The Suez Crisis and Its International Context.

这项研究项目分析了英国政府在1956年苏伊士运河危机中决定攻击埃及的原因。大多数研究认为，英国开战是狮子最后的咆哮，也就是说，英国试图通过使用武力来抵抗第三世界的民族主义，结果却遭遇了悲惨的失败。研究得出结论，英国这样做的目的是防止法国和以色列对埃及发动战争，因为如果没有英国的参与，这将对英国在中东的声望造成沉重打击。英国必须向阿拉伯国家表明，当以色列攻击阿拉伯国家时，它有能力充当警察力量。因此，英国有充分的理由攻击埃及，以防止其他阿拉伯国家将油田国有化从而保持对其他阿拉伯国家的政治控制的连锁反应。这项研究还考察了1955-1956年间英国对苏联在中东威胁的看法，并分析了它如何在苏伊士危机期间对英国的政策做出贡献，特别是英国对埃及开战的决定。到目前为止，现有的研究都认为，英国的目标是遏制埃及的影响，但我认为，英国的目标也在于对抗苏联对英国在该地区主导地位的威胁。1955年9月的埃及-捷克斯洛伐克武器交易摧毁了西方对武器供应的垄断。因此，英国担心俄罗斯正在破坏其对这些国家的政治控制。1956年10月，英国就苏伊士运河战争作出决定，其动机是保持亲西方阿拉伯国家的信誉，即英国可以在中东充当警察部队，从而防止它们采取中立路线。

This research project analyzed the reason why the British government decided to attack Egypt in the Suez Crisis in 1956. Most research agrees that Britain's going to war was the lion's last roar, i.e., Britain tried to resist Third-World nationalism by using force only to suffer a miserable failure. The research concludes that the British did so with the purpose of preventing France and Israel starting war against Egypt because, without British involvement, this would have been a heavy blow to British prestige in the Middle East. Britain had to show Arab countries that it was capable of acting as a police power when Israel attacked Arab. Thus Britain had every reason to attack Egypt in order to prevent chain reactions of the nationalization of oilfields by other Arab countries thereby retaining political control over other Arab countries.This research also examined the British perception of the Soviet threat in the Middle East from 1955 to 1956, and analyses how it contributed to British policies during the Suez Crisis and especially the British decision to go to war against Egypt. Existing research has so far contended that the British aim was to contain Egypt's influence but I argue that the British aim also lay in countering the Soviet's menace to British dominance in the region. The Egyptian-Czechoslovakian arms deal in September 1955 destroyed the Western monopoly of arms supply. Thus Britain feared that the Russians were undermining its political control over those countries. The British decision on the Suez War in October 1956 was motivated by retaining pro-Western Arab countries' credibility that Britain could act as a police force in the Middle East and thereby to prevent them from taking a neutralist course.