Soviet Ambitions in the Mideast
Fennell, J. Tim
"Soviet Ambitions in the Mideast" and the British (who trained Egyptian helicopter pilots). Virtually every African country has now broken diplomatic relations with Israel, despite...
...This would in a sense "close the ring" around China...
...The Soviets believe the Chinese-American rapprochement poses a significant danger to their global position...
...The second is the seemingly implacable Chinese animosity...
...To give the devils their due, the Soviet tyrants, their regime based on the denial of human dignity, are correct in considering Solzhenitsyn subversive...
...The Ethiopean army has captured from the rebels many weapons of Eastern European and Soviet manufacture...
...It's clear who's playing the role of Hitler, and there are a number of actors competing for the part of Neville Chamberlain...
...Mailer, who lusts to be the most public of writers, has no pubIic-spirited purpose, only a frivolous public persona...
...This is a Soviet version of the "domino theory...
...Mailer's book will make him a million dollars...
...The third objective pertains directly to the Middle East and North Africa...
...A strong position in the Middle East can serve several Russian strategic interests...
...The Soviet Union is the dominant Great Power along the 1200-mile length of the Red Sea, and this could be of great importance if and when the Suez Canal is reopened...
...The Middle East can be related to Eastern Europe in several ways...
...There is a constant whine in Mailer's omnipresent voice...
...The second objective involves Albania and Yugoslavia...
...Alimony laws make the costs of serial monogamy steep, so Mailer wrote Marilyn with an eye cocked on his former wives' lawyers...
...A number of Middle Eastern states, e.g., Egypt, have been associated with the socialist camp...
...The 1970s have seen the ideological overtones of the conflict deemphasized in favor of a more explicit concern with the traditional political and economic interests which cause disputes among states...
...So he conjured up some lurid lies about a dead Kennedy and a CIA plot to "explain" the Monroe suicide as murder...
...He raises no awkward questions, offers no troubling visions...
...The first is what Uri Ra 'anan identifies as the "doctrine of irreversibility," or what has been more generally known as the "Brezhnev Doctrine...
...There are reports that many in Rumania and Yugoslavia believe that continued foreign policy independence is contingent on a general ddtente between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the resultant relaxation of tensions in the Middle East...
...Only Great Britain will have atomic energy available by 1980, but this will provide only 6 percent of her total requirement...
...In that year the United States had several major real problems...
...The recent war may make this easier for at least two reasons...
...Prior to the summer of 1972, Port Said, Alexandria, Mersa Matrum, and Salm~a in Egypt were also open to the Soviets...
...Yet it is a fate that might be given some meaning if the West, stirred by Israel's example, can regain the moral vision without which democratic civilization cannot survive...
...And, in addition, are there areas of tension which might still lead to confrontation...
...There was also tremendous concern over the felt conviction that the idle poor were being subsidized by forced transfers from the working lower-middle class...
...it is, I believe, part of a general pattern of Soviet global intentions...
...Six TU-16 Badger medium bombers, armed with Kennel missiles, had been sent to Egypt prior to the partial Soviet expulsion in July 1972...
...If anything constructive came out of this terrible war and the depressing events surrounding it, it is that some gravely mistaken ideas about international affairs have been shot out of the water...
...12, 1968...
...The decision to proceed with the Moscow summit-10 The Alternative January 1974 despite the mining of North Vietnamese ports--may well indicate great preoccupation with the Chinese threat...
...First, less Soviet prestige was involved as a result of the partial expulsion of the Soviets from Egypt in the summer of 1972 and the withdrawal of advisers from Syria a few days prior to the Arab offensive...
...Solzhenitsyn has been driven against his inclination to have a "public" life beyond his art...
...They are on the verge of doing something never before done in this country (although done in other countries in other times...
...The naval force might serve as a counter to the Polaris submarines operating in the Mediterranean and the tactical (but from the Soviet perspective strategic) nuclear warfare capability of the Sixth Fleet carriers: '~ . . . the Sixth Fleet is stationed in this area . . . in order to control lines of communication passing through the zone of the Black Sea, as well as to strike at enemy targets from sea and air with nuclear and conventional weapons, and the Soviet Union and other socialist countries are designated as the principal enemy" (Krasnaya Zvezda, Nov...
