215. Letter From the British Ambassador (Makins) to Secretary of State Dulles1
My Dear Secretary of State: In our recent talks about the Middle East we discussed the problem of maintaining oil supplies in the event of the pipelines and the Suez Canal being no longer available.2
I have now been asked to let you know that Her Majesty’s Government are already studying this and hope to have the results ready shortly. They would be glad to compare notes with the State Department as soon as possible. A situation in which both the Canal and the pipelines were closed would throw a very severe strain on British shipping; and the study will not be complete until they know what oil and shipping could be provided from American sources.
Her Majesty’s Government are also engaged in making a long-term study on the movement of oil from the Middle East and the amounts of investment that might be devoted to the various available forms of transport (essentially more pipelines, improving Suez Canal, and construction of very large tankers for use round the Cape and to United States Pacific ports). This involves making assumptions as to future quantities of oil to be moved which are extremely tentative. The Departments concerned are consulting oil and shipbuilding companies in the United Kingdom. It would be most valuable if on the American side a similar study could be made and notes compared with us.
As regards the Suez Canal, the Foreign Office Legal Advisers doubt whether we should have any legal right to intervene. First, no general right is provided by the convention3 to use force for the purpose of keeping the Canal open. Second, although it might be argued that the United Kingdom, as successor to Turkey, would have this right under Article IX, the terms of that Article make such [Page 594] intervention subject to the request by Egypt. Third, in the light of the United Nations Charter and the decision of the International Court in the Corfu Channel case,4 which also involved the right of innocent passage, it is very doubtful whether it would be lawful for the United Kingdom or the United States to take unilateral action by force to re-open the Canal. But it might become necessary for all that. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd would be very interested to have your considered views on these points and the suggestion which you quoted on April 1 that the Suez Canal had been an international waterway for so long that if it were closed we should have the right to move in under international law, even though it would have to be recognised that this might be a major military operation.
Yours sincerely,
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 880.2553/4–656. Top Secret.↩
- Reference is to a conversation between Dulles and Ambassador Makins on April 1, when Dulles asked if the British Government had prepared any studies on what should be done if the Middle East situation deteriorated and the pipelines and the Suez Canal were no longer available to their governments. The Secretary said he would like to compare notes with the British on this problem and was especially interested in the effect on supplies of having to send tankers around the Cape, and in what possible alternative arrangements could be made. (Aide-Mémoire from the British Embassy entitled “Suez Canal and Oil Supplies”, August 3; ibid., 880.2553/8–356)↩
- Reference is to the Suez Canal Convention of 1888, signed by Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, and Turkey, which declared the canal free and open to merchant and war vessels of all powers in time of war and peace.↩
- Reference is to the Corfu Channel Case where the International Court of Justice ruled in 1949 that the British Government was legally justified in sending a flotilla of four ships of war with crews at action stations and with orders to fire if attacked through the North Corfu Channel in order to affirm the right of passage.↩