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The Sinai–Suez war of October–November 1956 can be viewed as the swan song of the imperial powers of the previous century. The conflict ended the Victorian mindset of “send a gunboat” to quell the natives and sedate their behaviour. The challenge to the Middle East status quo, which Britain and France had maintained for decades after the Sykes–Picot agreement of 1916, resulted from the tension generated in the wake of Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956. Israel’s invasion of the Sinai after numerous terrorist raids into its territory and the military collusion of Britain and France combined to threaten regional stability, Anglo-American traditional amity, and the equilibrium of the bipolar world. In Canada, feelings in the government and the public ran high over the prosecution of the Sinai–Suez war. After the invasion of 29 October 1956, the actions taken by Britain’s prime minister, Anthony Eden, and France’s premier, Guy Mollet, elicited harsh condemnation from both superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. For Canada, the actions of the two traditional “Mother Countries,” as those of British and occasionally French stock referred to them, caused chagrin as the country was finally shedding its designation as a Dominion, seven years after “British” had been dropped from the Commonwealth of Nations official title. Was there a watershed moment when an angry Prime Minister St. Laurent uttered“Supermen of Europe”in referring to the aggressive actions of the prime ministers of Britain and France?Yet these aggressive actions,the tense situation arising between traditional allies, and the prospect of a Soviet threat notwithstanding their involvement with the Hungarian uprising, opened the door for a Canadian demarche. The possibility of this manoeuvre was not only based on principle,but provided theWestern alliance with a face-saving device against many political situations. Through the creation of the first truly international force to be responsible to the General Assembly through the secretary-general 1 Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose of the UN,Canada’s proposal of a mediatory role for the United Nations allowed its prestige to soar. Prime Minister St. Laurent’s egregious epithet was not without its detractors ,especially within Canada’s Progressive Conservative party where the Imperial –Commonwealth nexus was still extant and the desire for governmental support of the United Kingdom was generally high. The Tories, as they are popularly referred to in Canada, were then led by George Drew. In the following month, John Diefenbaker won the party leadership and began reacting as befits the official opposition in the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate.Yet traditional emotions notwithstanding, the deus ex machina of the United Nations Emergency Force (unef),as devised by External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson and officers,was not opposed by the Tories.This historical concurrence underlines a constant factor in Canadian foreign policy. Regardless of the party in power, the formulation of governmental attitudes and policies will be bureaucratically generated. The bureaucratic atmosphere was the result of Liberal party administrations, which had held power in parliament for thirty-two of the thirty-seven years since the twenties. Political party conventions never guided the Liberal governments led by Mackenzie King. When the Progressive Conservatives returned to power in June of 1957, and were massively reconfirmed at the end of March 1958 with the greatest degree of electoral victory since confederation, there was no palpable change in the administrating bureaucracy. Whether the Tories were in opposition or in government, unef received the party’s support. Sidney Smith, the University of Toronto president who took on the External Affairs portfolio after he won a seat in the Commons in the autumn of 1957, maintained the bureaucratically generated policy until his untimely death in March 1959. More than two decades of uninterrupted Liberal rule had confirmed the nature, tone, and texture of a foreign policy of impartiality and scrupulous balance as far as the Middle East was concerned. In spite of the antagonism between the two major political parties of Canada’s tenth decade, a policy of equilibrium was maintained in the Middle East. After years as a lone prairie politician and a Progressive Conservative stalwart , John G. Diefenbaker was a consummate grassroots politician who had finally reached the political apogee in Canada. From the Winnipeg convention of 1942, wherein the party adopted the name Progressive, he was emerging as a prominent westerner in contrast to the party’s eastern financial orientation represented by...

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