...The developing nations were now appropriate objects for cultivating Soviet influence...
...Admiral S.G...
...Although Solzhenitsyn's fiction bears the mark of his hideous experiences with a sadistic regime, he is almost bashful about it...
...This, in conjunction with a strong naval presence, facilitates the manifest Soviet objective of moving Turkey and Iran to a position of neutrality...
...One of Solzhenitsyn's most recent publications is his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture...
...Soviet ships have repair facilities at Hodeida in Yemen and Aden in South Yemen...
...His running battle against the tyrants is an example of a bravery that can barely be understood by those of us who were born free...
...About half the fleet consists of combat vessels...
...Self-contained flotillas, however, require the maintenance of "fleet trains...
...I expect some American regime will give him the Medal of Freedom...
...It is in a nip-and-tuck battle with Jacqueline Susann's latest epic for the reading public's dollars...
...The historical reasons for Soviet preoccupation with Germany are well known...
...Gorshkov, Commander in Chief of the Navy, speaks of Soviet sailors" . . . honorably carrying the Red Starred flag across the seas and oceans of our planet . . . " The Admiral further observes that the Soviet fleet will eventually be capable of " . . . dealing crushing blows to an enemy's fleet in remote parts of the various oceans . . . . " A ~'Great Power," from the Soviet perspective, has global interests...
...Access to East Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf would be eased and the Soviets would thus be closer to the encirclement of China...
...The Red navy in the eastern Mediterranean probably has three objectives...
...A Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation has been concluded with India...
...The answer to these two vital questions will largely determine the success or failure of attempts to erect a "structure of peace...
...The first problem is the challenge to Soviet leadership within the socialist camp...
...A generation gap had opened which seemed to be unbridgeable, and whose outward signs included violent demonstrations in many forums, a feeling of contempt for democratic processes among the young, and huge differences in articulated thoughts about morality, especially about sex and drugs...
...Benjamin Stein Nixon: His Friends and His Enemies Spiro Agnew made a big mistake in his attack on the press in 1970...
...He should have omitted the word "effete" from "an effete corps of impudent snobs...
...Article IX of the Treaty stipulates that in the event of "an attack or threat thereof" there will take place "mutual consultations in order to remove such threat and to take appropriate effective measures to ensure peace and the security of their countries...
...The North Sea alone could provide for all of Western Europe's oil (at the present rate of consumption) for only about one and a half years...
...Khrushchev, in abandoning Stalin's "two camp" theory, designated the "third world" as the ~'zone of peace...
...The October War undoubtedly caused great consternation in Belgrade and Bucharest...
...A Yugoslav Middle East "expert" has observed that the departure of Soviet troops from Egypt would be "a great relief for everybody in or near the Mediterranean...
...The discussion will involve two dimensions: what may be called political or diplomatic objectives, and strategic or military objectives...
...Racial antagonism was running high as a result of continuing legacies of repression of blacks by whites and a new reign of terror in cities being visited upon all by blacks...
...There are at present four sources of energy available to a modern society: coal, natural gas, oil, and nuclear power plants...
...A leading Israeli Socialist, a left-winger in his own country, recently said in a speech before a New York audience that it was an "honor" for Israel to be in the vanguard of the struggle against the new totalitarian menace...
...And second, the Soviets, through a massive airlift of materials, gave strong and immediate support to their Arab clients, which they had not done during the 1967 conflagration...
...Mailer, his dignity invested in Marilyn, is simply irrelevant to the course of American society...
...Mailer's latest work is a sleazy, slovenly, dishonest exploitation of Marilyn Monroe...
...The first is related to the general drive for strategic parity with (if not superiority to) the United States...
...The war of last fall has probably not had the same effect for at least two reasons...
...It is among the most eloquent political statements of the century...
...As Mailer said in justifying Marilyn, he needs the money...
...commitment to defend her from Peking--might well see a Moscow-Taipei defense association...
...The sole remaining western outpost in the Red Sea is the French colony of Djibouti...
...That would get even for the grain deal...
