Britain and the Failure of Collective Defence in the Middle East, 1948–53

Abstract

The past few years have seen an increasing body of literature on the evolution of Britain’s postwar foreign and defence policies. It is clear that Britain played a crucial role in the cold war, and this has been demonstrated in many recent books and essays, including those in this volume. As yet, however, relatively few have dealt with the nature of Britain’s Middle East defence policy up to the time of Suez, and have rather concentrated upon Palestine or Suez itself. An understanding of the intervening eight-year period is crucial to an analysis of British policy in the Middle East and its surrounding regions.