This is a question has been bothering me as someone who’s country was colonized by the British Empire. We were taught about it in schools and how it lost power over time but never how the USA came to take its place especially over such a short compared to the British Empire.
Everyone else seems to have covered the basics… But what’s missing is The Suez Crisis.
France and Britain, the two preeminent colonial powers in Europe thought that they could use Israel to pressure Egypt into returning the Suez Canal to them (which Egypt had nationalised following Britain, France, and the USA reneging on their obligation to help build the Anwar Dam).
France and Britain coordinated with Israel for an Israeli invasion of Egypt, and then France and Britain would step in “as peacekeepers” and control the Seuz as a demilitarised zone. However, the US was having none of it, and went behind France and Britain’s back to undermine them and coordinated with Israel and showed to the world it was a British and French plot, humiliating the two nations, cementing the US as Israel’s main backer, and destroying what good will remained for France and Britain in the Middle East.
For the formerly top dogs of Europe, it was a rude awakening which showed them that the pre-Second World War order was truly gone and they could no longer make big geopolitical decisions without the US.
I’m going to quibble with this line.
It isn’t like the Suez Crisis made the USA Israel’s main backer, but that Israel realized it needed the USA rather than the UK or France. Israel had to invest a lot in shaping American foreign policy to benefit it.
Second, it isn’t like the UK and France had goodwill in the Middle East. Instead, this was the major rejection of the two imperial powers which diminished their role in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. From that point on, other nations and political groups in the Middle East knew that the USA had a credible veto on British and French imperial action in the area.
You’re right to quibble.
I’ll gesture towards “cementing” and “remained”, but your clarifications are important for people to bear in mind.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Sykes-Picot also did a lot with this stuff, and the Suez Crisis is not the start or end of any story.
I look at the Suez Crisis more as a symbol of the shift in power. Maybe there is an example out there, but I can’t think of a similar humiliation that the UK had to deal with regarding having to pull out of a diplomatic crisis by the threat of a single ally/power since the Concert of Europe was implemented.
There is a lot to talk about regarding imperial powers in the Middle East, but I’m focusing more on the idea where power shifted from the UK to the USA.