The Mediterranean Sea has long been an arena of contending powers, a region of endemic war. This condition has continued into the 20th Century, although under greatly changed conditions. For the former “known world” is now a segment of the strategical cosmos of global power relationships. Its strategic, political, and economic significance is still immense, however, as the last quarter- century has shown. Since the 1930’s, two contests for Mediterranean domination have been waged. The first—Fascist Italy’s attempt to establish Mare Nostrum—ended in 1943, having been caught up in the vast issues of World War II. The second, and deadlier, is part of the great struggle between the Free World and Soviet Russia. This article examines some of the trends and issues revealed in these convulsions.
When Mussolini took power in 1922, Italy was in an aggrieved and vindictive mood. She was profoundly dissatisfied with her erstwhile allies, frightened by Communist subversion, and perplexed by the grave dilemmas of successive crises. These feelings, whetted and exploited by the Fascists, were made to support a slowly accelerating policy of rearmament and aggrandizement, in which the vested Mediterranean dominance of Britain and France was challenged. In the 1920’s, during her metamorphosis into a totalitarian state, Italy merely intrigued in Central Europe and the Balkans. But in the early 1930’s, African expansion began to obsess Mussolini’s mind. Ethiopia, which had annihilated an Italian army in 1896, seemed an excellent place to begin. She separated Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, she was supposedly suitable for colonization and economic exploitation, and she was almost defenseless. Mussolini began to prepare Italy and the world for Ethiopia’s speedy absorption.
Much was involved besides the independence of Ethiopia, whose integrity had been guaranteed by Italy in nine treaties. In a world sick of war, the prestige and morality of the League of Nations were esteemed as representative of mankind’s higher attributes and hopes. Now, without cause, all was defied and endangered by the threat of war. Men of good will looked to the League and to Britain and France, its most influential members, to halt this sinister return to pre-1914 international anarchy.
Although both Britain and France were closely affected by Italy’s designs, the former was most seriously concerned. After 1918, Britain thoroughly dominated the Mediterranean. The power of the littoral states—including France, more a continental than a Mediterranean nation—had been eliminated or reduced, and the threat of Russia had been at least temporarily dissolved. British Middle Eastern and African holdings had been extended and deepened by annexations and new spheres of influence. The entire position rested, upon the might of the world’s greatest navy, solidly based at Alexandria, Haifa, Malta, Gibraltar, and lesser places.
But this balanced and elaborate Imperial system was sensitive to pressures against its segments. Its security heavily depended upon the weakness or benevolence of adjacent areas, such as Ethiopia, not directly under British control. Ethiopia’s fall would see Eritrea and Italian Somaliland joined into a half-million- square-mile crescent of Italian power landwardly enclosing a weak and isolated British Somaliland. The great hinterland could nourish and protect a formidable nexus of Italian strength. The Sudan would be directly threatened from the south and east. Egypt, already facing a strongly garrisoned Libya, would be distantly flanked. The great British Central African empire—Kenya, Tanganyika, and beyond—would become suddenly and dangerously exposed.
Yet to achieve this commanding position Italy must conduct a trans-Mediterranean operation requiring British acquiescence. Such passivity, in the face of the clear implications of an Italo-Ethiopian War upon Britain’s world position, would proclaim serious weaknesses. British failure to avert this blossoming of Italian aggrandizement could undermine her entire structure of world power. German ambitions, rapidly germinating, would be galvanized; Japan, in the Far East, would respond to this evident waning of Imperial power; and, perhaps more portentous, millions of subject peoples would know that history was on their side.
So, in the realms of prestige and power, the Italian conquest of Ethiopia was a British disaster. But the effects upon France were almost equally grave. When a strong Italian state emerged in the 19th Century, France’s southern Alpine border was subjected to unfamiliar and, particularly after World War I, intensifying pressures. These were even stronger in Africa, where Tunisia was uncomfortably adjacent to Libya, and French Somaliland was disturbed over Italian machinations among the tribes. Corsica in the Mediterranean, an integral part of France, was openly coveted. At sea, Italian power became a powerful counter to French Mediterranean strength; in the Red Sea, light squadrons had been established at Massawa and threatened Anglo-French control.
