ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that leadership and group factors account for the puzzle of Suez, that is, the fundamental miscalculation of the attitude of the United States when the crisis culminated in the Anglo-French landings at Port Said. It also argues that Groupthink, combined with Sir Anthony Eden's leadership, solicited the varying ways in which the small group rationalized the attitude of the United States. The contents of their rationalizations, however, should be explained in terms of the images widely shared by British policy-makers based on their perception of Anglo-American relations since 1945. Eden's individual worldview reinforced such rationalizations. Two major rationalizations can be traced, at the level of mainly the inner group, but also of the Egypt Committee and the Cabinet, that served at explaining away American opposition to the use of force: the influence of the impending American Presidential elections and the selective interpretation of messages from John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
