Here the broadcasters found themselves on secure ground. Their touch was less certain when it came to entertainment. They fell back in the first instance on music, played from behind a caption card. But modern rock sounded suddenly out of place. Light entertainment and comedy struck such a false note that, after one channel had experimented with these as some form of relief from the gloom, they were abruptly dropped. One British regional station had an immediate and warmly approving reaction from its audience when it went over unashamedly to an abundance of frankly patriotic music. But there were limits to the number of times which even the works of Elgar could be played within the space of twenty-four hours. An early answer was found in the wide use of soap operas. Extensive re-runs of
Almost fifty years ago General Wavell, when contemplating from the Middle East the stakes involved in an earlier world crisis, summed up the strategic balance in a statement remarkable alike for its brevity and its prescience. Oil, shipping, air power and sea power, said Wavell, were the keys to the war against Germany and Italy. They were dependent on each other. Air and sea power required oil. Oil had to be moved about in ships. Ships themselves required the protection of naval and air power. Wavell went on to argue that since the British Empire had access to most of the world’s oil, as it had to most of the world’s shipping, and since it was well endowed with naval power and potentially with air power — ‘we are bound to win’.
To what extent did this sort of reasoning still apply half a century later? It was true that oil was still both cause and means of conflict; it was true that sea power was still largely dependent on oil and on the shipping indispensable to its transportation; it was true that air power and oil were still inextricably bound together — for use, for protection, for movement. What was no longer true was that ‘we’ — the Western Allies — still had a monopoly of all of them.
Every great nation which without the benefit of sea power had sought to humble others in inter-continental struggles had in the end been humbled itself by sea power. It was a lesson enviously learned by the Soviet Union and carelessly thrown aside by its once greatest exponent — Great Britain.
The equation was now a very different one. The Soviet Union had some 8,000 registered merchant ships with a gross tonnage of 20 million; the USA less than 5,000 ships although a tonnage also of close on 20 million. The Soviet Union had 500 oil tankers, the USA 300. In reserves of crude oil the Soviet Union had some 6 1/2 billion tonnes as against 4 3/4 billion tonnes. The Soviet Union was the world’s leading crude oil producer, the United States the second. Yet the United States now imported 500 million tonnes of crude oil annually, nearly half of it from the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. The Soviet Union imported none. As if this were not enough, the Soviet Navy was the largest in the world, with some 250 major surface combat vessels and 300 submarines, of which 200 were nuclear-powered. Aircraft integral to the Soviet Navy totalled around 700. The Soviet Air Force had some 10,000 combat aircraft, including 1,000 bombers, of which one-fifth were inter-continental, 4,000 fighters in support of ground troops and about the same number for air defence. Air transports, including helicopters, amounted to more than 2,000. We summarize these resources here (though it must be remembered that a good part of them would be orientated towards China and the Pacific) as a reminder that it seemed to be the Russians, now, who had all the ingredients of Wavell’s recipe for victory.
In the Second World War the struggle for Africa and the Middle East had been a sideshow. The power of the