Ethiopia’s fall would give Italy a solid foothold in Central Africa, menacing French West African and Saharan territories via the Sudan; French Somaliland itself would be endangered directly. These strategic and political effects of Ethiopia’s subjugation would be enhanced by the moral impact of Italy’s gains in prestige throughout the world. All would be to the gravest detriment to France and her world standing.
With such considerations in mind, the world watched the gathering crisis. Tension grew rapidly in the summer and fall of 1935. The possibility of war arose and the respective arrays were assessed by the powers. It was obvious that, over-all, Franco-British preponderance was overwhelming. On the sea, where the war’s outcome would hinge, the allied navies could commit 25 battleships, ten carriers, 81 cruisers, and large destroyer and submarine forces; most of this armada gathered in the Mediterranean as the crisis became acute. The combined fleets were supported by large construction capacities and elaborate depot and repair facilities.
The Italian Navy contained nine battleships, three armored, seven heavy, and 25 light cruisers, with assorted ancillary forces in support. Several of the most recent Italian ships were formidable vessels, but many— more than among their possible opponents— were obsolete and of limited combat value. These numerical and qualitative disproportions were heightened by the shortage of fuel resources and the lack of strong naval traditions—important attributes of a nation’s sea- power.
In land and air forces, the Italian position appeared much stronger. Large conscript armies were based in Italy and Libya. During the prewar months, the strong elements normally present in Eritrea and Somaliland were heavily reinforced. The strategic reserve at home could be augmented rapidly by call-ups of trained civilians. The Army’s equipment was ample though not outstanding in quality. The Air Force, numerous and centrally-based, assertedly could deny most of the Mediterranean to hostile fleets. In later years this doctrine revealed a greatly attenuated validity.
The French Army enjoyed a towering prestige after 1918. The sturdy virtues of the poilu and the national military genius were said to epitomize the hard practice and mystique of modern war. Strong detachments held Savoy, North Africa, Syria, and other outposts. But there was no strategic reserve; the uniformed force consisted mostly of professional cadres and conscript youths undergoing their brief training. The “nation-in-arms” concept of substituting quantity for quality had been pursued with a thoroughness that exceeded the European norm. The French Air Force, starved of funds and afflicted with ministerial corruption, was little more than a negligible weapon. But most of France’s shortcomings were only dimly realized at the time, and her armed might was believed real and formidable.
British land and air forces were scattered throughout the Middle East, principally in Egypt and Palestine, with smaller units in Iraq, Trans-Jordan, the Sudan, and British Somaliland. Native forces of disparate quality supplemented British garrisons. Army and RAF personnel were all Regulars with high professional standards. Equipment was of fair quality and abundance. But the aggregate of all these forces probably did not exceed 50,000 men and a few hundred planes, most of which were occupied by the perennial duties of patrol and pacification. At home, there was almost no mobile reserve, and there was no large reservoir of trained civilians. It was clear that the overseas land and air forces would have to fight alone for a long time before they could be massively reinforced from the United Kingdom.
It was only at sea that the allies could wield superior strength. But it should have been obvious that Italy’s land and air superiority would not only diminish as the war progressed, it could not be decisive anyway. The only landwardly accessible part of the allied homelands, the French Alpine frontier, was easily defensible. Only the Anglo-French peripheries were exposed, and to attack even them Italy would need to keep large armies in action overseas, whose supply lines would be subject to naval assault. The sea was all that actually mattered, and the British lodgments at Gibraltar and Suez prevented Italian diversionary sorties into the outer oceans. Despite some ability to inflict initial defeats upon the allies, therefore, it was clear that Italy was risking certain and fairly swift defeat.
