Vasco da Gama, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, reached India in 1498. The Portuguese and the other white seafarers who followed them were able by superior mobility and fire-power to impose their will on petty Asian rajahs and princes. A handful of British troops conquered India in the 18th Century; in the 19th, a few British, French, and American ships and men broke through the isolationism of China, Japan, and Korea. Great colonial empires were erected in Asia—Spanish, Dutch, British, French. And after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, various Occidental chancellories anticipated “the breakup of China.”
In 1898, exactly four centuries after Vasco da Gama had dropped anchor off Calicut, Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan wrote that “we stand at the opening of a period when the question is to be settled decisively, though the issue may be long delayed, whether Eastern or Western civilization is to dominate throughout the earth and to control its future.” Contemporary developments in the Middle East introduce us, half a century later, into a new phase of that clash of civilizations. There Asia now challenges the sea-air powers of the West.
In Mahan’s time, Britain maintained a Pax Brilannica throughout a vast empire of which two-thirds of the area and four-fifths of the population were in lands bordering the Indian Ocean. “Communications dominate strategy,” and the British Asiatic empire was held together by sea power. The Royal Navy ruled the great sea route via Suez that gives Europe direct access to Asia and Australia. From Plymouth to Hong Kong by way of Suez is 9,500 miles—but by the course around the Cape of Good Hope it is 12,800 miles. From Plymouth to Sydney (Australia) by the two alternate routes it is, respectively, 11,200 and 12,300 miles. The British sustained their control of the shorter sea-way by the string of fortified naval bases, Gibraltar-Malta-Aden-Trincomalee- “the lifeline of the Empire.” The safety of the Suez bottleneck, 2,000 miles east of Gibraltar, was assured by the Royal Navy’s predominance in the Mediterranean and British dominion in Egypt. The British line of direct communications into the Indian Ocean was secure. Singapore gave Britain control over the eastern approach to those waters. The Indian Ocean was virtually a British lake.
The Battles of Manila Bay (1898) and Tsushima (1905) marked the beginning of an era in which rival naval Powers—American, Japanese, German—rose up to challenge British dominance of the Seven Seas. World War I eliminated Germany from the naval race and increased the relative strength of the Oriental contender, Japan. World War II brought the radical upsetting of both Asian political systems and the balance of military power in the East: Occidental colonial power has been almost wholly eliminated from Asia; Japan’s navy lies at the bottom of the Pacific, and the U. S. Navy patrols the West Pacific in its stead. The Soviet Union has joined forces with a militant China to become the greatest land power ever seen in Eurasia, and builds up a navy strong in cruisers, destroyers, and submarines—the commerce-destroyers.
The Sino-Soviet land power commands adequate armed strength, a powerful supporting industry, and a central strategic position from which the allies can exert pressure upon a truncated Japan to the east, an inchoate Arab world in the Middle East and North Africa, and the countries of South Asia. Those are the countries, with their peoples and their resources, which can tip the balance against Western civilization.
Current developments in the Middle East are thus of major strategic significance. There is much more at stake than petroleum —great as that stake is.1 For the Middle East is the highway to empire. Alexander the Great and the Mongols alike invaded India via Afghanistan. Imperial Russia, another land power, in the 19th Century mounted a threat to the British raj in India from the same quarter; Britain fought two Afghan Wars to block the menace to its power.
Mahan discerned the nature of the impending contest between land and sea power in Asia. He viewed the opposing forces as converging upon a zone of “debatable and debated ground” lying roughly between 30° and 40° N. Lat. and stretching 5,000 miles from the Middle East to Korea—with some flaring out at both ends. That was a zone of instability, the “Middle Strip,” in which Russian land power would clash with British sea power. “The regions whose political and social future is in doubt . . . constitute the objectives of policy.”