...In a sense it is an honor, as it was to fight fascism, though it is one Israel accepts reluctantly, albeit courageously...
...West Germany imports 7.5 percent of its natural gas and Italy 25 percent from the Soviet Union...
...The Nixon years, as we move into a period of international politics that is quite distinct from the postwar era of containment and bipolar confrontation, have surely become a watershed in American diplomacy...
...Moscow enjoys docking and repair facilities at Latakia and Tartus in Syria...
...As one American civil rights leader observed, the UN showed some resemblance to a southern lynch mob...
...He is fighting a deadly serious war of nerves and gestures against Soviet tyranny...
...12, 1968...
...Clearly Western Europe will continue to be heavily dependent on the Middle East, and to a certain extent on the Soviet Union, in the foreseeable future...
...Flexible response enhances what I believe to be the Soviet objective of containing or encircling China and also makes manifest what can be called Soviet Great Power aspirations...
...now it appears even to many liberals to be distressingly accurate...
...The Soviet decision makers, if not seeking immediate imperial aggrandizement, apparently perceive that Great Powers have global interests and concerns...
...This has persuaded them.to consider theater warfare, limited warfare, and naval warfare as something operationally plausible in terms of capabilities feasible...
...The Brezhnevproposed Asian Security Conference may have been a signal that the Soviet Union now considers itself an important Asian power...
...The Soviets have jumped over the "northern tie...
...It might be nice if, as a kind of cultural exchange, we could trade Mailer and a utility infielder to the Soviets for Solzhenitsyn...
...Brezhnev became identified with the doctrine following a November 1968 speech in which he professed that the Czech intervention was undertaken in the name of the "class struggle" and "proletarian internationalism" in order to "protect the gains of socialism...
...Kolkowicz postulates t h a t " . . . what we have today in the Soviet Union is in many ways a radical change in their attitude to warfare...
...9 The Washington Post, Sept...
...The Soviet naval buildup, in conjunction with growing neo-isolationist tendencies in the United States, may have an added psychological impact...
...Will the goals of the Soviets ultimately frustrate President Nixon's efforts to erect a "structure of peace...
...Brezhnev, in June 1968, proposed the creation of a Sovipet-backed Asian security system...
...The separatist movement in Eritrea is supported by the Soviet client state of Syria...
...Solzhenitsyn, who knows there is an inherent tension between the private nature of creation and the demands of any public role, is compelled against his artist's nature to play a public role of breathtaking grandeur...
...Virtually every African country has now broken diplomatic relations with Israel, despite what a Kenyan newspaper described as the impressive record of Israeli aid programs to Africa which "have been more successful than those of most of the major and richer nations...
...I will speculate on the nature of Moscow's global policy and attempt to illustrate how Soviet Middle Eastern activities are part of a much larger pattern of concerns...
...never been that powerful vis-h-vis the West...
...Large scale amphibious assault maneuvers were staged on the Kola Peninsula in 1968 and 1970...
...And for a country to have a great writer--don't be shocked, I'll whisper it---is like having another government...
...While the expansion has usually been cautious and opportunistic, Russian horizons have increasingly broadened...
...George Will The Alternative January 1974 11 tion analyst, has observed that "the Chinese leaders believe that they are the principle target of Soviet penetration into Southeast A s i a . . . Moscow has done nothing to discourage the belief...
...First, it represents a spectacular "gain for socialism...
...J. Tim F e n n e l l Soviet Ambitions in the Mideast The "era of negotiation" is upon us...
...In view of Soviet global aims, this is significant...
...The development of a flexible response capability requires a strong Middle East presence because of the access it provides to other areas...
...To see clearly what is being done, one must look back to at least 1968...
...The Soviets perceive that a political obstacle to direct American military intervention has been erected: "The very presence of Soviet ships in the Mediterranean prevents the U.S...
...That's why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones...
...The former French base at Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria, is believed to be where major repairs are made---there are even reports, denied by the Algerians, that the base has been turned over to the Soviets...
...Norman Mailer works hard to be the most publicized American writer...
...Diplomatic ties have been maintained with Indonesia, thus fostering good relations with a Chinese rival...
