The 1956 Suez Crisis remains a clear example of how the most established alliances can falter under pressure. Together with Israel, the United Kingdom (UK) and France attempted to reverse Egypt’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal through military intervention, yet faced recrimination from the United States (US), and were coerced into a withdrawal. Although the operation was militarily effective, it was catastrophic in a strategic sense. The Suez Crisis showcased the fragility of alliance legitimacy, the risk of secrecy among allies and the ease with which moral authority could crumble.
Nearly 70 years later, such lessons resonate far beyond the Middle East. When it comes to cooperation among the US, Japan and South Korea – the key pillars of Indo-Pacific security – the probability of a simultaneous dual contingency in the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula represents a similar testing ground for alliance cohesion under pressure. The experience of Suez demonstrates how trust, legitimacy and consultation could collapse when allies act without shared understanding. In addition, it also offers durable insights into Britain’s global posture, which spans the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and AUKUS, and includes an expanded network across the entire Indo-Pacific region.
Legitimacy and transparency
The most definitive instruments that Dwight Eisenhower, then President of the US, used during the Suez Crisis were moral and financial pressure, not military power. By condemning the intervention as neocolonial aggression, he coalesced international opinion and isolated the US’ close European partners. Deprived of American diplomatic and financial support, the UK and France were forced into an embarrassing withdrawal. The Suez Crisis underscored that military might and formal treaties would be insufficient without legitimacy.
Legitimacy is still a genuine currency that guarantees the duration of an alliance.
Similar dynamics apply in today’s Indo-Pacific context. Any kind of joint action among Washington, Tokyo and Seoul should be based on legitimacy and proportionality in order to maintain public support and deter adversaries credibly. The UK’s contemporary alliances face similar demand. Whether in the South China Sea or on NATO’s eastern flank, His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s commitments should be framed in a rules-based and transparent manner, rather than an impromptu display of power. Legitimacy is still a genuine currency that guarantees the duration of an alliance.
The Sèvres Protocol – coordinated in secret between Britain, France and Israel – excluded the US in the planning phase, and shattered trust when it was exposed. Afterwards, American backlash was swift and clear. It turned out that transparency is a structurally necessary element rather than a luxury.
Modern alliances are no different. The US, Japan and South Korea cannot withstand any member taking unilateral action without sufficient consultation. In a dual contingency scenario, small differences in terms of timing and intentions could lead to catastrophic miscalculation.
This lesson also applies to the UK, which is currently deepening cooperation with its AUKUS and NATO partners. Maintaining procedural openness, such as joint exercises, shared emergency planning and consistent communication, would reduce policy surprises and guarantee that alliance reactions are streamlined and not contradictory.
Burden-sharing and exit strategies
The Suez Crisis also revealed the limitations of unequal burden-sharing. Britain and France initiated their operations believing that they could withstand military and political burdens, yet without American logistics and financial support, their efforts collapsed. Such lessons are lasting: when risk and burden are unclear, a coalition will totter.
In the Indo-Pacific, the US cannot handle simultaneous multiple crises alone, and its allies should be prepared to assume a more serious operational role. For Japan and South Korea, this indicates a credible commitment in terms of integrated missile defence, logistics and intelligence. For the UK, where resources are stretched between the twin theatres of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific, reliability (i.e., delivering precisely what is needed most), not scale, determines credibility. However, burden-sharing should be able to adapt without criticism.
The most neglected feature of the Suez debacle is the absence of an exit strategy. When international backlash was heightened, London and Paris desperately searched for a diplomatic solution that did not exist. Effective crisis management requires much attention, not only during the escalation phase, but also in disengagement.
This principle can be applied to a dual contingency in East Asia. Alliance planning should not only incorporate a threshold for response, but should also include an explicit mechanism for de-escalation and a return to normality. For Britain, where interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have already demonstrated the high price tag of opaque termination goals, internalising an exit discipline within the alliance structure is a sine qua non. The clearness of the termination point would strengthen legitimacy and prevent it from falling into endless interventions.
