If it were possible to stand on the African shore and scan the vast panorama of the ocean space between the continents of Africa and Asia, one could quickly grasp the immensity of this theater of world history. From Colombo to Fremantle is 3,200 miles. Similarly, 3,200 miles separates Rangoon and Colombo. Cape Town to Bombay is 4,600 miles. Durban to Aden is 3,275 miles. The Bay of Bengal, one arm of the ocean, covers an area equal to half of Europe.
Here is not the One World that was visualized in the fourth decade of the 20th century, but many regions, many cultures, many religions and political systems. Yet, the world of the Afro-Asian Ocean, which is a name far more apt than the Indian Ocean (India being but the chief topographical feature of the oceanic area), is little understood in the West. For the purposes of this paper, let us limit our discussion to 17 of the countries which make up this world. Their relations, one to another, and within the frame of the oceanic environment, are little comprehended by their own peoples, let alone by peoples in the West. How much they differ in social, economic, political and religious outlook is no better understood than how they are joined together by common danger.
C. M. Chang, writing on the nature of Asia, has said: “The average educated Asian is apt to know more about Europe and America than he knows of Asia. Asians are not merely strangers to other Asians; they are often strangers to their own countrymen.”
The same may be said of Africa. The peoples of East Africa share the same continent, but have no common heritage or broad familiarity with the internal problems of the different countries they occupy.
The lack of understanding—even of interest—on the part of Asia, Africa, and the Western world is not without cause. For the last several hundred years, the history of Afro-Asia has been determined from outside, as a result of conquest by Europe of the countries along the ocean’s rim. But the Afro-Asian Ocean world is not a world devoid of a history. It is more accurate to say that its history has been partially arrested. One era has drawn to a close, and the many peoples of the region are engaged in a process of self-discovery and re-evaluation of their relations to each other and to the outside world. It should not be imagined that the West completely halted the history of the Afro-Asian Ocean world, for it was the West that gave these lands familiarity with the scientific approach to life and furnished them with the railroads, highways, communication centers, modern universities, and sanitary and medical systems that have made modern life possible in Afro-Asia.
The West steered Africa away from its age-old conformist patterns of tribal life and guided Asia in a different direction from its mystical inclinations. What would have happened had Afro-Asia not been interrupted by the West provides fascinating speculation for the historian. Certainly, this world would have been vastly different than it is today or will be in centuries to come. The imprint of the West is on every nation and people along the shores of the Afro-Asian Ocean. East and West have met from the Limpopo to Singapore and from Aden to Australia.
The world of the Afro-Asian Ocean is a world with a unity imposed by an ocean that links all its parts. Nevertheless, it represents perhaps the greatest problem area on the globe, in that every clash of nationality, race, religion and culture is to be found there. The Afro-Asian Ocean is a splendid frame for trade and civilized intercourse between nations. But peace, good will, harmonious economic exchange—all are threatened by conflicts that result from deep differences in the values of life.
It is important to bear in mind that the Ocean represents a vast, unsolved problem. This single global region, the community of nations and territories that surround the ocean, now affords the Sino-Soviet bloc with an opportunity to apply Pavlovian pressures on unprotected lands. This oceanic area has been described as the Achilles Heel of the Free World’s defense system, a region exposed to the armed Communist doctrine of continuous violence.
Major Stephen Foot of the British Army, writing in NATO's Fifteen Nations, has warned: “Today Africa is in the position that China occupied in 1926, except that few experts think the process of take-over will take 20 years.”
The Communist menace to Afro-Asia must be understood and resisted not simply in Western capitals but by Africans and Asians. The will to resist, to preserve national identities in the face of a destructive Marxist ideology, must be grounded on our understanding of the strength of the Afro-Asian Ocean nations and their understanding of what they have to contribute to one another.
A leader who understands the threat posed roof of the Afro-Asian world is formed by Russia and Communist China. These two nations, with vast populations, militant governments, a common ruthless ideology of conquest, and historical dreams of future domination of neighbors to the south, hang over the countries that border the Afro-Asian Ocean. For nations only recently come to independence, the Soviet Union and Communist China are a nightmare vision of what the future could hold in store.
For Free World strategists, the Afro-Asian by Communism is Tun Abdul Razak bin Da to Hussain, deputy premier of Malaysia. Speaking on 29 April 1963, he said: “We have a lot of experience about communism in Malaya, and we have sampled it in practice. For 12 years we experienced active communist terrorism in our country. We fought them and defeated them, and we are now determined that this period of our national history will not repeat itself.”
Yet the task of co-operation is nowhere more complicated or fraught with obstacles than among the 17 nations that extend from Australia to the Indian sub-continent and from the Red Sea to the Cape of Good Hope. Some of the most bitter divisions among nations and people are to be found within this perimeter. Ancient hatreds and modern resentments divide nations that should stick together on problems of over-all defense.
