Russia: Toward a Global Reach

RICHARD NIXON'S show-the-flag visit to the Mediterranean is an indirect tribute to the boldness of recent Soviet strategy. Since the debacle of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Russians have managed to challenge the U.S. Sixth Fleet as the paramount naval power in the area, to loosen Washington's already tenuous diplomatic foothold in the Arab world, and to establish a disturbing Communist presence along most of the southern flank of NATO. The Soviets have managed these feats by deploying a large, modern naval force in the Mediterranean, and by artfully cementing relations with regimes from Suez all the way across the cap of North Africa.

The Mediterranean basin is the most dramatic theater in a campaign to extend Soviet power and influence over much of the globe. Moving sometimes by the implied threat of force, but more often by military aid, trade and diplomacy, the Soviets have planted their ensign in most of the world's oceans and are expanding diplomatic beachheads in Asia, Africa and even the Americas. During the past five years, Soviet economic aid to non-Communist countries has doubled to $485 million a year, while military aid has increased from $350 million to about $500 million a year--even excluding the vast infusion of men and missiles in Egypt. Aeroflot, which aims to become a global carrier, now touches down in 57 countries, compared to 92 for U.S. international airlines. The Soviet navy is second in size only to the U.S. Navy and, as U.S. admirals constantly complain, boasts far newer vessels. Moscow's fleet of some 2,600 merchant ships is second to none. In the 95 capitals where Moscow maintains diplomatic representation (up from 71 in 1965), sophisticated commercial attaches are replacing the ill-mannered salesman in the ill-fitting suit who for years was the Soviet stereotype and the object of scorn.

Status Symbols. Russian expansionism goes back to the czarist days of Peter the Great, who coveted the warm water ports of the Mediterranean. Though the Kremlin has soft-pedaled the Communist imperative to spread the red flag wherever possible, such ideological expansion continues to affect Soviet conduct. The most important element in the Soviet thrust, as British Kremlinologist Victor Zorza notes, is that "the Soviets are a great power, and they want the facilities that go with great-power status." Those facilities include not only markets for Soviet industry and sources of raw materials, but also the fleets, bases, and other concrete symbols needed to establish influence beyond a nation's borders.

Russia is making progress in amassing those symbols, particularly among the countries of the Third World.

AFRICA AND THE INDIAN OCEAN

In some respects, the Arab states are only way stations in a grand cross-continental thrust aimed at the vast Indian Ocean. "The Russians are advancing south," Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan wrote last month in the Times of London. "If they were given to slogans they would declare: 'Red soldier, go South.' Their way is a succession of straits--the Dardanelles, Suez, Bab el Mandeb (linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden)--but it is a painless progression. No power blocks their way."

In the wake of leftist military coups, Soviet influence has spread south from Egypt to Sudan and Somalia, bracketing Western-oriented Ethiopia in between. In the Sudan, Soviet advisers work with the Russian-equipped army of 35,000, which is the main power base for Major General Jaafar Numeiry, who seized power last year. The Russians are also building airfields, and have taken over a naval base at Port Sudan on the Red Sea. In Somalia, where the Russians have built a $7,000,000 port at Berbera on the Gulf of Aden, strongman General Jama Ali Qorshel Siad recently cabled Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny that Russian aid "is inscribed in gold letters in our history."

On the other side of the Bab el Mandeb straits, the Soviets are ardently courting Southern Yemen. The Soviets seem to be having more success there than they did in neighboring Yemen, which is drifting back into the Western orbit despite a multimillion-dollar Soviet-aid effort. Southern Yemen possesses the valuable former British base at Aden, and also the barren and almost uninhabited island of Socotra, 600 miles east of Aden. Russian commandos, ferried in by helicopters from Soviet assault ships, are currently training on the island, whose position astride the sea lanes to the Arabian and Red seas makes it an ideal command center for Russia's increasing activity in the Indian Ocean. Russian warships make a point of calling regularly at Zanzibar off the coast of Peking-oriented Tanzania, and Moscow has promised to aid the fishing industry of tiny Mauritius, the former British island colony located 650 miles east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Moscow's moves in and around the Indian Ocean basin seem to be aimed primarily at countering Chinese advances and establishing a presence on the sea routes by which the West obtains its Persian Gulf oil.

THE ASIAN PERIPHERY

In nations on the periphery of Asia, the Soviets are moving to capitalize on an anticipated decline in the U.S. presence and to counter Peking's own hopes for hegemony in the area. In India, to which Moscow has given four modern F-class submarines and several surface ships, Soviet advisers are assisting in construction of a submarine base at the east coast port of Visakhapatnam.

Malaysians have been pleased by heavy Soviet purchases of rubber and tin. Singapore has long offered the Soviets use of the former British colony's superb port facilities on a commercial basis. Said Premier Lee Kuan Yew, who recently arrived in Moscow on his first visit to the Soviet Union: "It is only natural that the Russians would want to move into this area." Moscow is known to be interested again in Indonesia, to which Soviet aid was cut after the bloodbath that followed the abortive Communist coup of 1965.

LATIN AMERICA

Halfway round the globe, the Russians are moving into Latin America. It is an opportune time to do so, with U.S. prestige declining and Latin American countries anxious to forge new economic ties outside the Western Hemisphere. Though the Soviets have come mainly as traders, they have not been shy about establishing a military presence, too. The White House broke the news only last week, but it has been clear for some time that the Soviets have been installing facilities to handle missile-carrying submarines at the Cuban port of Cienfuegos. Acting on reports of unusual Soviet activity, U.S. intelligence stepped up aerial surveillance of Cuba in midsummer (TIME, July 27). Among other indicators was the fact that the huge Soviet AN-22 transports, used to fly earthquake relief supplies to Peru, were leaving Moscow with perhaps 65 passengers and arriving in Lima with only a dozen or so. The missing passengers, it is now assumed, were engineers who got off in Havana and went straight to Cienfuegos. The latest U-2 photos of the port show construction in progress of what are almost certainly bunkers for storing submarine-borne nuclear weapons.

To Fidel Castro's disgust, however, the Russians have forsworn attempts to stir up revolution in the hemisphere in favor of the so-called via pacifica--or peaceful way. That policy has been paying off handsomely, notably in Chile, whose Moscow-bankrolled Communist Party backed Marxist Dr. Salvador Allende, winner of a plurality in the recent presidential election. If he is voted in by the Chilean Congress next month as expected, he would become the first Communist-supported candidate for President to win a free election.

Red Yanks. Like the U.S., Moscow is finding global politics brings many problems. The Japanese, annoyed by the blustering manners of Soviet trade officials, often refer to them as the "Red Yanks." Developing countries like Somalia and Tanzania have shown skill at playing Moscow against Washington or Peking to maximum advantage. Moreover, most countries still regard the Russians with deep suspicion. Much as Libya's military government has welcomed Soviet arms aid, it has refused to allow Soviet warships to call at Tobruk for repairs and resupply. Egypt still bans the Communist Party, for all its reliance on Moscow for military muscle.

Other countries have reacted with a case of the jitters. Last month most of the Argentine navy put to sea after a radarman flashed a report of suspected Soviet submarine activity. When Argentine ships arrived on the scene, the menacing shapes turned out to be a couple of copulating whales.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.