The Third World War: The Untold Story

Chapter 16: The Elephant Trap; Central America

In the last three years before the world war, Central America was an elephant trap and a ticking time bomb. The United States very nearly fell into the one and detonated the other.

At the lowest stage of America’s fortunes in early 1984 a Vietnam-style war seemed in process of exploding right across the threshold of America’s southern backdoor. It looked like being a war that the United States would lose and that communist Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua would win, although Cuba’s and Nicaragua’s own economic experiments were proving an unmitigated disaster for all their peoples. It was a war that started in El Salvador, but then spread also to the four other non-communist countries of Central America — militarist Guatemala and Honduras, troubled Panama, even democratic Costa Rica.

The crisis was made suddenly worse because it seemed that America’s ally, Christian Democrat Venezuela, was going to become embroiled in war with Cuba-leaning Guyana; and there were absurd dangers that all of the important countries of the Caribbean (Trinidad-Tobago, anti-colonialist Grenada, Jamaica) might find themselves to some degree on Guyana’s side.

The crisis was averted in the most unexpected manner; partly because the United States engaged in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Cuba, but also because Venezuela (at first to America’s horror) went Social-Democratic in December of 1983. Thereafter a Venezuelan-Mexican alliance became an important stabilizing force in the region, and in the nick of time brought peace and compromise to it. If it had not, if at this juncture the Caribbean had become a Soviet lake and Central America a Soviet base area, the Western Alliance would almost certainly have gone down in the Third World War.

For all elephants that need to tread delicately in this post-war world, possibly as dangerous and unstable now in 1987 as at any time in living memory, the story carries disturbing lessons. It also carries a message of hope.

As the decade of the 1980s opened, the forces of change in Central America were not all revolutionary or Cuban-supported. There were also moderates and reformists trying both to stop the revolutionary tide and to implement reform in countries that had for generations been oppressed by too few rich families and too many soldiers, and where there were some of the lowest per capita incomes in the world.

To the left of centre among these moderate reformists was the Socialist International, closely related to the social democratic parties in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Mexico, and influential with groups in El Salvador. It had at one time also been influential with the rulers of Nicaragua, but Sandinista Nicaragua was slipping under communist control. To the right of centre was the Organizacion Democrata Cristiana de America (ODCA), presided over by a Venezuelan (Aristides Calvani) and influential with President Duarte of El Salvador and with several political parties in the Caribbean.

The Cubans and Soviets decided to try to cause trouble for ODCA (ie, El Salvador and Venezuela) first.

Already in 198 °Cuba’s leaders had held a secret meeting with Central American Marxist leaders up country in Nicaragua, to discuss their intended polarization of the region. They could by then celebrate a considerable triumph.

This triumph had been the military victory of the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua, and the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty.

The United States was completely isolated in its last lukewarm attempt to preserve ‘Somocism without Somoza’. The importance of this event was threefold and to the United States Administration deeply unsettling. It showed that a guerrilla movement in Central America could fight successfully against a US trained, politically demoralized army like Somoza’s National Guard. It brought to power a mainland government in a Central American country that had a strong pro-Cuban faction in its midst. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua, until they turned almost entirely communist, clearly enjoyed wide popular support.

At the 1980 meeting in Nicaragua of rising Marxists the voice was that of Fidel Castro, but the hand belonged to the Soviet Union’s President Brezhnev, who was already propping up Cuba’s ineffective economy to the tune of forty million dollars a week. The Soviets had become attracted during 1980 by the possibility of drawing the United States into a deep trap just outside its southern backdoor, where it could flounder ineffectually while critical events beyond its control unrolled elsewhere.

Soviet strategists believed that both Central America and the Caribbean were now ripe for revolution. They saw that Cuba could be used as the springboard of a powerful politico-strategic movement of support for subversive forces throughout the area. This diversion would tie down US forces and compromise American prestige, allowing the Soviet Union to strike more decisive blows and develop its own initiatives in other areas of the world. It would be difficult for the US to cast the issue of Central American conflict in purely East-West terms and so involve its allies. The Soviets were confident that American public opinion would hysterically oppose a major commitment of troops for a counter-insurgency war in an area to which American TV commentators could commute almost daily. The outlook as seen from the Kremlin was good.

Despite the appalling mess into which his economy had sunk, Fidel Castro started the 1980s in buoyant mood. The emigration of more than 125,00 °Cubans out of his island, after the port of Mariel was opened in the spring of 1980 to all who wanted to leave, had strangely given him a political respite. It had enabled him to get rid of some thousands of hard-core criminals and a good many mental patients. Almost all of the Marielitos had settled in Florida, bumping up the murder rate in Miami and the trade in drugs through the state to become the worst in America. Politically, by exporting at the same time the best of his opposition, Castro was again able to unite around him the different factions of the Cuban political elite: the military, the radical-revolutionaries and the remaining and wetter of the moderates, the latter led by the Minister of Economics Carlos Rafael Rodriguez.

Castro now saw an opportunity to stage a comeback to the Latin American mainland, break away from the regional isolation in which Cuba had found itself for many years, and open an outlet for the energies of the powerful Cuban armed forces after their African adventures. He told his fellow Marxists in Nicaragua that in the United States he would now be mobilizing his racial assets. There were going to be black and Hispanic riots if the new conservative Administration in Washington cut its welfare spending, as it almost certainly would. In Central America the main target was civil war in El Salvador, at least in part as a reaction against the return to power of the Christian Democrats in Venezuela.

Until December of 1979 Venezuela was ruled by the Social Democrats, who were careful to avoid confrontation with Cuba. After the election in that month it was ruled by the Christian Democrats who had campaigned for a policy of open confrontation against Cuba and for closer ties with the US. It appears from information available in Havana, where leaks were as common as in Washington at about the same time, that in 1981 Castro sent a memorandum to Brezhnev in Moscow, of which the gist is as follows: ‘The Government in Venezuela is the key US ally in this region. Without Venezuela the US could be isolated in Central America and we could probably bring forward revolutions in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras-while the radicalization of the Sandinista Government would go much faster. The Venezuelan Government has adopted a very anti-Cuban line. It recognizes the spread of communist influence in Central America and the Caribbean as a serious security risk. It is capable of mobilizing the help of other Latin American countries, notably Brazil, in order to face that threat. Luckily we have two advantages. First, there is strong domestic opposition in Venezuela to this Government’s policies. Secondly, this Government has made a fool of itself by being the decisive influence in bringing a Christian Democrat stooge to the presidency of El Salvador. The Americans think that this man will (a) be an adequate figure in holding his military junta in check (actually he is too weak); (b) look like a charismatic moderate, although in fact he is unconvincing on American television, especially when he tries to speak English; (c) be accepted by Mexico (which he won’t). It is against El Salvador that the revolutionary forces of communism now need to strike.’

This assessment was not entirely different from that being made on the other side of the hill. A document laid before the new President of the US at this time (and finding its way, as was not unusual then, almost at once into the hands of newsmen) ran as follows: ‘Faced with a dilemma between revolution and repression in Central America, the United States must try to find a middle course. While helping the military governments in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras the US must also: (a) pressure those governments into implementing reforms aimed at undermining support for the revolutionaries; (b) urge them to reduce the levels of ‘official terrorism’; (c) protect the present El Salvador Government from an extreme right-wing coup; (d) oppose resolutely, and if necessary by military means, the direct despatch of Cuban troops to the guerrilla movement in El Salvador; (e) try to wean the area’s Social Democrats away from supporting the communists. The first approach must be to Social Democratic Mexico.’

The approach to Mexico did not work. A special US adviser in Mexico City has since made public that he filed back the following report: ‘We are caught on the horns of a dreadful dilemma. The Mexican analysis of the Central American and Caribbean situation differs fundamentally from that of the US. The Mexicans think subversion in this region is the result of socio-economic backwardness and political oppression. They believe that the military governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras cannot survive much longer. They say that stability in the area will be best served if these dictatorial regimes are quickly replaced with centre-left popular governments, willing to implement agrarian reform, to institute democratic freedoms, and to dismantle secret armies under right-wing control.

‘The Mexicans do not differ from us about what the ideal solution to the crisis would be, but they disagree on the methods to accomplish it. Mexico will not support the Government in El Salvador. The Mexican ruling party has close connections with the Socialist International. It believes that social change is inevitable and that opposition to the military regimes offers the best hope for long-term stability.’

It is possible that the US Ambassador exaggerated Mexico’s real beliefs. When talking to a distinguished but unofficial American, the Mexican President asked, ‘Why on earth did the US allow those communist Sandinistas to take over Nicaragua?’

‘But,’ said the surprised professor, ‘Your Excellency made speeches in favour of the Sandinistas.’

‘Oh,’ said the President, ‘those were politics.’

All this helped set the springs of the elephant trap.

The first stage of the crisis was the intensification of the revolutionary war in El Salvador. What had begun as a series of skirmishes by a small, badly-trained and poorly-equipped army against a few guerrilla bands developed into a serious war, covering large sections of the countryside. The Salvador an Army received help from the US, the guerrillas from Cuba.

The President of El Salvador was a good man as troubled men go, and as troubled men go he went. In the elections in early 1982 only those bitterly opposed to the guerrillas dared to stand or vote, and they voted by a small majority for a coalition government to the right of the Christian Democrats. If there had been an election among Protestants in Northern Ireland at that time, a majority would also have voted that anything attempting to be centrist was ‘too soft’. Some moderates tried to join and restrain the new coalition for a while, but — under attack from their own colleagues as too gentle, and from American newspapermen as ‘accessories of the fascist murder gangs’ — they later withdrew. The resigning centre-right politicians bitterly blamed the ‘so-called moderate opposition’ for the failure of the ‘democratic experiment’, and accused them and leftist American newspapermen of wickedly contributing to the continuance of civil war.

For a number of right-wing officers, the moderates’ departure was welcome news. Hard-line soldiers and demagogues took over power and vowed to prosecute the war against communist subversion until the guerrillas were completely exterminated. There were brutal murders of people even vaguely attracted to the opposition movement. Many moderate-minded people then foolishly joined the communists, and the civil war gained in intensity and destructiveness.

That had desperate consequences for the peasant masses of this tiny but heavily populated country. Unfortunately for the US, there could be no pretence now that democracy was being defended in El Salvador. An outright and firm decision in favour of or against the all-military government was necessary.

The US Administration chose to favour it. With the help of American advisers and the provision of significant quantities of weapons and equipment it started a major counter-insurgency effort of the sort that could not work. El Salvador’s military, reinforced in their ‘win or die’ stand by this show of support, raised the level of violence in a war that by now had become something very like a popular insurgency. From both the Government and the guerrillas ever more widespread brutality was used against the civilian populace.

In America, the liberal opposition exploded. The Cubans had laid their plans in 1981 for Hispanic and black demonstrations against the welfare cuts they correctly expected from the US Administration, but they had shown their usual inefficiency in not getting the demonstrations (which had already been paid for) mounted on the target date. This inefficiency now proved for the Cubans a great advantage. Just as had happened in 1968, subsidized demonstrations spread with increasing violence across America. Decent young people and others looking for political mileage also, quite understandably, joined in protests against the ‘new Vietnam’.

By late 1983 El Salvador’s war was spreading across Central America. It looked at one stage likely to involve all of Central America’s five other republics.

Even before the right-wing coup in El Salvador the Sandinista Government in Nicaragua was going further down the sad Cuban road. Under pressure from a deteriorating economic situation, Nicaragua started putting local and even multi-national businessmen in prison, because they were ‘slandering’ instead of aiding the national economy. The US responded by cutting off economic aid, and Venezuela followed suit. This led the pro-Cubans in the Sandinista leadership to ask for Cuban and Soviet economic and other assistance. Cuba loudly and angrily denounced the ‘US-inspired interventionist measures against Nicaragua’, and claimed that a ‘mercenary army’ paid for with US and Venezuelan money was being trained in Costa Rica ‘to make war on the Nicaraguan revolution’.

More Cuban military advisers and weapons were rushed into Nicaragua. Mexico was not helpful at this moment. It said that America’s action in cutting off economic aid was pushing Nicaragua into the hands of the Soviet Union.

Some rather more sinister folk began to fear (or hope) the same thing. In Guatemala, a well-organized and equipped guerrilla army made the military apprehensive that a full-scale revolutionary war might develop very soon. The trouble spread to Costa Rica, a country possessing no armed forces but only police, long admired for its domestic tranquillity and its pacifist international stand. Reductions in the standards of living in Costa Rica’s hitherto well-off and civilized society, and the fall in the prices of coffee and other exports, set the stage for the appearance of something unheard of in that country — tiny, but highly efficient, terrorist groups. The same happened in Panama, where the death in 1981 of the spectacular General Torrijos had left a power vacuum that contributed to the resurgence of left-wing revolutionary activities. Rioting near the Panama Canal caused grave disquiet among senior officers of the US Navy.

Foolishly, Guatemala now intervened in El Salvador, and Honduras in Nicaragua. In the late summer of 1983 the Guatemalan military government, faced with a major guerrilla insurgency of its own, sent forces through the frontier to help Salvadoran Army units engaged in fierce battles with the guerrillas in the northern part of the country.

Honduras allowed attacks to be launched on Nicaraguan border areas by former Somocista National Guardsmen. Consequent clashes between border guards developed into sharp, bloody encounters throughout the months of September and October 1983. No war was declared. Hondurans accused the Sandinistas of promoting revolution in their country. The Nicaraguan Government denounced a Honduran ‘invasion’ and mobilized popular militias ‘for the defence of the fatherland’. The Organization of American States (OAS) called a meeting in October which passed a weak resolution ‘condemning all aggressions’. The war in Central America was suddenly looking like a trans-national one of left against right. National boundaries might be about to lose their significance.

At this moment it began to look as if there would be a Venezuela-Guyana war as well.

The Venezuelan general elections were due at the beginning of December 1983. During the Christian Democrat period in El Salvador, Venezuela had acted as a hard-line ally of the US. Its own people did not like this. Public opinion polls even at this stage showed that only 10 per cent of Venezuelans thought that their country should get involved in El Salvador and help the junta. Nearly 60 per cent thought that Venezuela should continue to give aid for the reconstruction of Nicaragua.

The struggle which began with Cuba-leaning Guyana at this time was welcomed by some extreme right-wing nationalist groups in Venezuela, plus some of the Venezuelan military, but it was really initiated by Cuba-leaning politicians in Guyana itself. A quarrel between these countries is always easy to ignite, because Venezuelans think that two-thirds of the land area of Guyana should actually belong to Venezuela. Some Guyanan politicians wanted to integrate their country more closely with Cuba because this would advance their own careers. They could feel fairly certain that the movement of armed bands across the disputed areas, spilling occasionally over the frontier, would trigger a reaction from Venezuelan generals. The trigger was pulled, and the reaction came. The spectre had now been raised of a war on the South American mainland.

Guyana asked for Cuban military help, and new teams of Cuban ‘advisers’ quickly turned up. All the other Caribbean countries tried to persuade Venezuela and Guyana to come to terms peacefully, and their general mood was against Venezuela. A left-wing inspired campaign against ‘Venezuelan imperialism’ spread throughout Trinidad, Tobago, Curacao, anti-colonialist Grenada, Dominica and even Jamaica. It was embarrassing to the US that its key ally in containing subversion in Central America and the Caribbean should start to lose sympathy in both regions as a result of a ninety-year-old territorial dispute with a black-dominated, English-speaking Caribbean country. Cuba did not miss the opportunity to show its anti-colonialism. It prepared to station military units on the mainland ‘at the request of a friendly government, threatened by foreign aggression’.

In November of 1983 America’s fortunes in Central America therefore seemed at their lowest ebb. The US Administration, committed to a policy of containment of subversion, but not opposed in principle to moderate change, had almost given up hopes that any middle-of-the-road alternative was feasible in countries torn apart by extremists from left and right. Mexico persisted in its anti-US stand, willing to take risks with the centre-left and more extreme left-wing movements. The Venezuelan Government had lost most of its capacity for action as the election approached, and it was unpopular internationally because of its border disputes with Colombia as well as Guyana. The Soviet Union was delighted to see the United States caught in the elephant trap and wallowing ineffectively, while the Soviet Union’s Cuban ally was recovering political prestige and gaining opportunities to intervene militarily at the request of ‘friendly governments’, as it had done in Africa.

As only one example, Cuban technicians now accelerated work on the new airport in Grenada, begun in 1980, which was clearly going to be able to service sophisticated combat aircraft. The United States had to decide whether it was going to take military action to-stop ‘new Cubas’ from arising right across Central America and the Caribbean.

