Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956

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Britain’s global role and status were at issue. Foreign policy and strategy

were not so easy to separate in the deﬁning and development of such a

global, imperial role even if military operational plans were initially

shelved partly because of the need to incorporate the use of nuclear

weapons, which in 1945 were still shrouded in uncertainty.

It is worth contemplating exactly what ‘imperial defence’ meant with

regard to foreign policy and the new global role in the radically new post-

war circumstances of the Cold War. Imperial defence in this period

(1945–56), police operations or anti-guerrilla warfare aside, ﬁrst came to

mean protecting the strategic position of the Commonwealth when the

idea of giving this operational forms had not been ﬁnally abandoned. It

was then deﬁned as the global strategy underpinning Britain’s position as

a world power. Britain as a global power, with important inﬂuence in

Europe, would retain this role through its defence policy and military

deployments that helped produce and justify the power political inﬂuence

required. In 1947, Britain could still aspire to play a military role in parts

of the globe outside Europe (or out of area), or so it was assumed.

It would continue to aspire to do so until 1956, when this too was revealed

as a total sham in so much as military operations in the Commonwealth

depended on foreign policy delivering the American alliance or at least

ensuring US tolerance of any such operations.

First attempts by the military to produce a strategy for defending the

Commonwealth and prepare for future global war were made in early

1946.

By then, key disagreements in the attempts to produce peace settle-

ments were reﬂecting the rhetorical gestures towards the establishment of

freedom and self-determination. These conﬂicted with the FO policies that

embraced the power political spirit inherent in spheres of interest and the

British Empire.

Whatever the justiﬁcation for the British imperial ethos,

there had to be a means of defending the empire now more commonly

referred to as the Commonwealth. Yet, the role this provided for the mili-

tary came to be more and more to provide the means of justifying its polit-

ical existence rather than providing for its military defence and security.

For foreign policy, the preserving of a global role as one of the Big

Three Powers came in 1948 to require the merging of an imperial with a

European role in a Third Force led by Britain which would constitute a

Third World Power.

The development of a European strategy in ways

which would contribute to the Empire/Commonwealth enhancing

Britain’s future global role had ﬁrst been suggested by Sir Orme Sargent,

permanent under-secretary at the FO, in his famous ‘Stocktaking on VE

Day’ memorandum.

In contrast, the military, in attempting to deﬁne a

strategy for the Defence of the Commonwealth, had taken on board the

past lessons of the Second World War. The apparently glorious victories in

the North African desert of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery were cer-

tainly uppermost in the mind of the man who had achieved them and who

became Chief of the Imperial General Staff in June 1946.

52 J. Kent

The most obvious lesson was that a land power on the Continent could

dominate Western Europe; yet, the British Empire/Commonwealth, with

the right allies and support, could survive. Moreover, it could even emerge

victorious through a strategy that could maintain the informal Anglo-Amer-

ican military alliance while preserving and exploiting or developing key

imperial regions. This was at the heart of the arguments over deﬁning a

post-war military strategy for a major war in 1946 and 1947. The military

ideas were referred to in the context of the ‘The Strategic Position of the

British Commonwealth’ which would ensure an important role for Britain

as a world power in line with the military’s imperial ethos.

They would

exclude the incorporation of Europe as the FO were suggesting and thereby

avoid the disadvantages of cooperating with left-wing Europeans as well as

adding to defence commitments. Therefore, instead of thinking of uniting

the empire and Europe, the military were thinking more in terms of aban-

doning Europe if the empire was to make the most of its limited resources.

The military strategy of course emphasised the importance of the

Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean, which heightened the geo-

strategic conﬂict that was emerging out of the Soviet desire to get greater

access to the warm waters of the Mediterranean by revising the Montreux

Convention.

These strategic ambitions in the Mediterranean clearly exac-

erbated the developing political tension between Britain and the Soviet

Union.

The requirements of foreign policy, as opposed to military

deployments and operations, were designed to be compatible with

Britain’s past and present imperial role, but in ways which reﬂected some

of the new post-war circumstances that were no longer in line with the mil-

itary’s imperial conceptions. In the long and medium term, as will be

seen, this in fact ceased to matter when the military no longer had the

resources and therefore any capacity to carry out such roles. In effect, the

armed forces were to become the provider of military strategic rationales

that were not dictated by operational requirements but were used to

justify power political foreign policy goals.

