A French cartoonist sees the Russian bear, fresh from a swim in the warm Mediterranean, contentedly sunning itself on the sands of northern Africa, a steel-shod paw within striking distance of the Suez Canal, which has become the Soviet Union’s potential gateway to the Indian Ocean.
In the latter half of the 19th century, about the time General Custer was having problems liberating the last remaining Indian lands from their original proprietors, the Imperial Russians were similarly engaged in overrunning the central Asian khanates of Khiva and Bokhara, civilizations that already were ancient when Marco Polo passed that way 600 years earlier.
The British, looking northward from their newly proclaimed Empire of India, could see the Bear peering menacingly over the Himalayas at the teeming plains below and the Indian Ocean beyond. The Russian threat inspired Rudyard Kipling to write his inflammatory poem, “The Truce of the Bear.” “Make ye no truce with Adam-zad—the Bear that walks like a man!” he warned. “When he shows as seeking quarter, with his paws like hands in prayer, That is the time of peril— the time of the Truce of the Bear!”
British apprehensions were reinforced in 1906, when Russia moved into north Persia, prompting a British counter-move into south Persia, creating spheres of influence which persisted until the 1917 Revolution in Russia.
Kipling was gone and the Indian Empire was slipping from British grasp when, in 1944, the wires from Baghdad, Moscow, Beirut, Cairo, and Teheran began to hum with warnings of renewed Bear trouble. With victory over Hitler clearly shaping up, the Soviets could now properly commence firming plans for postwar policy.
In February 1944, a State Department memorandum noted that the Soviets were negotiating contracts with the Iranians “in which the scales are tipped heavily in Russian favor . . . consistent Soviet exploitation . . . Iranian acquiescence only because the Iranians fear the consequences of opposing the much-feared Russians.” That the Soviets made no bones about their position was clearly indicated by Soviet ambassador-designate to Teheran, M. A. Maximov, who explained to our Moscow ambassador, Averill Harriman, that the Soviets intended to take aggressive measures to obtain their objectives, which Harriman considered to be “. . . much more far-reaching than simply the oil and mineral concessions and to include upsetting of the government.”
Other Soviet options were being kept open. The alarm from another quarter was first sounded by the U. S. military attaché in Beirut, who informed Washington in September 1944 that “. . . the Arabs, suspecting that Great Britain and, to a larger extent, the United States may have ‘sold out’ to world Zionism, are turning to the Soviets. More significantly, Russia is reciprocating . . . by the recent recognition of Syria and Lebanon . . . and the Russian representative . . . will reside in Moslem Damascus rather than in Christian Beirut.”
During the 1944 election campaign, both Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey, wooing Jewish voters, made favorable pronouncements on the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Arab reaction was immediate and violent, with warnings from every American diplomatic mission in the Middle East that the proposed action was dynamite. Minister Wallace Murray, in Saudi Arabia, most pro-American of the Arab states, warned that “. . . our great economic stake in Saudi Arabia might well be so compromised that our efforts through ordinary diplomatic channels to protect our interests there might be unavailing.”
Meanwhile, the Soviets were continuing to lead the Americans down the primrose path toward the double-double-cross. In October 1944, the first secretary of the Soviet embassy in Ankara, S. S. Mikhailov, told an American official that an independent Jewish state in Palestine was economically unsound and politically unnecessary, pointing out that British, Americans, and Russians all treated their Jewish citizens as proper nationals and there thus was no necessity for a separate Jewish state. The State Department swallowed this, reasoning that the Soviet position was logical in that the present Soviet position of wooing the Arabs would make highly unlikely any pro-Zionist policy in the face of obvious Arab opposition. Also in October 1944, the director of State’s Near Eastern and African Affairs desk, Wallace Murray, warned Undersecretary Edward Stettinius that he should alert the President to the facts of life concerning the area: “We have had the most definite indications that the Soviet Union is showing growing interest in the Near East and that this is no temporary manifestation.”