...What is happening is a long drawn-out coup, by which a small but powerful group of people are subverting the expressed will of the majority and are making the majority believe that their will is being done...
...Should the French withdraw there would probably 12 The Alternative January 1974 be open warfare between Ethiopia and SOviet-supported Somali for control of Djibouti...
...Some analysts believe the Soviet Union is not interested in acquiring permanent bases or repair facilities...
...If it is not the most important, that is because its intended audience--the western public--is preoccupied with trivialities like Mailer...
...She simply has no choice if she wants to live...
...Such "fleet trains" are very expensive and make major repairs difficult...
...The Middle East relates to the problem of China in terms of what might be designated "containment...
...When Malik denounced Israel as an "international gangster" and stormed out of the Security Council, the delegates in attendance gave him an ovation...
...In the conflict between the old and the new morality, Nixon invariably sided with the old morality, especially in calling for tough action against drugs and student demonstrations, and most of all, in his own rather old-fashioned and corny demeanor and speech...
...Solzhenitsyn would not leave Russia because he is committed to using his art to defend the dignity of the Russian people...
...Saints suffer and sinhers prosper and there is no use brooding about it...
...Mailer would not leave the United States because he is passionately--and, to give the devil his due, candidly-committed to using his skills, such as they are, to line his pockets...
...The Red Mediterranean fleet numbered approximately twenty-five vessels in 1966...
...Today the fleet is comprised of forty-five to fifty units and at times has grown to seventy...
...The extensive Soviet resupplying of the Egyptian and Syrian armies during the course of the war threatened to destroy the new super power "ddtente...
...Accordingly, they will try to strengthen their position in the Middle East while simultaneously expelling western, particularly American, influence...
...He has raised hairy-chestedness to a metaphysical principle: I sweat, therefore I am...
...Soviet decision makers, having developed global political pretensions, are now developing the requisite military capability to match...
...Of course the entire Moslem world, responding to the declaration of the Jihad, was up in arms, and one holy "act of war" was committed as far away as Malaysia where it is reported that the American embassy was burned...
...He says the critics should stop using the word "plagiarism" to describe his borrowings from other books about Monroe...
...And woe to the nation whose literary lions, strutting and grubbing on television, are nothing more than servants of commercial publishing powers...
...The most recent Arab-Israeli war emphasizes that the greatest potential source of conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States is the Middle East...
...The Suez Canal has not been made obsolete by the construction of huge tankers: 75 percent of the world's tankers can still travel through the Canal (though some would require ballast...
...Third, the Kremlin probably perceives that the undermining of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe will lead to upheavals within the Soviet Union itself...
...Several years ago such a picture of the world would have been dismissed as a Cold War relic...
...He reminds us that others who suffered more cannot testify...
...Few people took Soviet novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn very seriously last year when he condemned "the spirit of Munich" in the West and chastised the "timorous civilized world [which], faced with the onslaught of a suddenly revived and snarling barbarism, has found nothing to oppose it with except concessions and smiles...
...In addition, the detection of Polaris submarines operating in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf would be facilitated...
...Since at least the fourteenth century Russia has been an expansionist power...
...His art is rooted in a palpable love of country, a contagious, inspiring love that causes fear and trembling in the regime now in its fiftysixth year of tormenting that country...
...The shift in focus is reflected in an increasing competition for influence among non-Communist governments...
...On these issues, there was a consistent differing between Richard Nixon and his opponent, and most particularly, between Richard Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey's most articulate supporters...
...In the conflict between blacks and whites about busing and about welfare, Nixon always took the hard hat position against The Alternative January 1974 13...
...Chinese territorial claims, and the pressures of a population which may reach a billion by the year 2000, alarm the Soviets...
...Consider the sickening contrast between the situation of two writers much in the news these days...
...But Solzhenitsyn would not leave Russia...
...The utility of bases in implementing "flexible response" has also been amply demonstrated by the United States in Korea and Vietnam...
...A frequent theme in the statements of Soviet leaders and the press is the need to protect "the gains of socialism...
...The world--should Taiwan lose confidence in the U.S...