The US Administration adopted, as the only possible way out of the trap, Teddy Roosevelt’s old policy in the area: ‘speak softly, but carry a big stick’. The big stick hit the headlines. The United States gave warning to Cuba that the despatch of any more Cuban troops to countries outside its borders would be regarded as a casus belli. Units of the United States’ Atlantic Fleet took up stations around the island. If any attacks were launched on these ships, Washington announced, selected targets in Cuba would be attacked from the air in return. The soft speaking at this time was the US President’s statement that in view of the ‘crisis towards which the Soviet Union is now clearly moving, there can be no sense in any Caribbean or Central American country so far from its borders remaining under its vassalage. We will hold out a genuine hand of friendship, and aid, to governments which wish to break away from that vassalage. We hold no animosity against leaders now in power.’

The policy worked. The ships were not attacked, and no more Cuban troops were despatched to the mainland or through the Caribbean. The CIA triumphantly attributed this to the big stick. As was reported in the New York Times, the CIA view was that ‘The moderates within the Cuban elite are worried at the appalling economic conditions in Cuba and at the mess developing in the Soviet Union. They might have moved to oust the Cuban leadership if it had sent missiles against the American ships.’ Cuba’s excuse for running away looked more subtle. ‘We can afford to be patient,’ a communique from its premier said. ‘The revolutions against the repressive regimes of Central America are already irreversible. If America tries to prop them up, it will fail. If America were to move to encourage less fascist regimes in the junta-run countries, then it might be worthwhile exploring new relationships with it. But let us stir no more pots until the Christian Democrats have lost the Venezuelan elections in early December.’

They duly did so. The Social Democrats (Accion Democratica) won the Venezuelan election with a substantial majority. The US Administration, horrified at first, later found good reason to be pleased.

The new Venezuelan President-elect, who was to assume office next April according to Venezuelan constitutional procedures, held several early meetings with US and Mexican leaders. He made it clear that Venezuela would no longer follow the US line of interpreting conflicts in Central America in purely East-West terms. He wanted to try to bring moderate elements into the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala. Venezuela, explained the President-elect to US representatives, accepted the US policy of a ‘big stick and soft words’ towards Cuba. As regards the stick Venezuela would never condone military intervention from foreign powers in Central America or the Caribbean. As regards the soft words, Venezuela like Mexico regarded Cuba as a Latin American country which, it was thought, could be gradually weaned away from the Soviet embrace by a policy of cautious rapprochement. This had been Mexico’s policy for twenty years; it was Venezuela’s policy from 1973 until 1978, and now from 1984 onwards it would again be the official attitude of the Venezuelan Government.

The new alliance between Venezuela and Mexico proved patient, systematic and rather efficient. The isolation of the military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, supported now only by a tiny minority, made it surprisingly easy for Venezuela and Mexico to create a democratic alliance against them.

Mexico and Venezuela persuaded leading Salvadoran Social Democrats to separate themselves from the most radical elements in the Marxist revolutionary ‘Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front’ and to accept a ‘common front’ for a provisional government with other democratic organizations such as El Salvador’s Christian Democrats. The US was asked to propose the establishment of an international conference with the participation of all democratic Salvadoran political organizations, supervised by Mexico and Venezuela. The main role of the US would be to persuade the extreme right-wing members in El Salvador’s military government to accept a transition towards democracy. To these Salvadoran members of the junta, the only offers would be that there would be no prosecution for ‘crimes of war’ and that there would be an honourable end to their careers, still as quite rich men.

The initial response to these proposals by the right-wing military and the Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador was the same: total rejection. The Marxists condemned ‘those who are trying to steal the triumph of the Salvadoran people’.

This inclined the US Administration to accept the Mexican-Venezuelan plan. Washington made three conditions: (a) no Cuban participation at any stage of the proceedings; (b) the exclusion of Marxists and pro-Cubans from key positions in the new Salvadoran Government; (c) general elections to be held six months after the installation of the Provisional Government.

In the US there were some who regarded the change of policy as a sell-out of loyal allies, as with Thieu in Vietnam. For others, it was a wise decision, leading to an enlightened solution such as that in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe. Optimism spread because the Nicaraguan Government, under the pressure of a great economic crisis and disheartened by the lack of new Cuban support, was swinging back to the centre. The new Venezuelan President made an early state visit to Nicaragua in the month of May, only three weeks after his inauguration. He was welcomed by an enthusiastic populace, who had not forgotten the Venezuelan contribution to the overthrow of Somoza in 1979 and the hopes then surging for a better and more democratic future. The message was not lost on the left-wing Sandinista leaders who had been losing support among the masses. They wanted to avoid regional isolation.

Cuba’s premier made a last-ditch effort to avert the tide of Mexican-Venezuelan-sponsored political reforms. He travelled to Nicaragua at the same time as delegates started gathering in Mexico City to draw up a plan for democracy in El Salvador. But his effort to create a ‘rejection front’ proved unsuccessful, even in Nicaragua. The US discreetly let it be known to the more moderate of the Sandinistas that it would consider re-establishing diplomatic relations and the flow of aid if the Sandinistas freed political prisoners, sanctioned civil liberties and let opposition newspapers be printed again.

By the beginning of 1985, therefore, Cuba had to reconsider its position, and started to do so fairly fast.

When the Third World War started in the summer of 1985, El Salvador had just become insecurely democratic. Guatemala and Honduras were still (but now less securely) military dictatorships. The President of Mexico had, sadly, been assassinated in January but everybody assumed that Mexico and Venezuela would soon arrange a ‘political solution’ in these two countries too. In Nicaragua the moderates now had a more powerful voice in the civilian leadership (which was drawing aid from the US and Venezuela, and had also applied to the International Monetary Fund), but the military and security forces in Nicaragua were still very left wing, because they had been systematically penetrated by Cuba. The IMF’s investigators considered Nicaragua still too much run by soldiers who thought they were socialists, which in their view was economically not a good combination.

Cuba was rethinking its posture rather desperately when the Soviet tanks rolled into Western Europe. The orders from Moscow were explicit: ‘Proceed against the United States into full-scale war.’ The Cubans sensibly half-ratted, and the Americans foolishly overreacted to what little the Cubans did.

After a desperate high-level meeting in Havana through most of 4 August 1985, the Cubans sent a long coded telex back to Moscow. The first thirty pages consisted of obsequious expressions of support for the fundamental revolutionary justice of the Soviet cause. The decoder in Moscow working on the complicated Atropos decoding system could not conceal his impatience. Eventually he got to the sentences the Kremlin was waiting for, and they did not say what the Kremlin wanted. The vital parts of the Cuban message to Moscow on 5 August ran: ‘The risks before socialist Cuba are enormous, considering the possibility of US nuclear retaliation. Our options are in fact very few. Cuba does not have the military capacity to mount an invasion of a major Latin American country. To attack the US by air is too risky. Sea actions are out of the question; the Cuban navy has a capacity only for a limited degree of coastal vigilance and self-defence. American naval predominance in this region is total. Attacks against specific objectives in the Caribbean (for instance, Puerto Rico) have been most seriously considered. It is the unanimous view here that they would be ineffective, indeed actually harmful for the Soviet cause at this stage of the conflict.

‘We have nevertheless determined on the most courageous action in support of our socialist cause. This action will take three forms. First, we will accelerate our aircraft lifts of ammunition, supplies and some soldiers to selected spots on the mainland of Central America already under socialist or guerrilla control. Secondly, we will alert air squadrons and missiles on our airfields, and be ready to attack American shipping and US convoys bound for Europe. We are sure that you recognize, however, that this assault must be launched at the appropriate moment, when we can strike most violently and effectively. If we strike prematurely, before the really vital targets are at sea, we may be destroyed by American nuclear missiles; and our great usefulness to the common cause — as the independent socialist country nearest to the heartland of capitalism — could be wiped out in five minutes. Thirdly, as our most immediate contribution, all Cuba has been mobilized for war. Our armed forces are concentrating against the Americans’ Guantanamo naval base. An assault will be launched upon this at the moment when our attack on American shipping begins.’

This Atropos coded message was read, after decoding, by two very different generals, one in Moscow and one in Miami.

Army General I. P. Seriy of the Second Main Directorate (military intelligence) of the Army General Staff (the GRU) accurately minuted for the Soviet High Command: ‘Cuba is clearly deserting us as disgracefully as Mussolini deserted Hitler in 1939. The Cubans will join the war only when they think we have won it. After Soviet victory we should treat their renegade leader far less kindly than the sentimental Hitler would have treated Mussolini if he had won in 1945.’

The United States had broken the Atropos code even before Japan’s all-conquering Fujitsu computer company signed a joint-venture agreement with America’s biggest computer company in 1984. Before General Seriy had received his decoded message, Lieutenant General Henry J. Irving, Chief of Staff of the Rapid Deployment Force (known to his friends as ‘Humdinger Hank’), had got his. Minuted General Irving: ‘It is clear from decoded messages that Cuban communist forces, while pretending to lie low, will attack US convoys with missiles and aircraft as soon as they put to sea, and that attacks (possibly with biological weapons, probably with nuclear and chemical) will start against Guantanamo at that delayed moment. It is essential that America’s non-nuclear war plan be launched against Cuba from this moment, well before the Cubans strike.’

The US plan was activated. From military airports in Florida, and from the decks of Atlantic Fleet carriers, attacks were made against military and industrial targets in Cuba, with devastating effect. The weight of the attack wholly overwhelmed the Cuban air defences and caused very many casualties. A total naval blockade was imposed, cutting Cuba off from the rest of the world. US forces (particularly Cuban émigrés and Filipino mercenaries) massed to invade the island.

The United States had not anticipated the reaction of the rest of Latin America. The Secretary-General of the OAS sent an urgent message to the US President on 10 August: ‘Although all my members are in principle on America’s side in its global confrontation with the Soviet Union, I must tell you that there is general opposition and revulsion among them against the possibility of the US killing more civilians in Cuba. The Cubans have not yet launched any warlike actions against you, but you are bombing them. I beseech you to send me an instant assurance that in no circumstances will American nuclear weapons be used against Cuba, and that civilian casualties there will be kept to a minimum.’

‘Humdinger Hank’ regarded this message as appalling impudence. Fortunately, the speed of events in Europe cooled his actions before invasion of Cuba could actually take place. On the day when it became evident that the Soviet Union was breaking up, Cuba’s Economics Minister minuted to the premier: ‘Our great Soviet ally has lost this war, so let us be as sensible as General Franco was when Hitler was defeated in 1945. We have an advantage that Franco did not have in a totally de-Nazified Europe in 1945. Many of our fellow Latin American countries are allies of the US, but they are not blind servants of US national interests. They will see the Soviet defeat as a mixed blessing. They will fear that the US, free from the limitations previously imposed by Soviet power, may try to gain rigid control over its Latin American area of influence. Previous fears of “subversion from the Soviet Union and Cuba” in Latin America may now be replaced by fear of US neo-colonialism.

‘In these next few critical days we should therefore tell our volunteer troops still fighting at the side of guerrillas on the Central American mainland to surrender to Latin American governments, asking perhaps for Mexican and Venezuelan protection. But we should not accept any US ultimatum for unconditional surrender by Cuba itself, and we should say that any US invasion of Cuba will be met by our armed forces fighting to the last man.’

This was agreed. Some of the remaining Cuban troops on the mainland were anyway isolated and running out of supplies. Most of them surrendered, coming in together with guerrilla troops through November 1985. Only small pockets of about platoon size still kept fighting, but no peace treaty had yet been signed between Cuba and the US.

The Secretary-General of the O AS sent another urgent telex to the US President in late November: ‘Let me be very frank. The Government and people of Cuba still expect an invasion from the victorious US. Nearly all my members think such an invasion would be a great mistake. Bluntly, I must give you a warning that will distress you. If you continue with an aggressive stance towards Cuba, then the Mexican (and possibly the Venezuelan) Presidents will fly to Havana to sign with Cuba a treaty of assistance for the provision of food and oil. In helping Cuba, countries such as Mexico and Venezuela will be protecting their own freedom of action.

‘It is believed among my members that the US is now confronted by both a great danger and a great opportunity. The danger is that the US, free from the limitations previously imposed by Soviet power, may try to encroach upon the independent policies of other American countries. The opportunity is that of creating a united Latin American front, including a tamed Cuba, willing to play a more assertive role in world affairs.’

Hardliners in the US, as General Irving’s memoirs[22] show, were far from pleased by this message. The President and his close advisers wisely accepted the advice it contained.

A decisive influence was that of Brazil, now one of the principal promoters of Latin American unity. This country — together with Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela — soon began to play a significant role in providing the food and oil urgently required on the other side of the Atlantic, which gave Latin America leverage with a US Government facing a situation of unprecedented international change and turmoil. The US agreed to suspend the blockade against Cuba on the condition that all the few remaining Cuban troops in Central America surrendered, and that Cuba stopped all military and political activities in support of subversion in Latin America. This was quickly accepted. As this book is being written, Cuba is already moving towards far-reaching reforms in its internal policies.

The crucial new factor is Latin America’s unity and its will to preserve its freedom of action in the international arena. The US has survived a war against the Soviet empire, but this has not solved the structural problems of Latin America, still less has it done anything to reduce social and political unrest.

At the inter-state level, a new situation is being created, in which, Latin American governments are acting on the basis of common policies towards the US. Cuba is being incorporated into this new grouping, on the understanding that its foreign and internal policies will profoundly change. The domination of the communist party in Cuba is about to disappear in fact as well as in name. The end of the Third World War, however, did not bring an end to crisis in Latin America, and the situation there may yet turn into another period of what will be called anti-colonialist confrontation with the advanced, triumphant Western powers. We believe this will not happen, for there is evidence of a truly profound change in attitudes in the US towards Latin America.

We have dealt at some length with the struggles with which the US freed itself from the trap into which the Soviets wished it to fall because of the importance of what has been a profoundly educational and sobering process, whose consequences will be felt far outside the-Americas. In its perceptions, orientation, judgment and method the foreign policy of the United States is unlikely, after the experiences in Central America and the Caribbean in the first half of the 1980s, ever to be the same again. This looks like being particularly relevant to US relations with other countries in the Americas. It will probably become more and more apparent in US policies in other regions too, in ASEAN for instance, and in South-West Asia, and in the Third World generally. The world is likely, whatever else may happen, to become on that account alone in some degree a safer place.

Chapter 17: The Middle East

In the Middle East, not unfittingly for a region where violence and conflict had so long been the order of the day, it was first the threat of general war and then that war itself which at length brought about peace. Indeed, had it not been for strong, effective action by the United Nations in the summer of 1984, the Third World War might well have started a year earlier, and started moreover in the Middle East itself. As we look back from this year 1987, only two years after the brief but cataclysmic clash between the superpowers, we may recall that during the early 1980s events in Arabia, in South-West Asia and in Africa too, moved along lines which brought closer the very circumstances and confrontations that the Western nations had been seeking to diminish or avoid. Among such events might be included the fighting in Afghanistan, Iran’s agony, the Gulf war, Libya’s expansionism, Israeli strikes against Iraq and Lebanon together with colonization of the West Bank and annexation of Golan, South Africa’s action in Namibia and Angola, and a worrying disparity of view between the United States and Western Europe. At the same time, other events made for further stability and international understanding, such as UN and EEC initiatives on Palestine and Namibia, the relatively harmonious developments in Zimbabwe, US and Soviet attempts to discuss arms control, the general urge to relieve Third World poverty and the workings of the Gulf Council for Co-operation.

These developments, whether disruptive or otherwise, had in common not only the areas in which they took place. They also illustrated a cardinal point of both Soviet and US policy, that whereas their struggle for influence and gain in the Middle East and Africa could be and was waged by proxy, they did not wish themselves as the two principals to become directly and personally engaged in confrontation and conflict. This policy was easier to realize in southern Africa than it was in the Middle East, for although these two areas shared many features in common, there was one very important difference.

Both areas contained a nation at bay, people fiercely dedicated to their own survival, striking out against those neighbours who threatened their destruction, withstanding the pressure of United Nations Security Council resolutions which called upon them to surrender territory in order to move towards peaceful solutions. Both areas were and are of great strategic moment, both were fertile markets for arms dealers, both provoked Soviet troublemaking and Western ambivalence. In neither was the Soviet Union or the United States content to allow the other to gain an upper hand. Indeed it seemed as if the two superpowers looked then on the Middle East and southern Africa as arenas, not for co-operation, but for competition. This last similarity underlined the crucial difference. Whereas in southern Africa the prospects of a direct Soviet-American confrontation seemed small, in the Middle East they had been growing more likely and more dangerous month by month. There were clear reasons for this — the greater strategic prizes of the Middle East, its close vicinity to vital areas of military power already deployed or readily deployable by the two rivals and, perhaps most marked of all, the immense complexity of the Middle East problem.

