.
82
Judith Betts and Mark Phythian, The Iraq War and democratic governance: Britain and Australia go to war (Cham:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 205.
83
Review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, p. 63.
84
Peter Riddell, Hug them close: Blair, Clinton, Bush and the ‘special relationship’ (London: Politico’s, 2003).
85
Christoph Bluth, ‘The British road to war: Blair, Bush and the decision to invade Iraq’, International Affairs 80:
5, 2004, pp. 871–92 at p. 875.
86
Oliver Daddow, ‘Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and the Eurosceptic tradition in Britain’, British Journal of
Politics and International Relations 15: 2, 2013, pp. 210–27 at p. 222.
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for righting humanitarian distress, but armed force is sometimes the only means
of dealing with dictators’.87 It is important to note that Blair did not accept the
claim, often made on the American side, that there was a link between Saddam and
Al-Qaeda. The British were also more cautious than the Americans about making
regime change an explicit goal—knowing that this would be a breach of interna-
tional law—although Blair favoured it in private.88 A focus on WMD seemed to
square the circle. If Saddam, in line with past behaviour, refused to disarm, this
could provide a justification for invading Iraq. The regime change that would
follow would—notionally—be a mere by-product of his failure to comply with
the demands of the international community.
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There is controversy over the question of when, exactly, Blair committed
himself unequivocally to supporting the Americans’ objectives. One crucial
document is his note to Bush of 28 July 2002. The first sentence read: ‘I will be
with you, whatever.’89 Blair maintains that this was intended simply as reassur-
ance to Bush that the British insistence on acting via the UN did not mean a lack
of commitment to their joint goal of dealing with Saddam.90 It is quite true that
the overall content of the note was a blunt assessment of the difficulties involved
in military action and the need to build a broad international coalition in support.
However, it concluded: ‘A strike date could be Jan/Feb next year. But the crucial
issue is not when, but how.’91 Indeed, Secretary of State Colin Powell had earlier
advised Bush, prior to the president’s April meeting with Blair at his Texas ranch:
‘On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary.’92 It is
possible that Blair did not think at this point that he had pledged himself irretriev-
ably. But by mid-2002 the Americans believed, with good reason, that he would
support an invasion if it came to the crunch.
At this stage, Blair’s strategy was to tie Bush into the UN route, and to overcome
the scepticism of administration hawks such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick
Cheney. He wished to do so partly because he believed that a multilateral solution
would lead to a better outcome in Iraq. But he also had important concerns about
UK public opinion and about opposition within the parliamentary Labour Party.
His approach was surprisingly successful, at least up until the passage in November
2002 of Security Council Resolution 1441, which mandated the return of weapons
inspectors to Iraq. Blair’s impact on events was clear. However, he only persuaded
the Americans to go to the UN by committing himself to military action should
this method fail. From the outside, it now seemed possible to imagine that Blair
was both helping to tackle Saddam and restraining the Americans by getting them
87
Tony Blair, ‘The Blair Doctrine’, speech of 22 April 1999, https://archive.globalpolicy.org/empire/
humanint/1999/0422blair.htm.
88
The report of the Iraq inquiry, vol. 3, p. 449.
89
The report of the Iraq inquiry, vol. 6, p. 243; Tony Blair to George W. Bush, 28 July 2002, https://webarchive.
nationalarchives.gov.uk/20171123122728/http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/243761/2002-07-28-note-
blair-to-bush-note-on-iraq.pdf.
90
Interview with Blair by David Dimbleby for the podcast ‘The fault line: Bush, Blair and Iraq’, episode 6, 3
Nov. 2020, The Fault Line (chtbl.com).
91
Blair to Bush, 28 July 2002.
92
Powell to Bush, 28 March 2002, Virtual Reading Room Documents (state.gov); The report of the Iraq inquiry,
vol. 3, p. 488.
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