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This paper re-examines Canada's response to the Suez Crisis within the context of its overall approach to the Middle East in the early 1950s. It reminds contemporary readers that most Canadian policymakers, including Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and his Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson, viewed the distant and unfamiliar region with reserve, as one better left to the Great Powers to sort out. That view only changed in 1956, when the Suez Crisis, Anglo-American discord, and the possibility of nuclear war threatened Canadian strategic interests, transforming Canada into a small regional stakeholder.

The potential engagement of British forces in military action often leads to intense public debate. This book assesses the public legal justifications for such operations. It critiques the idea that using international legal norms to justify decisions on the use of force will necessarily result in fewer instances of military intervention.

The adoption of cognitive variables at the individual and group level serves in accounting for British decision-making during the 1956 Suez crisis, thus contradicting explanations which are framed in terms of rational actor models. An analysis in terms of cognitive variables, however, requires the formulation of a relevant empirical puzzle which sets rational explanations against cognitive ones. It is shown how the so-called process tracing method, developed by Alexander George, proves useful in identifying the role of such variables. The Operational Code construct and Irving Janis's Groupthink thesis are employed to help our understanding of the British decision-making process and to solve the empirical puzzle of why British decision-makers decided to resort to force despite the unlikelihood that US support, deemed essential, would be forthcoming. Groupthink analysis, however, would benefit from an interest in explaining the outcome of decision-making rather than concentrating on a description of the process. Due regard to cognitive beliefs previously held by members of the small group may well explain the contents of prematurely reached consensus.