India and Pakistan are deeply divided by religion and by the dispute over Kashmir. The Somalis and Ethiopians are at dagger points on a border issue. Countries such as Kenya and Tanganyika refuse to consider co-operation with South Africa even on such a non-political matter as African map-making. On the Arabian peninsula, factional rivalries and Egyptian political influence threaten disorders. In Malaysia, the Chinese and Malayan peoples are far apart. Of the 22.5 million people of Burma, more than five million are Karens, Shans, and Kachins who dislike Burmese rule. One has only to look at the racial and linguistic problems of Ceylon to discover the depths of the issues that separate men in the Afro-Asian region.
As W. Bretscher has pointed out in the the Afro-Asian Ocean world. Thousands of years ago, the Indians of that time had contempt for the Tibeto-Burman races at their eastern frontier, and their references to them were full of exaggeration. The Indians called the border peoples “the horse-faced people.”
Yet means must be found for co-operation in defense measures. To find ways and means of working together—at least in defense and related economic areas—is imperative for the nations of the Afro-Asian Ocean world if the great ocean is not to become a Soviet or Chinese lake.
Today, a power vacuum exists in the watery expanse where the Royal Navy kept the peace throughout modern times. Two wars have weakened British power from Suez to Singapore. Who now will fill the vacuum? For the time being, the United States may have to fill the vacuum with its sea power. But the United States cannot create a bridge between the peoples and economies of this arena of history. The Afro-Asian Ocean nations must build that bridge.
To be sure, the Afro-Asian Ocean world is too big and varied in outlook to be expected, Swiss Review of World Affairs, the population of Ceylon is composed of a variety of ethnic groups “which have not been fused into a homogeneous nation by any struggle for independence or other common fate.” The most divisive single factor in Ceylon’s political life is the conflict between the majority group, the Sinhalese, and the minority group, the Tamils. The majority would like to send this minority back to India, but the Indian government refuses to accept them.
Such racial conflicts are an ancient story in in the current vistas of history, to develop common political institutions. No basis exists for any political framework, and it would be absurd to harbor great expectations built on faulty understanding of realities.
The organization of society in the Afro- Asian Ocean world ranges from tribalism in Kenya, to absolute monarchy in Arabia, to European-type parliamentary structures in South Africa and Australia, to dictatorship in Indonesia, to the many-faceted structure of India. All religions—Christian, Moslem, Buddhist et at.—are to be found in this area, and they determine the values of national groups. Insofar as moral or religious views are concerned, no common denominator exists for the Arabs, Malays, Europeans of Southern and East Africa, Hindus, and the Chinese communities.
Nevertheless, some short term military and economic co-operation and co-ordination should not be impossible. Indeed, this is imperative for the security and economic wellbeing of the entire Afro-Asian Ocean area. But to provide for the future, it is essential to know the past, to be able to trace the lines of historical change and development, and to become familiar with the human and material resources of the world theater of which we speak. We must understand what is possible and what is impossible, in terms of the religions, cultures and political systems of the Afro-Asian Ocean. Understanding is the key to action in the future.
With an area of about 28 million square miles, the Afro-Asian Ocean is slightly smaller than the North and South Atlantic. But along its rim live one-third of the people of the world. Poor overland communications and lack of roads of necessity have made the Afro-Asian Ocean the highway of trade between the nations of the region.
Geographically speaking, the ocean is an enclosed ocean with a major control point at each quadrant. The six principal geographical arms of the Ocean are the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Bay of Bengal, the Gulf of Aden, and the Gulf of Malacca. To the south, the Ocean washes the undeveloped resources of Antarctica.
The Afro-Asian Ocean is an ocean with many islands. The largest are Madagascar off the coast of Africa and Ceylon off the southern coast of India. Many of the islands have a high strategic value. Ceylon, for example, is to mainland India as Cuba is to the mainland of the United States. Madagascar, if in Communist hands, would be a threat to all of eastern and southern Africa. Socotra dominates the approaches to the Gulf of Aden. The Maldives and the Chagos archipelago offer sites for air and naval bases south of India. The Andaman Islands are keys to the Bay of Bengal and were so regarded by the Japanese during World War II. Entry into the Gulf of Malacca can be controlled from the Nicobar Islands northwest of Sumatra.
The climate of this vast region ranges across the spectrum from the deserts of Arabia to the wet tropics of Mozambique. The ocean itself is tropical. There are two monsoon seasons. The Northeast Monsoon brings air off the Asian mainland and a dependable breeze for mariners. The Southwest Monsoon brings heavy rains, fogs, and rough seas. Seafarers have always regarded the lore of the ocean with awe. Hurricanes are common from November to March in the vicinity of Mauritius and revolving storms in the Bay of Bengal are an ever-present danger to shipping. The ancient mariners who learned to sail across this ocean performed some of the epochal feats of early civilized races.
Along the shores of the Afro-Asian Ocean are all the resources that nations need for strength and security in the modern world. Malaya has abundant tin and rubber. South Africa’s gold and uranium are proverbial, and its iron ore and coal are equally important for the industrialization of a region. Rhodesia is rich in copper. Arabia has the oil needed by both West and East. Bauxite is found in both India and Indonesia. South Africa, Java, and South Vietnam possess large deposits of manganese. Burma has nickel, zinc, lead, and tungsten. Chromium is found in India and Pakistan. In short, the Afro-Asian Ocean world does not lack for the resources that make for wealth. But resources do not automatically mean wealth. They must be transformed into salable commodities and real goods for exchange.