In December 1944, a lengthy telegram from Ambassador Harriman in Moscow shows that he, too, had taken the bait. He reported that the Soviets were being careful not to come out too openly against the United States and Britain on the Arab vs. Zionist question, for fear of weakening the wartime alliance before Hitler was finished. His message clearly indicated he had been convinced the Russians were against the establishment of a Jewish state.
Loy Henderson, career foreign service Russian expert long experienced in the Baltic area and the Soviet Union, had been marked by Roosevelt as not sufficiently pro-Russian to be allowed in any policy-making position which concerned the Soviets. Consequently, in 1944, he was sent to the “safe” post of minister to Iraq. There, the discerning Henderson soon read the signs, reinforced by conversations with the Iraqui foreign minister who told him Iraqui patience was wearing thin and that the Iraquis would turn to Russia if we persisted in our pro-Zionist course. Henderson was so fearful that his alleged anti-Russian reputation in Washington would lead them to believe his reporting suggested a Russian conspirator under every bed that he sent off a personal telegram to “Dear Wallace” (Murray) explaining that his dispatches voiced not only his opinion, but the joint views of his own staff plus those of the local OSS, OWI, and military attaché.
In August 1945, the Iraqui foreign minister was still trying to convince the Americans of the danger facing them. He warned that the Soviet minister had been doing effective propaganda favorable to the Soviet Union and detrimental to the United States by contrasting Soviet opposition to Zionism with U. S. support. Meanwhile, Washington was with little effect attempting to assure the Arabs we were not pushing for the entry of 100,000 Jews into Palestine as American Jewish leaders were demanding. The U. S. minister in Baghdad was under no illusions: “The Soviet secret weapon hereabouts” he reported, “is ability to maintain silence, and this weapon has been effective in building up goodwill and considerable measure of influence while retaining for the U.S.S.R. full liberty of action.”
Events in Palestine clearly indicated there was not just Arab smoke, but Jewish fire—mostly under the posteriors of the unhappy British, who held a post-World War I mandate from the League of Nations, an organization which, by 1945, was long since moribund. For many generations a few hundred thousand Jews had been living in the Middle East, operating much of the modest industrial and mercantile establishment and living on amicable and mutually beneficial terms with their largely agricultural or pastoral Arab neighbors. But the Hitlerian holocaust in the European ghettos had enormously reinforced previous Zionist activity toward establishing a homeland where Jews could walk in pride and safety—not just a few hundred thousand, but millions. Many of these Jews, heretofore traditionally considered a non-warlike race, had fought in North Africa, in the Jewish Legion in Italy, and elsewhere in Europe. With the Nazi collapse, these blooded veterans turned their martial talents to their own purposes. The Haganah, Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Stern Gang, and others formed paramilitary organizations, assassinated British officials, connived in clandestine mass immigration, and confirmed the worst Arab fears that the Jews meant business.
For the next two years, Britain’s 100,000-man occupation force suffered increasing harassment. Palestine was torn by railway sabotage, oil refinery explosions, and demolition of public buildings. After a final desperate effort in February 1947 to bring about Arab-Jewish agreement, Britain in extremis brought the question to the United Nations. The vital question of partition of Palestine into two weirdly gerrymandered states came to a vote in the General Assembly on 29 November 1947. Although never seconded by the Security Council, then, there, on paper, the Jewish state of Israel was born, with 33 members voting “aye,” 13 “nay,” and ten abstaining. Among the abstentions was pragmatic Britain, who saw in Israel a state that, if once established, she must ultimately support, to the destruction of her great oil and other interests in Arab lands. The necessary two-thirds majority had been achieved only by the votes of the Soviet Union and her satellites. On 14 May 1948, Israel proclaimed her independence, recognised 16 minutes later by the United States, seconded by Guatemala the next day, and next by the Soviet Union on 18 May. To help ensure that the new state had a chance to survive in the fierce fighting then going on between Arabs and Jews, satellite Czechoslovakia was directed by her Soviet masters to fly in plane-loads of arms to the hard-pressed Jews.