In southern Africa the situation could be measured in simple terms, in terms, as it might be put, of black and white. The early 1980s in the Middle East told a very different story. There we saw not just the aspirations of developing countries against a background of superpower rivalry attempting to influence policies and events. We saw an Islamic world divided against itself in spite of the strongest possible motive for unity — a shared hostility to Zionism. Some events threw a strong light on this central issue, particularly Israel’s policy of procrastinating over Sinai, colonizing the West Bank, annexing the Golan and surrounding Jerusalem with high concrete buildings. Other events obscured it: Iran and Iraq at war; Syria and Libya supporting Iran, not for sympathy with the ayatollahs, but out of enmity towards other Arab nations; Jordan dangerously linked to Iraq and beginning to lean, like Syria, towards the USSR; Egypt trying to reconcile the irreconcilable by aiming to be on good terms with Israel, the USA and the moderate Arab states; Saudi Arabia, Oman and the smaller Gulf states seeking to pursue policies of moderation in an environment largely given over to extremism; the PLO divided in its leadership and in no mood for compromise; the two Yemens keeping an eye, with Soviet interest in the background, on the main chance. Yet many of these other events arose from the apparent inability of any power, super or not, to get to grips with the central Middle Eastern issue itself, the deadlock over Palestine. Meanwhile the USA seemed to stick firmly to three aims — a Camp David peace, the exclusion of the Soviet Union and an uninterrupted flow of oil. The Soviet Union seemed equally prepared to interfere with these aims.

In short, the very dangers of a world war between the superpowers, because either might miscalculate the other’s intentions and actions in the Middle East, were heightened. Indeed the new phase of peacemaking which began in 1982 did bring the USSR and the USA to the brink of war. At times their very rivalry seemed to impede, rather than advance, their policies. Some of the United States’ activities that were designed to keep Soviet influence away from the Middle East had precisely the opposite effect. The US-Israel strategic agreement, unstable though it was, drew even the moderate Arab states into closer association with the Soviet Union, so that in the end it was the fact of US and Soviet involvement in Arabian affairs that narrowed their respective interests into a common one, the promotion of peace and stability in the region.

It was in 1982 that real progress towards breaking the Palestinian deadlock began to be made. Up to this time the status quo had been maintained, not because it was generally desirable, but because of what seemed to be immovable obstacles to any change. If these obstacles could be weakened or removed, however, a way forward from stalemate might be found. The conditions that had produced this deadlock were many, but they could perhaps be distilled into four major ones. First, no matter what other strategic interests the United States might have had in Middle Eastern, particularly Arab, countries, its continued military and economic support for Israel — as illustrated by intermittent strategic agreement between them — had been such that Israel’s military superiority over the Arab confrontation states had been more or less guaranteed. Second, Israel’s determination to annex the whole of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as East Jerusalem and Golan, was always likely to be totally unacceptable to Arabs and the Moslem world. Third, persistent Arab disunity, notably among those countries that neighboured Israel, simply meant that there was no local threat to Israel, nor would there be until they did unite. In this connection Egypt’s obsession with getting back all of Sinai delayed moves towards unity and (at that time) made negotiations for Palestinian autonomy something of a fraud. Fourth, the PLO’s unwillingness to play what was commonly called its ‘last card’ — that is, recognition of Israel’s right to exist — ruled out the possibility of negotiation between Palestinian leaders whether from the PLO or its National Council, and Israel. These were some of the main obstacles. Weaken or remove them and different circumstances would prevail. It was precisely this process which began in 1982 and led in 1986 to the emergence of the autonomous state of Palestine and a new status for Jerusalem.

It had been nineteen years earlier, in 1967, that the UN Security Council had agreed Resolution 242. It will be remembered that from the principle of ‘the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war’ the Resolution had called for ‘withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict… to secure and recognized boundaries’ and had stressed the necessity to guarantee ‘the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area’. There were, of course, other matters concerning refugees, demilitarized zones, and freedom of navigation through international waterways, but the Resolution’s architect, Lord Caradon, summarized the two crucial requirements: Israel must be secure and the Palestinians must be free. In the early 1980s certain variations on the theme gathered momentum, in particular Crown Prince Fahd’s eight-point plan. This was put forward in 1981 but was rejected at the Fez summit in the same year. It envisaged:

(1) Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories occupied in 1967.

(2) Establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

(3) UN control of the West Bank and Gaza in the transitional period, which would last only a few months.

(4) Recognition of the right of Palestinians to repatriation, with compensation for those who did not wish to return.

(5) Removal of all Israeli settlements established in Arab territory since 1967.

(6) Guarantee of any agreement by the UN or some of its members.

(7) Guarantee for all religions to worship freely in the Holy Land.

(8) Guarantee of the right of all states in the region to live in peace.

While there were those who dissented from the idea of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, hoping that a different solution for Jerusalem would emerge, and while the practicability of compensation for non-repatriated Palestinians was questioned, Prince Fahd’s proposals received such substantial and varied support, including that of the authors of the EEC Venice Declaration and of Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan, that they acquired a kind of mantle of authority which led to their general acceptance as a blueprint for peace in the Middle East. This general acceptance had been made easier by concurrent progress on a plan for Lebanon’s future, which was designed to allow Lebanon itself to take over responsibility for its security and to re-establish its political identity. First, the Christian Phalangists by abandoning their association with Israel would be enabled to reinforce the idea of Lebanese nationalist autonomy. At the same time, Palestinian military forces would evacuate the whole of South Lebanon, as would Israeli forces too. Their place would be taken by the UN Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Beirut itself, formerly garrisoned by both Palestinian and Syrian forces, would also be looked after by the newly constituted Lebanese Army. All this would enable the Syrian Army to evacuate Lebanon completely except for the El Bekaa valley bordering Syria itself.

These processes of military readjustment were intended to assist political realignments so that a central and national Lebanese government, incorporating all parties except Palestinians, could be established. Saudi Arabia’s commitment to and sponsoring of this idea continued to advance its general political position in the Arab world, while it was hoped that Syria’s dependence on the Soviet Union and its former hostility to the Fahd eight-point plan would be further reduced. If there appeared to be little of value in these various comings and goings for the Palestinians themselves, they could at least console themselves with the thought that the inter-relationship between the Saudi and Lebanese plan could lead to more general support for their own national aspirations.

All this sounded admirable in theory. But it was still theory, and there still had to be found some means of getting once again under way those international initiatives without which there could be no breaking of the deadlock. The key to finding these means lay in Egypt.

In 1981 and 1982, as had been expected, the newly appointed Egyptian President continued with the Camp David peace process in order to regain the whole of Sinai, yet he tried to reconcile this process, which required the co-operation of the United States and Israel, with a move back into the moderate Arab camp. At the same time, Israel itself had been tempted to slow down the hand-over of Sinai in order to gain time to judge further influences and policies. Such temptations, however, were removed by intense pressure from both the United States and Western Europe. Indeed the United States, which had already given some indication of future intentions by further military assistance to Saudi Arabia following the AWACS deal in 1981, made it clear that the balance of military aid could switch away from Israel to Arabia if the Sinai were not handed back on time. There was not yet any progress from Camp David to a proper re-assessment of how both the PLO and Israel could be persuaded to acknowledge each other’s rights in order to pave the way for negotiations on the lines of Prince Fahd’s plan. Once all the Sinai had been handed back to Egypt, however, and a peacekeeping force, which included Third World, American and European troops, had been established, a new set of circumstances emerged.

In 1982, with the Sinai back in Egyptian hands and the so-called normalization of Egyptian-Israeli relations still proceeding, the Saudi Arabian Sheikh Faisal Abdullah, who had long been working for a rapprochement between Egypt and his own country, succeeded in arranging a meeting between the Crown Prince and the President of Egypt. It took place in Geneva and was to set in train a series of events which, unlike all previous initiatives, began to break the Palestinian deadlock. In essence the policy they agreed upon was that Arab unity would as far as possible be restored. Disruptive movements, such as Moslem fundamentalism or adventurism in the Sahara, would be controlled by friendly, or if this failed, unfriendly persuasion. Given a degree of Arab unity, irresistible pressure should be brought to bear in two quarters: first on Israel, through the United States, to make the Israelis sit down and negotiate the future of an autonomous Palestine; secondly on the PLO, to oblige it to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and thus also sit down at the negotiating table. The weapon to be used against the United States and thus its Western allies would, of course, be oil. In simple terms, the bargaining would be: no Palestine, no oil. This position had to be taken seriously and a settlement based on it did in the end come about. But the voices of those not present at the Geneva meeting still had to be heard. The principal voices, both demanding and entitled to be heard, were those of the United States, Israel, Libya, Jordan, Syria and the Soviet Union.

During the remaining months of 1982 and the early ones of the following year these voices made themselves heard in various bilateral and multilateral meetings, and in doing so helped to shape the final outcome. We must shortly consider the way in which the United States was persuaded to sponsor a formula for peace, broadly acceptable to the bulk of the Arab nations and to which Israel could be obliged to submit. We must also examine how the Soviet Union took a hand in the game which all but brought the superpowers to a direct clash in the very area they were seeking to pacify. But first, we must clear out of the way two other obstacles which were impeding solution to the central problem. The first was Libya, the second Iran.

Libya’s leader, whose preposterous behaviour had caused flutterings in so many dovecotes, overreached himself at last in the same year — 1983 — as negotiations for a Palestinian settlement were gaining ground. He actually committed his country, with the promised aid of Pakistan (whose paymaster he had capriciously been, stopped being, and was again) to the establishment of a nuclear armoury. At the same time, his further interference in the Sudan and Niger, covered more fully in the next chapter, so enraged the moderate Arab nations, headed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, that, choosing a time when Libyan forces were also heavily engaged in suppressing another uprising in Chad, Egypt was authorized to deal with the Libyan leader once and for all.

Egypt’s armed forces struck, and struck hard. Libya’s air force was destroyed on its airfields. The relatively small number of serviceable tanks in the Libyan Army were knocked out by the anti-tank helicopters which Egypt had bought from Britain, while hundreds of non-running tanks were impounded in depots. What remained of Libya’s infantry, such as were not deployed in Saharan adventures, felt disinclined to argue the toss with the armoured and air forces that Egypt was able to put into the field. It was clear from the way in which the Egyptians conducted their campaign against Libya that they had modelled themselves on Wavell and O’Connor rather than on Alexander and Montgomery. Speed, surprise and audacity characterized the whole operation.

On D-day, the Egyptian Air Force destroyed all Libyan aircraft at Benghazi, while parachute and heliborne forces seized the Al Kufra oasis and its Soviet-made missile sites. Meanwhile, as armoured and mechanized divisions with strong air support drove for Benghazi, Tobruk was taken by commando groups. Within a week the Egyptians had consolidated these gains and destroyed or captured the main Libyan forces deployed in eastern Cyrenaica. In this consolidation they were assisted by the Senussi who had long chafed against rule from Tripoli. While mechanized troops continued to advance westwards on the coast road, mopping up half-hearted garrisons, Tripoli air base was put out of action by Egyptian bombers, and further seaborne and airborne operations captured El Agheila, Sirte and Horns. The main oil-producing areas between Gialo and Dahra were occupied by follow-up echelons, and communication centres like Al Fuqaha and Daraj were controlled by groups of parachute and light reconnaissance forces. Spearheads of the main armoured thrust drove into Tripoli after a final skirmish with garrison troops.

The whole affair had something in common with what Rommel had once described as a lightning tour of the enemy’s country. In this way Libya was subdued and all but annexed by Egypt. But the fight had been against the Libyan leader — who found refuge in Ethiopia — not against the Libyan people, whose new government was formed by a triumvirate, all of whom were recalled from exile, comprising the former commander of Tobruk garrison, Libya’s Prime Minister in the pre-military regime, and the man who was the eminence grise of Libya’s last king, the Senussi Idris.

Protests by the Soviet Union at this action by Egypt had no more effect than protests from the West when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. With the United States Sixth Fleet patrolling the central and eastern Mediterranean, the Soviet Mediterranean Squadron, the Fifth Eskadra, had been ordered to remain at anchorage and avoid confrontation. The Soviet High Command was much more concerned with free passage of the Dardanelles than with Libyan port facilities or the fate of the Libyan leader. The latter’s removal and his replacement by a regime sympathetic to moderate Arab policies were widely seen as almost wholly beneficial. Interference in Chad, Niger and Sudan stopped. The financing of international terrorism dwindled. Temptation to make a stir in the world simply for its own sake was put aside. Arab unity was further enhanced. Moslem fundamentalism suffered a setback. Encouragement for the less benevolent policies of South Yemen, Ethiopia and Syria ceased. What is more — and this in Western eyes was not wholly beneficial — the Arab oil weapon became more powerful with Libyan oil now under Egyptian control. Nor were the benefits confined to that part of the Middle East alone.

The fall of the Libyan military regime made it easier for Iran to escape from the pitiless rule of the mullahs in a way which also frustrated Soviet hopes of securing control of the country. The Soviet Union had long been infiltrating Iran with arms and agents for the revolutionary guards, at the same time attempting to subvert the army. They had been assisted by Libya which had subsidized a fanatical group of left-wing Iranian Army officers. To moderates who sought to overthrow the ayatollahs, a coalition between this group of fanatics with the pro-Soviet Tudeh communists and the revolutionary guards seemed a highly unattractive alternative to the mullahs themselves. Now, however, the influence in Iran of moderate, anti-revolutionary officers of the army and air force grew and infiltration into Iranian Azerbaijan was curtailed. The revolutionary guards’ endeavours to replace the army as the country’s main military force came to nothing. There was in addition a man for the moment at hand.

General Ahmed Bahram, former army commander, exiled by the ayatollahs, had established his headquarters and his army of counter-revolutionaries in Turkey in 1982. He held two strong cards in his hand. The first was his agreement with the Arab nations and particularly with the new military leadership in Baghdad that he would recognize Iraq’s shared need of the Shatt al Arab and harmonize their respective policies over Kurdistan. The second and even more important card was that he enjoyed a secret understanding both with the generals commanding the principal garrisons of Iran and with the leaders of the Mujaheddin Khalq, the Iranian People’s Militia.

General Bahram’s takeover of Iran was relatively bloodless, and the blood which was spilled could easily be spared as it was largely that of the revolutionary guards. The Tudeh communists proved to be insufficiently armed or concentrated to stand up to the alliance of regular and irregular forces, whose coup was staged with such precision and pressure.

The establishment of a more moderate and pro-Western regime in Iran, together with an end to the Gulf war, strengthened still further the axis between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and gave still more coherence to general Arab unity. The Gulf war had done much to separate Arab countries and distract them from the very issue — Palestine — for which unity and concerted action were indispensable. Instability and violence in Iran itself, bearing in mind that Soviet troops were on Iran’s eastern frontier, had always conjured up fears of direct Soviet military intervention there too. Now, with a military ruler determined to re-establish economic, social and political order, these fears were to some extent dissipated. It was not a return to the sort of Western alliance there had been with the Shah, but it offered at least some additional defence against Soviet expansionism. All in all, therefore, the Western nations had reason to be satisfied with developments in Libya, Iraq and Iran. The fly in the ointment, however, particularly in United States’ eyes, remained the immensely strong position from which the Arab nations could now wield the oil weapon.

As was to be expected, it was wielded not bluntly or brutally, but with forbearance and subtlety. The Saudis had long understood that next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing was to know when to forgo an advantage. Opportunity had to be nourished before it could be seized. Advantage, which would follow, had to be savoured before it could be forgone.

The Arab summit at Taif in mid-1983 appeared at first to underline some continuing disagreement rather than to signal a unified stand which would enable Arab leaders to persuade the United States to bring further pressure upon Israel. There appeared to be little change in the position of the rejectionist front. Despite Libya’s forced acceptance of Egypt’s way of thinking, Syria, South Yemen and Algeria were still opposed to any arrangement with Israel. There appeared to be no general acceptance of Egypt’s return to the Arab camp, although at Saudi Arabia’s insistence Egypt was represented at the conference. Iraq and Jordan seemed still to be at odds with Syria. The PLO although accepted as a voice to speak for the Palestinians, persisted in omnipresent intrigue and still presented the face of timorous foe and suspicious friend. It was even thought that they had had secret meetings with the Israelis in Vienna. Nonetheless the representative Palestine National Council — the so-called parliament of the PLO — began to take a more positive and constructive part in PLO leadership.