Yet thousands of years before Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic and Magellan voyaged to the Pacific, the Afro- Asian Ocean was a highway for commerce and culture. There is ample evidence that Nineveh and Babylon had trade relations with the west coast of India. The Old Testament (I Kings, 10:22) tells of vessels that King Solomon sent to the East in search of riches. Archaeologists also have reported that many materials discovered in the remains of the Indus Valley civilization (in present-day Pakistan) came from the Red Sea area. Indeed, one ancient Indian, writing in about 1500 B.C., prays: “Do thou convey us across the sea for our welfare.” The obelisk of Shamanesar III (860 B.C.) tells of Indian elephants in the valley of the Euphrates. And we know that the Chaldeans navigated the coast in the 8th and 9th centuries before Christ and established a considerable naval power at Elam. Flinders Petrie, the great archaeologist, discovered portraits of Indians at Memphis. We have the record, too, of the Greek Admiral Nearchus who transported the remnants of Alexander’s army from the mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf in 323 B.C. Pliny gives an account of a voyage to India, saying: “The subject is well worthy of our notice, seeing that in no year does India drain our empire of less than 550 million of sesterces, giving back her own wares in exchange, which are sold among us at fully 100 times the prime cost.”
While Rome developed its trade with the East and with Africa and while the Greeks established colonies in Arabia, the Hindus colonized in Malaya, Sumatra, Java, and Annam. Their naval activity and trade were carried on by organized corporations similar to the East India Company more than a millennium and a half later.
The extent of the Indian trade may be gauged by the report of Fa Hien, a Chinese, writing in 415 A.D., who said that in the ship he traveled in from Ceylon to Sri Vijaya were 200 merchants of “the brahminical religion.” K. M. Panikkar, the Indian historian, declares that there is evidence of Hindu naval activity in the South China Sea before the Christian Era. From the 5th century to the 10th century, it is known, the Malacca Straits were in the hands of a great Indian maritime power based in Sumatra. This power, known as the Sri Vijaya Empire, occupied much of what is present-day Malaya, plus the islands of Sumatra and Java. At the same time, Hindu ship captains were sailing with cargoes to the East Coast of Africa. Why these maritime people failed to discover and settle the continent of Australia is one of the great mysteries of history. The same mystery applies to the Chinese junks that were making their appearance in the Afro-Asian Ocean in the 4th century A.D. In view of the current struggle between India and China on the Asian mainland, it is interesting to know that they once were in conflict at sea. Only the existence of the Sry Vijaya Empire prevented the Chinese from dominating Indonesia. And when the Portuguese arrived in the Indies, China’s southward expansion over the oceans was curbed for a period of centuries.
Another drive for dominance on this ocean involved Arab sea power. The Arab ship captains not only cruised to Africa, but sailed all the way to Canton, China. They were the intermediaries of trade between Europe and India during the 14th and 15th centuries.
Today, as in centuries past, the Afro-Asian Ocean offers the best access to the lands that surround it—hence its strategic value.
Ever since Russia emerged as a modern state in the 19th century, the rulers of that country have been mindful of the Ocean’s strategic significance. Prince Ukhtomsky, traveling with Czar Nicholas in Asia in 1890-91, wrote of Russia and its oceanic frontiers, saying: “There are no and there cannot be any frontiers for us in Asia with the exception of limitless seas.” And he saw the oceans as frontiers of opportunity, not as barriers. In our time, the Russians view the Afro-Asian Ocean offensively and defensively. There is realization in the Soviet Union that the Afro-Asian Ocean is the “soft underbelly” of the Soviet world. The Soviet Union is not oriented in terms of defense to the southern region. Thus, the security of the U.S.S.R.’s Central Republics is involved in the Afro-Asian Ocean in that there are industries, research centers, and areas of production that would be profoundly affected by an attack from the south.
The Russians also think of the southern region in offensive terms. This is the significance of their build-up of a naval base in Yemen on the Red Sea. They hope to project their sea power farther into the southern region, which long has been exempt from the display of Communist naval arms.
The opportunities for Communist conflict instigators are immense in this region. East Africa, for instance, is a land with a future of continuing unrest and violent change. Revolution, genocide, and destruction of order are real dangers in East Africa, as many of the new leaders are not stopping to count the cost of violent change. It is here that there is the greatest danger that emerging countries will simply break forth into chaos and the inevitable tribal bloodbaths.
The real friends of Africa are, of course, those who will give a searching and candid presentation of African realities. Such a man is Dr. George H. T. Kimble, former director of the American Geographical Society and author of Tropical Africa, the major geographical opus on the continent. Dr. Kimble has predicted that a maximum of only six of the newly independent African states have a chance of surviving as “truly autonomous, virile and stable nations.” He said that the others are “doomed to weakness and suffering, to a life, at best, of stint and scheming; at worst, of impotence and indebtedness.” The way to improve the chances of survival is for the weak states to look for regional assistance both from the stronger Afro-Asian nations and from the Western countries with long experience in African affairs.
