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To understand the complex dynamics that shaped the modern Middle East, few guides are as insightful as the British historian and author, James Barr. His books, including A Line in the Sand and the one we’ll focus on now, Lords of the Desert, are essential reading for anyone wanting to look behind the curtain of 20th-century geopolitics. Barr, much like the legendary journalist Robert Fisk, has a talent for cutting through official narratives to reveal the raw, often cynical, power struggles that truly drove events.

Lords of the Desert picks up this story, charting the fierce, often hidden, rivalry between two supposed allies—Britain and America—as they vied for control of the Middle East and its greatest prize: oil. This was not a friendly competition; it was a struggle that began even as the embers of the Second World War were still glowing.

As Barr writes, opening his book with a pivotal moment:

“Flanked by the Lord Mayor of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Winston Churchill stood up in the Mansion House on the 10th of November 1942 to deliver some good news. Britain had at last won a decisive victory in the Middle East… Now, this is not the end, he went on to warn… It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

This speech, delivered after the crucial victory at El Alamein, marked a turning point. For three years, Britain had faced an almost unbroken string of calamitous defeats: Dunkirk, Greece, Crete, and the humiliating fall of Singapore. Churchill’s leadership was under immense pressure, with critics in Parliament calling for his resignation. The victory in the desert was more than a military success; it was political survival.

But Churchill’s speech contained a second, defiant message, one not aimed at Hitler, but at his most powerful ally: the United States.

The Atlantic Charter: A Dagger Aimed at the British Empire

Even as American tanks, planes, and supplies were pouring into the British war effort—a lifeline without which the victory at El Alamein would have been impossible—a new conflict was brewing. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, like his predecessor Woodrow Wilson, was a staunch anti-imperialist. He envisioned a post-war world free from the old European empires, replaced by a new order of global free trade.

This vision was formalized in the Atlantic Charter of 1941. On its surface, it was a noble declaration of principles like self-determinationSelf-Determination Full Description:Self-Determination became the rallying cry for anti-colonial movements worldwide. While enshrined in the UN Charter, its application was initially fiercely contested. Colonial powers argued it did not apply to their imperial possessions, while independence movements used the UN’s own language to demand the end of empire. Critical Perspective:There is a fundamental tension in the UN’s history regarding this term. While the organization theoretically supported freedom, its most powerful members were often actively fighting brutal wars to suppress self-determination movements in their colonies. The realization of this right was not granted by the UN, but seized by colonized peoples through struggle.. But for Churchill, it was a dagger aimed at the heart of the British Empire. A key American objective was the dismantling of Britain’s “Imperial Preference” system—a network of tariffs that gave British goods a huge advantage across its vast empire. America, the rising giant of manufacturing and commerce, wanted those markets open.

Churchill knew that if he agreed to unqualified free trade, the British economy would be crushed by American competition. He fought to dilute the charter’s language, but he was in a weak position. He needed American help to win the war, and he had to accept the strings that came attached.

This is the context for his defiant 1942 speech. When he declared, “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire,” he was speaking directly to Roosevelt and to powerful American figures like Wendell Willkie, Roosevelt’s 1940 presidential opponent turned special envoy. Willkie had just toured the Middle East and returned a fierce critic of British imperialism. The American political elite, from Admiral King to General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, deeply distrusted what they saw as Britain’s self-interested, cynical maneuvering.

The Arrogance of Empire: Ruling by Proxy

The British attitude on the ground did little to ease American suspicions. In Egypt, the man in charge was the British Ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson. A towering, bullying figure, Lampson operated from “Number 10,” his office in Cairo, and effectively ruled the country. As one diplomat noted, the British didn’t govern Egypt; they governed the governors of Egypt.

Egypt was nominally independent, but the 1922 treaty that granted this “freedom” also gave Britain the right to station 10,000 troops along the Suez Canal and made it responsible for the country’s defence. In reality, it was a protectorate. The British propped up a compliant monarch, King Farouk, and when he wavered, Lampson surrounded his palace with tanks and forced him to appoint a pro-British government. This heavy-handed imperialism was anathema to the Americans, who saw it not just as morally wrong, but as a barrier to their own influence and commercial interests.

This, then, was the stage for the post-war era. The defeat of the Axis powers was not the end of the struggle for the Middle East; it was merely the “end of the beginning.” A new, colder war was about to begin—not just between East and West, but between two Western allies, as Britain desperately tried to cling to its crumbling empire while America moved to replace it as the new lord of the desert.