Compared to what? Compared to a fair, liberal democracy yes certainly a colonial empire is bad, but compared to a genocidal kleptocracy that many former colonies turned into a colonial empire might be the lesser of 2 evils. There is no definitive colonial empire, they were all different and even had different arrangements within them.
Even that’s disputable. The 1943 Bengal famine, for instance, killed more people (2.1 million) than the 1970 Bangladesh genocide (300,000) even when you account for the fact that Bangladesh is only part of Bengal. So, in terms of raw casualty count even adjusted for population difference the British Raj was more evil than the Yahya Khan dictatorship. Of course, there are more factors to be accounted for, but even that is a highly arguable point. We shouldn’t sugarcoat the bleak horror of colonialism.
Here are some actual dictionary definitions of colony;
- a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country and occupied by settlers from that country.
- a group of people of one nationality or race living in a foreign place.
- a group of people who leave their native country to form in a new land a settlement subject to, or connected with, the parent nation.
- a body of people living in a new territory but retaining ties with the parent state
Egypt doesn't fit those criteria.
That disqualifies almost all late nineteenth-century colonies. With that definition, the only colonies in Africa are Kenya (to a lesser extent), Algeria, Libya, South Africa, and Rhodesia.
Again, its not as simple as that. Many in the third world, particularly leaders, were aware that Imperial powers had their uses and that their other options were limited so that the Imperial power might be the lesser of 2 evils.
There were others who viewed the US as a colony that successfully broke the shackles of the British to become one of the two the strongest countries in the world, and wanted to replicate that. If the US supported the colonial powers during Suez, you can imagine how hard such an image would shatter. Sure, there would be those who would still see them as the lesser evil, but the US can only lose from attempting to prop up colonial empires.
This is incorrect, they could ally with each other and forge other alliances as well as making greater efforts to take care of their own defence.
None of that is opposed to American interests.
If Suez had been successful the pace of decolonisation would have been slowed considerably and the third world would have faced a different set of choices after 1956. As it turned out the failure at Suez increased the pace of decolonisation.
No, it would not have been a considerable slowdown. Britain already lost its largest colony and was involved in numerous wars, France had massive quagmires, the Netherlands already lost almost all of their colonies, and Portugal was soon to be involved in quagmires. Really, the writing on the wall was visible to everyone.