The loss of all Middle Eastern oil, the oil lifeline of Western Europe, the loss of all Africa’s raw materials, the loss of the sea routes — and 70 per cent of NATO’s strategic materials were carried through the Cape route — the loss of a gigantic jumping-off point for naval and air operations elsewhere, the cutting of the world in half, would be a very serious matter. The West would be cut off from some 60 per cent of the world’s oil reserves, available to it only from the Persian Gulf. All the mineral wealth of a continent exceptionally wealthy in minerals would be totally denied to Western Europe. The United States would cease to be able to import nearly 50 per cent of the oil it used and would lose more than 60 per cent of its imports, which travelled around South Africa. If some 8 million barrels of oil a day, 90 per cent of Western Europe’s consumption, could no longer pass within a few miles of Cape Town it would be a grave situation indeed.
The Soviet Union’s own policy of denial was a clear reflection of the position. For what else had the Soviet Union built up its navy? Why else had it established its influence in Yemen, Somalia, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and Nigeria, except to deny these strategically important places to the West? No wonder they had taken such a keen interest in Southern Africa and the Horn in the 1970s. The Middle East was third only to the United States in her share of world exports, and Africa blocked the road from it. The total loss of influence in Africa and the Middle East, and of command of the sea, to be denied oil and material and to have to hand over great tracts of land to the undisputed authority of Soviet aircraft — such setbacks might not absolutely subjugate the United States, but would certainly reduce its ability to stand up to the Soviet Union. Africa and the Middle East were the key, not to winning, but to not losing a world war, as the events leading to the outbreak were to show.
We must now consider the action of the United States in two particular areas which profoundly affected the operations in Africa and the Middle East. First, the American intervention in South Africa. If the United States were not to be elbowed aside in a part of the world of vital importance there was clearly no alternative to the establishment of a firm footing and a naval base in Southern Africa. In late July 1985 a brigade of US marines plus an air group of forty combat aircraft, supported by an aircraft carrier and a naval task force of twenty warships, positioned themselves in and around Simonstown.
The base was occupied and put in a state of defence. The Soviet naval mission had quietly withdrawn. Whatever hopes this may have raised, the United States had not committed itself to the support of South Africa against CASPA. In the months to come no US forces were to operate in South Africa, except in defence of the Simonstown base. This was to become the foundation for the maritime supremacy and the ascendancy in the air which not only contributed to the defeat of the Soviet Navy in the South Atlantic but also played a major part in the development of operations in the Indian Ocean vital to the success of the American intervention in the Persian Gulf.
When one important naval task force had positioned itself in the South Atlantic and Cape area, another was deployed in the Arabian Sea and the western part of the Indian Ocean. A brigade of US marines with their naval and air support was from the end of July at Bandar Abbas, beginning to fulfil the United States’ undertaking to Iran and to the Union of Arab Emirates to keep them clear of interference from either the newly formed United Arab Republic or the Soviet Union itself. It was a timely reinforcement, for the Soviet bases in Somalia and Yemen had also been strengthened in the previous months of false
This United States’ action on both sides of the continent was at once condemned by the Organization for African Unity, whose name continued as before to mock reality. A resolution confirming the African states’ determination to establish black majority rule in the Confederation of Africa South by force of arms — not just African arms but Soviet, Cuban, Jamaican and Arab arms as well — was reaffirmed.
The battle for Southern Africa, without US intervention, was to be a slow and inconclusive affair. But what it was to lack in speed, concentration and decision, it was to make up for in variety, complexity and malignity.
