The British did help set up a federation, the United Arab Emirates, to bind together a number of the small states, which, it was hoped, would afford them some measure of protection. With that accomplished, the British packed up and left the Gulf in November 1971. Their departure marked the most fundamental change in the Gulf since World War II and meant the end of the security system that had operated in the area for over a century. It left behind a dangerous power vacuum in a region that supplied 32 percent of the free world’s petroleum and that, at the time, held 58 percent of the proven oil
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