With London no longer able to protect them, the Americans quickly filled the void, and the arrival of the US 5th Fleet – which today has more warships than the entire Royal Navy – to take over the Bahrain naval base vacated by British forces in 1971 aptly symbolised our humiliating retreat from empire. Until recently, the Pax Americana has admirably served the Gulf region’s interests, whether protecting it from the threat posed by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein or the more sinister designs of the ayatollahs menacing the Arab regimes from the opposite shores of the Gulf.