Matthew Yglesias challenges a deeply entrenched historical narrative, arguing that the Eisenhower administration's decisive intervention in the 1956 Suez Crisis was not a moral victory but a strategic blunder that inadvertently empowered the very forces it sought to contain. While conventional wisdom praises the move for ending colonial aggression, Yglesias posits that by shielding Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser from defeat, the United States inadvertently fueled a pan-Arab nationalism that deepened Soviet influence and set the stage for decades of bloodier conflict. This is a provocative re-examination of how well-intentioned foreign policy can backfire, urging listeners to look beyond the immediate success of stopping an invasion to the long-term geopolitical fallout.
The Illusion of Strategic Success
Yglesias begins by dismantling the standard historical view that Eisenhower's pressure on Britain and France was the correct play. He notes that while the immediate goal of forcing a withdrawal was achieved, the broader strategic objective failed spectacularly. "This worked in the sense that it got them to withdraw. But the strategic goal of getting Nasser to align with the U.S. didn't work at all," Yglesias writes. The author points out that instead of gratitude, Nasser's prestige soared, leading him to secure Soviet financing for the Aswan Dam and purchase Soviet arms.
The commentary here is sharp because it forces a distinction between tactical wins and strategic losses. Yglesias argues that historians often view this through a post-colonial lens that assumes any anti-imperialist movement is inherently good for the West, a view he finds flawed. He suggests that the U.S. missed an opportunity to let the invading forces humiliate Nasser, which might have curbed his regional ambitions. "In this world, anti-Western nationalism continues to roil Iraq and other countries and progressive scholars blame Eisenhower's handling of the Suez Crisis for that," he observes. This reframing is crucial: it suggests that the administration's intervention, rather than preventing Soviet expansion, actually accelerated it by validating Nasser's narrative of Western weakness.
Critics might argue that allowing a full-scale invasion by colonial powers would have been a humanitarian disaster and a moral failure for the United States. Yglesias acknowledges the human cost but implies that the long-term geopolitical stability might have been better served by a different outcome. However, the assumption that a defeated Nasser would have been a reliable U.S. partner remains speculative.
The Neutral Road Not Taken
The piece then pivots to a counterfactual scenario where the United States simply stays on the sidelines. Yglesias contends that without American economic warfare against the British pound, the invasion might have succeeded in toppling Nasser or forcing a humiliating compromise. "The biggest impact of an earlier clipping of Nasser's wings would be that this almost certainly doesn't happen," he writes, referring to the subsequent unification of Egypt and Syria and the major wars with Israel.
This section is the most speculative yet the most revealing of the author's thesis. Yglesias suggests that the hubris Nasser felt after surviving the crisis was the catalyst for future conflicts. "The Suez Crisis, however, created an atmosphere of hubris inside the Egyptian government. They believed that they had squared off against not only Israel but also Britain and France and won," he explains. By intervening, the administration inadvertently signaled that the status quo could be overturned without consequence, emboldening radical nationalism across the region.
The effort to tempt Nasser out of alignment with the Soviet Union completely failed and never made sense in light of his ideology.
Yglesias's analysis here is compelling because it highlights the disconnect between American diplomatic goals and the ideological realities of the actors involved. He argues that Nasser's vision of overthrowing the entire regional order was incompatible with U.S. interests, making the attempt at reconciliation a "somewhat pointless detour." The author effectively argues that the U.S. was trying to negotiate with a leader whose fundamental goals were mutually exclusive with American security interests.
A Different Palestine
Perhaps the most striking part of the commentary is the exploration of how a different outcome in 1956 could have altered the trajectory of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Yglesias traces a line from the 1967 Six Days War to the current intractability of the occupation, arguing that the former was a direct result of the hubris born in the latter. "It was the legacy of the 1967 war that transformed this from a normal nasty post-WWII situation into a highly unusual one," he writes.
In this alternate timeline, Jordan retains control of the West Bank, and the conflict remains a state-to-state dispute between Israel and Jordan rather than a complex occupation of a stateless people. Yglesias suggests that this would have made a resolution far more plausible. "This is the kind of dispute that is very much amenable to compromise, and it ends with some kind of cash compensation to resolve the refugee situation and a deal around the ability of Israeli tourists to visit East Jerusalem," he posits.
This argument challenges the fatalism often surrounding the peace process. By suggesting that the occupation is a contingent historical accident rather than an inevitability, Yglesias forces the reader to confront the weight of specific policy decisions. However, one must consider that the internal dynamics of Palestinian nationalism and the rise of groups like the PLO might have still complicated matters even without the 1967 war. Yglesias acknowledges that "the Jordanian government was not enthusiastic about going to war in 1967," but it is unclear if they could have resisted the pressure indefinitely without the Egyptian shield.
The Human Cost of Hubris
The piece concludes by returning to the human toll of these strategic miscalculations. Yglesias emphasizes that the occupation inaugurated in 1967 is what makes the conflict so intractable, turning a dispute over borders and refugees into a struggle over land and identity. "The bitter feelings and ill-will about displacement engendered by the 1948 war are understandable," he notes, "but a lot of people around the world were violently displaced in the aftermath of World War II."
By comparing the 1948 displacement to other post-war scenarios in Europe, Yglesias normalizes the initial trauma while isolating the 1967 occupation as the true anomaly. This is a vital distinction for understanding the current stalemate. The administration's decision to prop up Nasser, intended to stabilize the region, ultimately destabilized it for generations. "Gassing him up like that and encouraging the British to completely withdraw from involvement in the Middle East only made things worse," Yglesias concludes, summarizing the unintended consequences of the intervention.
The main elements of the occupation simply did not exist in 1956. More broadly, it's the occupation that was inaugurated in 1967 that makes the Israel-Palestine conflict so intractable.
Bottom Line
Yglesias's strongest argument is the clear causal link he draws between the Eisenhower administration's short-term diplomatic victory and the long-term strategic disaster of the 1967 war and subsequent occupation. His willingness to entertain the counterfactual that a defeat for Nasser might have led to a more stable, state-based resolution offers a necessary corrective to the nostalgic view of 1950s American foreign policy. However, the piece's greatest vulnerability lies in its assumption that a humiliated Nasser would have inevitably led to a peaceful Jordan-Israel settlement, underestimating the deep-seated ideological drivers of the conflict. Readers should watch for how this historical lens applies to current interventions, where the temptation to "fix" a crisis often ignores the long-term blowback of empowering the very forces one hopes to contain.