21 - International Law, Cold War Juridical Theatre and the Making of the Suez Crisis

Summary

This chapter focuses upon the making of the Suez Crisis in international law. It is argued that paying attention to how a crisis was made out of the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company helps us to understand the making of Cold War international law in two ways. First, it invites us to move away from the standardised narratives of the significance of the Suez Crisis for international law as, for example, the realisation of the United Nations Charter’s prohibition on the use of force or the moment at which peacekeeping emerged as an innovative (executive) solution to international crises. Secondly, an attention to the production of crisis pulls back from narratives of the Cold War that emphasise its ‘non-juridical’ character. In contrast to this, I argue that the crises that apparently plagued the Cold War world were so significant precisely because they marked a radical challenge to the existing international legal order. The Suez Crisis can be seen, then, as a jurisdictional contest over the authorship of international law, or as a struggle over the authority to authorise.