The military in the late 1940s remained committed to imperial defence

at the expense of Europe and with little regard for the political require-

ments of foreign policy. The military had originally based the broad

concept of Commonwealth (imperial) defence in global war on the idea

of main support areas that were necessary for eventual victory and the

three pillars required to ensure they were protected and maintained in

wartime. The main support areas were deemed to be the Western hemi-

sphere and the white Dominions, despite the fact that South African alle-

giance to the war effort from 1939 to 1945 was a close-run thing. The

other resources were expected to come from Black Africa, and as in

Second World War, Britain would be cut off from a hostile Western

Europe. Britain, the ﬁrst pillar, the Middle East, the second pillar and, as

in the recent war, the sea communications between Britain and the main

support areas were the crucial three pillars. If the Red Army were to

The Foreign Ofﬁce and defence of the empire 53

overrun Western Europe, Britain could eventually emerge victorious by

relying on the Dominions and Africa which required the preservation of a

Middle Eastern presence to defend it. Hence, the perceptions of the mili-

tary associated with Britain’s past imperial roles were fully incorporated.

It was not true (apart from India and other South Asian non-self-

governing territories) that decolonisation was destroying an imperial role

and it was certainly not the desire of the military in the 1940s that an

imperial role should end. One strategic argument initially put forward by

the military in 1946 had been that there should be no potentially hostile

power ﬂanking British air and sea communications in the Mediterranean.

This was particularly important for the links to the main support areas of

the Antipodean Dominions, and to ensure that Britain remained linked to

the Middle East, the crucial area in preserving Black Africa from ingress

by a potentially hostile power.

Attlee regarded this idea as outmoded and

a reﬂection of an imperial past built on sea power which was no longer

relevant in an age of air power which the Second World War had inaug-

urated.

For the prime minister, communications with the important

areas of the empire East of Suez could be maintained via the Cape route

which would avoid the gathering conﬂict with the Soviet Union.

Along the lines put forward by Liddell Hart, Attlee developed in March

an alternative to a costly and wasteful strategy for defending the empire in

the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Imperial defence was to be based

in Black Africa and speciﬁcally on an axis running from Lagos in the West

to Mombasa in the East. Liddell Hart’s ideas for imperial defence were

stimulated by a desire to avoid a confrontation with the Soviets in ways

which would be unaffordable and impractical.

In February 1946, the

foreign secretary had already examined the idea of developing Mombasa

as a major base to replace Egypt from which British evacuation had ﬁrst

been proposed in December 1945.

The COS had ﬁrmly rejected the idea

of abandoning a peacetime garrison in Egypt. Yet the FO, at the ofﬁcial

level, believed that this continued military presence could not be justiﬁed

if ‘the overall defence of the British Empire can be assured by substituting

for the Egypt–Palestine–Transjordan–Iraq bastion the East African bastion

plus through communications with West Africa’.

This formed the point which Bevin then went on to develop. He added

the African requirements to the Middle Eastern ones by pointing to the

power political needs served by the Middle East rather than just its mili-

tary/strategic importance. ‘Our presence in the Mediterranean serves a

purpose other than a military purpose which is vital to our position as a

Great Power’. If Britain moved out of the Mediterranean the Russians

would move in, an act guaranteed to allow all sorts of economic disasters

to ensue.

In addition to the loss of democracy, Italy was deemed likely to

leave Western civilisation and any weakening of Britain’s positioning the

Mediterranean was deemed likely to cause the end of social democracy.

Hence the need to support the Lagos–Mombasa line and develop Britain’s

54 J. Kent

imperial defence position in East Africa, not as an alternative to the

Middle East and the Mediterranean but to strengthen it. From the FO’s

point of view, it would also have the advantage of solving the Egyptian

base evacuation problem.

Yet, despite this agreement between the military and the foreign secret-

ary on the way a Lagos–Mombasa strategy would add to a Middle Eastern

strategy, the military did not accept Western Europe as a factor to be

added to imperial defence. Indeed, the COS continued to see the two

areas as alternatives. Despite these differences, what united the FO and the

military in their approach to imperial defence was the idea of maximising

the appearance of British world power through a military presence in the

Middle East. This concept was to remain, albeit in changing guises, both

before and after the debacle of Suez in 1956, and the imperial element,

deﬁned as the projection of power, still continues in Mr Blair’s concep-

tion of a ‘pivotal’ world role for Britain.