Thus did the Soviet Union, whose diplomats for years had sold the West on their opposition to a Jewish state, achieve the magnificent coup which opened the floor for the long-planned expulsion of the Anglo-Americans from the Middle East and their replacement by the Russians. Henceforth, with Israel a reality which must perforce be supported by the United States, the U.S.S.R. could resume its pro-Arab stance without fear of compromise.
It is unlikely that even the chessplaying, reputedly clairvoyant Soviet policymakers could have seen in their crystal ball the shape of Mediterranean things to come two decades later. It would take the cooperation of the Americans plus the collapse of the British Empire to allow the Soviets to take their next giant step. The train was set in motion by U. S. withdrawal from Egypt’s Aswan dam project, leaving the vacuum to be filled by the eager Russians. The British withdrawal, not just “east of Aden,” but practically from the Mediterranean as well, fairly sucked the Soviets into an area Russians had dreamed of penetrating since Kipling’s day: the Indian Ocean.
Today, the blueprint is clear. The Indian Ocean is Russia’s oyster. No other power challenges her there. The modern Indian Navy is Soviet-built. Cross-pollination between the Indian Navy and Air Force and their Soviet counterparts escalates. It must be accepted that the Indian elite, such as the late Jawarhalal [sic] Nehru and Indira Ghandi, have never been pro-American, to put it charitably. More to the point, the Russians are in a physical position to support India against the common threat of resurgent China. And, in Indian eyes, American inability to defeat a small, backward Asian nation does not recommend us as a strong reed on which to lean in any confrontation with the Maoist colossus.
Russia’s new role in the Indian Ocean alone would make easy access thereto, via the Suez Canal, highly desirable to her. But a consideration of vastly greater importance has arisen which makes absolutely vital the assured and undisputed control of this waterway. And that is the emergence of the Soviet-Chinese confrontation. To put it simply, the whole center of gravity of Soviet effort has massively shifted. The Soviets no longer fear the Americans, who are not only bedeviled by internal dissension, but also have been reduced to parity in weapons of terror, and are rapidly approaching that position in seapower. This, plus a tentative détente with West Germany, relative quiescence and stability in the satellites, impotence and lack of direction in France and Italy, has largely secured the Soviet Union’s western flank. They have now turned to face the new monster, the ironic outgrowth of the dragon’s teeth so hopefully and naively sown by Lenin’s Communist party organizers in 1923 Shanghai.
It is probable that the Russians were more surprised by the break with China than were the xenophobic, proud Chinese, whose patronizing view of “barbarians” in general over the millennia quite properly includes the upstart Slavs. Conversely, as the Third Rome—the cross displaced by the hammer and sickle—Moscow has taken a dim view of any national heresy or deviation from the Soviet leadership. It undoubtedly came as a rude shock, even after Yugoslavia’s defection, that in spite of Moscow’s sometimes cavalier treatment, the Chinese comrades would bite the hand that passed out such goodies, as, for example, the $300-million loan in 1950, the 1957 agreement to give China technical material for an atomic bomb, 15 days after the Soviet’s first Sputnik, and, in August 1958, the promise to help China build 47 major industrial projects.
The bloom had started to fade from the Chinese red rose as early as 1956, when Khrushchev commenced to denounce Stalin, then three years in his grave. In August 1958, the Chinese opened a massive artillery attack on the Nationalist islands off the coast. In eight weeks of skirmishing, the Reds lost 36 MiGs, to six aircraft for the Nationalists, who used U. S. Sidewinders while the Russians failed to provide their allies with the equivalent.