Italy faced disaster if her challenge were taken up. She threatened the vital interests of the two strongest European powers. She endangered world peace and courted the interdict of the society of nations, which could have strangled her by economic pressure alone. Yet she persisted, kept her nerve, and succeeded. Despite the consequences, Britain and France gave way—a disastrous course, since firmness would have transcended an effective rebuff to Italy. If not completely discredited, Fascism surely would have been more reflective in the future. Germany, still militarily negligible, would have been cowed, perhaps permanently. Japan would have noted the new vigor of Britain and France which, in turn, would have regained an awareness of their strength. Perhaps most important, the League would have taken on fresh and lasting promise.
But, catastrophically, none of this happened. In that summer and fall of 1935, one of the greatest and earliest chances to avoid what Winston Churchill has called “The Unnecessary War” was thrown away. Many of our present troubles stem from that tragic discard, which has led to so much slaughter and distress. Why was history betrayed in that fashion?
Part of the answer lies in the conflicting forces that beset French policy. Italian aggression was a clear threat to British positions, and France might profit from British discomfiture. A Franco-British rivalry had long existed in the Middle East bearing upon the general issue of Mediterranean control. Syria and Lebanon were French cultural and political beachheads on a large area of British dominated territory. Italy’s threatened activities might enable France to increase her influence in those areas. This complementary aspect of Italian ambitions vis-d-vis French policy, to the extent that it ruled, clearly was in opposition to the long-term interests of the nation.
There were further influences upon French policy. An Italo-Ethiopian War, which might be lengthy and expensive, would relieve pressure on France’s Alpine border and Mediterranean possessions. Italian pressure on the Balkan and Central European states, whose subservience France was striving for, would be relieved by a prolonged Italian adventure in Africa.
So there were compensations whose effects upon the totality of French policy are difficult to assess precisely. But it was the Germans, among all foreign policy considerations, who probably decided French attitudes. In the first six months of 1935, Germany received the Saar by plebiscite, got the right to build submarines and battleships, and imposed conscription. The security of Versailles, long fading, was shattered. Overpowered by the closeness of her ancient and resurgent enemy, unheedful of her still supreme military might, France became submerged by the Maginot state of mind. Her “mission” d’ une puissance protectrice was merely a deceptive abstraction. Both common sense and honor seemed to vanish: in January, 1935, Laval gave Mussolini to understand that France would renounce her economic treaty with Ethiopia and, later, Flandin helpfully offered Ciano a pretext for invading her.
If France was so constrained by considerations of self-interest and self-defense, what of the British role? She had the most to lose by allowing Italy a free hand, and unlike France she was under no comparable menace from other quarters. She could defeat Italy alone with her Fleet and stiffen France against Germany. But to pursue victory she needed an army and an air force; she also needed them to give her quasi-alliance with France real meaning, to ensure that something besides the “far-distant ships” would stand between the German Army and Paris. But she lacked the will to create them by conscription and sacrifice and to commit herself irrevocably. So Britain stood aside; thus her supreme, her only chance independently to halt aggression by the predominant use of seapower was thrown away. She was never to have such an opportunity again.
The narrow and myopic vision of the Anglo-French leaders were surface eddies of deep and irresistible currents. The war of 1914-1918 had cost the two democracies 2,200,000 dead and more than $100,000,000,000 in treasure. It had shaken the whole structure of Western Civilization and unleashed unfamiliar ideological forces. In Germany, Italy, and Russia, the reaction to equivalent stresses had been totalitarianism of the Left and Right. In France and Britain, it had been pacifism born of disillusion, cynicism born of suffering, and political irrationality born of the deep dilemmas of the era. Such were the elements that made up the popular mood and so imbued were the men in power. And so did they conduct their nations’ affairs in the international arena.