It is worthwhile to take notice of a report filed in March 1963 by an East Asian correspondent in Hong Kong. He wrote that “Zimbabwe Day probably means little to the average Chinese mainlander. Had he bothered to open his newspaper on Sunday, however, he would have read of a mass rally held in Peking on Saturday to celebrate the eve of Zimbabwe Day, honoring Southern Rodesia’s African nationalist. He would have perused a paper full of speeches delivered by African Nationalist Alfred Gondo and by Liao Cheng-Chih, chairman of the Chinese Committee for Afro-Asian solidarity.” This celebration is indicative of the wide nature of Chinese Communist activity with respect to Africa. This activity has been pursued since the Bandung Conference of 1955 at which Red China was able to identify itself with the new African nations then coming on the scene.
January of this year saw Communist elements establish a political beachhead on the island of Zanzibar only 22 miles from the mainland of Tanganyika. Colin Legum, writing in The Observer (London), reported that the leaders of the revolution included a former Mau Mau fighter in Kenya who had been trained at the Havana Guerrilla Warfare School and Zanzibaris who had visited Peiping and received funds from Communist China. The apparent aim of the seizure of power, which was accompanied by a mass slaughter of Arabs and Indians, was to establish a base for future deep penetration of Tanganyika, Uganda, and Mozambique. The fact that the uprising coincided with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai’s African tour may be viewed as a sign of Peiping’s lengthening shadow over Africa. The London Tablet, commenting on the current Red Chinese interest in Africa, recently said:
“The surfeit of Han (Chinese) is already beginning to spill over the rim of Asia. Africa may well seem to them a natural outlet, just as the empty Australian continent attracts other teeming and underfed Asian multitudes.”
Grave concern is being voiced in many quarters that Peiping aims to exert a controlling influence from the Horn of Africa to the regions of the Congo that border on Uganda and Tanganyika, and that Peiping also intends to foment a “war of liberation” against the Western bastion in Mozambique. In this connection, Patrick Wall, member of the British House of Commons, recently cited the need for establishment of a firm defensive line in Africa, saying “the temporary partition of Africa on the line of the River Zambezi must be recognized if the economic potential of the area is to be developed, without which the continent cannot be saved from chaos and the Western world further weakened.” Certainly, the ouster of British officers from the Commonwealth country of Tanganyika and the creation of a Chinese-oriented “people’s republic” on Zanzibar indicates that the security of a large portion of the African continent has reached a critical stage. Replacement of Western-oriented African political leaders by officials sympathetic to Communist China could result in the loss to Communism of the largest land area since the Chinese mainland fell to the forces of Mao Tse-tung.
It is well to recognize the deep fear of Red China to be found in a number of Afro-Asian Ocean countries. Sir Percival Griffith, writing in Asian Review in April 1963, spelled out this fear. “Those of us who have been wandering around South [Asia] and Southeast Asia for some years,” he said, “have been conscious for a very long time of the buildup of Chinese imperialism. You go to Burma for example and whatever the government may say about their friendship with their great Chinese big brother, if you talk to any educated man in Rangoon and see what he thinks about the Chinese big brother, he is terrified the whole time, and you go to Indonesia and there you find the same kind of feeling, that China is in an expansionist mood, and that by one means or another she has every intention of stretching out her tentacles to control South and Southeast Asia.”
It is this Chinese expansionism that poses the most critical questions for India. Thus far, the Indian government is chiefly concerned with the danger by land. But the danger by sea cannot be ignored, and the ablest scholars of India most certainly have not ignored the role of the Afro-Asian Ocean in that country’s defense and destiny.
K. M. Panikkar, writing on the influence of sea power on Indian history, begins his work with this quotation from Khaireddin Barbarosa to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent: “He who rules on the sea will shortly rule on the land.”
Panikkar voices the conviction that “the future of India has been determined not on the land frontiers, but on the oceanic expanse which washes the three sides of India.” To realize the strength of this viewpoint, one has only to look back to World War II. Had Japan been able to maintain a strong fleet along the shores of India, that portion of the British Empire could have been easily subdued by them.
Students of Indian defense point out that control of Indian waters was in Indian hands till the middle of the 13th century. Then the Arabs succeeded to sea power. But with the coming of the Portuguese a marked change was effected in Indian history, for the Portuguese claimed and soon exerted exclusive control of ocean space. Alfonso Albuquerque conquered Socotra, Ormuz, and Malacca and established a base on the Indian peninsula, thereby obtaining tight control over the Afro-Asian Ocean at its principal control points. The Moguls, whose traditions were those of a Central Asian land power, had no understanding of sea power.