Even yet, the Chinese held out hopes. In October 1959, the secretary general of the Chinese Communist party, Teng Hsiao-ping, ecstatically proclaimed that “The Socialist camp headed by the Soviet Union is the reliable guarantee of world peace and human progress. China has joined the camp, and shares the same destiny and life breath.” That the Chinese should have been this sanguine is remarkable in that Khrushchev in December of 1958 had spent 8 hours and 25 minutes assuring Senator Hubert Humphrey that he liked Ike, felt no evil toward the United States, and believed the Chinese communes to be unworkable. In October, just after his 1959 U. S. trip, Khrushchev visited Peking for the 10th anniversary celebration of the Red regime. In a speech to 5,000 people, Khrushchev denounced war as an instrument of policy, declaring that the people would never support it. This marked the end of the Sino-Soviet alliance.
The break came at a most inopportune time for China. In 1958, the “Great Leap Forward” got under way. It brought on a great dislocation of population. Statistics were grossly inflated and bewildered people struggled to make backyard pig iron. Because of bad planning, crops rotted in the fields, while snarled transportation plagued industry. It was in the middle of this tragicomedy that the Soviets elected to pull out their thousands of technical advisers—and to take the blueprints with them.
By late 1962, the Chinese had recovered sufficiently to invade India, while the Soviets continued to supply India with aircraft and “deplore” the Chinese attack. And when India clashed bloodily with Pakistan in August 1965, it was the Soviets who worked hard to bring about peace, before the Soviets’ de facto ally against China had been too seriously weakened. The treaty was signed at Tashkent.
In the summer of 1963, the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States signed the test ban treaty, which Peking labelled “rotten to the core.” Moscow replied that China could never wash off the shame of gambling on the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in a thermonuclear war. The Peking Jen Min Jih Pao (Peoples’ Daily) made the break official: “Incontrovertible facts show that the Soviet government has sold out the interests of the Soviet people, the interests of the Socialist camp, including those of the Chinese people, and the interests of the peace-loving people throughout the world.” The deadly feud was on.
That the deteriorating situation had failed to penetrate at once to the working level is suggested by a personal experience. One crisp December evening in 1958, a Soviet flag officer and his wife sat with my wife and me at an intimate little dinner in my quarters in Yokosuka, Japan. They enjoyed the fare and the Russian chat as a change from the monotony of their life in a country where their only contacts outside the Soviet embassy were at diplomatic parties where they had no common language. Our conversation ranged over many subjects. I recalled the pleasant associations I had had in the wartime Soviet Union. The Admiral said that he, too, had enjoyed some small contact with Americans in Vladivostok immediately after the war, but that he had noted an almost immediate deterioration in relations very soon after the shooting stopped. “The friendship was born and died with the wartime alliance,” I said.
“It is a great pity,” I continued, “but perhaps sometime in the future we will once again be allies and friends, this time against the Chinese.” The Admiral’s face turned red, and his amiable smile vanished, “It is not correct for you to suggest such a situation concerning our Chinese comrades!” he said angrily. And groping for some suitable counterattack, he chastized the Americans for being in Korea. Then we passed to other things and the little contretemps was tucked behind us.
In 1961, I was back in Japan and met the Admiral at a dinner party. After the usual preliminary chitchat, I asked him if he remembered our little exchange about the Chinese two years before. He broke into a cheerful grin. “Da! Gospodin kontr-admiral!” he said. “I remember it well. You were right and I was wrong.”
Where the Comrade Admiral and many of his more influential countrymen were wrong was in a basic lack of appreciation of Chinese psychology and attitude over the centuries. It is difficult for the Western mind to grasp that the Chinese language, hence the Chinese mentality, is vague in the concept of time as a finite quantity. The wardroom’s Chinese teacher in my Chungking gunboat, 1,300 miles up the Yangtze, was interested to hear where I had been in China. When I told him Tsingtao, on the central seacoast, was my favorite place, he remarked that he, too, was from Tsingtao. I gave him the names of several of my friends there as possible mutual acquaintances. “Oh, you misunderstand me.” he said. “I mean that I am from Tsingtao four hundred years ago.” The mere circumstance of a common Sino-Russian political philosophy—one might almost say militant religion—suggested to the Russians that a near-deathless brotherhood, such as the long-lived Holy Roman Empire of mixed peoples, might emerge. But, to the Chinese, it was only yesterday that the swaggering Slavs seized from a temporarily weak Celestial Empire what is now the Soviet Maritime Provinces. As for Soviet aspirations in the Indian Ocean, the Chinese remember that in the 15th century Ming fleets of as many as 62 huge ships and 28,000 men sailed to the coasts of east Africa, their might overawing Indians, Arabs, and Malays along the way. We would be naive to think that the Chinese feel that a century or two of momentary weakness should more than temporarily interrupt the march of the sons of Han.
