ABSTRACT
The diplomatic truce established in the Middle East by Dag Hammarskjöld in September 1958 paved the way for the withdrawal of British and US forces from Jordan and Lebanon. The Macmillan government quickly decided to pull out the troops from Amman despite the residual doubts of the ‘Suez lobby’ in London and King Hussein’s nervousness about being left alone without a foreign troop presence. At the same time that the withdrawal was staged, the Foreign Office coordinated an interdepart-mental review of Britain’s overall Middle Eastern policy. Official opinion in Whitehall on the issue crystallized around two perspectives that can be roughly categorised as ‘interventionist’ and ‘Arabist’. Those who believed that Britain needed to retain the means to intervene with force in the region were opposed to the view, expressed mainly by Foreign Office officials, that Britain should ‘disengage’ from regional politics and build a new relationship with the Arabs based on commerce and economic development. The review was the first systematic policy rethink on the Middle East carried out in London after the Suez crisis. It also represented the last serious attempt to formulate a joint policy with the US as a means of magnifying British regional power.