There were other strains. The existence of Communism and its Fatherland weighed upon the controlling minds. Profound inconsistencies in the capitalist system had emerged from the late war; its unseemly workings were even said to have brought about the great conflict. Workers’ hardships seemed inversely related to their employers’ enrichment. Many of capitalism’s defenders felt, despite themselves, that its historical validity had ended and that its anachronistic residue was rotten to the core. To the Bolsheviks, capitalism’s doom was assured by history and revolution, which would replace it by proletarian dictatorships. Amid the economic stagnation and social cleavages of the period, the prospect looked reasonable and dreadful to many Western leaders. Yet prospects of economic recovery were clearly visible. By coming to Ethiopia’s aid could those in power risk the downfall of the entire system in a nightmare of uprooting? And were not the Fascists, after all, implacable enemies of Bolshevism?
These were times of sickness and lack of fiber. The French and British leaders reflected the eclipse of democratic vitality under stress. They had little choice, if they were to stay in power: the perceptive and farsighted opposed seemingly inexorable tides and lacked power and influence. Indeed, there were encouraging signs—a poll of 9,000,000 Britons recorded 6,834,000 as favoring military action to stop aggression and even more as wanting economic sanctions. But the validity of these straws was uncertain; at most they were indicative of the moral awakening that was to come.
Nothing was done. Ethiopia’s organized resistance ended in May, 1936. Britain and France would not fight, and Italy would not save them face by bogging down in Ethiopia and becoming compelled to abandon her prey. The crisis passed. Spain soon diverted the world’s attention from East African issues, and Europe entered upon a new and deadlier pattern of international activity.
The march of events was too rapid in the ensuing years, and Italy’s latterly revealed deficiencies were too great to make Ethiopia’s fall alone a serious strategic blow to Britain and France. In this they were perhaps more fortunate than they deserved, but their appeasement had grave effects still. Although the Allies had reinforced their Mediterranean fleets, further augmenting their superiority, the Germans and Italians confidently sustained the Spanish Falange with troops and planes. Italian submarines even engaged in combat operations against Loyalist and neutral ships. So great was the impact of the Ethiopian drama that, though nothing but minds and attitudes had changed, Anglo- French military and political dominance in the Mediterranean was a thing of the past.
The Allied yielding had great effect upon the mind of Adolf Hitler and became a prominent antecedent of the succeeding terrible years. He became convinced that Britain and France would not defend the smaller European nations, even those formally allied. A succession of crises erupted: The Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia—in two installments, Memel; the seriousness increased as the Allies continued to retreat and as German power grew. When Albania was absorbed by Italy on Good Friday, 1939, the world was conditioned and there was little disturbance.
World War II began over Hitler’s demands on Poland, which had received concrete guarantees at last from a finally aroused Britain and France. Poland was attacked on September 1, 1939, and the Allies declared war on September 3. After Poland, Denmark, and Norway were subdued in successive campaigns, the Low Countries and France were invaded on May 10, 1940. Unprepared physically and spiritually for her ordeal, France fell in six weeks. Britain, alone, almost disarmed, but finally and irrevocably stirred, was confronted with Italy’s entry on June 10, 1940, just before the fall of France. In five years the balance of power had tipped drastically—and the Mediterranean became a seat of war.
The ebb and flow of the tides of battle in the Mediterranean are of but tangential relevance to our topic. But certain controlling elements should be noticed: the respective British and German insights into the Mediterranean’s significance, and the basic causes of Italy’s total defeat.
The British understood with perfect clarity the military uses of the Mediterranean, in which they perceived three dominant attributes. The Mediterranean protected Africa and the Middle East; it exposed the flank of the Axis position on the Continent; and, as an avenue of supply, it helped nourish the center of power at home. Thoroughly aware of its significance, the British favored the Mediterranean area above all other overseas theaters, sometimes to the detriment of their defenses at home. This stubborn and inspired purpose is a dominant fact of World War II; without it, the campaign would have been lost and the course of the war transformed.