Mahan considered that British sea power would probably be supported, in that struggle, by that of the United States and Germany; he did not conceive of Russia’s land power being augmented by that of China. He thought of India as protected on the land side by the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush and, with its flanks unassailable “so long as the navy remains predominant,” as constituting the central position with respect not only to China and Egypt, but also to Australia and the Cape of Good Hope. India, he considered, would function as the subordinate base best suited for exercise of influence upon Central Asia and “for operations upon either extremity of the long line over which the Russian front extends.” He did not envisage South Asia itself becoming “debatable ground.”
Soviet strategists showed themselves early aware of the political potentialities of Asia generally and the Middle East in particular. At the First Congress of the Peoples of the East, held at Baku in 1920, Chairman Grigori E. Zinoviev pointed to the future time when the “hundreds of millions of people inhabiting Asia and Africa” would join the world revolution; but the attention of the assembled delegates was concentrated chiefly on the more immediate possibilities of political change in Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey and Persia (Iran). Early in World War II, there was an echo of the same strategic conception: when Hitler and his Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, in November, 1940, sought with Molotov to delineate the respective world spheres of influence of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop suggested that the center of Soviet aspirations presumably lay toward the Indian Ocean; Moscow in due course replied with a more precise definition— “south of Batum and Baku, in the general direction of the Persian Gulf.”
From Baku to Abadan at the head of the Persian Gulf is about 650 miles. Mastery of the land bridge between the Gulf and the Caspian Sea could give the Soviet Union a paramount strategic position in the Middle East. With Iran in the sphere of Soviet influence, the West’s access to Middle Eastern oil would be in direct jeopardy; and to the east Afghanistan and Pakistan—and, in depth, India itself—would be flanked by Communist power.
This underscores the radical changes, since the beginning of the century, in power factors focussed on India. In the Far Eastern section of Mahan’s “Middle Strip,” the area lying north of the Yangtze and extending into Inner Mongolia and Manchuria is discovered to be a firm part of a renascent China; only Korea remains “debatable.” In Central Asia today, Peking’s tough authority is undisputed in Sinkiang—and has been solidly established on “the Roof of the World,” Tibet. Matching the withdrawal of Britain’s rule from India, Soviet influence has penetrated deeply into Afghanistan.
In sum, the “debate” is over in much of the “Middle Strip”; it has moved farther south. British authority is being pried loose from its last hand-holds on Asia. The Federation of Malaya is scheduled to become self- governing this coming August, and a new Malayan Army headquarters assumed command last July of all armed forces raised in the Federation. A British-Malayan mutual- defense treaty giving Britain the right to maintain some military bases in the Federation will be signed, it is planned, after the granting of independence; nevertheless, Singapore (with its predominantly Chinese population) will soon be left without a secure hinterland—and without a future role as an Occidental fortress. Given in addition prevailing conditions in Indonesia, the long domination of the Straits of Malacca and the Sunda Strait by Western sea power seems destined soon to end.
Last July also, Ceylon and Britain agreed to undertake arrangements for transfer to Ceylon’s control of the Trincomalee naval base and the Royal Air Force station at Katunayake. The British reputedly propose to construct a major airfield in the Maidive Islands, southwest of Ceylon, to serve as a refueling depot for RAF planes; but this cannot compensate for loss of free use of naval and air bases on Ceylon—a major crossroads for ocean traffic. The British still retain control over their naval base at Aden, but the Protectorate is under attack from Yemen; and, now that Egypt has cast off Western authority, Aden has in any event lost what was originally its prime function—that of guarding the far end of the Red Sea.
World War II saw a notable growth in importance of the geographical factor for sea power, given particularly the expanding offensive power of land-based aircraft. The wartime fate of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Cavite proved the need for defense in depth of naval bases. British bases such as Singapore, Trincomalee, and Aden today possess the strategic prerequisite of situation; they lack intrinsic strength and resources—internal security. It must also be assumed that the Dhahran air base, guarded as it is by Saudi Arabian troops, would become valueless to the U. S. Air Force on the day that the Saudi King might be alienated from American policies. And the gap in the American line of military communications stretches all the way from Dhahran to the Philippines. It is to be regarded as at least problematical whether the big aircraft carriers could contest mastery of the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian Sea against a long-range air force based on the Tibetan plateau. The Western naval powers have lost not only security of passage through the Suez Canal, but decisive command of the northern waters of the Indian Ocean from Aden to Singapore: they can neither assure their own use of the ocean lanes in those waters, nor deny them to the potential enemy in time of war.
