61 REPORT OF THE GEOPOLITICS AND SEA POWER PANEL Panel II on Geopolitics and Sea Power to Preserve Foreign Access met in May and June 1980. It looked at U.S. ability to project sufficient diplomatic, economic and military power to provide a climate in which U.S. industry can continue to bid freely for imported oil and non-fuel minerals so vital to American jobs and living standards. The panel was composed of Ambassador Edmund A. Gullion, chairman, Professor Lawrence J. Korb, Mr. Frank R. Barnett, Mr. Frank Shakespeare and Dr. Roger W. Fontaine. Also participating ex officio were Dr. Daniel I. Fine, Mr. R. Daniel McMichael and Dr. James Arnold Miller, rapporteur. commerce Findings and Conclusions The U.S. is dangerously deficient in military capabilities to project force to protect access to petroleum and non-fuel mineral sources of supply outside the geopolitical area of NATO responsibility. The relative decline of American (and British) sea power - traditional safeguards of world must be contrasted with the surge of the U.S.S.R.'s four-ocean navy, which gives Moscow a global reach for the first time in history. In this context, the panel found that there is a growing perception that the U.S. no longer possesses the capability to guarantee an international "climate" for secure oil and minerals access and availability of supply. A loss of stability of contract, which formerly characterized the traditional world raw material delivery system, has been exploited by the Soviet Union and its surrogates/allies which seek to disrupt Western access to raw materials in the Third World. This threat, the panel concluded, requires U.S. national security policies which are linked more closely to foreign natural resource supply problems. The panel members agreed with the major thesis of Professor Korb's paper: the U.S. must take immediate action to recover from a decade of neglect of our military capabilities. Although the panel did not attempt a detailed review of Korb's defense spending recommendations, there was general agreement on their scope and direction. The panel agreed that the U.S. "cornerstone" nuclear/strategic forces must be maintained and strengthened because of their crucial importance to East/West relations, and also because if the U.S. is even perceived to be inferior to the Soviet Union, its credibility and influence particularly in - 62 The Resource War in 3-D the Third World will be seriously impaired and its range of action (psychological, economic, diplomatic and military) sharply reduced. This leads to a collateral imperative of providing a consenting "power projection shield" for Third World theaters vital to the mutual economic interests of the U.S., Europe and Japan. The panel concluded that strategic inferiority during much of the 1980s, until new and potentially "offsetting" weapons such as the Trident submarine and the MX missile become operational, increases U.S. vulnerability to Soviet attack. (Some argued the case for a derivative B-1 bomber, plus sea-launched cruise missiles and float-launched ballistic missiles, as "quick fix" remedies for the near term period of Soviet military opportunity.) Panel members also expressed concern that the uncertainty of U.S. conventional military capability was especially serious in the context of "resource wars." The panel agreed that this problem requires increased funding for military personnel compensation, equipment and weapons, training and readiness, and for war reserve stocks. The panel urged that NATO extend conventional military forces to protect the sea-lanes and resource supply concentrations on a global basis. Meanwhile, the U.S. should revive its intelligence and paramilitary capabilities for conventional and low intensity war threats. The panel observed that the crucial issues of the "geopolitics of natural resources" were energy in the Middle East/Persian Gulf and strategic minerals in southern Africa (see Figure 1). The panelists unanimously agreed that Soviet strategy in Africa is to establish bases and overflight options which provide a capability to interdict oil and mineral sea routes from the Persian Gulf through the Suez Canal and also through the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and into the South Atlantic. Over one billion tons of oil per year will be routed around the Cape (South Africa) during this decade. Some 25,000 resource-trade vessels carrying 90% of Western Europe's oil imports and 70% of its mineral requirements pass by the Cape each year. Yet, this major ocean "choke point" is beyond U.S. and NATO security. South African naval facilities. remain off-limits to the U.S. fleet, despite the reality that the Cape is one of the three interconnected ocean "choke points" (Madagascar Straits and Hormuz Straits are the others) which are critical to effective Atlantic-to-Persian Gulf U.S. naval deployment. Southern African mineral exports and reserves are of major importance to Western industrialized economies in peacetime and possibly indispensable in war. South Africa supplies over one-half of EEC (European Economic Community) imports of chromite and ferrochrome. A special cabinet-level West German study, made public early in 1980, on "Mineral Supplies and the Possibilities for State Crisis Intervention" disclosed that in West Germany a 30% reduction of chrome imports could translate into a 25% decline in gross production and jeopardize several million jobs. The panel Report of the Geopolitical and Sea Power Panel 63 concluded that EEC resource dependency on Southern Africa and Africa in general is an enduring reality which requires Alliance strategies to prevent Soviet displacement and preemption. It is also imperative that the Alliance promote free market