Germany’s Mediterranean endeavors were belated and inadequate. The Germans’ continental minds were closed alike to the strengths and weaknesses of sea power when operating in narrow waters. A few divisions sent from the hundreds fighting in Russia, or from the scores occupying Europe, several times would have enabled Rommel’s Afrika Korps to seize Suez and the oil of the Middle East. The stroke would have led to the expulsion of the Mediterranean Fleet, a new front against Russia, possible linkage with the Japanese, and other dire results. But the possibilities did not impress Hitler and his colleagues. Absorbed by the gigantic Russian battles and the problems of occupying a continent, the Germans missed their great chance. Their oversight justified Britain’s clear-sighted policy and made its achievement possible.
To Britain and Germany, the Mediterranean campaigns made up a segment of a worldwide struggle. But Italy, untroubled elsewhere, belonged to the Mediterranean. Her staffs had long studied the probable lines of a Mediterranean war. Unprovoked, she had selected the time of her entry into hostilities. Although she had considered France her likely enemy, she was impressively equipped for any opponent. Why could she not alone have swept the British from the Mediterranean, making Hitler’s misjudgment an academic question?
Her prospects of doing this seemed excellent indeed. In 1940, the imminent fall of France neutralized the French Fleet and the armies in Savoy, Tunisia, and Syria. The Italian Army mobilized 64 divisions. Nearly half a million men followed Marshal Graziani and the Duke D’Aosta in Cyrenaica and East Africa. Since the Ethiopian crisis, the Navy had been modernized and augmented, with more units building to reinforce the ships afloat. The Air Force was large and well-distributed; its bases, with those of the Navy, abounded in the Mediterranean and Africa.
The British had less than 40,000 troops in Egypt; 1,000 men, half British, garrisoned the Somaliland enclave. Air units were equivalently modest, mostly consisting of planes unsuitable for home service. The Mediterranean Fleet had less than half the Italian strength. Its bases were few and of limited resources; Malta, Britain’s only station in the Central Mediterranean, was beleaguered. Supply lines were extremely tenuous. Yet these scattered forces in less than a year broke the back of the Italian Navy, eliminated the East African Empire, and virtually destroyed the Army of Cyrenaica. Germany thereupon began reluctantly to dominate activities in the Mediterranean and, when Italy surrendered in September, 1943, she had long since forfeited a major role. Her swift debacle was amazing.
But her preparations were faulty everywhere. Popular indoctrination of war aims was highly defective. Industry could not meet the requirements of a modern complex military establishment; equipment was frequently of inferior design and workmanship. Steel production—18% of the British rate—was insufficient; there were inadequate reserves of oil, machine tools, high-grade alloys, and other items. Badly constituted and directed, Italy’s industrial machine was given an impossible task in World War II.
Still, these weaknesses were latent; overwhelmingly strong in forces in being, the military should have won a quick decision over its harassed enemy. But the defective rapport between Fascists and people extended to the uniformed civilians. The Army leaders were timid: Graziani and the Duke D’Aosta waited months before moving hesitantly against their heavily outnumbered opponents. Tactical skill among junior officers was notably absent. Although Italian commentators have illuminated isolated displays of gallantry and initiative, the Navy’s leadership risked its vessels only against greatly inferior British forces. Japan, in a schematically similar strategic position, exploited every advantage of interior lines and initial superiority, maintaining a lost war for years. Pacific distances cost Japan the fruit of her naval skill and boldness, but Mediterranean narrowness gave Italy great chances, which her pedestrian leadership would not redeem.
Other than espousing the Douhet theories, which the machines and weapons of the day made utterly impracticable, the Italian Air Force seemed to lack a coherent doctrine. There was no strategic bombing worthy of the name, airground tactics were neglected, and the use of dive bombers against ships was scarcely explored. Italy’s great initial superiority in the air was nullified by theoretical neglect and extreme operational caution.
