ABSTRACT
British strategists agreed with their American counterparts that air interdiction was the key to the defence of the Middle East. The Turks themselves would be exclusively preoccupied with the defence of their own soil, and the Allied forces deployed in the Middle East were inadequate to offer the Turks any aid. The new plan, essentially the same as the old, made a fresh, more sober assessment of the balance of forces that the Allies would be able to deploy against the Soviets, in defence of the United Kingdom, and for the campaign in the Middle East. The Pentagon conference of October 1948, revealed a widening chasm between British and American strategic conceptions in regard to the Middle East theatre. British strategy was imploding into a minimal goal of defending the Egyptian strategic base at the Ramallah line in Palestine.