At present, the East advances on Western positions over a broad front. To maintain the Asiatic political status quo against any overt Communist military aggression, there have been constructed SEATO on the east, and the Baghdad Pact’s “Northern Tier” on the west flank of India. Those coalitions, although intended to function in an Asiatic environment, are of Occidental designing. And Admiral Mahan, strong advocate of the principle of concentration in military effort, has observed that:
The proverbial weakness of alliances is due to inferior power of concentration. . . . Each party to an alliance usually has its particular aim, which divides action.
Both SEATO and the Baghdad Pact were contrived not to serve the dominating force of Asian nationalism but to further military aims envisaged by their Occidental architects. Asian nationalism will upon occasion refuse to support the techniques proposed to achieve those aims; and the self-interest of individual coalition members will sometimes override considerations of the common good. Pakistan would enlist SEATO support of its positions vis-d-vis both India and Afghanistan; Iraq draws upon the Baghdad Pact for strength to oppose Syria and Egypt. India, Afghanistan, Syria, and Egypt are thereby inevitably pushed farther away from the Western members of the two coalitions.
But no strong position can be established in South Asia in defiance of the will of India. And, in the words of Gamal Abdul Nasser, “It fell to Egypt that she should be the geographic crossroads of the world.” Those are unyielding facts. The West’s strategy, for effectiveness in a world in flux, must take into full account the political conditions prevailing the major foci of power. South Asia and the Middle East are not to be won to partnership with the West by measures which deny the validity of Asian nationalism as manifested in key countries.
The Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt highlighted the critical role of Asian nationalism. The four Middle Eastern Baghdad Pact members—Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan—came out firmly and categorically in condemnation of the action of both Israel and their Pact ally, Britain. Syria demonstrated by blowing up an oil pipeline how easy it is, in the final analysis, to make Europe feel Arab power. Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with both Britain and France and banned export of Saudi oil to British and French refineries. Britain’s participation in the action badly jarred the harmonious association of Asian and Occidental elements within the British Commonwealth: India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, as well as SEATO members Thailand and the Philippines, were among the nineteen co-sponsors of the Afro-Asian resolution, introduced in the United Nations last November, demanding that the three attacking Occidental States withdraw their forces from Egypt “immediately.” The Arab-Asian bloc on this occasion stood united, against an attack on one of their number—from the West.
The Northern Tier has thus been turned by an engagement not in front, but to the rear, of the position; and SEATO has been weakened, not by Communist subversion, but by actions of its member-States, Britain, and France, on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean. But the Arab-Asian world, roused by the event, for its part has been kindled by the evidence presented it of the weakness of the British and French empires. The Arab nations of the Middle East will not forget the lesson that they have learned: that united and supported by the Asian nations and the Soviet Union, they can trip up the biggest Occidental Powers of them all.
The present indications are that the Western position will deteriorate markedly in the Middle East. If different in important respects, the situation there is not beyond comparison with that which prevailed in China during the “warlord era” of 1916-28: there may be division into separate feudalistic realms, but there is a common religion, a common culture, a language affinity—and that pervasive urge of Arab nationalism which moves growing numbers of the Middle Eastern peoples.