Such appearances, if inauspicious, were deceptive. The Saudis, who as hosts had more control of the agenda and procedures than anyone else, displayed to advantage their singleness of purpose and toughness in diplomacy. The eight-point plan of Crown Prince Fahd, in spite of not having been endorsed at the 1981 Fez summit, remained firmly the vehicle for discussion and agreement. This plan had, of course, the respectability and authority of being not merely an Arab plan, but a Saudi Arabian one. Saudi Arabia had long enjoyed a special position as the custodian of the Holy Places of Islam. Now, with Egypt once more by its side, and with the fruits of consistently moderate statesmanship and inexhaustible economic strength to draw upon, Saudi Arabia’s claims to the political, as well as the religious, leadership of the Arab nations were hard to challenge. Moreover, their determination to bring about United States participation in putting intense pressure on Israel remained unchanged. In this they were supported (which was indispensable for their purposes) by the bulk of other Arab nations, including the oil producers. In effect, and despite the continued uncertainties of Syria, Algeria and South Yemen, the jihad, or holy war, which Prince Fahd had called for three years earlier as the only means of asserting Islamic rights in Jerusalem and breaking the Palestinian deadlock, was now a reality. Furthermore, Syria’s reluctance to conform was to some extent offset by the PLO’s further detachment from Syria and by its willingness to play the ‘last card’ as a preliminary to actual negotiations over the outstanding issues.

During the Taif summit the US President’s special envoy to the Middle East sat in Cairo, being briefed by all those emissaries from Taif and elsewhere whom he chose to see. Outwardly he remained serene and his despatches to the President were couched in the language of a diplomat whose options remained open. But in fact these options were rapidly dwindling to only two: silence or placate the Jewish lobby in New York, Washington and the rest of the USA, or let the Western world go short of Middle Eastern oil.

At the same time, Western European governments had been active. The former British President of the Council of Ministers of the EEC had put his and Western Europe’s weight behind a drive for two objectives, whose achievement they felt would greatly enhance the possibility of new international peace initiatives. One was that the implicit acceptance of Israel’s right to exist contained in the eighth point of Prince Fahd’s plan — guarantee of the right of all states in the region to live in peace — should somehow be made explicit. The other was that the PLO’s part in the peacemaking machinery should be acknowledged by all concerned, including Israel itself, on the understanding that explicit mention of Israel’s right to exist in security and peace was in turn endorsed by the PLO. At the time of the Taif summit in mid-1983 these objectives seemed to be within reach.

Much still depended, however, on the United States’ willingness and ability to change Israel’s position and policies. In 1983 the governments of the major European members of NATO made a proposal which could not fail to be attractive to the United States, and at the same time would relieve some of their own anxieties. It was, in brief, that the European members of NATO would now at last reduce their real vulnerability by more efficient co-operation between them in defence efforts and less reliance on US forces in Europe. It was to be hoped that this would enable the United States to pursue more vigorously a Middle East policy leading on from Camp David to a full settlement, an essential feature of which would be to oblige the Israelis to accept the need to involve the Palestinians and the Arab nations on the basis of Prince Fahd’s plan, perhaps with modifications. This European proposal added much weight to the pressure on the United States from the more or less unified Arabs, particularly since it was accompanied by the setting up of machinery, in the shape of the Western Policy Staff, to consider common action by NATO member states outside the NATO area where common interest arose. This the United States found particularly gratifying. Faced with the prospect of either antagonizing the Jewish lobby or denying the Western world adequate supplies of oil — and comforted by the reflection that he would not again be standing for office — the President chose the former. He would try to hold the Jewish lobby at bay.

Once more the President despatched his special envoy to Tel Aviv. This time his mission was made public by carefully orchestrated leaks to the media. In plain terms the United States’ message to Israel’s leaders was this: either Israel must now agree to move on from Camp David and begin to negotiate a settlement of Palestine and Jerusalem, or US military and economic aid would be run down.

The reaction of the Israeli Government was as capricious as it was self-destructive. In a desperate but fruitless demonstration of their immediate strength, but ultimate impotence, they announced their intention of annexing South Lebanon and instantly mounted air attacks on airfields near Damascus, on Syrian troop concentrations in the El Bekaa valley, and pushed aside UN troops in South Lebanon. Syria responded in kind with artillery, missile and air attacks on the Golan Heights. While the reaction of the United States Government might have been predicted, what took the world by surprise was that for once the United States and the Soviet Union were at one — Israel must be made to toe the line. In an unprecedentedly cordial and fruitful meeting between the US Secretary of State and the Soviet Foreign Minister, which took place in London late in 1983, it was agreed that unless Israel instantly accepted the conditions for peace negotiations based on the Fahd plan, economic sanctions against it, including total blockade of its ports of entry, would be initiated at once. The Israeli Government thereupon resigned and was replaced by one from the main opposition party with the declared policy of negotiating peace with the Arab nations in order to solve the problems of Palestine and Jerusalem.

One by one the obstacles to negotiation had been going down. A significant degree of Arab unity had been restored; the PLO together with Arab leaders had expressed their willingness to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist; pressure had been brought upon the United States both by the Arab nations and Western Europe to take that uneasy leap from Camp David to the determination of Palestinian autonomy; and now Israel, responding to a choice of action put before it by the United States and the Soviet Union, had a new government willing to reciprocate by formally declaring abandonment of the previous Israeli policy of colonization and annexation. The way for negotiation at an international peace conference was at last open. What was now wanted was an agreed formula and machinery to enable negotiations actually to begin. During December 1983 work towards these ends proceeded. At length, after intensive international diplomacy in the Security Council of the United Nations, agreement was achieved and a new Security Council Resolution emerged.

The main difference between this new Resolution and 242 was, of course, that Palestinian self-determination was now a cardinal feature of it. In bringing the original Resolution up to date and providing for its implementation, therefore, the new one did much to acknowledge, while not absolutely conforming to, Prince Fahd’s eight-point plan. The new Resolution dealt with five main issues:

(1) Cessation of all violence and all Israeli settlements in occupied territory.

(2) Creation of a boundary commission to hear both sides and make recommendations for a permanent ‘secure and recognized’ frontier.

(3) A period of international trusteeship over East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza (and also the Golan Heights) during which period the Palestinians could exercise self-determination, elect their own leaders, and decide both on their own constitution and on their relations with neighbours.

(4) Provision of international guarantees (together with demilitarized zones, and restriction on the deployment of certain weapons systems, particularly SSM and SAM) to preserve the right of every state in the area to live in peace ‘free from threats and acts of force’.

(5) A final peace conference to take place in Geneva under the joint chairmanship of the United States and the Soviet Union as before (with the Palestinians represented by their chosen leaders) to prepare and sign the peace treaties. The unanimity of support for Resolution 242 in 1967 had been thought remarkable. Unanimity on this new Resolution was no less so. In particular the readiness of the Soviet Union to comply with what was so clearly identifiable as a United States’ interest was remarked upon. Reflection, however, reminded observers that sixteen years had elapsed between the two Resolutions without there being much implementation of the first — if in this respect Camp David might be left aside. In any case, it was not at this time the Soviet Union’s intention implacably to antagonize the moderate Arab states under the leadership of Saudi Arabia when the USSR believed that its own proxy Arab states, like Syria and South Yemen, could, when actual negotiations to implement the new Resolution got under way, safeguard Soviet interests under the guise of their being Arab ones. So it turned out to be.

Before we examine how actual negotiation turned into a more dangerous confrontation between the superpowers, it is necessary to say a word or two further about Jerusalem. It had always been clear that there could be no peace in the Middle East without peace in Jerusalem. Yet real peace in Jerusalem was unobtainable through divided domination; it had to be brought about through united freedom. Jerusalem itself had to become a kind of gateway to peace. Concurrently, therefore, with the diplomatic activity in the Security Council during late 1983, European initiatives in the General Assembly, with Great Britain taking a particular lead, had led to the adoption of a Resolution dealing with Jerusalem, the implementation of which was intended to be in parallel with that of the broader Resolution of the Security Council. It’s essential outlines, after the preamble dealing with the Holy City’s future role as a symbol of peace and freedom, recognized and respected by all mankind, were these:

(1) There would be an Israeli Jerusalem and an Arab Jerusalem each exercising full sovereignty within its own territory but with no barriers and no impediment to freedom of movement between them.

(2) The Secretary-General would appoint an impartial boundary commission to hear representations from those concerned and make recommendations to the Security Council as to the boundary between the Israeli Jerusalem and the Arab Jerusalem.

(3) The Holy City would be completely demilitarized.

(4) The Secretary-General would appoint a high commissioner (and deputy) to be stationed in Jerusalem, to represent the United Nations and to work with all concerned to secure and ensure the purposes of the Resolution, and to report appropriately for the information of the General Assembly and the Security Council.

Thus not only had the need for concerted international action to bring permanent peace to Jerusalem and the Middle East been reaffirmed, but both a formula and machinery for its implementation had been established. We need not at present concern ourselves with the detailed working of this machinery during the last months of 1983 and the early part of 1984. It is the end which mattered, rather than the means. But what must now command our attention is what happened in Syria in the summer of 1984, which nearly brought the whole peacemaking procedure to a close and the two superpowers to the brink of war in the Middle East itself one year before actual war on the Central Front of Europe.

It became plain at this time that as well as peacemakers, there were peacebreakers at large. It seemed at first as if a whole series of peacewrecking events was being directed by implacable extremists. Yet so capricious and multitudinous appeared to be the motives and targets, that paradoxically these events might have been the work of a single internationally organized network, such as Black International, or even a combination of Black and Red International. The connection was never firmly established. It was suggested by Western sources that a kind of multinational strike force had been structured round the Palestinian Rejection Front, which had, of course, been armed by the Soviet Union, and was now — so argued these sources — being directed from Moscow. It was hardly surprising that the Soviet Union and its associates took a different stance, and put all the blame squarely on to the CIA. All such views were coloured of course by the political attitudes of those who expressed them. Initially, however, it was not so much the direction behind the terrible events which ensued that mattered. It was the effect of the events themselves.

The bomb explosions in Cairo airport were bad enough, killing or maiming as they did more than 350 people. Then came the assassination of the President’s special envoy in Tel Aviv, which caused some cynics to observe that this was the best blow for peace the PLO had so far struck. The murder of sixteen members of the United States contingent in the UN peacekeeping force in Sinai was similarly attributed to the Palestinian Rejection Front — certainly the bullets found in them had been fired from Soviet-made weapons. All this soured the United States view of the Soviet commitment to peace. Nor was the Soviet Union less sceptical about the USA’s real intentions when the former’s representatives at the peace conference were kidnapped, tortured and executed. There may have been evidence to show that it was the doing of the Italian-Nazi-Maoist group, but this did not prevent the Soviet Union attributing the whole affair to the CIA. These accusations and misunderstandings hardly made for smooth progress at Geneva.

The worst events of all took place in Syria, and the Syrian authorities were not slow to condemn hard-line Israeli groups, who, they claimed, were operating in Syria with the Mossad’s support. In Damascus the President’s office was blown up during a high-level meeting. Again the levity of some political commentary let it be made known that the meeting continued at an even higher level, but the fact was that the President, his brother, other ministers and some senior military officers had been killed. Simultaneously, sabotage at a dozen military bases, together with the destruction of fuel depots, power centres and telecommunications so disturbed the Syrian Government that it declared martial law. If this was a last mad attack on Syria by Israeli clandestine forces, it was certainly effective.

Then two more acts of violence shocked the world. In the Syrian naval base at Tartus two minesweepers and a visiting Soviet frigate were destroyed by limpet mines, killing and wounding many Syrian and Soviet sailors, while at Riyadh an AWACS aircraft which was about to be handed over by the US Air Force to the Royal Saudi Air Force disintegrated in flight. All on board perished.

Fear, increased by uncertainty, gripped the peacemakers. The Soviet Union accused the United States of sabotaging peace efforts in order to maintain a position of strategic dominance in the Middle East through its ally Israel. The United States in reply taxed the Soviet Union with the intention to establish a military base in Syria, from which to spread its influence east and south.

For this last accusation there appeared to be some grounds. Syria, either motivated by panic or manipulated by those determined never to compromise with Israel, had once more appealed to the Soviet Union for instant and substantial demonstration of friendship and fulfilment of their security pact. The appeal was not made in vain.

The Soviet Mediterranean Fifth Eskadra moved to Syria’s naval base at Latakia, and reinforcements from the Black Sea Fleet were moving through the Dardanelles as frequently as the Turkish Government would permit, under the Montreux Convention. The surface ships of the Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron, consisting of a missile cruiser and two frigates, with three auxiliaries, returned to Aden. Meanwhile a stream of Antonov transports bringing arms, equipment and troops to Damascus overflew Turkish airspace, having given minimum warning through normal diplomatic channels. Turkey protested in strong terms and received a discourteous and threatening reply from the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding these threats, Turkey moved air and ground units nearer to the Syrian frontier, as did Iraq and Jordan, while the Turkish Navy concentrated some of its submarine, mine-laying and patrol craft astride the Dardanelles. Egypt moved more combat aircraft and armoured formations into the Sinai. The United States reaction demonstrated its determination to go on reassuring its friends while cautioning the Soviet Union. Units of the US Air Force and Rapid Deployment Force were despatched to Egypt and Somalia. Even Jordan accepted some US advisers and AWACS aircraft. The US Sixth Fleet took up a waiting position south-east of Cyprus. Two US destroyers exercising in the Red Sea with the Egyptian Navy, off Ras Banas, departed to rejoin their carrier group further south.

So serious did the situation appear to be that NATO commanders called for certain alert measures to be taken in Europe, while Warsaw Pact forces prolonged and reinforced manoeuvres which were under way in Bulgaria. In Britain some reserves were recalled and the House of Commons debated the question of embodying the Territorial Army. France and Italy undertook joint naval exercises in the western Mediterranean.

Worse was to come. There were several sharp sea and air engagements in the eastern Mediterranean between US and Syrian forces and between Soviet and Israeli, all naturally disavowed or hushed up at the time. By good fortune there were no TV cameramen present at any. Both US and Soviet forces were under strict orders to avoid direct engagement with the main antagonist, but it could only be a matter of time before, whether by accident or design, they fired upon each other. It really appeared as if the superpowers were on the brink of war. And all for what? For Syrian intransigence. The hot line between Washington and Moscow became very hot indeed. What was said lent great strength to the UN Secretary-General's call for an immediate international conference under his chairmanship in Geneva to resolve differences and resume Middle East peace negotiations. All parties concerned agreed to it.

So it was that in the latter months of 1984 negotiations as to the future of Jerusalem and the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian state, together with international guarantees designed to preserve the right of all states in the area to live in peace 'free from threats and acts of force', resumed, and might be said to have been crowned with success, for by the spring of 1985 a peace conference had been convened to take place in Geneva later that year under the joint chairmanship of the United States and the Soviet Union to 4make preparations for the signature of peace treaties by all the parties involved.

By this time much progress had been made. Violence had ceased. Israeli settlements had been withdrawn from occupied Arab and Palestinian territory. The boundary commission had made its recommendations, which had been endorsed by all sides. The future of Jerusalem on the lines of the UN Security Council Resolution was assured. The Palestinians had agreed on their future constitution and the Palestinian National Council together with members of the PLO made up the majority party of the newly-elected Palestinian Parliament. The principal guarantors of these new agreements were to be the Soviet Union and the United States with peacekeeping forces to be established along previously disputed frontiers, these forces to come mainly from Third World nations and exclude both US and Soviet troops. All that remained was final signature of the treaties and their implementation.

It was not to be, or at least not in this way. Events in the Middle East were overtaken by the outbreak of the Third World War.

The superpowers came very close to war in the Middle East and it is of interest to note the potential for waging war there that the various countries of the region, and those from outside it who had interests there, possessed.

If numbers alone could have determined the military balance, it would have been firmly tipped in favour of the Arab nations. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States — to say nothing of the Sudan, Algeria and Morocco — mustered between them the best part of a million men under arms, excluding reserves, while Israel's total armed forces were some 170,000, although mobilization, which would be rapid, more than doubled this figure. There were, of course, peacekeeping forces from the United Nations in positions close to previously disputed frontiers — in the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem — but these forces were small and lightly equipped. As for the United States and the Soviet Union, their presence at the centre of things near the new State of Palestine and in the countries neighbouring Israel was confined largely to advisers and training teams. It was true that the Soviet Union still had nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, but they were being kept very busy, while the naval and air units which both superpowers deployed periodically in friendly Arab ports and air bases were, after withdrawal from former confrontation, of modest proportions.

