Britain, Russia and the open seas

LIONEL GELBER

The free world has been slow to defect how, as Russia adopts policies of detente on the European continent and may even curb the apocalyptic race in nuclear weapons on land, she is not only girding her loins against Com- munist China but might also be clearing the decks for global supremacy through the ele- ment of sea-power. History can put this old- new challenge in perspective. The United States, after being sheltered by British naval power during her own years of growth, donned the mantle of leadership at a time when the dimensions of world contests have become vaster than ever before. Not that previous contests could be waged within narrow confines. When a free world order relied on Britain the scale of things was also worldwide. But in that era, with instruments of primacy like the Royal Navy and an 17mpire on which the sun never set, it was only in Europe that Britain also had to have an adequate balance of power. An adequate balance of power in Europe and adjacent waters is, as the formation of the North Atlantic Alliance reveals, still a prerequisite for the West. But the European balance is now merely a key sector in a larger global

ha lance.

One major prop of that global balance has been the naval preponderance which the West enjoys. There have not only been sea lanes to police in a traditional way. For a number of years the Western deterrent has been sea-based as well as land-based. And this last fact also may explain why, even when there is hostility on the Soviet frontiers with China and unrest among European client states, a countervailing naval effort still figures among Soviet priorities.

After World War as the United States pitted against the further development of Soviet land-power a global nuclear apparatus with oceanic ramifications. Russia may get far without neutralising these. If she neutral- ises them she may get still further.

Such a dual Soviet aim could potentially become the gravest threat since Hitler to a free world order. And when the United States meets it, her British ally, in spite of severe budgetary constraints, has a particular contribution to make.

None has been as apt as Britain to preconcert far afield with others and that, as a residual propensity, is what might still guide her. It may not be innate but she had to live it down before General de Gaulle would have let her enter the Common Market. What he resented in Britain was all she still derived from Commonwealth bonds and her ultimate solidarity with the United States—the legacy, in short, of her oceanic past.

If the European Community is to attain its goal, moreover, there must be economic and political unification. In a full organic union with European neighbours Britain would ac- cordingly have to abandon overseas sources of strength. She could have external links that other federalised components share and no others.

What Britain requires is an alternatiVe that

Mr Gelber. the Canadian historian and political commentator. was Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of Canada 1960-61.

will restore some of the economic scope she once had without stultifying her politically. This she might achieve by a looser trading arrangemement with the European Commun- ity or by a multilateral free trade area which extends far beyond the West European seg- ment of the free world. If that kind of pro- ject could be organised it would enable Britaid to prolong such overseas connections as may still help her to make her mark. But nothing can be done along those broader lines unless the United States recognises the utility to her, from a politico- strategic as well as an economic standpoint, of such a venture and, as leader of the West, takes an appropriate initiative.

Through the entry of Britain and others, at any rate, the enlargement of the European Community might revive the Gaullist drift towards a Third Force Europe—one that would divide the West at a conjuncture when its unity, with an American leader harassed by war in Indochina and ham- pered by manifold distractions at home, has seldom been so imperative. Certainly by merging her political identity with that of others in a close-knit European union, Bri- tain would be sounding the death-knell of an oceanic grouping such as the Com- monwealth and be doing it just when the maritime phase of the global contest between Russia and the West might render it more hazardous to keep safe that everyday traffic between continents which civilised society takes for granted.

The nature of the Commonwealth has determined the effect which-naval advances by the Soviet Union have had upon it. An oceanic Commonwealth could never have emerged if first Britain and then the United States had not kept the seas open for open societies. Among Afro-Asian members of the

Commonwealth few abide by that heritan of law and public life which the British 14j behind. Yet the imponderables of the Coy monwealth, at once so creative and 4 elusive, should not be minimised. They has set the higher political standards of o societies as those towards which a num of less open ones may still aspire.

Nor are such intangibles the C monwealth's sole merit. There are rra pacts and programmes of financial a technical assistance. It is, moreover, by porting cheap foodstuffs from c monwealth countries that Britain obtains et port advantages which, upon entry into Common Market, she would have to nounce. Even in concrete economic to Britain should therefore regard the C' monwealth nexus as a boon.

Irritants abound. It is, nevertheless, a bute as well as a handicap when part insist that Britain observe a stricter code conduct than the rest. For Commonweal transactions, she remains the centre. And long as she does, she will, for a country her size and resources, discharge a functi that is globally unique.

Even so, none of this will be worth m if Britain's oceanic security is undermined h. Russia's maritime endeavour to outflank t European sector of the global balance- overseas partners of the Commonwealth ar• cut off from Britain and from each other.