Unfortunately, the different military and political strategies to achieve

this soon became clear between 1947 and 1949. Then, with NATO eventu-

ally being followed by the transition to a revised global strategy paper in

1952, a new era of greater unity over imperial defence between the FO and

the military was ﬁnally conﬁrmed. The military, although they would not

openly acknowledge it, were by then faced with the unavoidable reality that

idea of imperial defence, or any meaningful defence in a general global

role, was operationally impossible however pivotal it might be deemed by

politicians. Yet, Bevin and the FO had already laid out strategic require-

ments in the informal empire (the Middle East in particular). These were

regarded in the FO as necessary to contribute important power political

effects but justiﬁed by their military operational effectiveness. And the mili-

tary would subsequently assist the FO in the 1950s by devising new strategic

and military positions to support the power political requirements. In

effect, the latter were to enhance Britain’s global role and justiﬁed by the

alleged needs of imperial defence based in the Middle East.

In 1948, when military plans for global conﬂict were ﬁrst drawn up by

the military planners, (they were emergency plans, meaning plans to ﬁght

with the resources available) for operations in Europe and the Middle

East, previous assumptions began to appear seriously questionable. From

the start, a number of unpalatable facts about ‘hard’ British power

became too obvious to ignore. British imperial defence, even without a

possible continental commitment, was living on borrowed time. The FO

was however hoping to borrow time in abundance for Britain to recover

economically, helped by the resources of the sterling area and the colo-

nial empire in Africa.

This goal had produced the ‘First Aim of Foreign

Policy’ in January 1948 in a Cabinet paper, which ﬁrst revealed a problem

in reconciling the ‘hard’ power facts accompanying an imperial defence

strategy with the political means envisaged in the FO for maximising

British post-war global power and inﬂuence.

The Foreign Ofﬁce and defence of the empire 55

The FO was in fact no longer happy with a military strategy relying on

an imperial position alone.

As Europe recovered, much effort was

devoted to developing links with the Western Europeans that could be

combined with an imperial, global role still uppermost in the minds of

policy makers, especially the military. Like the Treasury and the Board of

Trade, the military were not keen on the European connection because

of their perceptions of economically weak left-wing Europeans.

By late

1949, the economic realities of the hoped-for African resources had

impacted on policy makers, and the Third World Power idea was replaced

as the ﬁrst aim of British foreign policy by the Cabinet.

The strategic concept underlying imperial defence remained however,

and the Strategic Position of the Commonwealth continued as its military

centrepiece which deﬁned strategic priorities in global war. This

remained so even when the US Joint COS informed their British counter-

parts in August 1949, after the signing of the NATO treaty, of their new

strategic concept that would replace Plan Fleetwood their plan for global

war. Fleetwood was the US equivalent of the British plan Speedway (the

ﬁrst had been called Doublequick), whose successor Galloper now had to

be revised as the Americans were less interested in the Middle East than in

defending a bridgehead in Southern Europe.

The idea in taking account

of NATO was to avoid a repeat of a D-Day invasion of occupied Europe.

This also required the abandonment of the American commitment in the

ﬁrst month of war to dispatch American forces to the defence of the

Middle East, the vital area in any future global war, for the British imperial

defence strategy.

The formation of NATO did not lead to a greater military emphasis on

a continental commitment at the expense of imperial defence by the mili-

tary. The British military did not believe that the Russians would attack

Western Europe and hence questioned the need for forces to defend the

Continent.

One might have thought that as the BDCC Middle East

looked at the growing problems of planning for the defence of the Middle

East,

it would lead both to a greater European commitment to NATO

and to a new approach to imperial defence. Moreover, with the emer-

gency in Malaya in 1948, the ‘terrorist’ attacks in the Suez Canal zone in

1951 and the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in 1952, the deployment of

troops in an imperial policing role was by itself reducing available

resources. Thus it would be more difﬁcult for an imperial power to meet

any wartime commitments, and a strategic defence of the empire would

no longer be a practical use of resources. Yet, this was only partially true as

the old requirements of maintaining Britain’s position as world power to

which the Empire/Commonwealth, measured in power political and not

colonial terms, remained. Hence, the empire was intrinsically necessary in

that sense, and imperial defence became more and more a defence of a

concept and its political value and less a commitment to a speciﬁc opera-

tional role.