...But what, one may well ask, are the objectives of the other superpower, the Soviet Union, in this new era...
...The Soviets compete with China for influence among the "progressive forces" in the Middle East and elsewhere...
...Isn't it ironic...
...Stalin's concept of theater warfare has been fused with Khrushchev's preoccupation with a general global war...
...A contingent of marines (i.e., "naval infantry") assigned to the helicopter carriers, in the event of some Arab upheaval, could intervene in a radical state to restore order or tip a struggle for power in favor of a particular faction...
...The Red Fleet also raises the morale of the radical Arab states and serves as a deterrent (though to an extent very difficult to estimate) to Israeli "aggressive designs...
...This may well be the paramount foreign policy issue of the next few years...
...The Red Fleet is very deficient in air cover, though air bases in the radical Arab states could potentially compensate for this...
...Chinese naval vessels have cruised the Indian Ocean, and Peking is helping Tanzania construct a naval base...
...Once again Admiral Gorshkov: "As the economic might of the Soviet Union grows, its interests are extending more and more to seas and oceans, and new demands are therefore made upon the navy for defending these interests . . . . " The Strategic The current thrust of Soviet military doctrine seems to be in the direction of developing a theory of "flexible response...
...William Smith asserts that " . . . in the near future a large part of Western Europe will be linked to the widely spread Soviet gas grid" (New York Times, July 21, 1970...
...never enjoyed such a strong political position at home...
...Consequently, the aspirations of the Soviet Union in the region are of manifest importance...
...There were over a half a million Americans fighting in Vietnam, in a conflict which appeared to be thoroughly meaningless to many people...
...He took a hard line on international confrontations in general, but promised eventual withdrawal from Vietnam...
...Roman Kilkowicz, a leading authority on the Soviet military, observes that ~'the Soviet military leaders have never, in the half-century of the history of their country, commanded a more formidable armed force...
...American officials traveling in the Middle Kingdom have reported a pronounced Chinese fear of Soviet encirclement (Evans and Novak, Los Angeles Times, August 4, 1972...
...freedom of navigation for our ships and fleets . . . all determine our possibilities and responsibilities in world affairs...
...Penetration of the Middle East by the Soviet Union is also related to what can be termed the Great Power syndrome...
...The Middle East (including Algeria and Libya) provides 50 percent of Western Europe's total energy needs and 80 percent of its oil...
...Other than that, however, he has not produced a scrap of higher caliber fiction in a quarter of a century...
...China, on the other hand, poses different problems...
...He is a moneygrubber in the Bobby Riggs tradition, but he lacks Riggs' cheerful self-knowledge...
...But occasionally there is so conspicuous an incongruity in the rewards of life, so random an apportionment of pleasure and pain, that, try as one might, one cannot wrench the mind's eye away from it...
...The Soviet Union and China are competing for influence in most of black Africa...
...The doctrine is rooted in the Leninist concept of "proletarian internationalism" and was invoked by Khrushchev to justify the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution...
...Through the manipulation of the organs of mass communication in a concerted attack whose coordination and imagination would make the Beaverbrooks and Hearsts seem like pikers, the corps is close to taking over the government, inchiding all three branches, from the people who were lawfully elected to it...
...It is known that Victor l~uis held discussions with Nationalist leaders in late 1968...
...Ra 'anan argues that the 1967 Arab defeat and the Soviet response (or rather lack of response) signaled to the dissidents in Eastern Europe (particularly Czechoslovakia) that Soviet influence could be rolled back without Moscow taking military action, i.e., that Soviet credibility had been undermined...
...In his Nobel lecture Solzhenitsyn says: "Archaeologists have uncovered no early stages of human existence so primitive that they were without art...
...In The First Circle Solzhenitsyn says: '~Aren't writers supposed to teach, to guide...
...Gromyko indicates: "Equal rights at all sectors and in all spheres of activity in the international arena, including the adoption of measures to protect the vital interests of the Soviet Union, its allies and friends...
...Solzhenitsyn's cry is: "Woe to the nation whose literature is cut off by the interposition of power...
...Mailer, who considers himself a radical and a threat to the established order, is, in fact, like most food for base appetites, an enervating opiate...
