70 Years After the Suez Crisis, America Learns the Limits of Its Power

Newsweek · David Averre · 2026-11-06 11:37 UTC

Washington is now on the receiving end of the uncomfortable lessons it once taught its European allies at Suez.

On November 6, 1956, British and French troops were scything through Port Said, the Egyptian city guarding the entrance to one of the world’s most-important waterways. A day earlier, their paratroopers had dropped in to seize the Suez Canal, with Israeli forces advancing across the Sinai Peninsula to help clear the way.

By midnight, the Anglo-French assault had stopped; not because their soldiers wilted, but because the governments commanding them had been forced to capitulate under pressure from Washington.

U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had threatened to brutalize Britain’s battered economy, and rallied the United Nations to demand a ceasefire and withdrawal. America’s economic and political influence achieved in hours what Egyptian armed resistance could not, and brought the Western military campaign to a humiliating halt.

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