After World War It when the Ameri Sixth Fleet spread a protective wing or. southern Europe its aircraft also had t Black Sea ports of the Soviet Union withi reach. More recently it has had to recur itself to an offsetting Mediterranean prese by the Red Fleet—one from which Rus'• has reaped immense strategic profit. In spring of 1967, after egging on belligerent Egyptian ward, the USSR NU not save Egypt from a pre-emptive strike Israel. Subsequently, however, the most a to-date aircraft and anti-missile devices, vu ten or fifteen thousand Soviet personnel a technicians, were sent to Egypt; the So Navy has also obtained facilities at Alo

dria and Port Said (as well as at Latakia in Syria)– The Red Fleet, moreover, possesses helicopter carriers which can be modified, but no attack aircraft carriers. From the air- field at Cairo West it gets instead land-based air support which Russia may also procure elsewhere.

Throughout the Mediterranean this amphibious Soviet build-up has stirred ap- prehension. There are even misgivings over what Malta, a Commonwealth country, may do. For that island is a key to maritime com- munications between the Eastern - and Western Mediterranean. Her naval facilities, a bequest from Britain, could be at Russia's disposal if, following a change of govern- ment, the Maltese went neutralist. The same might occur, moreover, on the European lit-

toral of the Mediterranean and then NATO would have fewer and fewer bases on its southern flank. Already as paymaster of the

Arab cause, the Soviet Union may have got a footing at Mers el-Kebir, the former French base in Algeria. It could thus have both ends of the Mediterranean within its orbit.

The spirit Moscow exhibits is one of audacity tempered by caution. As long as there is a European standstill between Russia and the West, the Soviet naval presence in the Mediterranean does not have to match in size the Mediterranean vigil that the American Sixth Fleet, with the navies of European allies, has been mounting. What it does do more immediately is fulfil an age-old Russian dream by serving as a cover for a Soviet breakthrough from the Middle East to the Indian Ocean.

Such a breakthrough would contrast with trends elsewhere. In Eastern and Cen-

tral Europe, Russia has is consolidating

the status quo and she is for it also in East and South Asia. She is, on the other hand, against the status quo in the Middle East as far as she may thereby promote her own interests rather than those of Arab client states or of Palestinian terrorists with a pro- Chinese orientation.

Important, above all, will be the extent to which the Russians penetrate the Persian

Gulf in the wake of any Western withdrawal

and after the Suez Canal haibeen unblocked. Russia may or may not want to extract and distribute the oil of the region. What she might covet is the ability to have it withheld in a showdown from Britain, other West European countries and Japan.

Even now, Russia has a grip on the Yemeni port of Hodeida, while in Somalia across the mouth of the Red Sea she is carving out an East African foothold. After Egypt had to retire from the Yemen and Bri- tain withdrew from South Yemen Russia could bring the naval base and airport of Aden, together with the island of Socotra. within her-clutches. Nor has she bagged any

strategic prize as -precious as this since she fixed her sway upon Eastern Europe. By operating from Aden and Socotra the Rus- sians will traverse the Indian Ocean with ease. For thus traversing it the-Soviet Navy is also ensconced elsewhere. Russian fisheries

and submarine fleets may collaborate and on behalf of the former, it is often reported, the Soviet Union has even signed agreements with three Asian members of the Common- wealth—India, Pakistan and Ceylon. India denies that Russia has the use of naval facili- ties at Visalapatam on her east coast or the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. What may be conjectured,' they, has been the use of those islands for'•exercises by the Royal Navy—a relic of long-Tecognised custom and Commonwealth bonds. And it would be reassuring if this were so. From Indian ter- ritories on the Bay of Bengal, Soviet naval vessels might command traffic, the heaviest in the world, passing through the Malacca Straits to and from Singapore and Malaysia up to Hong Kong and Japan.

On the west coast of the Indian sub-con- tinent, all the same, there now is a shore- based rampart of Russian naval power. Pakistan, though still aligned by treaty with the West, has let Russia improve an old road which, meandering down through Afghanistan, winds up in the Pakistani port of Karachi. And what this signifies will be evident. It means that the Soviet Union has acquired a land route to the Indian Ocean with enormous strategic potential—one which, when the Suez Canal is closed and Vladivostok inescapably distant, may ex- pedite the replenishment of Russian naval supplies in the region and the replacement of personnel.