...Finally, but very importantly, there was apprehension about what was then believed to be the excessively high rate of inflation...
...The Middle East is a key geopolitical region providing access to other areas and potential naval bases...
...The cutoff last October of Arab oil supplies to the United States emphasizes that when one is contemplating the strategic significance of the Middle East, one immediately thinks of oil...
...The dwindling coal supply has only been partially compensated by natural gas from the North Atlantic...
...There are usually twelve Soviet submarines patrolling between Port Said and Gibralter...
...His writings, now a degeaerate form of "journalism," celebrate the tribulations of the Author as Drunk, the Author Levitating the Pentagon, the Author Solving the "Murder" of the Movie Star...
...The combined dependence on the Middle East and the Soviet Union for vital energy resources must be an important element in the future political calculations of Western Europe and the United States...
...John C. Campbell, a former American diplomat, asserts that ~it is an open Russian beast that we could not now repeat the Lebanon landing of 1958 because their fleet would be in the way, and we would, therefore, be deterred from doing so...
...Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), was superb...
...Mailer is not bashful...
...Within the Persian Gulf the Soviets are given access to the Iraqi port of Basra...
...Conclusion Soviet involvement in the Middle East must be attributed in a very general sense to strategic-geopolitical factors...
...The Soviets have acquired a series of repair facilities and anchorages stretching from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, India, Ceylon, and Singapore...
...The Israel-Arab/Reader...
...Now commentators are comparing the fourth Arab-Israeli war to the Spanish civil war---a local war in which the world's major totalitarian power tested out its new weapons which, in the future, could be directed against the '~timorous" West...
...But Solzhenitsyn, devoid of self-pity, has prison to worry about, not Time magazine covers...
...And more specifically Western Europe will be dependent on the Persian Gulf due to North Africa's inadequate reserves...
...At present Soviet naval vessels showing the flag in the Indian Ocean travel from Vladivostok...
...The doctrine may also have important implications should a I~ninist regime ever establish itself in the Middle East...
...Ship servicing and repairs at sea are very arduous and physically exhausting...
...India also lined up solidly with the Arabs who have opposed India in all of its three wars with Pakistan...
...Eastern Europe is of fundamental importance for three reasons...
...However, Soviet policy in the Middle East is not made in a vacuum...
...A Soviet defeat or setback in the Middle East might reverberate to Eastern Europe...
...There is no whine from Solzhenitsyn, risen from the living dead of Soviet prisons: "To reach this chair from which the Nobel lecture is d e l i v e r e d . . . I have mounted not three or four temporary steps, but hundreds or even thousands, fixed, steep, covered with ice, out of the dark and cold where I was fated to survive, but others, perhaps more talented, stronger than I, perished...
...And the new airfields which the Nationalists are ostensibly constructing in the hopes of attracting American B-52s could easily accommodate the new generation of Soviet Backfire bombers...
...For Mailer, life is real, life is earnest...
...Yes, but Mailer, America's primitive, is doing his best in that direction...
...Mailer is a one-shot wonder, like Bob Belinski, the miscreant who pitched a no-hitter in his first game and made the rest of his career a study in self-degradation, substituting bufoonery for achievement...
...to establish themselves in the radical states to the south of Turkey and Iran...
...Twelve years after the desegregation decision, millions of people wondered if desegregation had to include large-scale busing of "little children from here to kingdom come" and the destruction of public education which often followed...
...The Middle East and North African nations might perceive that western power is waning while Soviet power represents the wave of the future...
...At present the Soviet objective of promoting d6tente in Europe would preclude such provocative action...
...Were the Soviets to realize a sphere of influence in the Middle East, a great deal of pressure could be brought to bear on Western Europe...
...used against Israel on the Sinai front), and the British (who trained Egyptian helicopter pilots...
...Solzhenitsyn says literature is "the living memory of a nation...
...Ten TU-16 reconnaissance aircraft, operating from bases in Egypt, regularly surveyed the Sixth Fleet prior to the events of July 1972...
...Even such a staunch ally as Saudi Arabia felt compelled to stop oil shipments to the United States...
