America's "Suez": the war that shook Washington's credibility

Historical analogies are never entirely accurate. But after a fragile ceasefire in the US-Israeli war against Iran, some wonder if this is a Suez-like moment for the United States, marking a weakening of American power and credibility in the world.

The Suez Crisis erupted in October 1956, when Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt to force the country to reopen the Suez Canal. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, just days before an election, ordered them to call off the attack. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden subsequently resigned. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser became a hero of anti-colonialism.

Suez then became shorthand for the moment when Britain, exhausted after World War II, gave way to the United States as a global power.

There are also differences from that time. The Suez Canal is artificial and entirely within Egyptian territory, unlike the Strait of Hormuz, which is an international waterway. Also, there is no other global power that could replace America in the region, let alone dictate to President Donald Trump.

However, the two-week truce leaves the Islamic Republic in power and still in a position to decide the future of the Strait of Hormuz, while the issue of Iran's nuclear stockpile and ballistic missile program remains unresolved. After Trump's declaration of victory, however unfounded, it is difficult to imagine a renewal of all-out war.

For the rest of the world, this war “is starting to look like a military defeat, more serious than Iraq or Afghanistan,” said Bruno Masaeş, Portugal’s former secretary of state for European affairs.

"The myth of America as an all-powerful power is important," he added, "and it is a basic requirement of the global hegemon to ensure the unimpeded flow of oil, to open the strait and keep it open. This belief in an all-powerful America that can solve everything - is disappearing."

Keeping sea lanes open for American goods and global trade is one of the few enduring interests the United States has in the Middle East, as well as in Asia.

Trump's tariff wars were an unpleasant shock, but his threat to take Greenland from Denmark by force if necessary is seen as a watershed moment in American rapacity, unreliability and contempt for traditional friends.

The Iran war has led to the closure of the strait. The Iranian military still controls the passage and is likely to demand high fees for its use. “The strategic rationale for the US military presence in the region has suffered a severe blow,” said Steven Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

The Suez analogy makes sense, Wertheim said, insofar as the Iran war demonstrated “in a single event the dangers of mismanagement and miscalculation by the United States.”

The war itself and its uncertain outcome, he added, "only accelerates the already existing concerns shared by countries around the world about what the decline in the quality of governance in America means for what they can expect from the United States."

America's allies may be unhappy, confused, and even angry about the Trump administration's policies, but many of them, especially those in the Persian Gulf and Asia suffering from energy shortages and restrictions, have few other options when it comes to security partners.

However, the war and the ceasefire agreement have diminished American influence and will affect how the United States' allies view its reliability, said Charles A. Kapchan, a political scientist and director of European studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The war against Iran was not launched in consultation with the allies. And it followed a series of events that confused them. Trump's tariff wars were an unpleasant shock, but his threat to take Greenland by force from Denmark, a European and NATO ally, if necessary, is seen as a watershed moment in terms of American rapacity, unreliability, and contempt for traditional friends.

"The war with Iran and its economic consequences only add to all of that and further reinforce the impression that the United States has become unpredictable and unreliable at this point," Kapchan said.

International relations and alliances are built on trust. But, as Stanford University's Francis Fukuyama wrote on Tuesday, "Never before has the United States been less trusted, neither among traditional friends nor among rivals, than today."

A successful negotiator, he said, must create at least a minimal amount of trust that he will honor his end of the bargain. “But reciprocity is a principle that Trump has never understood or applied,” he said.

The war challenged Washington's argument that its global dominance was essential to the security of international trade and world order. This was the main justification for the numerous American bases around the world, especially in the Middle East.

However, the war instead showed that the United States acted as a factor of disorder and destabilization.

"By engaging in a war of choice in a region crucial to global trade and completely ignoring the likely consequences for the economies of its closest allies, the Trump administration has destroyed the legitimacy of American power," said Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Government Policy.

The influence of a weakened United States is most pronounced in Europe, which relies on NATO and the American security guarantees that come with membership, including the American nuclear umbrella. However, Europeans have distinguished between trust in America and trust in Trump. The former remains, as it is crucial to European security.

Yet Trump's policies are inevitably producing a backlash that will outlast him. The rest of the world is trying to reorganize and reduce risks in relation to an America that treats its allies as enemies and its traditional adversaries, like Russia and China, as friends.

The war challenged Washington's argument that its global dominance was essential to the security of international trade and world order. This was the main justification for the numerous American bases around the world, especially in the Middle East.

Asked whether American hegemony has been weakened, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said: “We hope not, but we fear it could be.”

NATO has suffered a blow from the Trump administration's overall policies. He persistently calls it a "paper tiger," despite having managed to get its members to spend significantly more on their military. During the Iran war, he criticized the Europeans for not acting to open the strait, even though the much more powerful US Navy failed to do so.

The resistance of allies to his demands is what irritates him the most. “It all started with, you know, Greenland,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “They don’t want to give it to us, and I said, ‘Goodbye.’”

The cumulative effect on NATO is significant, said Rajan Menon, professor emeritus of political science at the City University of New York. In the long run, China appears to be the bigger winner.

"While we act like we've lost our minds and talk about bombing a country back to the Stone Age, China appears to be a peacemaker and a factor of stability," he said. Meanwhile, Beijing has been given the opportunity to observe how the US Navy operates.

“China is watching all of this with great glee, and when Trump goes there” for the summit currently scheduled for mid-May, “it will be significantly weakened.”

China, which gets much of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, has pressured Iran to agree to a ceasefire and is expected to play a role in keeping the strait open and guaranteeing safe passage for others.

Much depends on how the war ends, warned Kapcan of the Council on Foreign Relations.

If a ceasefire leads to an agreement that imposes significant limits on Iran's nuclear program and its ability to cause instability, he said, that would be much better in the long run than a frozen conflict or one that "continues to simmer month after month," with all the attendant consequences for the energy market and America's allies.

Translation: A.Š.