56 J. Kent

The ﬁrst plan for the defence of the Middle East with the forces then

available, drawn up in June 1948 and known as Plan Sandown, was based

on the Tel Aviv–Ramallah line.

This was hardly the defence of the Middle

East and could only be portrayed as such if it was assumed that in the

future more forces would be available at cheaper cost. When in fact the

opposite turned out to be the case and the limited practical boundary of

operations deﬁned by the Tel Aviv–Ramallah continually expanded, this

inconvenient fact was largely ignored. Yet, it enabled the FO to help deﬁne

a world role for Britain by calling on strategic justiﬁcations that the military

were only too happy to provide, however spurious, in operational terms.

The American change of strategy with its abandonment of a Middle East

commitment in the early stages of war did have one important con-

sequence. The planners were asked in November 1949 to revise the exist-

ing Strategic Position of the Commonwealth Paper of 1947. When they did

so, and it was presented to the Defence Committee in June 1950,

the

changes reﬂected the fact that Britain was still deemed to be playing an

important world role. The choice of empire or Europe was being avoided,

even though the increasing disparity between commitments that had to be

retained for geopolitical/status reasons, and the resources that were avail-

able to meet them continued to grow. This disparity really emerged in the

mid-1950s, but the signs were already there during 1949–1950.

The problem by August 1949 was not just the American reluctance to

accept the three pillars (Britain, the Middle East and the defence of sea

communications) of imperial defence. The FO feared the economic con-

sequences of Europe not recovering and dragging Britain down, so policy

makers found it easier to accept a special place in an American-dominated

alliance.

Yet they remained committed to some lesser form of integration

and cooperation with Western Europe as this could provide the Ameri-

cans with a rationale for Britain’s special position. In addition, the Cold

War need of solidifying a Western bloc, for which the military (apart from

Montgomery) had little time, was now a key FO consideration. Yet, the dif-

ﬁculties of committing forces to Europe,

which gave substance to the

desired cooperation in line with a military strategy, remained. The military

remained reluctant to have the military importance of Commonwealth

defence superseded by the political importance of NATO.

The retreat from empire in the sense of its military/strategic raison

d’être or in the influence and prestige that a military commitment

represented was not underway. The provision of ‘security’ through bases

and their apparent strategic rationale could give a power like Britain,

seeking the preservation of a global role, important cards to play. Even if

imperialism and empire were no longer acceptable words, and even if

Britain lacked the military resources to carry out effective operations,

there was the Cold War. As we will see, the FO and the military came

increasingly to support each other in the attempts to promote a global

role for Britain by using imperial defence, especially the protection of

The Foreign Ofﬁce and defence of the empire 57

the Middle East in the Cold War, in ways which would preserve British

influence. The more so as it became obvious, there were insufficient

conventional forces for global war operations in either Europe or the

Middle East.

As imperial defence or the strategic position of the Commonwealth was

replaced by global strategy, the shadow of British power could no longer

be translated from a concept into a tangible, military/strategic reality. The

realities were the atomic bombs and the Cold War, deﬁned as the war for

hearts and minds fought by all means short of international armed con-

ﬂict. This was to have a great and largely misunderstood impact on global

strategy. The Soviets had exploded their ﬁrst atomic bomb in August 1949

and caused consternation in the West which inﬂuenced the American pro-

duction of National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68).

It also led the

British to become nervous about the scale of attack that could be

unleashed on the British Isles following a Soviet conquest of Western

Europe. One obvious effect might be the reallocation of forces earmarked

for the Middle East to assist in preventing the Soviets arriving so easily on

the Channel coast. In particular, the despatch of two divisions was agreed

by the Defence Committee on 24 March 1950.

It was noted that the United Kingdom could not provide the forces to

defend the British Isles and Western Europe in addition to the forces

needed to defend the imperial lifelines and the Middle East. In fact, as was

soon to be noted, it could not provide for the collective defence of Western

Europe but could successfully contribute to a collective defence of the

Middle East – which the Americans were now refusing to join. This recent

decision on the despatch of two divisions to Western Europe in the event of

war would not, however, reduce the land reinforcements planned for the

Middle East (two divisions) nor even delay them. What it would mean was

that there could be no rapid follow-up of such reinforcements. More worry-

ingly, while the initial forces to defend Egypt were not very great (in effect,

the defence of Egypt was called the defence of the Middle East under Plan

Sandown), already in 1950

they are beyond the capacity of the UK alone to provide. The retention

of our position in the Middle East is of such importance to the cohe-

sion of the British Commonwealth in cold and hot war

that we should

do all in our power to engage Australia, New Zealand and South Africa

– and we hope some day in happier times Pakistan and possibly even

India – to undertake ﬁrm commitments to send armed forces to the

Middle East as soon as possible after the outbreak of war.