In the China of the 1920’s, too, the governing drive was nationalism, in the form of a violent anti-foreignism committed to recovery of special privileges and concessions granted foreign powers during nearly a century of sea-power domination. In the Middle East, the Arab sense of past injury remained strong after the British and French relaxed their paramountcy in the post-World-War II period; that feeling was kept raw by Arab grievance at the carving of Israel out of the Arab flank; it was brought to a high pitch, comparable to that manifested in various Chinese anti-foreign movements, by the Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt. Dr. Charles Malik of Lebanon, when presenting a proposed resolution to impose sanctions on Israel in the UN General Assembly on February 22, issued a cogent caveat:
The paths of the Arab states have sometimes parted on several matters. . . . But do not let this healthy divergence of views mislead you or distort your judgment. When it comes to matters affecting the security, the very existence of any of the Arab states, the Arabs—peoples and governments alike—stand and speak and act as one.
It is evident that the factor of political nationalism is having a centripetal effect on various political elements within the Middle Eastern conglomerate. President Nasser himself holds a somewhat amorphous philosophy, set forth in the thin volume, Egypt's Liberation, proposing that the Arab nation unite and gird itself for the struggle with “imperialism.” His gaze is not fixed upon a possible lightning thrust from beyond the Caucasus; he holds instead that “imperialism is the great force that is imposing a murderous, invisible siege upon the whole Arab region,” that “the white man ... is again trying to re-divide the map of Africa,” and that a “terrible and sanguinary conflict” is in course there between five million whites and 200 million Africans. From that conflict, “we cannot, under any circumstances, ... remain aloof. . . .” There has come to the borders of Egypt a role to be played, not of leadership, but “a role such as to spark this tremendous power latent in the area surrounding us . . . with the aim of creating a great strength which will then undertake a positive part in the building of the future of mankind.”
This conception has its counterparts elsewhere in the Arab world. But the fullest formal expression of the driving force of Eastern nationalism is found in the resolutions adopted at the 1955 Bandung Conference of 29 Afro-Asian States. The underlying philosophy is one of political self-determination and “co-existence,” economic “cooperation,” cultural exchange—and rejection of military primacy. In various meetings during the past three years between Indian Prime Minister Nehru, Burma Prime Minister Nu, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and President Nasser, a broad basis of understanding has probably been established. One expression of that presumed understanding came in the communique summing up the Brioni conference of July, 1956, between Nehru, Nasser, and President Tito: “The Bandung Conference . . . laid down certain principles which should govern international relations.” The chiefs of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt in their joint communique of February 27, 1957, regarding the Middle Eastern situation stated:
the Arab countries meeting at the conference reaffirm their earlier declared determination to protect the Arab nation from the harm of the “cold war” . . . and to abide by the policy of positive neutrality, thus preserving its real national interests.
The Bandung spirit moves the Arab nations; so does a renascent Arab nationalism.
It should not be assumed that, for all of its new fervor, Arab nationalism in practice will remain too weak to count as a factor in major international affairs. The military action that resulted in interruption of Western Europe’s petroleum supply and the blocking of the Suez Canal to shipping incidentally revealed to Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia the full strategic importance of the oil fields to the West and taught Egypt how strong a lever is a vital waterway. The Arab countries have come to appreciate the efficacy of joint action and are learning new techniques —including that of the economic boycott. They are also obtaining modern weapons. Imperial Rome taught its skills to barbarian tribesmen and enlisted them into its legions—to discover in the end that the barbarians had learned how to conquer. Lenin told the Japanese journalist Fuse in 1920:
The powers in the West enrich themselves by extorting [sic] weak countries in the Orient. At the same time, however, they arm their Oriental colonies and give the natives military training. The West is digging a grave in the East to bury itself in.
The East is still short of industrial power, but that weakness may be partially overcome by some key Asian nations through economic arrangements with the Soviet Union. Even without such Soviet collaboration, however, Asia’s broadening experience and trend toward intracontinental organization, added to the strategic factors of geography, natural resources, population, and ideological force, could tip the balance in its favor.
