ABSTRACT
From the late 1940s through the Suez crisis of 1956, United States (US) officials faced a bewildering variety of security problems with regard to Egypt. During the decades preceding World War II, Egypt emerged as a region of strategic importance to the British Empire. US interest in maintaining British military facilities in Egypt for national security reasons conflicted with US interest in mollifying Egyptian nationalism for political reasons. In the late 1940s, Egyptian nationalists began to challenge Britain's presence in their country. Specifically, they demanded revision or abrogation of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty that authorized the British base in the Canal Zone. In 1951 the US officials devised the Middle East Command (MEC) concept to bridge the gap between strategic and political interests in Egypt. In 1952 and 1953, changing circumstances in the Middle East and elsewhere rendered the Canal Zone military base less essential to US and British security.