But the game was not one of numbers alone. As tension in Europe became greater and the forces of the Warsaw Pact and those of NATO began their processes of mobilization, redeployment and reinforcement, so comparable processes were to be seen in the Middle East. It then became clear that the Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, far from abandoning the peaceful settlement on which they had embarked, were not intent on using their military strength against Israel, but were determined to harbour it in order to keep open the path to peace. At the same time Israel had to be kept quiet. The United States would have to help. The Arab nations, in forgoing what might have seemed to be a temporary advantage, were thus able to combine magnanimity with policy, the fruits of which were to be seen in the successful conclusion of the Middle East peace conferences soon after hostilities between the superpowers had ceased.

So it was that Egypt, whose new relationship with Libya had allowed a greatly reduced force to patrol that frontier, did not increase its forces in the Sinai from the two armoured and two mechanized divisions already there, but did reinforce the garrisons in the southeast near Ras Banas, while leaving a strong reserve near Cairo and Suez. The Egyptian Air Defence Command with its 200 interceptors and missile brigades still guarded central strategic bases and the approaches from north-east and south-east. The air force's 300 combat aircraft were deployed roughly in proportion to the army, and the navy remained with its customary distribution of submarines, destroyers and patrol craft between the eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia's main concern was with North and South Yemen. Two Saudi brigades with supporting arms and aircraft remained in the north-west, the remaining four brigades with strong air support, and patrol units from the Frontier Force, were in the south-west. Saudi naval corvettes and patrol boats were on station in both the Red Sea and the Gulf.

Iraq's army of some twelve divisions was broadly divided between a force on the new frontier with Iran, a grouping facing Syria, and a central reserve, with the Iraqi Air Force's 350 combat aircraft supporting the army deployment and the navy's missile and patrol vessels at readiness in the waterways and the Gulf.

Iran, like Iraq, had largely made good the losses already sustained in the war between them. The bulk of the Iranian Army's ten divisions, half of which were armoured, were divided between the north-east sector facing Afghanistan and the western front, with strong reserves held centrally and in the main oil-producing areas of the south-west. The Iranian Navy patrolled the Gulf, and the 200 or so combat aircraft supported both army and naval deployment.

Syria's forces — none of which were by this time deployed in Lebanon (where UN peacekeeping forces backed up the small army) — were located with two armoured divisions each in the northern and eastern commands, while the two mechanized divisions remained near Damascus. Syria's strong air force and air defence command, which included 450 Migs, was deployed to challenge attack from any quarter.

Jordan's four divisions, all armoured or mechanized, were concentrated in the northern and eastern sectors, supported by nearly 100 F-5s, with a small naval force at Aqaba. Oman's relatively small, but efficient force of some 15,000 were deployed both to resist any further incursions from South Yemen and to guard the sea approaches. The two Yemens had armed forces of roughly similar size, the South primarily equipped with Soviet arms, the North with a mixture from the USSR and the West. Each had armoured and infantry brigades, MiG fighters and patrol craft. Both could threaten Saudi Arabia. Aden was virtually a Soviet naval base.

Thus were the various forces disposed when peacemaking in the Middle East was brought to a temporary halt. It was plain that when the two principal guarantors of the 1985 peace agreement were themselves at war — war moreover brought about by events far removed from the Middle East scene — the principal strategic aims of the Arab countries, with the exception of Syria and the inevitable dissension of South Yemen, were twofold. The first was to preserve the integrity and security of their own countries; the second, to preserve the political and military conditions that would enable them to resume implementation of the peace settlement as soon as possible. It seemed therefore to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, together with their supporters — Jordan, Iraq, Oman, the other Gulf states, Libya and Sudan — that their policy must be to isolate Israel and keep it in check; to prevent any interference by North or South Yemen; to support Iran both in maintaining its internal security and against Soviet incursions from Azerbaijan and Soviet-inspired activity in Baluchistan; and with the assistance of the United States and NATO to maintain or re-establish control of the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Gulf.

It is not intended to give detailed accounts of how these objects were achieved. Indeed in the event there was, with two major exceptions, very little war prosecuted in the Middle East or South-West Asia during the few weeks of the Third World War. What fighting there was took place largely in Europe, and at sea and in the air. Enough to say here that the prospect of hostile action by Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, together with explicit United States warnings, kept Israel in check. Syria disallowed any Soviet proposals to fly in reinforcements, and was more conscious than ever of the proximity of Turkey, which together with the rest of NATO was by this time at war with the Soviet Union and had closed the Bosporus with mines, submarines, land-based weapons and other means. The first aim of joint Arab policy was achieved without bloodshed.

The second aim did involve some bloodshed. North Yemen, under intense pressure from most Arab nations, agreed to accept a joint Egyptian-Saudi Arabian force to assist North Yemeni troops in suppressing once and for all the Soviet-armed guerrillas infiltrating from South Yemen. Sanaa, Taiz and Ibb were all successfully cleared, and effective anti-incursion forces were established along the frontier between North and South Yemen.

Support for Iran — the third policy requirement — did not take the form of troops or arms, but rather guarantees of co-operation in frontier control, shipping protection in the Gulf and economic aid. Iran was thus able to enhance its internal prosperity and external security without fear of threat from any of its western neighbours. The greatest threat to Iran would be from the north. The need to remove this threat was one of the reasons that brought war to the Middle East. The other was control of the sea.

Those who had previously been sceptical about the effectiveness or even the employability of the United States Rapid Deployment Force, with possible contingents from Great Britain, France and Italy, were agreeably surprised by both the rapidity of its deployment and its strength. The United States battle group in the Indian Ocean, despite torpedo damage to the carrier Nimitz, succeeded in neutralizing the Soviet squadron. The United States air reinforcement of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, together with the best part of an airborne division that landed near Cairo, gave them the capability of countering any Soviet intervention overland. The joint naval force of British and French frigates, plus a US Marine amphibious force and embarked air wing, secured the Gulf. The Arab four-point strategic policy, desirable in concept, had now been accomplished.

Removal of the threat to Iran from the north was the work, not of the Western allies or of the Arab nations, or even of the Iranians themselves. It was the work of the Afghan guerrilla movement. The substantial re-arming programme that had been in progress since 1982 reached its height in 1985. By this time there were plenty of essential weapons and ammunition, including SAM-7 launchers (which were extremely effective against helicopter gunships), machine-guns, mortars, assault rifles and anti-tank guided missiles. Even more important was the degree of central command and control exercised by the guerrillas' formidable and respected leader whose main area of operations was in the provinces of Nangarhar and Paktiar. His great chance came when the Soviet Union began to withdraw some of its armoured and helicopter formations from Afghanistan after the outbreak of hostilities on the Central Front in Europe. Allowing the first contingents of these powerful armoured and mechanized forces to retire unmolested, he chose his moment, declared jihad and supervised a concerted attack on every Soviet unit left in Afghanistan.

In 1842 the British Army had suffered a 'signal catastrophe' when it retreated from Kabul. There had been but one survivor, Surgeon Brydon, who succeeded in reaching Jalalabad. Rudyard Kipling had had some unpleasant things to say about what happened to British soldiers if they were wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains — 'an' the women come out to cut up what remains' — but neither of these points applied to the Soviet catastrophe. There were no wounded for the women to cut up. There were no survivors. The Soviet Union, during the remaining short period when it existed under that name, made no attempt to re-enter Afghanistan or to interfere in Iran.

One of the most satisfactory features of the peace conference in Geneva, which continued on and off for the whole of 1986, was the expedition with which the former Middle East peace treaties were reconsidered and signed. The United States was at once able to enforce Israel's compliance and help to guarantee its right to exist. The guarantors were now the United Nations themselves with the United States and the Arab nations foremost among them. The essential conditions for peace had been realized. Jerusalem had become a symbol of unified freedom, the Palestinians were autonomous and had their own chosen constitution and Israel was secure. Harmony between most of the Arab nations had been achieved.

It has been argued that just as peace in Arabia was dependent upon a settlement in Palestine, so peace in Africa was dependent upon a settlement in Namibia. If peace in the Middle East promises to be lasting, it is perhaps because it sprang from confrontation which led to negotiation. If peace in Africa, particularly southern Africa — to which we must now turn our attention — appears to be less durable, it is perhaps because it is the result of negotiation which can only lead to further confrontation.

Chapter 18: Southern Africa

In the Middle East the central issue of Palestine had been tackled and resolved. In Africa the central problem of what to do about South Africa had not really been tackled at all, still less resolved. This was not the only contrast between the two areas. In the Middle East the goal of a peaceful settlement for Palestine and Jerusalem had commanded the support of nearly all neighbouring nations and had more or less unified the Arab countries themselves. No such accord was to be found in southern Africa. There the problem was not how to create an autonomous state from peoples and territory that had been overrun and occupied as a result of war. The problem was how to persuade a sovereign independent state of great economic and military strength to change its political system to the immediate disadvantage of those whose system it was and who enjoyed the fruits of its power and privilege.

A generally declared commitment on the part of the black frontline nations that majority rule must replace apartheid was all very well in principle. But it seemed to endorse Bismarck's celebrated ^observation that when you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice. In practice there appeared to be no effective means by which these front-line states or the Organization for African Unity (OAU) or any other body could induce South Africa to change its system and its policy. Moreover, the priorities pursued by the black nations were, understandably enough, to provide themselves with some degree of economic prosperity and political security. Yet in the early 1980s there had been one or two encouraging signs. One was in Namibia, another in South Africa itself.

We can perhaps look back four years with satisfaction at the emergence of an independent Namibia in 1983, when the great difficulty of reconciling the contradictory positions of South Africa on the one hand and the South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) on the other had at length been overcome by the tireless efforts of five Western powers — Britain, the United States, Canada, France, and West Germany — known as the Western group. It will be remembered that UN Security Council Resolution 435 had in plain terms proposed a ceasefire that would be controlled by a United Nations force, followed by elections, also to be UN supervised, and then a proclamation of independence. South Africa's particular objection to this plan lay in what appeared to be general acceptance by most other African states and the UN as a whole that SWAPO was the sole representative of the Namibian people. In those circumstances the impartiality of the UN observers and supervisors could hardly, so South Africa claimed, be guaranteed. And if SWAPO was by such lack of impartiality to win a sweeping majority in the elections, what was to prevent it establishing a one-party socialist — in South African eyes, communist — state and so put southern Africa on the road to international communism? SWAPO itself favoured Resolution 435 proposals simply because of the freedom of intimidation that it might allow it and the consequent freedom for constitutional adjustments which a substantial victory would then give it. To bridge the gap between these two positions and to secure the confidence of the Namibian internal political parties, as well as of SWAPO, South Africa and the other African nations, the Western group presented their alternative plan in the latter part of 1981.

No proposal could have been equally liked by all parties concerned, but the new plan commanded sufficient support among those who were in a position to influence the waverers that it formed the basis for implementing Resolution 435. In essence this new plan was that the ceasefire would be followed by elections to a constituent assembly; this assembly would then be required to pass by a two-thirds majority a constitution; an election under the constitution would in turn open the way for independence itself. The system of government under the proposed constitution was to have three branches: an elected executive branch responsible to the legislature; a legislature elected by universal suffrage; and an independent judicial branch. The electoral system, being based on membership from both the constituencies and the parties, would ensure proper representation in the legislature to the various political groups among the Namibian people throughout the country. The constitution was also to contain a declaration of fundamental rights to guarantee personal, political and racial freedom.

Throughout the first part of 1982 international diplomacy at the United Nations and intensive negotiations in Africa itself gradually removed the obstacles to agreement to implement a revised UN plan which was finally reached at the 1982 Geneva conference. The wise statesmanship of Zimbabwe's Prime Minister did much to facilitate the finding of a solution to the vexed question of the ceasefire — who would supervise it and where would South African and SWAPO forces withdraw to? His proposals enjoyed the authority of experience and the attraction of simplicity. Broadly, an international force, which would police both ceasefire and elections, would be drawn from black and white Commonwealth countries (including Zimbabwe itself, Nigeria, Canada and New Zealand), Scandinavia, the Philippines, Venezuela, Eire, Finland and Switzerland. They would be commanded by an Indian general whose reputation for persuasiveness, impartiality and common sense had been greatly enhanced by his handling of previous peacekeeping operations. The camps to which the opposing forces would withdraw, broadly in the north for SWAPO and south for South African, were chosen with a view to combining ease of monitoring and administration with inability to intimidate or influence local opinion. Two sensitive and difficult problems — first the actual methods of conducting and supervising elections, second, the future integration of SWAPO troops with the existing South-West Africa Police and Territory Force — were to be handled roughly in the same way as had been so smoothly and successfully done in Zimbabwe.

This was but one demonstration of how practical difficulties facing those striving for a peaceful way forward were tackled. There were many others. First and foremost was the future constitution itself, and here the principal hurdle to be cleared was how to reconcile the differing views of SWAPO and the Namibia National Party (which had the largest support from the 100,000 Afrikaner population — out of Namibia's total of roughly one million) backed by Pretoria. Constitutional guarantees could mean different things to different groups, and only safeguards of minority rights in which those concerned could believe were likely to satisfy the Namibia National Party and the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance. None the less a constitutional conference to draft the basis of an independent Namibian government convened at Geneva late in 1982, and the fact that it did so had been brought about by a number of other agreements and disagreements involving the United States, South Africa and the black African nations, particularly Angola.

In a climate where moderation had begun to assume support which it had formerly lacked, two immoderate lines of policy had fortunately lost credibility and been put aside. One was the attempt by the African group in the United Nations to secure agreement for imposing economic sanctions on South Africa because of this country's refusal to comply with the original plan under Resolution 435. The move was blocked by the vetos of France, the United States and the United Kingdom. More important was the realization by the African group that only some accommodation with South Africa could in the end lead to an independent Namibia — short of continuing the fight with infinitely greater resources, rather more success than had hitherto been achieved, and non-interference by the United States should this elusive success be sought by increasing Soviet or Soviet-proxy support.

With the idea of sanctions out of the way, progress could be made elsewhere. Notable here was the second abandonment of immoderation. At one time the United States had had the curious idea that a settlement in Namibia could be linked to a withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola. Indeed one State Department paper had contained the extraordinary suggestion that African leaders would be unable to resist the Namibian-Angola linkage once they were made to realize that they could only get a Namibia settlement through the United States and that the US was in earnest about getting such a settlement. In this bizarre notion there was one element of realism. The African states did understand the importance of the US role in securing a settlement in Namibia, but it had little to do with Angola. It concerned essentially America's relationship with South Africa.

The persuasion which the US was enabled to apply to South Africa at the continued meetings between the former's Secretary of State and the latter's Prime Minister during the early months of 1982 did much to open the 'new chapter' of relations which the two countries were henceforth to establish and cement. The most immediate benefit from these meetings was that South Africa agreed to support the Western group's plan for an independent Namibia and undertook to ensure that Namibia's internal political parties would do so as well.

In parallel with this advance, the black African nations, led by Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Angola, were able to induce the leader of SW APO that this Western plan — despite its constitutional guarantees for minorities — was the best, indeed at that time the only, basis for seeing to it that Namibia's future would be determined by himself and his organization. After all, they pointed out, if SWAPO was justified in its claim to be the sole representatives of the Namibian people, what had it to fear from requirements for multi-party democracy with elections at prescribed intervals, or from a bill of rights to protect minorities? Conditions relating to the non-expropriation of private property or guaranteed representation for whites in parliament need not be a deterrent. They had not deterred Zimbabwe. Better surely to go for the legitimate, albeit slow, path to ultimate black domination, as in Zimbabwe, than the more rapid, more dramatic, but still disputed triumphs of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

In Angola the position was still an unhappy one. Ill discipline, corruption, rivalry and inefficiency seemed to be the pattern there. Shortcomings in the transport system alone seemed to make impossible the proper distribution of food. The war against South African forces had robbed the civil transport system of half its vehicles. UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) guerrillas further disrupted railways in the centre and south of the country. Ambushes by the Angolan National Liberation Front (FNLA) forces interfered with life in the north. If Angola were to climb out of its pit of incompetence and strife, it would hardly be by encouraging SWAPO to continue the fight against South Africa and pledging its support to that fight. Happily, the leader of SWAPO found these arguments convincing.