In over-all military terms, the Indian Ocean is tending rapidly to resume the character it had before the arrival of Vasco da Gama—that of an Asiatic lake. It has been flanked in the Middle Eastern sector by Asian nationalism; the Suez Canal is no longer a dependable link in the line of sea communications between the Atlantic and South Asia; all water routes to Middle Eastern oil stand in increased jeopardy, and a new element of hazard has been introduced into the status of the oil fields themselves. The retention of British naval stations at Mombasa, Port Louis, and Durban does not counterbalance the loss of effectiveness of Aden, Trincomalee, and Singapore. The West, dependent primarily upon its sea power, has been placed at a strategic disadvantage in respect to Asia and has been correspondingly weakened as regards the east coast of Africa.
Those are the harsh aspects of the present situation. To suggest that those aspects will in the future be softened on either the eastern or western borders of the Indian Ocean is to blink the obvious ebbing of Western sea power in Asia. Nor is the picture changed essentially if air is added to naval strength for the sea powers. For the mobility and effectiveness of land power have grown notably more rapidly, in the first half of the present century, than has that of sea power. And sea power is more than ships and planes, it is more than military alliances: it is the whole aggregate of geographic, economic, and political circumstances, of installations securely based, and of weapons, for control of the sea. No procedures adequate to check the decline of Western sea power in Asia have yet been undertaken, or proposed. Until they are, that decline can be expected to continue.
The economic consequences of denial of the Indian Ocean to the West, whether in time of war or peace, would be serious indeed. An American estimate indicates that by 1975 we shall have to import at least one-fifth of our national raw-material needs. Of military- stockpile materials, we now import 73% in value from the so-called under-developed areas (including Latin America). In war, commerce-destruction would hurt an island seapower, such as the United States now is strategically, with its heavy reliance upon sea transport for raw materials essential to its armaments industry, far more that it would a self-sufficient land power.
But if peace prevails, Western civilization may even so be forced into a retreat more precipitous than its present movement of disengagement suggests. For the white races of this earth—who during the age of modern warfare have wrought their greatest destruction upon each other—control most of the world’s riches and the greatest lebensraum, but are in a minority that is shrinking relatively, not growing. Will the peoples of Asia and Africa be content to adapt themselves to a Western political framework, subsist as best they can in cramped quarters, and continue to deliver the raw materials over for consumption by the West? There is no assurance that such will be the case.
Writing in 1900 on “The Problem of Asia,” Admiral Mahan returned to his theme of the conflict of cultures:
Our first necessity ... is to recognize that for European civilization in its turn has now arrived . . . a day of visitation; that a process has begun which must end either in bringing the Eastern and Western civilizations face to face, as opponents, who have nothing in common, or else in receiving the new elements, the Chinese especially, as factors which . . . have been profoundly affected by long-continued intimate contact, and in such wise assimilated that the further association may proceed quietly to work out peacefully its natural results . . . the incorporation of this vast mass of beings, the fringe of which alone we have not as yet touched, into our civilization, to the spirit of which they have hitherto been utter strangers, is one of the greatest problems that humanity has yet to solve. . . .
At the time of the Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th Century, it was not “Europe’s Asia policy” but “Asia’s Europe policy” that moulded events. After a long period of world domination by white seafarers, we have now come full circle. The West has made no serious effort at true incorporation of cultures. Contemporary developments in South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa indicate how far it is still even from understanding of and accommodation to Eastern civilization. The Suez affair only stimulated Arab-Asian nationalism and quickened the Arab-Asian sense of kinship and common purpose. Western sea power confronts its “day of visitation” in the Indian Ocean, and the West stands in clear and present danger of losing the political initiative to Asia and Africa. This condition results from a fundamental shortcoming in the West’s position, a deficiency which could prove crucial—the West’s political failure to comprehend and reconcile itself to Asia.
* The opinions or assertions in this article are the private ones of the writer and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or the U. S. Naval Institute.
1. Cf. Rear Adm. E. M. Eller, USN (Ret.), “U. S. Destiny in the Middle East,” in the November, 1956 Proceedings.