Palestine: The arbitrary Sykes-Picot line in the sand in 1916 established the boundaries between the British and French spheres after the Ottoman empire's fall. Within this random decision-making Palestine fell within the British sphere. The Palestinians have suffered since.
Suez : After Suez, Eden went as Prime Minister; the British Empire, as known, saw its end coming. Arab nationalism was on the ascendant. The US became more actively involved in the Middle East, building upon the Iran coup, with the coup in Syria in 1956. It was not ... that the Sèvres meeting outside Paris was held in secret, nor that it included the Israelis, nor even that the policy that it inaugurated was unsuccessful. The case against the meeting is twofold: that the British presence was the essential ingredient in the launching of an aggressive war, and the British public was lied to about what British troops were being called upon to do. The UK-Israel axis began at Sèvres farmhouse and was cemented during the operation in Egypt. The USA began to hitch on to the pro-Israel bandwagon after they sought ? but failed ? to prevent the 1958 revolution in Iraq, which brought Arab nationalists to power.
Lebanon: Here, we see a grotesque overreaction on Eisenhower's part to the rise of Arab nationalism., and an irrational fear of its access to oil being lost. But in terms of achieving its goal ? the United States retaining ready access to oil - taking a mighty force to the coast of Lebanon , including nuclear weapons, and breast-beating to the region like King Kong at the top of the Empire State Building, with Britain his Baby Kong alongside, was hardly likely to be successful. When the CIA man in Baghdad contacted the Americans to explain that the new regime was not pro-Nasser, and the USA could work with it, King Kong was encouraged down from the Empire State Building He and Baby Kong withdrew.
Torture : US and UK practices of prisoner abuse since 2001 represented the re-emergence of practices at the heart of the US and British imperial projects for decades. The violence, including torture, that underpinned the expansion of European imperialism, as well as early UK imperialism, is well documented. Likewise, the use of torture by imperial states to defend their colonial gains against local forms of resistance. In the context of British imperial violence specifically, the use of torture was often brutal and widespread, occasionally reaching genocidal proportions. Moreover, British officials were often directly involved in the abuses meted out, as well as working alongside their colonial partners. Likewise, torture was used directly by British officials in attempts to forestall independence in Malaya (1948?1960), in Cyprus (1955?1959) and in Aden (1963?1967). Moreover, similar practices were soon deployed closer to home: in early 1971, in Northern Ireland, to contain spiraling sectarian violence.
Cyprus : As the desire for an end to British rule among Greek Cypriots grew in intensity, the enosis movement threatened Britain's sense of Cyprus as a base for British imperial power in the Middle East. The insurgency simmered for years before being waged as war between 1955 and 1959 as Britain proved characteristically slow to come to the obvious conclusion, self-determination with separate sovereign bases.