Because the Afro-Asian Ocean is the highway over which would-be Communist conquerers must march, the future of the Afro- Asian Ocean world will in all likelihood be decided on that ocean and by the country that controls the islands. Whatever may be the fate of the East African Coast or the coast of Southeast Asia, it should be clear that India, which juts out into the Afro-Asian Ocean for a thousand miles, is at the mercy of the power or powers that control the ocean space. Again, Panikkar warns his countrymen that, “what is of the utmost in importance in safeguarding India’s communications with Europe is not Bombay or Colombo, but Diego Suarez in Madagascar. It is the oceanic space that dominates the strategy of Indian defense.”
Yet another aspect of the Afro-Asian Ocean world is that East Africa is the hinterland of Asia, chiefly India. For many centuries, the cultures and peoples of the two continents have met on the East African coast. This contact continues to produce grave problems. A large Indian minority exists in Kenya, Tanganyika, and South Africa. The Indians in these countries occupy the role of the Chinese in the islands and countries of Southeast Asia. They are the traders. In South Africa, for example, the Indians of today are descendants of Indian laborers brought over for work in the sugar fields. After a century, they have a comparatively high standard of living. Many have attained affluence. Their communities have handsome schools, mosques, temples, and stores. A general sense of well-being exists that sets them apart from the Bantu population which is envious of their economic status. This has resulted in serious rioting on occasion. That the Indians of South and East Africa have a high birth rate which doubles their numbers every 16 years suggests the difficulties in adjustment that lie ahead.
Elsewhere in Southern and East Africa, one finds the problem of differences and disputes over majority and minority rights. The definition of who is an African is not so easy to arrive at as Americans believe. Are the black peoples the only genuine Africans? Or are there true Eur-African, Europeans who have lived on the continent for generations, even centuries? Are the Indians to be classified as truly naturalized Africans? What about the Egyptians, who currently stress their African ties, but whose civilization is Mediterranean-oriented? The statement “Africa for the Africans” is not as simple as it sounds to the ears of those who know nothing of the complexities of the continent.
The racial situation on Zanzibar reveals the difficulties involved in finding a just solution of problems. Before the uprising, in which an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 Arabs and Asians were killed, there were approximately 40,000 Arabs, who owned most of the land; approximately 240,000 black Africans, who performed most of the labor; and approximately 18,000 Asians, who handled the commerce of the island. A look at the bloodshed and terror which occurred in Zanzibar this year makes one realize that the so-called “winds of change” can blow destructively against sub-groups within the new nations.
For the Westerner looking at Africa and Asia, it is well to realize that easy solutions are a myth and that differences in outlook, custom, beliefs, and systems are certain to persist. Many concepts in the Afro-Asian Ocean world are strange to Westerners. There must be insight into the framework of the lives of people living in undeveloped nations. Dr. Marguerite J. Fisher, writing in the Western Political Quarterly, explains that “the horizons of the masses of Asia are generally limited to the local or village level, and the national government in Karachi, Rangoon or Djakarta is likely to seem remote and unreal. It is difficult if not impossible for many of the people to conceive of meaningful participation in their national government. The political parties have been largely the creation of the urban elite.”
There is much that must be understood by the U. S. public. Americans need to know, for instance, that if you ask a villager in a remote Indian State which is bigger—his state or China—he may say that his own state is bigger. Basic knowledge of the outside world simply does not exist in many countries. And when one hears of the drive of African nationalism, one ought to consider that in many parts of Ethiopia, the country people do not even know the name of Addis Ababa, their capital city.
Looking around the rim of the Afro-Asian Ocean, one finds diverse societies at all stages of evolution—from the near primitive Stone Age to 20th century industrialization. Nowhere is the contrast between ancient and modern society more evident than on the Arabian peninsula.
The Arabs have played an intimate and continuing role in the life story of the Afro- Asian Ocean world. Before the birth of Christ, traders moved from Arabia to the hill country of Ethiopia. Hundreds of years later, other traders from Muscat established depots in India and East Africa. Slaves and gold from Africa were traded by the Arabs for the cloth and utensils produced in India and Persia. Later, many Persians were allowed by the Arabs to come as refugees to the East African coast. The settlements of Arabs and Persians from modern Somalia south to Zanzibar were known collectively as Zenj, which is the Arabic word for Ethiopia. In time, traders from India also moved to this coast. The Arabs left their imprint on the blood of the coastal people, their culture and language.
Some of the Arabian areas are living museums in a number of respects, while in other respects, they are deeply involved in modern technology. Take, for example, Kuwait—the independent Arab sheikdom—six thousand square miles of sand and rock on the old Pirate Coast. The annual rainfall is from 2 to 4½ inches. The Kuwaitis long have been known as the master mariners of the Persian Gulf. Today, they live on top of a sea of oil. Oil production in Kuwait was 54 million tons in 1955. Indeed the oil reserves of this tiny territory amount to 21 per cent of the world’s total reserves. Income from this oil production in 1961 totaled 160 million pounds sterling.
Indeed, not all the Afro-Asian Ocean nations are without hope and promise. One land that should have a bright future is the Malagasy Republic—long known to Westerners as Madagascar.