The Geneva conference on Namibian independence did bear fruit. A ceasefire was declared, supervised and honoured. Elections took place early the following year — with not unexpected results. It was true that SWAPO commanded a majority in the constituent assembly, but it was a slender majority. The strength of the other parties, in particular the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance and the Namibia National Party, were such that the two-thirds majority necessary to pass the new constitution ensured inclusion in it of the guarantees about which South Africa, the Afrikaners of Namibia and the Western group had shown such concern. And so to the world's mild astonishment and relief, 1983 saw the success story of Zimbabwe repeated in Namibia. As we shall see later, this success story was not to go on for very long. None the less, in 1983 there were other grounds for encouragement.

Progress in South Africa itself may have been less striking, but was significant in that there was progress at all. Apart from Pretoria's long declared intention of introducing a programme of gradual reform, a further reason for making some political concessions was growing confidence in South Africa's military strength through measures taken to counteract the insecurity which many South African whites had previously felt. These feelings were understandable. There were after all some 300 Soviet tanks in Mozambique together with the most sophisticated air defence weapons. Soviet, East German and Cuban advisers assisted with both manning equipment and training, and although Mozambique's armed forces were no more than 30,000 strong, they were becoming efficient both in their own right and in supporting guerrillas of the African National Congress (ANC).

Zimbabwe, which had signed a secret defence pact with Mozambique, had finally, after early setbacks, successfully integrated its regular and guerrilla forces and now commanded a well-equipped and well-trained Defence Force of 50,000 men greatly experienced in the very sort of fighting that would be appropriate to any confrontation with South Africa. Botswana's army was very small, a mere few thousand, but they too had taken delivery of Soviet tanks and other vehicles, weapons and ammunition. Angola had regular armed forces of roughly the same size as Mozambique — some 30,000 — and were supported by 20,00 °Cuban, 3,000 East German and several hundred Soviet advisers. Between them they operated aircraft and heavy equipment, provided advice and training to the Angolan armed forces, and could if necessary be used in actual operations. Angola's Organization of Popular Defence backed this up with a paramilitary force of about half a million men.

Thus the conventional military strength on which the black frontline states could call was by no means insignificant. In the past, South Africa had attempted to safeguard both its internal and external security by punitive cross-border raids — notably from Namibia into Angola, to say nothing of raids on Maputo. While it was clear that South Africa's armed forces, with their superior numbers, equipment and training, could always produce local successes in cross-border raids, there was no question of their contemplating military operations to occupy a neighbouring country. Indeed these raids themselves were often conducted by non-South African black troops, led by white officers. The South African-led raids in Angola, for example, made use of former FNLA black Angolans who were opposed to the MPLA. They also supported UNITA forces to disrupt SWAPO guerrillas. Similarly, South Africa made use of members of the Mozambique National Resistance (MNR) for the raids on ANC guerrilla houses near Maputo. In Angola the raids disrupted the economy and served to demonstrate the penalties to be paid for harbouring anti-South African dissidents. In Mozambique they interfered with ANC guerrillas and made it plain to those who supported them that they could not do so with impunity. There had also been raids into Zambia and Zimbabwe before negotiations about Namibia's future began to be taken seriously. Even relatively harmless support given to refugees from South Africa in Botswana and Lesotho, neither of which countries had associated themselves with ANC military activities, did not go unpunished.

The South African Defence Force was substantial, mustering about half a million men, of which some 200,000 were actually under arms, and the remainder readily mobilizable. Apart from the regular forces and national servicemen, who made up between them about 100,000, there was a Citizen Force of 50,000 and local militia commandos of similar size. In addition, the South African police amounted to 40,000, with half that number again in reserve. It was essential that the loyalty of those under arms was beyond question, for the real threat to South Africa's security came from within.

The Marxist ANC was not the only black opposition group but it was certainly the most important. Much of its support came from Moscow. It had gained general international standing by both its discipline and its realism. Its military wing, Umklonto we Sizwe, could call on perhaps 10,000 trained guerrilla fighters, and although there were no ANC bases in South Africa itself, it did have within the country far-reaching political support from the black population and had established an underground network. Its guerrilla operations mainly involved industrial sabotage which was directed at targets such as the oil refineries and electrical power stations and grids in Cape Province, Natal and the Orange Free State. There were, however, those in the movement who favoured widening the range of targets to heighten feelings of insecurity among the whites and give pause to Western sources of either investment or participation in South Africa's economy.

Other opposition organizations-from which many defected to join the more powerful and effective ANC — included the South African Youth Revolutionary Council, which had a strong base in Botswana; the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania; and the Azania People's Organization, which had been particularly successful in controlling some of the new black trade unions and disrupting work at a number of international industrial concerns. The ANC were quick to applaud such activities. It regarded trade union action as a crucial force in the struggle for liberation, not least because it was able to engage in this struggle within the law.

Also within the law was the Inkhata, the largest black organization in South Africa, based in Zululand and headed by Chief Kwazulu. Kwazulu, a direct descendant of the great Zulu warrior King Cetewayo, had always been a controversial figure. Indeed to be denounced by Pretoria and the ANC yet remain on constructive speaking terms with both put him firmly in the centre of South African politics. However dangerous this ground might be, it did offer some hope of compromise in adjusting South Africa's constitution so that it corresponded more closely to the racial balance within the country.

Just as moderation and compromise had for the moment won the day in Namibia in the face of opposing extremes, so a comparable course was charted for non-violent change in South Africa itself. Kwazulu's proposals for power-sharing were in essence that the white-administered state of Natal and the neighbouring black homeland of the Zulus should be merged. Although the ANC had not hesitated in 1977 to condemn Kwazulu's acceptance of limited self-government, they found his new proposals more difficult to reject. Indeed they recognized that while urban black support for the ANC was still far greater than for Inkhata, an increasing number of ANC militants were joining Inkhata because, in their own words, 'It was the legitimate offspring of the ANC. Implementing Kwazulu's proposals for Natal, with their emphasis on black power-sharing, might well be a preferable course of action to a war of liberation. No matter how wide the support for military action might be within the ANC itself and among young blacks elsewhere, fighting a full-scale war against the whites at that time could only result in a very large number of black deaths, further repression and continued white supremacy and apartheid for another generation.

However reasonable Kwazulu's proposals might be and however much the ANC might be prepared to wait and see, no progress towards reform was possible except by the ruling National Party itself. But in the elections of the early 1980s, the National Party had not received a mandate for reform. Indeed, the far more extreme Herstigte National Party had gained support although it had won no seats in parliament. Yet within the country there was a growing body of liberal support for a programme of gradual reform. It was because of this, together with South African undertakings to open a 'new chapter' of relations with the United States (which would bring great economic benefits to South Africa), that the Prime Minister determined to embark on a programme of reform in 1983. There were other reasons for not leaving it any later. He wished to exploit what goodwill might be forthcoming from the valuable progress that had been made over Namibia. He was also conscious that by the end of the century the white South African population could not possibly provide all the skilled workers that would be needed. Above all, the Prime. Minister wished to avoid conflict.

He reconciled himself to the creation of a black middle class by training and education to fill higher posts in industry and government, to decentralized regional development to enhance the prosperity of the homelands, and to granting more political representation to non-whites in order to start a process of co-operation and consultation that would at length lead to responsible power-sharing. In this mood, he was at least prepared to consider what Chief Kwazulu had to propose. It was unfortunate that the Prime Minister's programme of Verligtheid, which could have led to genuine liberalism, was interrupted by the outbreak of war. The restraint so admirably exercised by the Arab states towards Israel was not displayed by the black front-line states in their actions against the Republic of South Africa. When war broke out the armies of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana, together with a largely SWAPO and Angolan force launched from Namibia, simultaneously invaded South Africa.[23]

Their unwillingness to forgo an advantage put back a solution to the injustices of apartheid many years, and the solution when it came was accompanied by violence.

Violence was no stranger to the African scene, as we shall see if we examine what was happening elsewhere during the early 1980s. Much of this violence had occurred because Libya had attempted to set up a Saharan hegemony to incorporate Chad, Niger and the Sudan, and even to link up with Ethiopia, so that Egypt could be encircled and isolated. Fortunately for Libya, and indeed for that part of Africa as a whole, things did not develop exactly as the Libyan leadership had planned. In the first years of the 1980s, however, if revolutionary zeal, large oil revenues, weak, irresolute or distracted neighbours and unlimited arms supplies from the Soviet Union could be said to be the right ingredients for indulging insatiable ambition, Libya was clearly on to a good thing. Chad had an army of three infantry battalions and a few guns and mortars; Niger had an even smaller army, but was still rich in uranium; Sudan, it was true, had respectably sized armed forces, but many of them were deployed in the troublesome southern areas of the country and to the east near the border with Ethiopia, both to maintain security there and to keep an eye on Eritrean guerrillas. In any event, Sudan's 250 tanks and forty combat aircraft looked puny enough compared with Libya's estimated strength of 3,000 tanks and over 400 MiGs and Mirages. Moreover the air mobility lent to Libya's twenty-five battalions of infantry, Pan-African Legion and Moslem Youth by the transport squadrons of Hercules aircraft and over 100 troop-lifting helicopters would make easy the concentration of superior forces against Sudan.

Libya had soon recovered from the temporary setback in Chad at the beginning of 1982 when the OAU peacekeeping force had replaced its own troops there. The Libyan regime persuaded those who controlled the principal Arab tribes in Chad to form an uneasy alliance with the leader of the main rebel forces in the eastern provinces near the Sudanese frontier. Thus with two of the three private armies on its side, Libya was still able to deploy some of its own troops at Abeche and continue to harass the Sudanese, all with a view to subverting the rule of Sudan's President. This subversion was directed not only from Chad but also from Ethiopia. To the west of Chad, Libya's sponsorship of the Tuaregs had resulted in continued fighting between its so-called Islam legions and Niger's small army.

All these manoeuvrings, designed to isolate Egypt and create Libyan hegemony over the Sahara, were brought to an end in 1983 as a result of action against Libya by Egypt itself which removed the Libyan military regime once and for all. The effect of its fall was generally beneficial. Libyan troops, who had not relished the experience or the prospect of being hideously and agonizingly mutilated by the savage tribesmen of Niger and Chad, were allowed to return home to the far more agreeable duties of garrisoning their own country. The Sudan-Chad border quarrels were patched up and the border itself policed by OAU patrols. Niger settled down under its military ruler, looking to Algeria and France for further assistance both with its security and its economy — indeed Libya's interference there had facilitated some degree of rapprochement between these two countries. Sudan was able to concentrate more on its internal difficulties in the south, while keeping an eye on the activities of Ethiopia and further cementing good relations with Egypt. Somalia's position was strengthened, while the Egyptian-Libyan axis, as we have seen in the last chapter, helped to give great impetus to growing Arab unity and a peaceful settlement in Palestine.

The great game between the superpowers of reassuring both their friends and themselves that they could be relied upon in times of danger or tension was still much in evidence in Africa during 1983. The continuing exercises by the US Rapid Deployment Force were of some comfort to Somalia and Sudan and were answered by comparable Soviet manoeuvres in South Yemen and Ethiopia. Much more serious was the Soviet build-up of arms and advisers in Mozambique, Botswana and Angola; indeed support for the latter was so extensive that some of it was clearly destined for Namibia. By 1984 there were some 10,00 °Cubans in Mozambique together with increased numbers of Soviet and East German advisers. Botswana had contented itself with accepting technical and tactical experts from these two countries to help with the training of its own gradually expanding army, but it had also established in the north-east a number of training camps for ANC guerrillas who were being equipped with Soviet-supplied small arms, rocket launchers and mortars, together with hand-held SAM. In Angola the number of Cubans and East Germans had roughly doubled. Apart from their traditional tasks of manning sophisticated equipment and training the Angolan armed forces, they were now also involved in welding a large number of former SWAPO guerrillas, who had taken refuge in Angola after the Namibian independence negotiations got under way, into an all-arms force of roughly brigade size for future use in Namibia. These ominous advances in the front-line states' conventional and guerrilla capability — coming as they did at a time when the National Party in South Africa was running into more difficulties with its reform programme and ANC industrial sabotage was on the increase — did not augur well for southern Africa.

Zimbabwe, on the other hand — and this was consistent with its positive initiatives over Namibia — remained ambivalent in its attitude towards the Soviet Union. There were perhaps two reasons for this. One was the closer economic ties which Zimbabwe continued to seek with the West; the other was its association with China. China was willing to back any movement that would advance the struggle against apartheid, yet at the same time it wished to check Soviet influence in southern Africa generally. Quite apart from its special relationship with Zimbabwe, China was also on friendly terms with Mozambique and Angola, offering them limited aid and exploiting the inevitable frustrations and restrictions caused by the Soviet and East German presence in the two countries. In Zambia and Tanzania, too, China was able to build on earlier friendly co-operation, while in Namibia it gave strong support to Western initiatives to bring about a settlement. Despite all China's friendliness, however, Soviet influence in southern Africa's black states remained paramount.

The same could not be said of west Africa. In 1981 Equatorial Guinea had rebuffed the Soviet Union's attempts to reinforce its footholds there and had, moreover, invited the country's former colonizers, Spain, to return and help with the re-organization of the army, the economy and constitution. The USSR had suffered comparable setbacks in two former Portuguese colonies, Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands. France, meanwhile, felt able to swallow some of its socialist-inspired disapproval for the more despotic behaviour of dictatorships in French-speaking west Africa and pledged continued military and economic assistance to the Ivory Coast and the Central African Republic. Perhaps the most encouraging developments of all had been those in the western Sahara. The withdrawal of Libyan aid to the Polisario, continued Saudi Arabian economic props for Morocco, and the OAU's refusal to recognize the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic, all made for compromise, and a solution was at last agreed during 1983 between Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, and the Polisario itself. The idea of a separate and independent Saharan state was abandoned, or at any rate postponed. Instead, federation with Mauritania of much of the disputed territory won the day.

Nigeria and Zaire were two other countries in Africa where Western anxiety for moderation and cohesion did much to reconcile them to the necessary price that had to be paid — substantial foreign loans to these countries. Nigeria's problem was one of reduced oil exports and thus revenues. This made the import of sufficient food, which constituted more than half of all imports, very difficult. A reduction in imports had in the past inflated prices disastrously. It was essential for the civilian government's success in the 1983 elections that there should be neither food shortages nor crises over prices. Its broad programme for alleviating these difficulties was a conventional one — cuts in government spending, delay in satisfying creditors abroad, general austerity in federal and state allowances, abandonment of new projects. These measures alone were not sufficient, but combined with sensible progress towards a sound oil policy and proper loan guarantees they did much to make possible the necessary borrowing on the international market.

Zaire's political instability arose not only from the need for international monetary credit — indeed this need had been temporarily taken care of by the enormous IMF grant of $1 billion spread over three years. It had arisen from dissatisfaction with the former President's tyrannical methods and his inability to cure the unrest in Shaba and, worse, in Kivu where the Parti Revolutionnaire Populaire pursued its guerrilla campaign against central authority. The new President, however, was able to reassure both the President of France and Belgium's Prime Minister to the extent that they felt able to cooperate more fully both militarily and economically.

Thus, as the United States and the Soviet Union moved towards war during the latter part of 1984 and the early months of 1985, the greatest danger of this war's being waged by proxy in Africa was not in the Arab countries of the north-east, nor in the Sahara, nor west Africa, not even in the relatively stable centre and east. It was in the Horn of Africa and in the south. In the event, as we saw in chapter 17, the Horn of Africa was partly neutralized by the astonishing speed and force with which the United States and its allies strengthened their position in Egypt, the Red Sea and the Gulf. South Yemen was contained by naval action, and by powerful deterrence from North Yemen and Oman. In a similar way Ethiopia was contained by United States military reinforcement of Somalia and Sudan. The fighting in southern Africa, however, was prolonged and savage. It has been described in some detail in a previous book[24] and it is not intended to reiterate here either an account of the military operations or of the gradual withdrawal of black African forces and ANC guerrillas from South Africa. Nor need we concern ourselves with the immense United Nations activities which dealt with the problems of relief, reconstruction and repatriation, although it should be noted that the Cubans, the East Germans and what remained of the Soviet advisers were repatriated, in many cases after lengthy hospitality from South African 'camps' which made the treatment they were subjected to by their own countrymen, when they did return, less disagreeable than it might otherwise have been. What does command our attention now is the effect that war in southern Africa had on the central problem itself- the future of the Republic of South Africa.

