ABSTRACT
During World War One, the UK had defended Egypt from the banks of the Suez Canal; during World War Two, from the Western Desert. After World War Two, once the Labour government relinquished the Indian Empire, the Suez Canal became obsolete as an imperial highway to India and the Far East. However, the canal continued to serve as a valuable conduit for transporting Persian Gulf oil to Europe, and the Korean War demonstrated the canal’s strategic and logistical utility in wartime, as a short cut to the Far East.2