The Malagasy Republic is the fourth largest island in the world, having an area of 227,800 square miles, or about the size of Texas. It is 1,000 miles long and 250 miles wide. The population of the country is 5,487,000.
Unlike so many other new countries in Africa, the people of the Malagasy Republic— the Malagache—are not a cultural fiction, but a people with a true national identity. Madagascar is sometimes referred to as Africa’s Asian island. The reason is that the inhabitants are descendants of Malayans and Melanesians who settled there centuries ago. The language recalls the Malayan tongue rather than an African language.
Since achieving its independence from France in 1960, the Malagasy Republic has proved to be stable, moderate, and pro-Western in many of its policies. President Philibert Tsiranana has accused the Communists of creating incidents in the Republic. In 1960, he was prompt in warning what he termed “foreign subversives” that they would be deported if they caused trouble. He has had the vision to associate the republic with the European Common Market and to sign a treaty of friendship with Israel—the latter action in defiance of the wishes of Egypt’s President, Gamal Nasser.
The more moderate policies followed by the Malagasy Republic have brought on the condemnation of the Communists and their allies. V. Kudryavysev, writing in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia on the Moshi conference dealing with African affairs, attacked the Republic and its president. “When the call of Soviet fishing boats at a southern Madagascan port for fresh water,” he said, “a normal thing under maritime law, is used by President Tsiranana, as a pretext to urge France and other NATO powers virtually to occupy Madagascar by naval and air forces of the bloc to protect the island from a mythical ‘Communist menace,’ he inflicts on the African people no less, and perhaps greater, harm than the colonialists.” This angry comment by a Russian is evidence of how the Communists fear the co-operation of moderate African leaders with Western countries that are prepared to be of assistance to newly independent countries.
Far different is the situation across the Afro-Asian Ocean on the islands that comprise Indonesia. Indonesia, which forms a bridge or stepping stone between the Afro-Asian Ocean world and the world of the Pacific, today is in deep trouble, politically and economically. William Olson, an Australian observer writing in the Sydney Daily Mirror, gives an accurate summation of the political situation. “One can begin by firmly stating,” he writes, “that Indonesia is a military dictatorship with the backing of the powerful army. ‘Guided democracy’ is the euphemism preferred by the President. Calling a spade a workman’s implement doesn’t make Indonesia a democracy, guided or otherwise.”
It is worthwhile noting that Eastern and Western influences have met in Indonesia over the centuries. Immanuel Birnbaum has pointed out in an essay in Süddeutsche Zeitung that this appears “in the ruins of a Hindu Temple in Central Java and in the inhabitants of Bali, who still practice Hinduism.” It also appears in the folklore of Sumatra which reveals both Arab-Islamic and East Asian influences. The linguist observes that unity—national unity—is far away in that there are 200 languages and dialects spoken in the Indonesian archipelago. The unsettled nature of Indonesia is mirrored in the fact that Javanese is the official language but is not understood in all parts of the country.
The future of Indonesia in turn affects the future of Malaysia, another Afro-Asian Ocean country. The Indonesian government endorses a number of the foreign policy objectives of Peiping, condemns the freedom fighters in South Vietnam, approves Communist rule of Korea, and terms the United States and its allies the root of trouble in the Orient. Malaysia, on the other hand, is on the best of terms with its former ruler, Great Britain. It also welcomes military assistance from another Afro-Asian Ocean world nation, Australia. Malaysia is a working democracy. Its free economy and hard currency show what orderly government, operating on sound principles, can achieve in the environment of the Afro-Asian Ocean world.
Malaysia’s future also depends very much on effective diplomatic and military action to prevent guerrilla raids from the Indonesian-held half of the island of Borneo. If Free World diplomacy fails to deter the Indonesian government, military measures of deterrence may be required to guard the integrity of Malaysia.
Brian Breedham of The Economist, an influential British periodical, has suggested that “what may happen is a delicate exercise of tit-for-tat—the infiltration of British-trained guerrillas into the large and wealthy Indonesian island of Sumatra. The Sumatrans rebelled unsuccessfuly against Dr. Sukarno’s rule in 1958, and might very well do so again if suitably encouraged. For all the risk involved (and there were risks in sending American counter-guerrilla experts into South Vietnam), there are powerful arguments for reminding Dr. Sukarno that two can play the guerrilla game.”
Malaysia and the Malagasy Republic are not typical of the Afro-Asian Ocean world nations, however. The oceanic region as a whole promises to be unstable for many years to come, as the various nations struggle to find their national identities and in common establish order. Meanwhile, the forces of disorder and the managers of conflict are hard at work, seeking to thwart democratic strength and genuine co-operation.