One result of the brief but cataclysmic war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO was that it prolonged, with results whose severity and disruption have yet fully to be seen, the unjust and oppressive regime based on white supremacy in South Africa. It seemed that during the early days of recovery from this last world war, South Africa's leaders — faced with all the pressures for and against reform, some internal, some external — chose to risk the mounting black discontent and violence for the sake of white control. When war came, the activities of the front-line states' armies, together with ANC guerrillas, did little to endear the Afrikaners to their northern neighbours, except in so far that the South African Defence Force's eventual successes in holding on and beating back all invaders strengthened conviction in their own supremacy. Indeed the poor showing of the ANC guerrillas when it came to actual battle reinforced the views of hard-line Afrikaner leaders that they would be able to perpetuate their own political dominance. White control was something they understood and thought they knew how to deal with. The consequences of a programme of reform and reconstruction were not understood and were as a result feared and shunned. There had been ample grounds for misgiving even before the war began. In Namibia constitutional government had been overthrown in 1985 — and SWAPO dictatorship established. In Zimbabwe gradual decline from democratic practices had been more or less completed in the same year; Botswana's greatly enhanced support for both foreign and ANC revolutionary militants had simply ensured the misery of its own people; and Mozambique had seemed helpless in trying to escape from the contradictory grips of communist mercenaries and national resistance movements.

There may have been one or two unexpected dividends in South Africa for those who advocated a policy of gradual reform and power-sharing. One was the revulsion felt by black and white South Africans alike at the indiscriminate bloodlust shown by some of the ANC guerrillas during the transitory and haphazard instances when unarmed civilians were at their mercy. Another was the stand taken by black homeland units, like the Transkeian Defence Force, the Bophuthatswana National Guard and, most notably, by the Inkhata Army, which so furiously and successfully resisted the Cuban and Mozambique attempts to invade the Zulu homelands. Yet examples like this of loyalty to the Republic did little or nothing to reconcile those who had previously questioned the principle of liberal reform to a new initiative for a verligte policy. On the contrary, there was an even greater swing to the verkrampte line advocating the exploitation of South Africa's economic hold in terms of food, transport, technology and goods, over its neighbouring black countries, so creating a kind of buffer between white supremacy and the ANC, and abandoning the reformist schemes that had raised so much hope in the early 1980s.

The policy of black homelands would continue. The so-called independent nation states would continue to be totally dependent on Pretoria financially, economically, administratively. The multi-racial President's Council which had formerly been used as machinery for introducing constitutional reforms, was dismantled. There would be no question of a single, racially-mixed parliament. Ethnic 'self-determination' would be maintained. There was to be no limited franchise system for regional councils and no question of any coloureds or Indians — let alone blacks — in a central legislative body. There was to be a clear division of power between the various racial groups. In short, apartheid was there to stay. Also sprach the Herstigte National Party.

Thus South Africa set itself on the path of blood, violence and revolution. Argument as to the future of that country has inevitably been taken up once more by all those who disagreed: the black front-line states as they begin to recover some degree of political, economic and military cohesion; the ANC in exile, together with all the other black revolutionary movements; the trade unions within South Africa itself; almost all the rest of black Africa with their support in arms, agents and money; the Third World in general. And unless, by the sort of diplomatic activity in the United Nations and elsewhere that made possible a peaceful Middle East solution, a way can be found to put such intolerable pressure on Pretoria that wiser counsels prevail, South Africa will find that the injustices of apartheid are corrected on a far bloodier battlefield than ever it saw during the short-lived Third World War.

Chapter 19: The Far East

The collapse of colonialism in South-East Asia, where three empires, British, French and Dutch, had sprawled untidily over the map, left the area without regional coherence in a clear need for it. The fall of Saigon in 1975, at the end of the second Indochinese war, marked the end of the brief period of American dominance and, apparently, of external intervention. The United States, scarred by the internal divisions caused by the costly and ultimately unsuccessful war in Vietnam, turned with huge relief away from the commitment of American troops on land in South-East Asia towards a purely maritime strategy for the region, based on the islands and island states of the Pacific.

There was a price to pay for this: it was no longer possible to exercise influence over events on land in the area. Governments were toppled or put in place by small, hard, wiry men crossing land frontiers, not by the actions of ships at sea or by unscrewing the nose cones of missiles. This had to be accepted. Domestic politics would stand nothing more. This was not to say that the United States was leaving Asia. Far from it; the US had every intention of remaining a power in the Pacific basin, the fastest growing economic area in the world. America's centre of gravity, however, would henceforward be in North-East Asia, built around the security link with Japan and, as it turned out later, a growing understanding with China. The naval and air bases in the Philippines would still be needed for US maritime strategy. Washington hastened to renew the leases for them. Manila was initially hesitant, not merely to drive a hard bargain but because the waning of American strength and influence was creating a climate of caution. But Vietnamese actions in Indochina soon put an end to regional hopes for stability and the other ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) states pressed the Philippines to sign, to enable the United States to keep a strong military presence in the area. South-East Asia was looking to Washington once more; the countries needed powerful friends again. In January 1979 the new agreements for American use of the Philippine bases were concluded.

It was the men in Hanoi that brought all this about. The North Vietnamese had emerged in heroic guise from the longest and bloodiest war of independence that South-East Asia had seen, unifying a country which now had military power far greater than its neighbours, allied to a fanatical determination to go on using it if need be, regardless of the opposition. In the aftermath of the war the ASEAN hope was that the Vietnamese energies would be channelled into uniting the hitherto divided nation and into rebuilding the war-torn economy. The fear was that communist or nationalist fervour would prevail instead, with Hanoi pursuing the aim of controlling the whole of Indochina, the long-held ambition of Ho Chi Minh. And then what? Further into South-East Asia?

The ASEAN leaders put out friendly feelers, making clear their desire for stability and their willingness to encourage and help with economic consolidation. Japan offered economic aid to Hanoi. This was perhaps the best way of drawing Vietnam towards peace and the West and away from the Soviet Union, now Hanoi's principal patron. The United States was unhappy at the idea of rewarding the intransigent in this way, at least so soon, but itself none the less conducted discreet negotiations with Hanoi to pave the way towards normal relations when the wounds had healed a little. Vietnam seemed willing to contemplate this, but all stopped when in November 1978 it concluded a treaty with the Soviet Union and shortly afterwards invaded Kampuchea (Cambodia), overthrowing the admittedly hateful and genocidal regime of Pol Pot and installing its own puppet, Heng Samrin.

Conflict in South-East Asia had thus broken out again, heavily supported, indeed only made possible, by the military assistance given to Vietnam by the Soviet Union. China, traditionally sensitive to Vietnamese ambitions, soon reacted in support of Pol Pot and in February 1979 briefly invaded Vietnam. While this attack certainly exposed China's military inadequacies, not least to Peking, it none the less imposed great costs on Hanoi, drawing a large part of Vietnamese military strength northwards to the frontier regions, where it was tied thereafter by the threat of renewed hostilities.

Thailand, faced with the insurgent activities of the ousted Pol Pot supporters spilling over the common border with Kampuchea, turned to the United States for aid and was promptly given military supplies. The ASEAN nations banded together against the Vietnamese and Soviet expansionism and turned to the world outside for support and in particular for help with the flood of refugees that had begun to pour out of Indochina. Most of all they looked to Washington, as the power in the area best able to counter the military strength of the Soviet Union. Thus the United States became once more politically involved in the region, only a few short years after leaving Vietnam. This time it was not for the containment of China, the original focus of US South-East Asian commitments. Rapprochement with Peking had removed the need for that. Now it was Soviet military activity and expansion that had to be checked. Soviet policies in South-East Asia were all of a piece with its activities elsewhere in the Third World — assertive, opportunist, anti-Western, anti-Chinese; in short, pro-Soviet and with a traditionally Russian flavour to boot.

ASEAN, the association which brought together Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, had for long been the most promising grouping yet seen in the region, though its purposes were primarily political and economic. Each of the members had its own security problems or preoccupations, some of them severe, but they were of a separate nature. Collectively they did not recognize any external threat to their security and since there was no consensus on security, nor apparently any particular urgency, there was no security structure in ASEAN.

The area ASEAN covered had some strategic significance, however, not only for the energy sources and raw materials it contained, but for its importance as a waterway. Among the hundred or so ships that were passing through the Malacca Strait daily in the early 1980s were those that carried the bulk of Japan's imports of oil and iron ore. For the United States and for the Soviet Union the waterway was important as the passage between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Access to trade with the region and the preservation of stability to enable this to continue seemed to offer a common interest to all the powers, and the Soviet Union in particular was at pains in the later 1970s to woo the ASEAN states — after initially being ill-disposed to recognize the organization — and to seek closer links. For a time Moscow touted a proposal for an Asian Collective Security Pact, but since this was transparently aimed at opposing China it found no takers in an area conscious that it had to find some way of getting along with that huge and unpredictable country. Yet the Soviet Union was also determined to support Vietnam and the two policies were not compatible.

ASEAN drew away from the Soviet Union, sharply so after the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea, and some of its members began to forge closer links with China. The Soviet Union became isolated in Asia, its only allies being Vietnam and a North Korea that was careful to maintain links with China as well. Soviet forces did, however, reap the benefit of the support for Hanoi, in the form of air and naval bases in Vietnam. The Soviet navy began to make use of Cam Ranh Bay in particular, admirably placed halfway between the Far East Fleet and the Soviet naval force in the Indian Ocean, and affording surveillance over the activities of the US Seventh Fleet in the south Pacific.

It was almost inevitable that ASEAN would, under the new circumstances that were unfolding, pay more attention to security concerns. By 1980 the military expenditures of the member states had risen to $5.47 billion, 45 per cent more than the year before and a near doubling compared with 1975. Thailand, dangerously close to Vietnamese military activity in Kampuchea, was already devoting 20 per cent of its budget to military purposes. All were buying modern weapons, with Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand acquiring new tanks, indicating a readiness to resist any incursions by Vietnam. An interesting feature was the growing adoption of American weapons. All the countries operated one model or another of the F-5 Tiger fighter and the A-4 Skyhawk fighter-bomber. The US M-16 assault rifle was the standardized personal arm. American military advisers were in many countries, and ASEAN officers trained in hundreds in the United States. American military aid to ASEAN members went up by 250 per cent to some $7.5 million in the five years up to 1980 and was to more than double in the four years after that.

There were military links with other countries too. Indonesia, as an island chain, concentrated largely on sea and air forces, buying in 1980 three missile corvettes from the Netherlands, four missile ships from South Korea and two submarines from West Germany, together with fighter aircraft from Britain as well as from the United States. Malaysia bought frigates from Germany and mine counter-measures vessels from Italy. Military facilities were expanded too, notably in Malaysia. A new air base was built in Kelantan state, facing the Gulf of Siam, which became operative in 1983. A new naval port was also built in Perak state on the Strait of Malacca, which opened in 1984.

So ASEAN military strength grew with the heightened awareness of the need for it, and with this the transformation towards a military grouping slowly developed. Staff talks, with shared exercises and intelligence, paved the way militarily. Thailand, most threatened, and Singapore, most conservative and realistic, led the way politically, with Malaysia coming along more slowly. Indonesia had a special reluctance to draw nearer to China, remembering past Chinese involvement in the activities of the Indonesian Communist Party — which were, it must be said, brutally put down. But no country was quite sure about Chinese aims; after all, Peking would not renounce support for communist elements in South-East Asia despite its wish to be on good terms with governments. As an overtly communist state aspiring to the leadership of the Third World, perhaps such a renunciation was simply not thinkable to the ideologically pure in Peking, even if their more pragmatic colleagues saw that other things were much more important for the time being.

By early 1985, ASEAN, after feeling its way for some time, had become a reluctant but none the less real military alliance. The struggle in Indochina had in the meantime been continuing, with various insurgent factions managing to survive, even to prosper, on the strength of arms and other help reaching them from China via Thailand. Vietnam had something like 250,000 men tied down by Kampuchean guerrillas and more men were occupied trying to maintain control of Laos, where again China was giving active help. There were constant clashes with Chinese troops along the common border, which suited Peking very well since it locked up large numbers of the best Vietnamese troops and prevented them from being used against the Kampucheans and Laotians.

In short, Vietnam was bogged down. The economic strain was huge and Moscow, angry at Hanoi's total unwillingness not only to listen to advice but even to accept that it might be needed, began to keep it on short supplies as a means of applying leverage. Military material was carefully rationed on one excuse or another; spare parts for the almost entirely Soviet-made equipment were limited and slow in arriving. The Soviet Union had become disenchanted with the lack of success of the South-East Asian venture and was alarmed at the way ASEAN had now banded itself together in open opposition. It is possible, just possible, that Soviet pressure might eventually have forced some compromise or change of course on Hanoi, on the hard-faced leadership there which had known no other life but that of armed struggle to attain its own ends. But war now broke out in Europe. Soviet supplies almost instantly dried up; Soviet forces left; the ships in Cam Ranh Bay scurried off. The whole political scene changed dramatically.

When war came to Europe, the nations in Asia were immediately fearful that it would come there too, for surely the conflict would spread around the world. American and Soviet warships both put to sea at once. Merchant vessels made for the nearest safe port. Defences everywhere went on the alert. Diplomats worked feverishly. Nobody knew quite what to expect. They simply feared the worst, as people will.

The Soviet Union faced the most difficult problems. Though Europe was the primary theatre, the vital one in which the war against the Western Alliance would be won or lost, the Soviet Union had to remain fully on guard in Asia too. There it was confronted by China, an implacable enemy whose military strength had steadily been improving. Chinese weapon systems and formations were no match for those of the Soviet forces but their numbers were huge. The Soviet Union, accustomed to using men in mass, found it profoundly disturbing to face vastly superior masses. The thinly populated Soviet Far Eastern territories were vulnerable to long-term Chinese expansionism and Moscow was not a little aware of the political and cultural appeal that China might exert, if things went badly for the Soviet Union, on the peoples of the Soviet Asian republics.

Soviet foreign policy in Asia had long been dominated by the need to contain China. Since 1969 strong forces had been built up along the 4,000-mile border, amounting to almost a quarter of the Red Army, around fifty divisions in all. They were there simply to defend the border, to prevent China from altering it by force (it was disputed in many places) and to see that if fighting did break out the Soviet Union would get the better of it. There was no intention of using them to mount an invasion of China: that would be to fight the way Peking wanted it. The Chinese would welcome the chance to draw an attacker deep into their often brutally inhospitable country and then wear him down with an inexhaustible supply of hardy defenders. That was not Moscow's idea at all.

There was the United States to worry about as well. The US Seventh Fleet had recovered considerably from a low point after the Vietnam war and had now built up its strength once more. It had the advantage of being able to operate from forward bases in the western Pacific, giving it a flexibility that the Soviet Pacific Fleet with its own limited bases and virtually no allies did not have. The new US Trident II submarines were now able to operate from waters near the US west coast, forcing Soviet attack submarines to deploy over considerable distances to try to counter them. The United States also had allies, notably Japan, whose forces were now quite strong.

It was very much the fault of the Soviet Union that Japan had in the late 1970s and early 1980s begun to change its security policy. As Soviet military strength in the Far East increased it was impossible in Japan to ignore its presence. Soviet garrisons were built up in the Northern Islands which Japan claimed as her own; Soviet aircraft infringed Japanese airspace; Soviet naval activity was prominent. Overt Soviet support for Vietnam and markedly insensitive Soviet diplomacy towards Tokyo in the wake of the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty of August 1978, an obvious sign of displeasure, created in Japan a distinct awareness that the world around it was no longer benign. Public consent for an increase in defence spending, so grudgingly given in the past, slowly emerged. A programme of modernization was started, notably in the maritime and air self-defence forces, which quickly picked up speed, aided by the ability of Japanese industry to deliver the goods. A sense of nationalism, of being under threat, began to take over. As always in Japan, when a consensus had been formed, change was swift. The maritime self-defence force acquired an anti-ship capacity and took over sea control of the Sea of Japan and out into the open sea lanes, freeing the US Navy for offensive tasks. The air self-defence force, re-equipped with F-15 Eagle interceptors and with new air-to-surface and air-to-air missiles, and with AWACS and new radars as well, was able to take over the defence of Japanese airspace and give support to naval vessels. Again, US aircraft were freed for offensive tasks.

By late 1984, when acute East-West tensions were inexorably leading to world war, the strategic setting in Asia was not at all in the Soviet favour, despite her own force expansion. While the Soviet leaders could feel with some reason that events in the Middle East and Africa were moving their way and could feel confident about the outcome of a war in Europe, about Asia they had real doubts. Soviet strategy was therefore plain: try to keep the region quiet. China and Japan must be persuaded that it was in their interest to keep out of any war between the Soviet Union and the United States. If that did not prove to be possible, China would have to be contained until the war in Europe was won. It could then be dealt with, and harshly. But at all costs there must be no war on two fronts.