Then Russia may be forging ahead off the coast of East Africa, nearer the Cape of Good Hope. The island of Mauritius, where there is a British naval radio relay station, has given facilities to Russian merchant ships (together with airport rights for Aeroflot) as well as to Soviet fishing trawlers. On the African mainland, Tanzania, another Commonwealth country, is also said to have a fisheries agreement with Russia. And privil- eges like these might be converted later into something less innocuous.

It has long been patent that control of Egypt would provide Russia with a step- ping-stone for the pursuit in the Indo-Pacific theatre of a still wider global strategy. The Truman Doctrine was devised to curtail any downward Soviet thrust through Greece and Turkey. In 1956, however, when Sir Anthony Eden and M. Guy Mollet might have im- peded the Russian leapfrog across the Mediterranean, Washington did what it could to impede them—a self-defeating blow from which American policy in the Middle East has never recovered. Israel, with aircraft from the United States and yet with scant backing from other natural allies in the West, might again save herself from the perils by which she is beset. But there has also been the question whether an attempt will be made beyond the vicinity of the Suez Canal to take peripheral defence measures at the sea passages around the Cape of Good Hope and South-East Asia.

The answers, pro or con, have been ones for Britain to find, and she has had to find them in a Commonwealth context. Nor can they be the same. In South-East Asia a cluster of other Commonwealth coun- tries sought to persuade Britain to stay on when she tried to depart. At the Cape of Good Hope, the African members of the Commonwealth demanded hands off.

The second closure of the Suez Canal, a by-product of the Six Day War between Israel and Arab states, was what provoked the Commonwealth crisis over the defence of the sea passage around the Cape of Good Hope. The longer route has been more costly for all ships, but Russia has not only had the extra roubles to consider. Other countries have been employing supertankers for the transportation of oil from the Persian Gulf which are precluded by their size from use of the Suez and must therefor go around the Cape. The Soviet Union refrains, however, from building such monsters as they cannot navigate the straits of the Black and Baltic Seas or slice through ice that, for much of the year, obstructs the Arctic passage above Norway. Then, too, when Russian supplies for North Vietnam were debarred from travel across Chinese territory, the Soviet Union had to ship them by the slower haul around the Cape. And it would have to do the same if the trans-Siberian railway were exposed to bombing by a Chinese foe—un- less the Suez Canal were available.

The number of warships and submarines which Russia assigns to the Mediterranean might fluctuate. What they also do, nevertheless, is serve as a check upon that sea-air branch of the Western deterrent which, with allies, has the American Sixth Fleet as an unacknowledged escort. And now the Soviet Navy, even though to a much smaller degree, may watch the Indian Ocean with the same objective in mind. When, moreover, there is speedier access to it, Russia, protecting her own shorter route to East Asia, might, with land-based facilities, cast a shadow over the entire region.

Nor has assistance from within the Com- monwealth been lacking. Politically this is the most permissive of entities and con- Commonwealth members like Pakistan must puzzle beneficiaries as politically unpermis- sive as the masters of the Kremlin.

During the 1950s India embarrassed the West when, in expounding the virtues of non-alignment, she restricted herself to declamation and diplomacy. The con- sequences will be more damaging if Rawalpindi and any of the others bestow assistance on a rival camp. It may be that Mauritius, badly advised, did not altogether understand what she was letting herself in for, Pakistan has not switched sides formally or even intimated that, as custodians of world order, she perceives nothing to choose be- tween them. But there has been an ambival- ence in Pakistani behaviour which some Afri- can members of the Commonwealth might soon emulate and this is a danger with which British policymakers must now grapple.

It is a danger, moreover, which stems from a deepening solicitude in Britain for the safety of sea traffic around South Africa. To- day, quite apart from what happens to the Suez Canal. the Cape route has more than a fall-back utility. It is the only feasible path for giant tankers laden with much of that oil from the Middle East to which, like Japan, Britain and the rest of Western Europe have now geared their economies.

There are some, nevertheless, who wonder whether fortification of the Cape route is not strategically futile. The argument is that non-Soviet traffic will be in less jeopardy here than elsewhere because the Cape is so far from the North Atlantic where roving Soviet marauders would have nearby havens of their own and where, so as to contain the Soviet naval menace, the West is also better off.

This might well be so—though Russian detachments may get a float support, that modern method of supply. But it is not only the West with which the Soviet Union com- petes; there is also the advent to Zambia and Tanzania of the Communist Chinese. Far beyond Sino-Soviet frontiers, Moscow com- bats Maoist ideology and the magic worked on non-white peoples by Chinese forward strides in war technology. Russia thus has yet another motive for showing the flag off the coast of East Africa. By doing so she may augment Soviet political inroads. If there are ensuing grants of naval facilities, these will increase the Russian strategic capa- city among the sea lanes of the region.

