Empires do not endure forever. Their decline is driven by long economic shifts but often marked by sudden, defining crises. The Suez Crisis of 1956 was one such turning point for Britain. The current standoff over the Strait of Hormuz could play the same role for the United States.
In the mid-1950s Britain still fought to preserve a shrinking empire. From Mau Mau camps in Kenya to counterinsurgency in Malaya, Britain maintained overseas garrisons and influence across the globe. Its control over the Suez Canal, acquired through a late-19th-century takeover and decades of political dominance, was central to that global reach.
After Egypt’s 1952 revolution, London agreed to withdraw many bases and return effective control of the Canal. But regional tensions mounted: Britain, France and Israel viewed Gamal Abdel Nasser’s alliances and support for anti-colonial struggles as threats. When Nasser turned to the Soviet bloc for arms and then nationalized the Suez Canal after Western financing for the Aswan Dam was withdrawn, Britain and France concluded they could not accept the loss.
British leaders privately argued that conceding to Nasser would mean the end of their influence. Prime Minister Anthony Eden, with France and Israel, secretly planned a military operation to seize the Canal and topple Nasser. The United States publicly opposed military action, and President Eisenhower warned against it, but Britain assumed Washington would ultimately back its old ally.
The plan unraveled. Israel invaded the Sinai, and Britain and France landed troops at Port Said. International reaction turned against them. The United States used its economic leverage—selling off sterling reserves and blocking financial assistance—to precipitate a British crisis. The Soviet Union threatened intervention. The United Nations, using the Uniting for Peace procedure, demanded a ceasefire and the reopening of the Canal. Within weeks British and French forces were forced to withdraw; the Canal reopened under Egyptian management.
Suez was the moment Britain discovered it could no longer impose its will militarily on weaker states. The episode discredited interventionist confidence at the highest levels of British politics and compelled a strategic reorientation. Anthony Eden resigned; Harold Macmillan succeeded him and presided over a rapid decolonization, the withdrawal from many overseas bases, a repositioning of Britain as a junior partner to the United States, and a redirection of domestic priorities toward a mixed economy with expanded social services.
The parallel to today is striking. The United States presides over a global network of bases and has used military force repeatedly in the postwar era. Repeated failures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have already taught many Americans that military power has limits. Yet leaders who cling to imperial assumptions—who believe force will reliably secure global interests—still dominate policy discussions.
A confrontation over Iran and the Strait of Hormuz poses the same sort of reckoning Suez imposed on Britain. If the U.S. pursues an escalatory course—threatening or using force to coerce Tehran—the international reaction could produce diplomatic isolation, economic blowback, and a visible limit to U.S. predominance. A coordinated global pushback, UN action, or financial and political pressures from other powers might force a strategic retreat that would expose the unsustainability of relying on military dominance.
If Washington were to learn the Suez lesson, the consequences would be profound. A comparable American pivot would mean closing or vastly reducing overseas bases, renouncing threats or unilateral use of force as primary instruments of policy, and committing to multilateral diplomacy, international law, and United Nations-centered dispute resolution. It would require leaders willing to acknowledge that the era of imposing political outcomes by force has passed and to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy around cooperation rather than coercion.
Where is the equivalent of a Macmillan or a Wilson in today’s Washington? The current political landscape—polarized, dominated by neoconservative and militarized tendencies—offers few obvious candidates. Occasional diplomatic openings, such as past outreach to historic adversaries, have been rare and tentative. Yet the potential silver lining of the Hormuz crisis is that it could mark the collapse of the neoconservative project that has guided U.S. interventionism for decades, cornering policymakers into a stark choice between a disastrous war and a humiliating diplomatic retreat.
Americans should insist that this moment provoke a deep rethinking of national priorities: shifting resources from endless military campaigns to domestic renewal; rebuilding alliances grounded in mutual respect rather than dominance; embracing international institutions rather than bypassing them; and rejecting racist, imperial assumptions that rationalize intervention. A transition away from militarized foreign policy would also open space for constructive global engagement on trade, climate, migration, and development.
History shows such transitions are politically difficult but possible. Britain’s post-Suez adjustment did not mean global irrelevance; it meant recalibrating power and influence into forms that fit a changed world. The United States faces a similar test: either accept the constraints of a more multipolar reality and reorganize policy accordingly, or risk a damaging, possibly terminal, erosion of its international standing through another avoidable confrontation.
The crisis over Iran and the Persian Gulf could therefore be more than a regional spat. It could be the tipping point that forces the United States to finally confront the limits of military power and to reinvent its role in the world. Whether that reinvention happens will depend on whether U.S. leaders can show the political courage to abandon a long-standing imperial playbook and embrace multilateralism and diplomacy as primary tools of statecraft.
Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist and researcher with CODEPINK, and author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
