Internationalize All Key Waterways

...Then comes the issue of the need for oil and its free passage through the Canal...

...In this case, it could hardly be discussed without reference to the Aswan dam decision...

...The Aswan dam is as vital to Egypt as the freedom of the Canal is to Britain...

...As to manner, who doubts that the rebuff was deliberately made in public...

...That this issue is vital to Britain is evident...

...There is no doubt an Israeli aspect to the Egyptian policy which requires watching, but if it had anything to do with the Aswan dam rebuff the fact is not evident...

...It is demoralizing for small nations to have to depend on diplomacy and power politics for such work...

...Experience, furthermore, shows that, when a big nation possesses undisputed control over an important passage, this control is used as its government sees fit...

...In the turmoil caused by Colonel Nasser's dramatic gesture, a number of issues seem to have coiled themselves around each other, making confusion worse confounded...

...Three questions are involved: Suez, the Aswan dam, and oil...

...Disquieting and unpleasant as Colonel Nasser's best-of-both-worlds policy is, it does not seem worse in itself (apart from its consequences) than that of the other two members of the neutral trio, Marshal Tito and Pandit Nehru...

...This explains such utterances by prominent Britons as "An attack on our honor and interests...

...a fair attitude has been kept in war...

...isn't it also time to sturly a World Oil Authority...

...Sooner or later, this kind of thing has to stop...

...But the mere fact of holding such a privilege in peace and war is bound to strike world opinion as somewhat obsolete...

...the Company was very shortsighted in taking high profits and failing to plow them back into Egyptian economic development...

...It may be related to that of prestige, and it depends on the figure that a nation and its government happen to cut at a given time on the world stage...

...And so it is proper that whatever happens on the Nile should resound on the Canal and be heard all over the world...

...As for the dam, its financing should be removed from the field of political squabbles...

...The first confusion would appear to be one between Britain as a nation with a proud history as a world power, Britain as a people with a vital need to keep free a passage through the Suez Canal, and Britain as the owner of a considerable number of shares in the Canal Company...

...So far as the Canal is concerned, the Eden proposal should be adopted...

...It is not in any case a good tiling, at least in the international field, for a stale as such to take on forms and activities that are best left to a truly free enterprise: for if the capitalist undertaking does not live up to the most exacting standards, matters of policy and prestige arise which are bound to make issues both complex and dangerous...

...This raises the whole problem of oil ownership...

...By and large, Suez under British control and Panama under American have been held in a reasonable way...

...One can always rely on the liberal organs of the British press to state a case honestly, and one of them has rightly pointed out that "until lately...

...No one believes, indeed no one pretends, that the Aswan decision was taken on strictly financial grounds...

...They ought to be re-examined not merely in themselves, but as concrete cases of wider and deeper questions...

...Vital not in the sense that British life could not proceed without it—for there is plenty of oil in the world that need not pass through the Suez Canal—but in the sense that it would make Britain dependent on oil worked by other than British-controlled companies...

...Some of us have been advocating it for nearly a generation...

...As for the third issue, arising out of the fact that Britain owns a con siderable share of the Suez Company's capita], it does not seem that the Egyptian act is in any way contrary to either custom or law (leaving aside its brusque and discourteous manner...

...Whenever an affair is important enough to justify intervention at state level, it is best to organize an international authority...

...It is obvious, therefore, that the dust of the Aswan dam is the cause of the mud of the Suez Canal...

...This is the truly statesmanlike solution of a problem which is only vexed because the beati possi-dentes are slow to adapt themselves to modern ideas and ways, which the discovery of the H-bomb has made imperative...

...No wonder that the West's blunt and dramatic refusal to finance the Aswan dam on the Nile brought to a head the nationalization of the Canal Company, which apparently was being planned...

...Freedom of navigation has been maintained in peace...

...This episode may turn out to have been useful if, as seems likely, both sides realize their responsibilities and attack the problems at issue in a world-commonwealth perspective...

...It was a political decision meant to convey to Colonel Nasser the displeasure of Washington (and, it would appear, of London) at his Muscovite flirtations...

...In some delicate cases, too, the use of it may give rise to serious differences of opinion...

...Would Colonel Nasser have indulged in some of his less wise moves had he been able to rely on free and unfettered financial provision for his national needs...

...Moreover, if "vital need" were to justify actual possession, the struggle of conflicting claims would bring about a tangle of terrible wars...

...For instance, the keeping of the Suez Canal open to Mussolini's ships during the Ethiopian conflict and its closing to Spanish ships during the Spanish-Ameri-can war...

...But the three issues should be kept separated...

...The issue of "honor" is not clear...

...It should, of course, apply to every channel and narrow passage of international importance, including Singapore, Gibraltar and Panama...

...A special authority should be set up to finance big schemes of this kind without political strings...

...As for oil...

...It is high time an authority was set up to provide such objective technical and financial assistance...

...It might become the first practical step toward putting vital world arteries under an ad hoc world authority...

...The authority would no doubt expect international behavior compatible with financial stability, and sonic of the Napoleonic ideas of the Egyptian President would have to go to the bottom of the Aswan lake, much to the benefit of peace in Asia Minor...

...This kind of claim never is...

...Neither the substance nor the manner of the step is, however, convincing...

...This would, if successful, provide enough experience for the internationalization of other narrow passages in the years to come...

...The suggestion put forward by Sir Anthony Eden that the Canal be internationalized is admirable...

...Compensation seems sufficient...

...So an outsider, careful to subordinate his personal preferences to an objective view of things, is bound to conclude that the matter of honor or prestige had better be shelved...

...Thus, this relatively small nation is doubly famous, for the Nile has had an illustrious history from remotest antiquity, while the Canal is today one of the major arteries of world trade...

...What is astonishing is that such a logical sequence caused any surprise at all to those who, knowing all the political and legal circumstances, should have been alive to its possibility...