...Second, Eastern Europe provides access to and a buffer between the Soviet Union and a dismembered Germany...
...The Middle East, by providing comparatively quick naval access to East Africa and South Asia, is also a valuable geopolitical link in the encirclement of China...
...Plans for enlargement were disrupted by the 1967 war...
...New York, Bantum, 1969...
...Specifically, Nixon criticized Lyndon Johnson's conduct of the war, but wanted to maintain American honor and strength in confrontation with the Communists...
...Once a state joins or is associated with the "socialist commonwealth" it cannot slip "backwards" into a neutral or prowestern position...
...The Canal also has not reached its optimum size...
...The Soviets have explicitly rejected the traditional belief that Russia is exclusively a land power with interests confined to contiguous territories: " . . . attempts to present the United States as a 'sea power' and the U.S.S.R...
...In the event of Soviet military intervention (perhaps if there is domestic turmoil after Tito's death) the Mediterranean fleet could discourage or even interdict any NATO attempt to render aid to Yugoslavia...
...He says T/me magazine's cover made him look ridiculous...
...It would be a far better world were Israel not thrust so mercilessly into this role, a fate Israel's founders did not conceive for the remnant of Nazi barbarism...
...Melvin Gurtov, a Rand CorporaProphets and Profits Life is unfair...
...The third relates to the geographic proximity of China...
...First, Cairo and Damascus will be heavily dependent on Moscow for resupplying and retraining their armies...
...Spain, whose prime minister has said that the aim of the Jews is to destroy Christian civilization, declared its "unshakable friendship" with the Arabs...
...However, a shift in Soviet policy in the late 1970s is not to be lightly disregarded...
...Sixth Fleet from carrying out the Pentagon's aggressive designs with impunity, from running things here as unceremoniously as it used to" (Admiral Smirnov in Krasnaya Zvezdo, Nov...
...This necessitates the importation of gas from the Soviet Union...
...Soviet technicians have also expanded and modernized the port of Mogodisha in Somali...
...It should also be kept in mind that approximately 80 percent of Japan's oil comes from the Middle East and the Soviets wish to export natural gas to Japan...
...Such missiles are designed primarily for use against ships...
...Second, due to its strong support of Israel, America's prestige has been dealt a severe blow...
...Mailer, having long ago abandoned literature, hawks his wounded ego on talk shows while promoting a book about a tawdry Hollywood episode that should be trivial in the nation's memory but, alas, is not...
...The Soviets also supply 6.5 percent of Western Europe's oil...
...Nixon consistently took the line favored by lower-middle class and upper class people, while Humphrey, and especially his supporters, consistently took the line of the middle class, upper-middle class, and poor people...
...Indeed, both the French and Italian navies are equal to the Soviet Mediterranean force...
...In reality, of course, while a distinction is analytically useful, military and political interests blend together and act upon each other...
...Miller has astutely observed: "Strategy in an extensive oceanic environment does not involve control of the sea itself~ but of specific points of importance in and around it, of access to and routes between them for the purposes of trade or acquisition of supplies, or the movement of military forces, or maintaining communications...
...10, 1973...
...President Nixon has repeatedly emphasized that the primary foreign policy objective of the remaining years of his administration will be the consolidation of a "structure of peace...
...as only a 'land power' are based on outmoded dogmas . . . " (Praydo, July 17, 1971...
...Everything Solzhenitsyn writes enriches our civilization...
...The combat strength of the flotilla, however, does not nearly match the Sixth Fleet at this time...
...Mailer hangs around prize fighters, brawls on the Dick Cavett Show with Gore Vidal, and fancies himself very brave...
...By 1980 imports from Nigeria and the development of the North Atlantic might reduce the total to roughly 70 percent...
...The Political Eastern Europe and China are the two areas given top priority in Soviet national policy considerations...
...no discrimination in world trade...
...Alexander Solzhenitsyn is the greatest living Russian writer, a giant in the tradition of Tolstoy...
...Unfortunately for the rest of the country, that particular body of men and women wield power far greater than anyone, including the corps itself, dreamed...
Vol. 7 • January 1974 • No. 4
