The government of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, in office from October 1963 to October 1964, coincides in large part with the first year of the US administration of Lyndon Johnson. Prime Minister Douglas Home and in particular his Foreign Secretary Richard ‘Rab’ Butler, would be the last government officials to follow traditional British foreign policy goals for the Middle East: namely, that Britain had to maintain its influence across the region for reasons of prestige, to maintain its status as a great power and, most importantly, to exercise control of its oil resources and assets deemed vital to the prosperity of the British economy. While outwardly concerned with the entire Middle East, British policy was essentially focused on Aden and the Federation of South Arabia (FSA) and how, in particular, to manage the threat to the FSA resulting from the civil war raging in neighbouring Yemen. To this end, the government of Douglas-Home sought to resolve the challenges to British interests in South West Arabia primarily through military means. It was only towards the end of its tenure that it came to realise such means offered only a limited response to the siren like appeal of Arabian nationalism. As such, the British Government began moving away from its more hardline stance and began to seek an accommodation of sorts with the nationalist forces in Aden but without surrendering influence. This can be seen most clearly in the Conservatives pledging independence to the FSA by 1968, while seeking to keep the Aden military base.

US policy under Lyndon Johnson towards the Middle East remained much the same as under Kennedy: trying to placate the progressive Arab regimes, most notably Nasser's Egypt, while at the same time seeking cordial ties with the conservative Arab governments (mainly monarchical regimes). Despite escalating its involvement in the Vietnam war, an involvement justified by the need to contain potential Chinese aggression and Soviet influence, the Americans remained curiously indifferent to Marxist inspired movements who looked to seize power on the Arabian Peninsula. By 1967 however, the courtship of Nasser had ended in failure, leaving the United States with a policy that, in terms of its interests, differed little from that pursued by the British until the election of Harold Wilson's Labour party to power in October 1964.