These notes dominate the wartime history of all three of the Italian Services. Action was to be avoided; if joined, the commander’s first duty was to preserve his force, not destroy his enemy’s. Somehow this was to ensure victory, irrespective of the enemy’s moves. The conviction crippled initiative and thwarted the development of a worth-while offensive strategy and vigorous offensive- defensive tactics. There were exceptions, particularly among the commanders of light naval units; but the will and the method to seize victory in 1940—and to avert defeat later—was cut out by the dominant mood.
Excessive solicitude for costly military impedimenta undoubtedly stemmed from economic weaknesses. But the Italian approach to war had other origins. In the Renaissance, war was a business whose capital could not be risked for Pyrrhic decisions; under Austrian rule, war was futile; in World War I, it was terrible and profitless. Italy’s is an old, experienced society unwilling to rend itself for the glory of battle, and this persuasion could not be erased from the military and civilian mind. Such old but civilized notions are maladjusted to the modern world, and they are at total variance with the bombast, pretense, and essence of Fascism. The Italians were singularly ill-suited to become the first littoral power to try to control the Mediterranean in modern times. Dating from the first moves toward Ethiopian conquest, Italian expansion lasted less than a decade. Its span was unwarrantably long.
The Mediterranean was transformed in 1945. Italy, of course, was eliminated as a major power, and Germany was entirely displaced. France and her navy were restored, but shrunken in power and with urgent internal and colonial pre-occupations. Britain held great sway; her fleets and armies stood in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, and Italy itself; she was installed, at least temporarily, in every important Mediterranean island except Corsica and the Balearics. Her long efforts and great victories seemed to place her in an enviable position of security, even more complete than that of 1919. But there were two overshadowing developments. The United States, for the first time in its history, had taken a prominent part in Mediterranean affairs, and her influence was second only to Britain’s. And the Soviet Union, her formidable enemy struck down, stretched her power for the first time to Mediterranean shores.
From the North African landings of November, 1942, our wartime role in the Mediterranean rapidly expanded as we committed increasingly large forces. At maximum strength, U. S. forces included seven Army divisions, the 15th USAAF, tactical air force units, and sizeable naval forces engaged in convoy and close-support work. But these did not inaugurate an attempt to become a Mediterranean power. We were content to leave to Britain the dominant voice in Mediterranean affairs. By the end of 1946, our withdrawal was practically complete, except for the channels to the occupation troops in Austria and Trieste.
But the calm of 1945 was short. The Soviet Union soon began a determined bid for supreme power in Europe. Most of Eastern Europe was absorbed, and in the southeast the Balkans, as far as the Greek frontier, were subjected to Soviet rule. Turkey was under harsh pressure to share the control of the Straits with Russia. Much of what the timid statesmen of Britain and France had dreaded a decade before began to loom. After centuries of striving, Russia seemed about to establish herself as a Mediterranean power. The effects of such a development would be most serious. The Middle East and Africa, under tottering West European control, would lie within reach, and India could be approached from a new direction. Perhaps most important, Europe would be disastrously outflanked by a Russian appearance in the Mediterranean to reinforce the heavy landward pressure being applied from East Europe. Hard upon the agonizing solution of the old crisis appeared a new, posing fresh strategic and political problems. These developments compelled us to re-enter the Mediterranean.
In Greece, a Communist insurgent regime, the EAM, by the end of 1946 seemed on the point of capturing the state. The Greek- Turkish aid program instituted in the summer of 1947 furnished economic and military supplies to enable Greece to eliminate her revolt and Turkey to stiffen herself against Soviet pressure. Succeeding schemes embraced almost the entire Mediterranean area. Later, in conjunction with a system of formal military alliances, a quasi-permanent, locally-based American force was established in the Mediterranean area. The Sixth Fleet was the principal component, with several USAF bases in bordering lands. Although British primacy was acknowledged for a time, an increasing measure of political influence followed this military and economic influx of American power. Now, a decade after our return to the Mediterranean, the United States has virtually supplanted Britain in the area and has become its principal arbiter.