South Africa, with the most convenient of sites for surveillance over the Cape route, has been willing to undertake that mission. It is one which Britain, by renewing the sale of naval arms to the Republic, wanted to foster. But some "overseas members of the Com- monwealth have not been as ready to ac- quiesce in sales of that kind to South Africa.

For a number of years Britain ensured the defence of the area through an agreement with South Africa under which British naval vessels could be berthed and fuelled at the Simonstown base or use other South African ports. The Wilson government, however, -banned the sale of arms to South Africa after the Security Council of the United Nations denounced that country in 1963 for its cruel mistreatment of blacks by whites. Since then the politico-strategic picture has altered. The Heath government ran, all the same, into a hornet's nest when they pro- posed to lift the embargo.

Commonwealth capitals opposed to such a proceeding contended that South Africa could employ British naval arms to reinforce the iniquities of apartheid and it is indeed true that some of those weapons might have more than one use. In 1956, when the British and French attempted to reoccupy Suez, Afro-Asian quarters reverberated with threats of secession from the Common- wealth and Ottawa asked London to desist. It did the same again.

Not that Afro-Asian countries are habitually averse to political compromise, Many forgive the West its sins lest worse befall; some, doubting that anything could be worse, condone transgressions by an- tagonists of the West with singular alacrity. But when countries like India and Pakistan now do this, it is because they have axes of their own to grind.

The British raj, with its Asian sphere of influence, had long averted any territorial push by the Russians down to the Indian sub-continent. Until the eve of World War there was also British naval predominance to prevent Tsarist Russia, so repressive and predatory on land, from penetrating the Indo-Pacific theatre by sea. Today, when most other empires have been liquidated, the Soviet imperium—diminished territori- ally by World Wart and territorially re- aggrandised by World War II—seizes the opportunity for expansion by sea beyond its own Eurasian domains. Anti-imperialist countries like India and Pakistan are thus put within a Russian ambit at last. It is, all the same, Communist China, the scourge of Tibet, that does most to couple together, as miscreants, the resurgent imperialism of Russia with the defunct imperialism of the West. For India has been eager to cultivate Russia as a counterpoise against China and against Pakistan over Kashmir. As she strives for the cession of Kashmir, Pakistan, in turn, courts both Russia and China against India.

It is a tangled skein. Until the Organisa- tion of African Unity was aroused the French went on selling arms to South Africa (while black states of Francophone Africa have also been trading with the Boer Republic) and those sales may not wholly cease. In addition, after Britain announced her strategic withdrawals from the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic there was a rapprochement between South Africa and the two chief powers of Latin America, Brazil and Argentina, with the object of making the waters of the South Atlantic more secure. Brasilia and Buenos Aires, removed as they are from African and Com- monwealth affairs, might be suitable in- termediaries for South Africa if she purchases naval arms abroad. Their pro- curement through other channels should let Britain off the hook while oceanically the West will be no weaker.

On unreason, after all, Afro-Asian coun- tries have no monopoly. In their case the - wounds of racism account for much. And one outcome may be that Britain's own in- vestments and export drive will suffer if, by furnishing South Africa with naval arms, she invites trade reprisals within the Com- monwealth from some of her African partners.

Strategically, too, prudence is ordained. Against the day when the Cairo-Moscow axis might seek to exclude military aircraft of the West from the airspace of the Middle East, Britain will have to maintain a more circuitous route for air communications with Commonwealth countries of South-East Asia and the Antipodes. A modicum of goodwill among the Commonwealth nations in Africa is therefore essential if Britain is to retain those air or landing rights with which British staging posts in the Indian Ocean would be the other intercontinental links. And she has, above all, a still more imminent contingency to anticipate. It would serve no rational defence purpose if, by selling arms to South Africa, Britain so alienated some African countries that they retaliated by offering naval facilities to the Soviet Union, The auguries are such as to suggest that Britain would do better for herself and for

the West if, on this most bedevilled of topics, she bowed out. It is not one over which the Commonwealth, with its value to the free world as a whole, should run the risk of a deeper rift or even of breaking up.

The continental countries of Western Europe, on the other hand, also have a stake

in the defence of the route around the Cape, though it is not as large as Britain's. And, as many of them were once colonial powers, anything they do to help South Africa pro- cure naval arms might elicit a more adverse response from African quarters than action taken by Brazil and Argentina. Yet neither do West Europeans have a Commonwealth dilemma with which to conjure.