Dangling like a limb of ripe fruit ready to be sawed off at a dozen places—railway cuts, tunnels, and bridges—the Soviet Maritime Provinces could not be fully supported in a major Sino-Russian war except by sea. The Soviet logistic effort in support of North Vietnam has made abundantly clear to the Soviets the immense handicap of having to circumnavigate Africa to reach the Far East. In the same sense that the Panama Canal must remain in hands that guarantee its availability to the United States, so Suez henceforth must come under unchallenged Soviet control. And in the maintenance of this control, the continued existence of Israel is a prime consideration, as a counter-irritant to the Arabs which will make Soviet support of the Arab world indispensable to the latter.
In April 1970, the veteran of 50 years of Israeli politics and diplomacy, David Ben-Gurion, told correspondent Marlin Levin [Time, 1 May 1970] that “They [the Soviets] want to get the two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific. So first of all they must have the Mediterranean, and it is not easy to get that without the Arabs. They want the Arabs, but not because they like Arabs. I do not think they are interested in destroying Israel, because if they do the Arabs will not need them.”
In descending order of importance, the Soviets must “own” Suez.
► To build up and support the Siberian Far East.
► To be prepared to support India and negate the land bridge across the roof of the world via which West Pakistan flirts with China, and which cuts across direct land communication between India and the U.S.S.R.
► To be able to sit astride the Chinese lines of communication with Africa.
In Africa, Chinese engineers are building a $350-million railway, supplying arms, training troops and black commandos. In Palestine, Maoist-oriented and partially Chinese-supplied commandos thwart the efforts of moderate Arabs and Soviets to make peace and open the canal. Chinese are active in Albania, once a Soviet submarine base, and in North Africa.
Thus has the world’s axis shifted. The Soviet plan set in motion in 1944 to replace the Anglo-Saxons in the Middle East, and thus threaten control of Europe’s oil, has succeeded. Concurrently, Turkey has been outflanked and diplomatically softened up so that the perennial Tsarist dream of freedom of the straits for the U.S.S.R., but not necessarily for the rest of the world, is now a practical reality. Much of the North African littoral has again become in effect the pirate stronghold that once plagued the West. And this time the turbans are not Moslem green, but Communist red. Through a series of circumstances which played into Soviet hands, Suez is Russian. From the vital lifeline of a now defunct British Empire it has become an equally vital lifeline of the new Soviet Empire.
The Persian Gulf’s oil is essential to the industry and shipping of Japan. A preponderance of Japan’s iron ore comes from India. Thus will the Soviets’ control of the Indian Ocean place a halter around the neck of the one power which can play a major third party role in the confrontation of the Bear and the Dragon.
Could Kipling once again be with us, he would find that his Bear that walked like a man has learned equally well to swim like a fish. No longer does the Bear have to peer impotently from behind the bars of the Himalayas. The plains and the seas to the south are now within his grasp.
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A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy in the Class of 1929, Admiral Tolley spent over eight years on the prewar Asiatic Station, three years of which were served on board the gunboats Mindanao, Tutuila, and Wake. His first World War II assignment was to command the schooner Australia from the Philippines in 1942. Subsequently, he was Assistant Naval Attaché in Moscow and, during the Korean War, he was Director of Intelligence Division, Armed Forces Staff College. His last assignment before retiring was Commander Fleet Activities, Yokosuka, Japan.