Bombers earmarked for the Middle East, although not in a strategic

role, were to be moved back to Europe under Galloper, and the strategic

bombing of the Soviet Union would be left to the Americans (the length-

ening of the runways at Abu Sueir was vital if the Americans were to launch

58 J. Kent

offensive operations from the base in the Canal Zone as opposed to using

it as a staging post). Unfortunately for Britain’s global military role, the

United States then conﬁrmed in June 1950 that they had no intention of

sending forces to assist in the air defence of the Middle East because they

did not intend to use the area as a base for long-range bombing.

Worse

was soon to follow to reveal the futility of a British, or indeed a European,

commitment to the conventional defence of Western Europe.

Imperial defence, or now Commonwealth defence, remained centred

on the Middle East, whatever the position of Western Europe. As well,

Britain could no longer provide for the defence needs of the Antipodean

Dominions in the Commonwealth. However, reinforcements from Aus-

tralia and New Zealand for a possible war in Europe remained a classic

example of inadequate British resources being hopefully augmented

through Commonwealth contributions that would be justiﬁed in terms of

Cold War and not imperial needs. It was, therefore, hoped that the

ANZAM area in the South Paciﬁc would not receive more than the

minimum essential strength and that any surplus Australian and New

Zealand forces would be available to defend the Middle East.

The manner by which Britain initially avoided abandoning an imperial

global strategy, while attempting to support the political needs of the FO

in Western Europe, was to retain the three-pillar strategy by incorporating

Western Europe into the ﬁrst pillar (the defence of the United

Kingdom).

Hence, when the review of global strategy, as imperial

defence was now incorporated under, was completed in June 1950, the

continuing importance of the Middle East was conﬁrmed.

This was

despite the growing problems with force provision, as well as the resource

difﬁculties of projecting hard power on a global basis to conform with the

commitment to Britain’s world role. The decision of Australia and New

Zealand to establish military relations with the Americans, independently

of Britain, through the the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security

Treaty (ANZUS) treaty proved indicative of the way things were develop-

ing by1951.

Ironically, from mid-1950s, British appeals to the Common-

wealth Dominions in the Paciﬁc to provide forces for the old imperial

defence of the Middle East were never more than partially successful. But,

of course, imperial operations in Malaya or Egypt could be justiﬁed by a

Cold War cloak. The British were determined to use the strategic require-

ments, apparently inherent in military facilities and operations, to conceal

whatever imperial role might be retained – at cheaper costs than hot war

requirements.

The modiﬁcation of defence strategy in June 1950 was in a sense over-

taken by events in Korea within a matter of days. The following year when

the dust had settled on the devastation and the changes in the world situ-

ation, notably the acceptance of German rearmament, it was revised

again. Despite a Cold War providing more justiﬁcation for the imperial

Cold War roles of the French in Indo-China and the British in Malaya, the

The Foreign Ofﬁce and defence of the empire 59

principles underlying the 1950 modiﬁcations remained unchanged.

Although the world situation had become more serious in Cold and hot

war terms, the measures adopted by the Western powers were deemed to

have developed principles which in the British case went back to 1947.

Yet with a Cold War strategy, British military operational planning in

the Middle East would now have to take account of a foreign policy more

centred on Europe. As Europe was now deemed more vital for the

defence of the British Isles, operations in a hot war would seem to become

more important. The deployment of nuclear weapons, assuming the

failure of their deterrent role, would continue to play a key role at least

until NATO had developed sufﬁcient conventional strength to defend

Western Europe. Yet, there was to be no abandonment of a Middle

Eastern strategic commitment and the diplomatic efforts to secure Egypt-

ian acceptance of a British military presence in Egypt in peacetime. Natu-

rally, the military argued that any defence of the Middle East depended

on this requirement being met.

