The accusation of ‘thirteen wasted years’ was first levelled against the Conservatives by Labour in 1964 about the period in office since 1951. To gain perspective on the years 2010–24, we open with an acknowledged authority assessing progress in the last fourteen years compared to what was achieved then. Kellner’s chapter will aim to synthesise the charge made about the ‘thirteen wasted years’ (1951-64) narrative and build the foundations of the analytical approach for the rest of this book by considering what governments abroad, notably in Europe, were achieving at the same time.

Australian interests in the Middle East in general and the Suez area in particular have traditionally been of two kinds: military and economic. Imperial and Australian defence planning in the first half of the twentieth century had been based on the assumption that there would be a string of imperial bases between London and Singapore or Darwin which would make effective Commonwealth defence plans in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean areas. Gibraltar, Malta, Suez, Aden, Colombo and Singapore had been the normal naval and/or air bases regarded as vital to the safeguarding of the Dominions east of Suez. Commonwealth security had been maintained through dominant British influence at key strategic points along what had frequently been described as the jugular vein of the Commonwealth. It was for this reason that Australian forces had served in the Middle East in two world wars. Political and economic stability in the sensitive Middle Eastern area was regarded as a matter of vital concern to the Commonwealth as a whole.

Chapter 2 offers a new perspective on the evolution of the first armed peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), during a period of geopolitical transformation within the UN Security Council and General Assembly as a number of newly independent nations joined the organisation as member-states. It explores the expansion of the Afro-Asian bloc’s voting weight and the heightened diplomatic engagement of middle-sized states, such as India and Canada, as involvement in peacekeeping became a source of political power within the UN’s international forums. Once on the ground, the UNEF mission shifted international perceptions of the organisation from a simply deliberative forum to an active military participant. Reflecting on this shift in the field, mid-level peacekeepers and participating troops began to cultivate a distinctive peacekeeper identity through a mission magazine, underpinned by their Orientalist understandings of their space of deployment and the liberal cosmopolitan ideals of the UN Charter.

It is not clear whether Egypt did in fact intend to invade Israel in June 1967. Egypt, however, mobilized its forces and moved them into Sinai near the border with Israel, placed the Jordanian army under Egyptian command, coordinated its military plans with other Arab States, demanded the removal of UNEF and closed the Strait of Tiran. These actions, combined with bellicose statements, it can be argued, gave Israel legitimate reason to apprehend that an attack was imminent. It might well be that the closing of the Strait of Tiran, was, in itself, an armed attack. Israel’s use of force was legitimate if it had, at the time, a reasonable belief that an Egyptian attack had taken place or was imminent. According to modern international law, Israel’s use of force was not legitimate if it was a preemptive strike to prevent the possibility of an Egyptian attack. Neither the UN Security Council nor the UN General Assembly took a position as to who was the aggressor in the Six Day War. As a result of the June 1967 Six Day War, the region’s strategic geography was drastically changed.

By the end of the 1950s, the question of whether indigenous forces would enable Britain to reduce its cost of protecting the region remained unanswered. At times during the tumultuous mid-1950s, British defence planners and foreign office mandarins had such little faith in the ability of local forces to keep order in the midst of social and labour unrest that they believed no other avenue was open but to rely on the British Army. Even when local forces were judged to have performed well operationally, British observers were quick to point out that they still depended on British military support, usually in the shape of RAF transport and combat aircraft and Royal Navy frigates. Moreover, it was British assistance to these forces that was held up as the most important factor in their efficacy. In this way, local forces should be thought of as complementing Britain’s military architecture rather than replacing it. Whilst instability around the time of the Suez Crisis reduced British confidence in the ability of local forces to maintain order, Britain still wanted to reduce the size of its garrison stationed in the Gulf.