10 - East and West of Suez: Receding Frontiers

Summary

This chapter considers the loss of confidence in Britain’s far horizons which became a major post-war preoccupation as the moral axioms of ‘global reach’ faltered. By the 1950s, the burden of shouldering an extensive array of overseas bases and tactical deployments had become increasingly intolerable. But despite these material constraints, successive British governments, their service chiefs and the wider ‘defence community’ of strategic analysts, academics, and journalists found it exceedingly difficult to contemplate even the most glaringly urgent reductions. Cold calculations of strategic priorities could never be entirely insulated from the alluring tug of a belief system inherited from former, more exalted times. The ensuing paralysis was symbolised by the 1956 Suez crisis that revealed the stark limits of Britain’s world-power aspirations. Historians continue to debate whether the 1956 Suez crisis really devastated popular morale to the extent that is routinely claimed. It is argued here that the deeper impact of Suez can be traced through its dissonant resonances around the globe, puncturing not only the prestige of Anthony Eden’s enfeebled government, but also the feasibility of a world conceived in terms of Britain’s ubiquitous ‘presence’. For the challenge it posed to the governing assumptions about extended horizons and elastic frontiers, Suez exemplifies the diminishing reach of the idea of Britain itself.