The range of Indian problems is too great to encompass in this brief report. But as nine out of ten Indians live in small towns and villages, the basic need is for modernization of village life and the agriculture of the nation. To grasp what is involved in such a task one has only to look, as has Danielle Hunebelle, a French writer, into the life of a single village. The community she chose was Alandi, population 3,195. It is in India’s most socially advanced area, Maharashtra, the capital of which is Bombay. Yet this village is the only one in the district with water, electricity and a secondary school. The village is a Hindu shrine, and pilgrims come from all over India to worship at the tomb and temple of Saint Jnanesvar. Out of Alandi’s annual municipal budget of 125,000 rupees (approximately $26,800), 80,000 rupees come from taxes paid by pilgrims. In this village are more than a dozen strictly separated castes, including the thakars who live like serfs and who cannot hope to change their status. Mademoiselle Hunebelle, in telling her story of the village of Alandi, recounts what one 62-year-old householder told her about his life. One brief excerpt from his account goes far to reveal the difference between the backwardness of India and the modern world in which that nation must live. “After going to a diviner,” said the Indian villager, “and then to the astrologer, Datta [his son] started work on a well on the day of Dasara, a blessed day. All my sons with their workers then made an offering to Ganapati, the god of success. They put some rice, a coconut and some red powder on a stone. They dug, but they did not find water. Then, on the second Monday in July, we made a puja (offering) to Satya Narayan. We invited 300 people to eat with us, and a Brahmin scattered rice petals and powder over a statuette of Vishnu while reciting the mantra in Sanskrit. A few days later the water began to gush forth.”
Part of the hope for India may lie in the direction of co-operation with another Asian nation that has easily accomplished the transition from the mystical outlook of the past to Western-style modernism and industrialism. This nation is Japan.
Throughout the Afro-Asian Ocean world, Japan can play a highly constructive role. This role is to serve as an economic stimulant. A. M. Rosenthal, writing in the New York Times, correctly states that Japan can help direct the course of history by providing “the industrial cement for a wall of economic achievement through the threatened Asian nations in Communist China’s path.”
Actually, Japanese interest in Southern Asia is an old story, though today that country has no militant intent. In the 1930s, when Japan was building its so-called “Co-prosperity Sphere,” the Japanese government gave thought to negotiating with the government of Thailand for construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Kra. And if the Gulf of Malacca should be closed to Free World shipping by the Indonesians the way Colonel Nasser has closed the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping, it might be necessary to reopen discussions of a canal across the Kra Isthmus.
Indeed, the Japanese may be said to have decisively influenced India’s independence movement in that when Japan’s Navy entered the Bay of Bengal in 1942, 100 years of British-protected sea communications in the Afro-Asian Ocean area came to an end.
Japan is thoroughly alert to the mission it may play in the Afro-Asian Ocean. Ambassador Katsuo Okazaki, speaking in New York City in 1962, said:
“We offer our Asian neighbors an example of what an Asian country can accomplish by private enterprise, democracy and partnership in the free world. Japan, as an Asian nation, can contribute much to the common cause by serving as a bridge and principal instrument for the Western partners in dealing with Asian areas where we have had long experience. A stagnant Asia is already a breeding ground for chaos and Communist imperialism.”
Moreover, Japan has a direct economic stake in the Afro-Asian area. She has a long-term trade agreement with South Africa for the purchase of iron ore needed by her expanding steel industry. She also has moved into the field of developing oil production in the Middle East. And Japan’s industry depends on the secure movement of crude oil from the Middle East to her factories in the home islands. It is for the protection of this Afro-Asian Ocean commerce that Japan has commenced the rebuilding of her Navy, which now includes 18 destroyers, 26 anti-submarine frigates, and five new submarines.
Another country with a vast potential for military and economic co-operation in the struggle against Communist domination of the Afro-Asian Ocean is Australia.
Today, Australia supports a population of 10.5 million people with a standard of living that compares with that of the United States. This population represents a 40 per cent increase since 1946. The number of factories in Australia has increased 80 per cent in the same period, and electric generating capacity has risen 250 per cent. The country is, in short, one of the most highly industrialized nations in the world. Of every 100 persons in its work force, 28 are engaged in manufacturing. With abundant coal and iron deposits, Australia quickly has established a strong and growing steel complex. It also has a large chemical industry, refines petroleum, and turns out a vast variety of goods, including jet aircraft, diesel locomotives, and electronic components.
This all means that Australia is far better prepared today to resist an attack than she was when faced with a Japanese attack in World War II. But there are serious defense problems, the chief one being the concentration of population on the east and southern coasts, while vast areas in the north are virtually unpopulated and undefended. Envious eyes study this almost empty continent, and it is well to remember that Darwin, in the north, is closer to Singapore than to Canberra, the capital of Australia.
For many years, Australia looked to Great Britain for protection. The country was simply an extension of England overseas. World War II drew Australia close to the United States—one million of the latter’s troops being stationed in or passed through the country. Today, the ANZUS Pact unites Australia, New Zealand, and the United States in a common defense agreement against Communism. But Australian government leaders are becoming increasingly aware of the country’s relations with other nations facing the Afro- Asian Ocean. Australia’s commitment of soldiers and airmen to Malaysia’s fight against Communist infiltration exemplifies the new orientation of the country. Australia also has given permission to the United States to build a giant radio transmitter on the west coast that will serve Polaris submarines operating, in the future, in the Afro-Asian Ocean in defense of the free nations of that area.