Institutionalisation as a shield against crisis
If Suez revealed the cost of activities without institutional backing, subsequent decades of French-German cooperation demonstrated the opposite. The 1963 Élysée Treaty and its follow-up organisations – such as the Franco-German Council of Ministers, which was established in 2003 – structured coordination and habits that withstood political fluctuations and crises. Although such procedural glue – including hotlines, joint staffs and liaison officers – did not arouse public attention in this case, it often determines whether alliances will either bend or break in crisis situations.
In the Indo-Pacific, a similar mechanism connecting the US, Japan and South Korea could take the form of a standing ‘Dual Crisis Council’. The purpose is to coordinate escalation control, intelligence exchange and legitimacy messaging in real time. As for the UK, analogous institutionalisation across its own network, including AUKUS, NATO and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, would ensure consistency against a concurrent dual contingency in Europe and in East Asia. Coordination on such a dual contingency should be permanent, not reactionary.
From Suez to the Indo-Pacific: A blueprint for cohesive alliances
Despite Britain being the driving force behind the Suez Crisis, the experience remains instructive towards its future alliances. Suez demonstrated clearly that even a leading great power could be marginalised if moral authority is lost, or if it surprises its partners. In the intervening decades, the UK has defined itself as a coalition enabler rather than a unilateral actor. Yet, from Taiwan to the Arctic, a dual contingency would test British adaptability.
The UK’s foreign and defence policy now depends on what it lacked during the Suez Crisis: clarity, coordination and consistency. Clarity ensures that intervention would be justified, not through nostalgia, but through law and strategy. Coordination would guarantee allies share intelligence before, during and after a crisis. Consistency prevents moral dissonance – which contributed to the Suez debacle – by matching political rhetoric and operational reality. Such attributes are a necessary operational element rather than an abstract virtue in an era when legitimacy is as visible on social media as in the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
The Suez Crisis debunked the illusion that alliances guarantee harmony. They cannot withstand crisis moments without the consistent maintenance of trust, coordination and shared norms.
If Suez showcased the risk of secrecy and divided purposes, the current challenge is to manage exorbitant complexity. The UK, the US and their alliances are now functioning across overlapping entities – NATO, AUKUS, Five Eyes and the Group of Seven (G7) – which each have distinctive mandates. AUKUS’s focus on the Indo-Pacific should be harmonised with NATO’s renewed European continental mission, while intelligence and deterrence systems should be operated without duplication.
In this context, Britain can play a bridging role. It is uniquely poised to translate the lessons between two theatres, applying NATO’s institutional maturity to the experimental design of AUKUS, while guaranteeing that Indo-Pacific cooperation develops with legitimacy and transparency at its core. Such a role would determine whether free and open nations reinforce one another or fragment under the pressure of dual contingency.
The Suez Crisis debunked the illusion that alliances guarantee harmony. They cannot withstand crisis moments without the consistent maintenance of trust, coordination and shared norms. If HM Government can apply the historical lessons of coalition fragility to today’s alliances, it could prevent the repetition of a Suez-type strategic isolation in a far more interconnected world. To the US, Japan and South Korea, the Suez Crisis offers a mirror; to the UK, it offers memory. In both cases, it points to the same conclusion: that alliances last through legitimacy, transparency and restraint, not by force.
The next Suez would be systemic, not geographic. It would be a crisis of systemic alliance cohesion impacted by secrecy, surprise and moral misjudgement. In this sense, the primary task for modern decision-makers is to ensure that coalitions hold when pressure rises.
Dr Ju Hyung Kim is president of the Security Management Institute, a defence think tank affiliated with the South Korean National Assembly. He is currently adapting his doctoral dissertation, ‘Japan’s Security Contribution to South Korea, 1950 to 2023’, into a book.
To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!
What do you think about this Memorandum? Why not leave a comment below?