This development reflects the decline of the major West European powers in recent years. France, in decline for decades before World War II, was an economic and physical wreck in 1945 and utterly powerless to cope with the Soviet threat. Britain was far better off, having emerged from the war with powerful forces and impressive holdings. But her economy had been badly strained and had suffered much damage. The traditional foreign subsidies and the elaborate and expensive armed forces required by the new situation were all insupportable burdens in view of insistent domestic and colonial needs.
Such weaknesses and war-released ideological forces have impelled colonial upheavals. These convulsions have drained French resources and stamina and hastened her decline. Britain’s withdrawal has been with more wisdom and grace. Nationalist fervor, abetted and used by Russia, has resulted in a power vacuum in the Middle East. Syria is already a virtual Soviet satellite; Turkey is being outflanked. In view of the area’s crucial value to the Free World and the Russians, the trend—already far advanced—is exceedingly dangerous. Britain’s failure to arrest the deterioration in November, 1956, hastened her withdrawal, and the United States is left with almost the entire responsibility of holding this bastion. The task demands the highest skill and statesmanship, combining military strength with the delicate suasion of an alien and unsympathetic race.
Much indeed hinges on success in our dual mission. We cannot permit a Soviet incursion into the Mediterranean. It is equally apparent that our forces’ deterrent role can be conducted with great effect from the Eastern Mediterranean. That sea is the only deep penetration of Eurasia, other than the narrow Baltic. It is a vantage point from which sea- power can project itself into the vitals of our probable enemy.
From this offensive post to the southern edge of the Ukrainian industrial system, it is 600 miles; to the Caucasus oil, 1,000 miles; to Moscow, 2,000 miles. There are similar distances to the military routes from Russia to Western Europe, The Levant, and the Indian Ocean. All but the most remote can be reached by Mediterranean-based, carrier- borne, nuclear-armed aircraft. Guided missiles will enlarge this potential rapidly. The carrier task force—immune from local upheavals, of vagrant roots, and quickly rein- forceable—is the embodiment of sea power’s new dimensions. Our rivals must be well aware of the Mediterranean application of such principles.
But war might come nevertheless—an unquenchable local flare-up, some dreadful misunderstanding, or a Kremlin decision might begin the terrible ordeal. We cannot predict even the general course of Mediterranean events if World War III should come. But just as the Mediterranean’s old strategic role has been altered by the existence of new machines and weapons, so we can expect it to be changed again when these devices are used in actual combat. This would result from the enemy’s reaction to the operations of our Mediterranean forces. In future years, further technological advances naturally will have greater and more intricate strategic effects.
An outbreak of war in the immediate future will find American and British carriers operating against southern Ukrainian targets and enemy air-ground offensives toward the Suez Canal and Persian Gulf. They will employ nuclear-armed planes and such guided missiles as may be available, assisted by land- based air units. The destructive potential of these forces—with the carrier groups as the core—will be enormous. But it is imperative to maintain heavy and sustained attacks, employing a continuous flow of reinforcements, in an attempt to obtain an early decision.
For the Russians must react with the greatest alacrity and violence, employing every weapon—Albanian-based submarines, mines, nuclear-armed medium-range bombers, guided missile ships of the Black Sea Fleet. In a protracted war, the Mediterranean’s defects as an operational area will become apparent; without sea room to maneuver, Allied forces soon will endure intolerable strains. The sea, having served us, will now serve our enemy. We may be compelled to withdraw to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, from which the war will continue.
The Mediterranean will become then a no- man’s-land, a vacant waste, used only by submarines and surface raiders of both sides making brief sorties. This is a possible sequel to the last quarter-century of Mediterranean change, in which the powers delved into the sea for their various purposes. Now the Mediterranean seems to be entering a new era, but it does not promise to be a particularly happy one.