raw material production and trading through security and foreign policy objectives. The panelists observed that continuing South African efforts to establish reforms in social policy are imperative and should merit international recognition and support. The Soviet Union, however, pursues the objective of destabilization of South Africa by advancing its influence on the continent southward and by arms transfers into the area. The prospect of Soviet-backed armed conflict in South Africa directly threatens the mining and mineral sector. The panel agreed that South Africa must be viewed from a geopolitical perspective with raw materials a central consideration. While beneficial social and political change in South Africa should be encouraged, the program of change should be so conducted as not to jeopardize mineral production and exports and to cause their loss to the West. International sanctions against South Africa could: (1) enlist the Soviet Union as an enforcer; (2) precipitate a decline of a cost-effective, technologically-advanced mining industry; (3) provoke a possible counter-embargo strategy in which strategic minerals would be subject to supply restrictions according to the relatively low export revenues some produce; and (4).create scarcity and high prices, adding to inflationary pressures upon "energy shock" economies. The panel reviewed a worst-case "super-cartel" scenario in which the Soviet Union and a disaffected, denatured and dominated South Africa would control world reserves and production of chromium and platinum and significant shares of manganese, gold and diamonds. Panel members concluded that South Africa's current natural resource management is both anti-cartel and opposed to collaboration with the Soviet Union. Thus, the possibility of a "super-cartel" could only be envisioned as the result of the displacement of such management by politicized anti-western state control. Although U.S.-South Africa relations have been strained severely in the last several years, South Africa continues to encourage allocations of its mineral resources by market forces. The panel concluded that Western foreign policies toward South Africa should be compatible with the continuation of this market policy. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan revives geopolitical concerns that the Soviet Union is in the process of extending a "frontier zone" to the Persian Gulf. This development, the panel agreed, is favored by the erosion. of Western power in the area and particularly by ill-considered initiatives to de-militarize the Indian Ocean. Soviet interest in Persian Gulf oil is apparent; its military presence in Afghanistan suggests widening hegemonic objectives. 64 The Resource War in 3-D As a major oil producer, the Soviet Union shares an interest with certain Middle East producers in reducing Western influence in the region and on oil availability and price. But as the Soviet Bloc's own energy demands increase and its internal supply margin dwindles, its interests in Middle East oil may become at least as much economic as it is political. The panel agreed that instability of the Persian Gulf region and the orientation of Soviet policy towards it create the most likely threat of "resource war." Panel members noted that U.S. foreign policy assessments made public in 1977 mistakenly assumed that the Soviet military mission in Ethiopia was limited to a "local African" conflict. Such estimates must have emboldened the Soviet Union to establish a military capability to project power over the Red Sea, Suez and the Persian Gulf. These operations constituted the "laboratory" for Afghanistan nearly two years later. Also, Ethiopia has the potential to provide the U.S.S.R. with periphery access to Arabian oil through destabilization strategies. Whatever the resolution of the Iranian hostage crisis, the panel concluded that oil and gas will remain a principal cause of regional unrest and temptation to Soviet intervention, whether direct (Afghanistan) or indirect (South Yemen and Ethiopia). Thus, the concept of resource confrontation in the Persian Gulf area is considered a continuing condition in the relations between the West and the Soviet Union. Soviet long-term objectives are both denial to the West and consolidation, e.g., Warsaw Pact-Middle East energy mutuality. Southeast Asia, including Australia, is now a geopolitical zone of major Japanese trading interests and raw materials dependency. Australian-Japanese resource ventures provide the Japanese with the margin of industrial survival. Soviet naval power and geostrategic interests in Vietnam could impose foreign policy and resource constraints on Japan. Indeed, the Soviet naval units now in Cam Rahn Bay already could pose a threat to Japan's sea lines of communication. Without the ocean-borne flow of minerals and oil, Japan would face industrial and social collapse. Its vulnerability has been demonstrated in both the 1973 and 1979 oil crises in the Middle East. Yet, Japan has not the means nor the assigned responsibility for defending the sea-lanes most vital to it. It is noteworthy, the panel observed, that Japan depends on the U.S. as its raw material supplier of "the last resort." In Latin America and the Caribbean, there also exist possibilities for confrontation over significant resources. The panel noted that Cuban influence in Jamaica is strong, and if the political management of that turbulent island falls under influences hostile to the U.S. and its allies, the availability of its bauxite and alumina becomes questionable. Panelists were concerned that the Soviet Bloc is certainly pursuing beckoning opportunity there as well as elsewhere in the Caribbean basin and in Central and South |