If a bargain can be struck, the French may now opt for Britain's entry into the

Common Market as a counterpoise to its

domination by the Bonn Republic. What counts today, however, is not a local bal-

ance, European or West European, but a global balance with a West European sector which the United States must continue to underpin. And, besides, after all that France has done to impair the strength of the West (NATO; Canada; the Middle East) the British are not obliged, at the expense of their resi- dual status, to rescue her from her plight. Beyond Europe and across the seas is where _ Britain must still look if she is to hold her own, in Europe and elsewhere in the free world, commercially, politically and strategically.

Then there is the Ostpolitik of the Bonn and French Republics. This could imply more than an acceptance of her existing frontiers by West Germany. With the visits of Messrs Brandt and Pompidou to Mos- cow, came news that French and West Ger. man firms, together with some from Italy, will do more than they are doing to toughen Russian sinews technologically. Among end results, there may be a fresh spurt in Soviet naval shipbuilding. And even if British in• dustry joins the others, they cannot drag Britain, as long as she keeps out of the Com- mon Market, where she does not wish to go. While business is business, this is a principle that is as valid for deals with South Africa as for deals with Russia. Rather than Britain, the continental countries of Western Europe can still cope with the problem of arms for South Africa if the subsequent African re- coil will do less harm.

Meanwhile, to the north of the Indian Ocean, pressure of a very different sort has been exerted upon Britain. There, intent upon the security of South-East Asia, Com- monwealth countries were piqued by a British pullback rather than by a reassertion of limited involvement. Henceforth, accord- ing to a new defence policy enunciated in the late 1960s, Britain was to devote herself chiefly to the European sector of the global balance. Ministers blamed economic stress for the nation's disengagement East of Suez. With the change of administration during 1970, however, Britain started to entertain the idea of a more substantial commitment in South-East Asia. Malaysia and Singapore should feel less insecure if the British con- tribute to a joint security arrangement be- tween five Commonwealth powers—Britain. Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. And what this connotes is that. even if it is a modest one, Britain will stick to her presence in the Indian Ocean. It Is, above all, what the situation East of S01 calls for. In the West, apart from the United States, only Britain does this kind of thing even though- financially the load, for her, is so onerous. It was thus with a more robustly co- operative accent that London spoke as the 1970s got under way. Yet Britain's voice was not devoid of ambiguity. For she could resemble the knight who mounted a horse and rode off in all directions if, on entering the Common Market, she also tried to play. an individual part oceanically. Her presence East of Suez might soon be at odds with her presence in the European community if, within that Community, a political union were, as mooted, to evolve sooner or later. What Downing Street might thereupon pro- pose is that, as political Europe becomes a single entity, its British component should act East of Suez in Europe's name. The United Kingdom could do that, though, only upon the assumption that the European Community will always subscribe to the same politico-strategic concepts as Britain. It would be a rash assumption to make. Western Europe, with so erratic a record and with the Third Force aims which crop up, will not inspire confidence on that score. What should also be remembered is that the more the new Europe is unified the less can any of its separate components retain enough controLof the purse-strings to imple- ment politico-strategic concepts of its own.

In this respect Washington has ample cause for disquiet. It has long been imbued with the curiously schizoid notion that, even after Britain is Europeanised, she will con- trive somehow to blend the Eurocentric with the extra-European. In July 1967 President Johnson expressed hope that the British would not withdraw from East of Suez. What he contemplated, presumably, was tacit co- ordination between an American and British presence in the Indian Ocean. Since the early 1960svarious ports on the coast of East Africa have received periodic visits from warships flying the Stars and Stripes—a naval unit of two destroyers with its flagship, an aircraft tender, based on Bahrein in the Persian Gulf. And, by renewing their presence, the British might even be able to add to a Western deterrent that, from other strategic points on the map, has Russia's own home soil as its target. Under an agreement with Britain, the United States may yet complete joint naval facilities on an island of the British Indian Ocean Territories. And these would be useful even if Washington does not deploy any of its 'Poseidon' submarines, with their unsurpassed missile projection, to that northerly salient of the Indian Ocean which is the Arabian Sea. It is an area to which, at intervals. Britain could send one of her own.