The commitment to defend the Middle East (in effect Egypt) remained

the stated goal into 1951 even after it was realised by the men on the spot

in the spring of 1950 that the defence of the Middle East was not possible

given that Britain would have such few resources.

As such, it was decided

that British defence plans could not be disclosed to the Middle Eastern

states as ‘the little the UK can actually do to protect the Middle East’ was

more likely to lower the morale than to raise it. The Tel Aviv–Ramallah

line (the defence of the base in Egypt) remained the only viable option

under Plan Celery (the emergency plan for the Middle East) with the

forces actually available. It was assumed that Australian, New Zealand and

South African forces would not arrive for several months after the out-

break of war.

If American forces were now to be included (contrary to

American plans), then a successful defence of the Inner Ring (running

from the Turkish Mediterranean coast opposite Cyprus along the Taurus

mountains to Malatya, south along the Firat River to the Anti-Lebanon

mountains and south to the lava belt) could be planned for. Yet at the end

of the day, the decision between the Inner Ring and the Lebanon–Jordan

line (a line astride the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains north of

the Beirut–Damascus road, then south through Lake Tiberius and south

through the Jordan Valley) would have to depend on the Anglo-American

forces at the time. One is tempted to say at the beginning of 1951 that

there were little or no realistic reasons to adopt either an imperial defence

policy or a European one when Britain had decided to adopt both.

In 1951, the FO continued to attempt to renegotiate the soon-to-be-

expiring Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. Bevin had several meetings with

the Egyptian Foreign Minister Saleh el Din in December 1950

and, in

the face of the military’s objections, was prepared to concede ownership

and control of the base and its equipment in 1951. Unfortunately,

Herbert Morrison became foreign secretary in March 1951, the same

60 J. Kent

month that the majlis in Iran also nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil

Company. This produced a furious reaction to the damage it caused to

British imperial prestige and hardened British attitudes to an Egyptian

agreement. The classic reason for not surrendering the vestiges of infor-

mal empire in the Middle East prevented the contemplated concessions

and ensured the Ambassador in Cairo Sir Ralph Stevenson’s advice was

ignored.

Thus the Egyptians, who would only reach an agreement

encompassing a British evacuation in peacetime, were faced with a British

government that would only accept an agreement allowing for evacuation

based on the alleged military requirements.

The new foreign secretary’s

proposals embodying an air defence organisation and the military forces

to be stationed in Egypt were then embodied in a paper considered by the

Cabinet on 30 March

and ﬁnally approved on 2 April 1951.

They meant

that military needs had justiﬁed an imperial presence in Egypt and pre-

vented the FO securing an agreement with the Egyptians.

It was already obvious that the idea of imperial defence, even meaning

only the most vital area (the defence of the Middle East), was somewhat

spurious given the lack of British resources which simply could not

provide for the operations that were necessary to implement the strategy.

Defence of the empire would become the uniting feature of military and

civilian planners because they were becoming joint participants in main-

taining an imperial role for Britain in the Middle East. From October

1951, when the Egyptians abrogated the 1936 treaty it became a serious

business when a campaign of violence against the British began. The

doubling of the numbers of troops in the Canal Zone was far more than

an imperial police operation because of the importance of the Middle

East for Britain’s place in the world. It signiﬁed a link between defending

an imperial past and deﬁning a military strategy linked to the pursuit of

the Cold War.

The revision of global strategy in June 1950 had clearly been done with

the distinction between Cold and hot war very much in mind but had

emphasised the need not to form two separate compartments out of the

two concepts. Naturally, the military argued that the ﬁghting of the Cold

War had to be consistent with the strategy for hot war and largely condi-

tioned by it.

Put another way, the old idea of defending the empire had

to be linked to the requirements of preventing the spread of communism

on a global, not simply, European basis. Nor could the military, or the FO,

be sanguine about the erosion of British status in the Middle East. The

Cold War had to be related to military strength, and the priority in the

short term had to be the stabilisation of the anti-communist front, espe-

cially in the Middle East. The British were committed to defend the

Middle East in the hot war for which they allegedly needed a base and

peacetime presence in Egypt. Hence the linkage between the Cold and

hot war. ‘The essential garrison and emergency forces in Europe the

Middle East and Far East’ were ‘to win the Cold War’ but were pretending

The Foreign Ofﬁce and defence of the empire 61