Australia’s situation is in some respects comparable with that of South Africa, thousands of miles to the west on the other side of the Afro-Asian Ocean. Like Australia, South Africa is on its way to being a major industrial power. The industrial giant of the African continent, South Africa produces three times as much steel as the rest of the African states combined, and the country’s power generating capacity is double that of the rest of Africa. Producing 64 per cent of the world’s gold and possessing vast supplies of coal, iron, and other resources essential to industrial growth, South Africa has the strength in manufacturing and technology that is essential if the Afro-Asian Ocean world is not to be permanently undeveloped.
As Westerners examine conditions in the Afro-Asian Ocean world and reach out for firm conclusions, they should bear in mind James Burnham’s striking analogy wherein he compared the “vast underdeveloped, mostly tropical and sub-tropical, mass-populated regions” of Afro-Asia with the countryside that the Chinese Communist armies set out to conquer before they seized the big cities on the Chinese mainland. Mr. Burnham made the point that the Communist drive to conquer Afro-Asia was based on the “long strategy of indirect approach” and was designed to cut off Western Europe and North America “from the life-giving countryside” so that these centers of civilization would be “reduced finally to withering islands in an alien, swelling sea.”
It would be suicidal for the West to allow the Communists to dominate the Afro-Asian Ocean world, to nibble away at countries or to subvert or to allow great cities and power centers such as Bombay, Singapore, Johannesburg, and Fremantle to fall under direct Communist or indirect leftist rule. In the short term view, it is possible for the West to create military barriers to Chinese imperialism. But in the long run, the West has everything to gain from persuading the 17 Afro-Asian Ocean world nations to engage in at least limited cooperation in the military and economic spheres, despite their very real differences.
In the West and in Afro-Asia, each nation needs to take a fresh look at these differences and to make cool judgments. Pakistan and India are separated by religion and by dissimilar ways of life. But they also should be capable of a rational analysis which will show that the defense of the Indian sub-continent is indivisible—that a Chinese Communist attack on Assam in time will mean an attack on East Pakistan. The East African countries deeply disapprove of the political approach that characterizes South Africa. But leaders with an understanding of the imperatives of economic development of their states should be able to envision ways and means whereby South Africa could serve as an industrial bridgehead to a better future for their nations. The Malays, though mindful of the political danger from the Chinese population in Singapore, should be able to achieve closer economic ties between the two racial groups for their mutual benefit. In Southern Asia and on the East Coast of Africa, differences are nothing new. Asia never has been a homogeneous entity. The Asian continent always has had many faces and has spoken with many voices. One country—India—contains enough differences within itself for a dozen nations. F. S. C. Northrup has pointed out that it embodies “70 million depressed class peoples at its base, the intuitive Brahman at its ideal apex, and in the midst of which is a Mohammedan culture, now some dozen centuries old, dominated by the uncompromising determinateness of a theistic religion.” In addition, India has a British heritage of mixed character, including Protestantism and Lockean democracy. To this is added the pacifism of Gandhi’s followers and a doctrinaire 19th century socialism obtained from the British Fabians. Yet the Indian Union has not exploded. If the Indian Union can maintain its existence (though the sub-continent had to be partitioned), some measures of co-operation should be possible among the Africans, Eur-Africans, Australians, and Asians of the Afro-Asian Ocean world.
In recent years, co-operation has been almost impossible because, with the eruption of new nations, the new nationalities have been extraordinarily sensitive concerning their relationships with one another and with Europeans. The resulting emotional climate has prevented the practical regional co-operation that could be so beneficial to the nations of the Afro-Asian Ocean area. But the Malagasy Republic and Malaysia provide two examples of new nations, turning to moderate and reasonable policies that involve partnership with European peoples. Other Afro-Asian Ocean nations should, in the period ahead, be able to co-operate with one another and to restore broken contacts with the West and Westerners, and gain thereby. If they find diplomatic ways of moving around emotional issues, the Afro-Asian Ocean nations will be in a position to overcome the threat of the armed doctrine of Communism. But while the nations of the area struggle toward maturity, they will need a shield of sea power in the Afro-Asian Ocean to protect them from Communist aggression and to assist in the maintenance of peace and stability.
Educated at Kenyon College and the University of Virginia, Mr. Harrigan served with the U. S. Marine Corps during World War II. He is Associate Editor of the News and Courier of Charleston, S. C., and a member of the Institute for Strategic Studies (London). In addition to his contributions to national magazines, such as American Heritage, American Historical Review, and the Proceedings, his articles have appeared in the Revue Mililaire Génerale, Australian Army Journal, NATO's Fifteen Nations, and other professional military journals overseas.
★
He Was Through With Adventure, Security, and Education
In the District of Columbia area, a U. S. Navy recruiting poster featured three sailors, with the phrases “I Want Adventure!”—“I Want Security!”—“I Want Education!” printed underneath each.
At the bottom of all this, some sailor had scrawled in pencil, “I just want out.”
——Contributed by Harold Helfer
(The Naval Institute will pay $10.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)