Yet be that as it may, American aircraft (with American warships) now have access to staging posts on British atolls in the In- dian Ocean. Then there is Australia—an ally of the United States under the Anzus Pact and a future co-signatory with Britain of any Commonwealth security pact for South-East Asia. At Coburn Sound, the naval base Canberra has been planning for Western Australia, British and American warships will be most welcome. What may be noticed, too, is how, after President Nixon visited the Sixth Fleet in 1970, he greeted a further British presence not only in the Mediter- ranean but also East of Suez. For when the brunt is borne regionally, three English- speaking countries will do it together.

The growth of Russian sea-power is thus one of those exigencies that have reactivated at crucial junctures since the turn of the cen- tury a much-derided Anglo-American factor, `the special relationship' which Churchill ac- claimed. And this is significant on a number of grounds. There have been small peace- keeping experiments by the United Nations. The United States and Canada have allotted NATO forces to Western Europe. Britain, nonetheless, is the only member of the Western alliance, other than the United States herself, that, ceteris paribus, operates in the common interest and, with Com- monwealth associates, so far from her native heath. The United States is leader of the West and the Commonwealth still revolves around its British pivot. The upshot is that as a matter of practice, and as a practice that matters, the Commonwealth grouping and the Anglo-American factor again impinge upon each other.

The ,United States, torn between global -burdens and the cry at home for retrench- ment abroad, cannot stand guard every- where. She has her Second Fleet in the Atlantic and her First Fleet in the Eastern Pacific, but it is in waters adjoining the In- dian Ocean that she must concentrate the bulk of her outlying sea-power. The American Seventh Fleet and the Soviet Pacific Fleet, based on Vladivostok, have an eye to keep on the Chinese coastline as well as on each other. When the Soviet Navy makes its bid for parity or ascendancy, the Mediterranean and the Western Pacific still constitute the other decisive zones in the American calculus of global sea-power. But neither can the West afford to neglect the huge interconnecting zone of the Indian Ocean. By urging Britain to resume there a more definite strategic posture, regional members of the Commonwealth, while pre- occupied with their own defence, were manoeuvring for the defence of the free world as a whole.

The issue is plain. Not since the days of the German Emperor, William 11, has a maritime rival flung down so prodigious a gauntlet. It was against a similar attempt to combine massive land-power with far- reaching naval and colonial aspirations that, at the turn of the century, Britain had been spurred into an alignment with Imperial Japan, Republican France and Tsarist Russia While also reinsuring herself with the

United States. Nothing that the Japanese or Nazis undertook in the maritime realm after World War I was to be so all-encompassing. But what principally distinguishes the Soviet bid for naval supremacy from those earlier endeavours is its dual character—the search, that is to say, for an invincibility at sea in the old style, the new-style oceanic vehicles of the Western deterrent and the quest for their neutralisation.

The United States, with her allies, is still supreme at sea. And yet by his utterances Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, with the backing of the Soviet Defence Minister, Mr Andrei A. Grechko, is more reminiscent of his German precursor, Admiral von Tirpitz, or so redoubtable an Edwardian sea-dog as Lord Fisher than of an American naval thinker of the period as notable as Captain Mahan. In two world wars the German Navy tried to split free societies from each other and, after Hitler flouted the Nazi- Soviet Pact, to isolate the embattled Russians from those in the West who brought succour by sea at so great a cost in men, shipping and supplies. Today. the Red Fleet might also want to split free societies from each other and, more even than the Red Army, enforce as law a Russian ukase where Russian power has never been exerted before.

Such a state of affairs can transform the world scene. Ever since World War tt the United States and her allies have upheld a global balance from fulcra that are maritime as well as territorial. Nowadays, however, a Eurasian super-power is attaining leverage, like that which Britain and the United States have had, to intervene at will on other world fronts. Britain, after Trafalgar. and the United States, after she took Britain's place as the leader of the West. underwrote a free world order in which free nations survived as did many of the unfree who had the good -fortune to dwell behind the shield of a ben- evolent oceanic proponderance. The preser- vation of that shield will be no simple task.

The new war technology prevents world war through a global balance while at the same time it enhances, short of nuclear war, much that is bellicose. Benefiting from an ensuing immunity. Russia has been castiga- ting positions of strength, but if she and the West ever try to negotiate a world settlement, can be in a stronger position herself.

As for Britain and other Commonwealth countries, there was a maritime element in whatever governed their common past and, as far as common ties are concerned, it will govern their common future no less. One test must be the degree to which the British peo- ple, after being the linch-pin of an oceanic aggregation, let themselves lapse into a mere outer island adjunct of continental land- power. Britain will be Europeanised only if she has lost faith in herself. But she may lose more than that if open societies do not manage to keep open the open seas.