Moscow was, on the other hand, more than happy to have the United States involved in such a difficulty. At some quite early point in 1985 — just when is not quite clear — a Soviet emissary went to North Korea to press the leadership there to be ready to take, at the least, some military action against the South, at best to launch a full-scale war at the right moment. The idea was an ingenious one. It would draw US forces to Korea, men who might otherwise go to the Gulf or Europe. The US Navy would have to get their equipment there, which would hamper its operations in the Indian Ocean. A large number of US aircraft would be tied down in Korea and Japan. As a bonus it would present China with a dilemma: should it give help to North Korea, a communist state and an old ally, but at the cost of opposing the United States and thus indirectly aiding the Soviet Union; or refuse help, in which case North Korea would become a Soviet client? Japan, too, would have to decide whether to allow the United States unfettered use of bases in Japan. If it did and China helped North Korea, that would set Japan and China at odds with each other, which would be good for the Soviet Union. If Japan refused to allow use of the bases this would cripple US support of South Korea and split the United States and Japan. All in all, the Soviet Union had much to gain if trouble could be started in the Korean peninsula.

Peking, however, had highly-placed friends in Pyongyang, where reasons of ideology and personal ambition promoted factions that gave their support, open or hidden, either to the Soviet Union or China and not always consistently at that. The Chinese leaders got wind of the initiative and had no intention of allowing events to develop as Moscow planned. A very senior member of the Politburo and, just as important, the Deputy Chairman (a general) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee's Military Affairs Committee (the supreme military command) went with him. Quietly but very firmly the North Koreans were told that if they started a war at this particular juncture there would be no Chinese 'volunteers' this time; they would be on their own.[25] Both knew there would be no Soviet assistance beyond a few weapons; Soviet troops would be too busy looking after their own security on the Chinese border and elsewhere.

This blunt warning, impressed not only on the politicians in Pyongyang but also on the North Korean generals, many of them known personally to the Chinese general from the Military Affairs Committee through their service together in the Korean War of 1950-3, seems to have gone home. At all events, North Korea did very little when the time came, mounting just a few minor raids. The North was clearly not going to risk the enmity of a growing China, just as China was not going to risk having Pyongyang fall into unfriendly hands; North Korean territory was too close to Manchuria for that. Perhaps also the North thought the time was not appropriate anyway; after all, the emissaries had been careful during the talks not to rule out action later on, when circumstances might be more suitable. Better wait and see how the Soviets got on first.

The raids, principally with light naval units, did cause the Americans and the Japanese some alarm since it was not quite clear at the time whether they presaged something bigger. The South Koreans, of course, mobilized completely and appealed to Washington, describing the threat in their usual rather dramatic terms. Washington was not so sure about things, but did send two fighter squadrons, to comfort Tokyo. Preparations were made to move some ground forces to the peninsula but the Soviet Union collapsed before they arrived and the men were in the event sent instead to Vladivostok to supervise the surrender of some of the Soviet forces in the Far East.

Just as the Soviet Union wanted to avoid full-scale war in Asia, so did the United States; they both had their hands full elsewhere. China did not want it either, and was not ready for it unless the Soviet Union emerged from the war very much weaker, in which case China might well be tempted into taking advantage, in the Marxist jargon, of the new correlation of forces. Japan did not want war at all, despite its new foreign policy direction. To its relief it saw the danger approach and then happily recede, though it’s new strength left it able to throw useful weight into the Western side of the scale had it been needed. Japan also took the opportunity later of profiting from the Soviet fall.

Asia, then, saw much tension but no global East-West war. What fighting there was largely took place out in the Pacific and something of this has already been described in Chapter 13. The Soviet Pacific Fleet had put to sea, under the guise of one of its regular exercises, before fighting in Europe erupted. It was shadowed by American and Japanese warships and aircraft, and the submarines of both sides stalked each other. Soviet aircraft maintained their usual surveillance over south China and Soviet ships were active in and around Vietnamese waters. But that was before the war in Europe started. When it did start they all left. Vietnam would have to look after itself for a while. There were naval actions between Soviet and US naval units but not many. Perhaps the war went too fast for that; both navies had intense preoccupations in other theatres. Japanese ships were involved in one minor action, when a Japanese escort group north of the Tsushima Islands was fired on by an unidentified fast-patrol boat, later known to have been part of a small North Korean force returning from a lightning raid on Pusan in South Korea. The missile — a Styx — was intercepted and the Japanese destroyer, commanded by one Captain Noda, a lively and aggressive officer, fired back with one of the new Japanese-built missiles. Like many another piece of Japanese equipment, it worked splendidly. The radar showed a hit and the target disappeared. This was the first shot fired in action by the maritime self-defence force and, as it turned out, the only one of the war.

In the Korean peninsula nothing much happened, despite the heavy concentration of troops there. The North Korean decision to pay more attention to Peking than to Moscow proved a canny one, and its minor forays produced little more than defensive actions by South Korean forces, who were discouraged by the United States from any wish they might have had to upgrade the fighting. While Seoul and Washington had both heard of the warning given by China to the North (through confidential information gleaned at the time by the US Ambassador in Peking) they were aware that the Chinese attitude might well be different if major war were launched by the South.

So the clash between East and West did not spread to Asia as the countries of the region had feared. But that did not mean that nothing.happened there. Far from it: a lot of what might be called tidying up went on. The breakdown of authority in the Soviet Union provided a heaven-sent (so to speak) opportunity for putting right a few wrongs and settling old scores.

The first of these was in Indochina. The drawn-out struggle there had been going badly for Hanoi, as has already been described. Soviet supplies had been thinning out and when the war in Europe started they stopped altogether. The Soviet advisers, who had already concentrated in Haiphong for their annual indoctrination and conference found themselves conveniently placed to leave for a safer place on 3 August. It is thought that they did this on the Ivan Rogov, the large amphibious ship usually stationed there. The Ivan Rogov was sunk a few days later, along with one of its escorts, by a US attack submarine. The submarine's elated skipper, Commander David Redfern, had long been waiting for such an opportunity and had worked hard for it, helped, it must be said, by a patient patrol aircraft working with him, which unfortunately did not survive the action.

In Peking the Politburo and the Military Affairs Committee had been in almost continuous session since early August. Daily they had argued, often heatedly, over the merits of a variety of actions that might extract some profit from the war between the superpowers. They had discussed what could be done to encourage the Kazakh unrest in the Soviet Union, of which they were getting news, not least from the Kazakhs on their own side of the border. They decided eventually to order large-scale military exercises on the border, but that was not until Kazakhstan had seceded from the Soviet Union after the destruction of Minsk by nuclear attack on 20 August. Manoeuvres were ordered at the same time, on the border with Uzbekistan, in both cases to dissuade the Soviet Union from launching punitive action. Exercises on a smaller scale were also set in train in Manchuria, but with caution. The Chinese were conscious of their military weakness, in Manchuria above all. They decided on a course of prudence, to wait and see what events brought. In relation to Mongolia, however, they thought it worthwhile to send some very tough messages, making it distinctly clear that the time had come, in their view, for the Mongolian leaders to invite the Soviet divisions there to go home. If they did not, it was gently hinted, life might later prove very uncomfortable indeed for those leaders when the Sinic peoples inevitably drew together again.

Vietnam seemed to offer a more immediate chance of doing something that would be to Chinese advantage. Mei Feng, the aged but experienced Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, had no doubts. China had learned from the abortive invasion in 1979. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) was in much better shape now, but the Vietnamese were not. Mei Feng's view was that Chinese forces should go in, and this time as far as Hanoi. Once they were in control there, the Soviet Union would be unable to dislodge them, even if it won the war. The rainy season should not deter them; it would hinder the enemy aircraft and armour but the Chinese soldiers could manage all right, they would take to it like Peking ducks to water.

Mei Feng's counsel prevailed. A Chinese attack on Vietnam, long prepared and needing only the signal, was launched on 19 August, with the PLA itching to show the results of the change of leadership, training and tactics that had gone right through the Chinese Main Force divisions since 1979. The invasion, for that is what it was, followed something like the pattern of February 1979, for the PLA was still tied to some extent to its old thought processes and beliefs, except that forces went in through Laos as well. The aim of this was to split the defenders and force them to divide their resources among a number of fronts, any one of which could develop into something bigger. And, of course, messages had gone out to the Laotian insurgents, with whom Chinese 'advisers' had been working, and to the various factions fighting the Vietnamese in Kampuchea. It was not a model of co-ordination but under the conditions of insurgent fighting in the jungles this was hardly to be expected. The transistor radios carried by guerrilla groups crackled out the message that China had attacked and within a day or two all the various fronts, if such a term can be applied to actions varying from ambushes to divisional attacks, burst into life.

This time the PLA made rapid progress at the outset. It seems that something like twelve divisions were used in the opening assault, which was launched against the fortified Vietnamese positions and defences along the length of the border and through the jungles of Laos as well. Then the attack bogged down for a time as the regular Vietnamese formations moved in to support the largely local defences that the PLA had broken through at considerable cost. By this time Birmingham and Minsk had been destroyed followed by the swift crumbling of the Soviet empire. Some sort of description of these events would have gone out on Chinese radio, though it may not have meant very much to the wet and weary peasants who formed the bulk of those fighting on both sides in Vietnam. The news spread like wildfire through Hanoi, though, as it did through the cities of ASEAN. The men in the Vietnamese front line — and the women too, since they shared in the fighting that had occupied most of their disturbed lives — may not have taken much notice of the news, but the Vietnamese leaders certainly did. The pro-Peking faction which had always existed under the surface began to show itself, as personal survival came to depend again on backing the right horse. Now there was clearly only one horse to back, for the time being at least. And the sooner the bet was placed the better.

The Vietnamese Politburo had no doubt been in session all this time but it has recently become clear that the hard-liners who had held power for some years, since the conclusion of the treaty with the Soviet Union in 1978, had slowly been losing it. Ample accounts have come out via Peking of the activities of the pro-Chinese elements in the Vietnamese leadership, subdued for some years but never absent. Now, it seems, their influence began to be exerted, first among the few southerners still in responsible positions, then among the military. The battle was going badly and, of course, all hope of Soviet support was lost. There was a coup, aided, it is thought, by a 'heart attack' or two — a terminal illness when caused by a bullet in the right place. Within days negotiations with China were taking place through intermediaries, almost all of whom were pro-Peking Vietnamese returned from exile.

As is now known, the fighting stopped when the PLA was on the point of breaking through at Lang Son and Quang Ninh, ready for a drive with fresh divisions astride Routes 1 and 18 towards Hanoi and Haiphong. A new government was installed — or installed itself, as is the way in such circumstances — and a formal ceasefire was concluded shortly afterwards. This was not all plain sailing; China not only wished to see the Vietnamese divisions totally disarmed but also to see them hand over their equipment to the PLA at once. Peking made it clear, too, that Vietnamese forces were to withdraw from Kampuchea and Laos. The new administration in Hanoi was more than happy to agree to most of this but wanted it done in an orderly fashion, handing over to responsible elements. The hand-over of weapons posed a problem but this was solved by allowing Vietnamese forces to retain certain of them, to enable the new leaders to secure their position against disgruntled pro-Moscow dissidents. Heavy equipment was centralized under Chinese guard and later moved to China by the PLA, though some weapons in the south of the country undoubtedly fell into the eager hands of groups in Kampuchea. A provisional government was set up in Kampuchea, from factions broadly acceptable both to China and to the ASEAN states, and at ASEAN instigation a conference was called (which did not meet for some months because of disagreement over who the potential leaders of a new regime would be) to nominate a new government that would have international backing.

So ended what was, from the Chinese point of view, a satisfactory interlude. Militarily a little messy, it was politically uncomplicated, neatly achieving the aim of removing Soviet influence from Vietnam. It produced a government there that was, on the face of it, likely to be in harmony with Peking, at least for the time being. Since there had been friction between Vietnam and China for 1,000 years, erupting into conflict from time to time, it was perhaps too much to expect harmony in a few short weeks — or to expect it to last. The ASEAN states were relieved at the changes, since the new men in Hanoi promised to turn to peaceful activities. And as we write in 1987, so it has turned out. There has been stability, even in Kampuchea, helped, fortunately, by some good harvests and generous aid from around the world. Perhaps this will endure and the example of the prosperity of the states in the Pacific basin spread to the whole of South-East Asia. One can but hope so. The signs are fairly good.

When Peking decided to use force in Vietnam, the war in Europe had not reached its climax and the Soviet regime had not fallen. The moment this happened, the Chinese leaders had plenty on their minds besides disciplining Hanoi.

Their simplest problem turned out to be that of Mongolia. Messages had been sent to the leaders in Ulan Bator and others now followed, telling them that they should regard themselves from that point on as being under Chinese protection. Soviet forces should therefore surrender. They had in fact already gone, though under whose orders is still not quite clear. The divisions apparently went in good order, taking all of their arms and equipment with them. This, of course, was not quite what Peking had in mind but they were in no position then to influence the situation. The Mongolian Government sent fraternal messages to China pledging its allegiance, though not at once, for these matters take a little time.

It is not yet clear whether there were leadership reshuffles on any scale in Ulan Bator, though some of the men formerly in charge have not been seen since. At any rate, to strengthen the durability of Mongolia's allegiance, China sent an intimation to its leaders that Mongolian defences would be bolstered, against whatever ills there might be around, by a PLA garrison. More precisely, it was requested that the barracks vacated by the three Soviet divisions should be occupied by three PLA Main Force divisions. 'Would the Mongolian Government be so kind as to make them ready.' This was, of course, done at once, since it would have been impolitic to do otherwise. Some time later, the Mongolian leaders went to Peking and were feted. To nobody's particular surprise they agreed that Mongolia's destiny lay with China, that it was, indeed had always been, a part of China. So was the Autonomous Region of Mongolia formed. Another bit of 'tidying up' had been successfully completed.

But this is to run ahead a little. The dramatic events of late August 1985 did not always lead to such readily acceptable solutions. When the Government in Moscow was toppled, Washington was diplomatically very active around the world. The American ambassadors in the various Asian capitals were kept fully informed all along, of course, and normally provided the local governments with the fastest, sometimes the only, news of what was happening. The US Ambassador in Peking had kept his eye on what was going on in Vietnam, with which he broadly agreed but about which he could have done nothing if he had not, and he had intimated to the Chairman that Washington would quite understand if China had certain ambitions for Mongolia. This was by way of a sweetener, because he also made it clear that the surrender of the Soviet forces in the Far East, which he confidently expected any day, would be handled by the United States. It was, after all, the United States that had been at war. China had no standing in the matter, so to speak, 'but its interests would naturally be carefully safeguarded in whatever arrangements were made'.

Similarly, the US Ambassador in Tokyo carefully let loose the offhand remark that he imagined Japan would have views about the Northern Islands, but if so he would rather not know about them, at least not officially. He conveyed the message that the US troops that had been on their way to Korea would, in all probability, now be diverted to the Vladivostok area, to accept the surrender of Soviet forces there. The timing of this was, however, a little uncertain and he formally asked, under the terms of the Japan-US Security Treaty, for agreement to their staging in Japan if need be.

The hint about the islands fell on receptive ears. The Northern Territories — four islands close to the east coast of Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands — were claimed by Japan as its territory but had been occupied by the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Soviet garrisons were installed there then and substantially built up in the early 1980s. Japan badly wanted them back, but the Soviet Union was totally unyielding; Moscow was not and never had been in the business of returning territories it had acquired. The issue united all Japanese; even the mildest section of the press was fiercely nationalistic about the islands.

The Cabinet in Tokyo had naturally been watching matters closely. Whatever arguments there might be about the Soviet title to the islands (and there were unresolved legal arguments, though not in Japan), Tokyo had no doubt at all that if the Soviet forces vacated them then they would revert to Japan one way or another. Accordingly, Japanese reconnaissance aircraft had been watching the islands closely, and on 22 August, or thereabouts, reported that amphibious landing vessels were leaving them. There were still some guns there and some aircraft, but it seemed as if the Soviet garrison might be moving out.

As we now know, that is indeed what was happening. The unfortunate Soviet commander of the Far Eastern Military District, under whom the garrison came, had been without any coherent orders from Moscow for days. Most of his forces had not been involved in the war so far, the fighting having been essentially confined to the Pacific Fleet and various maritime and other aircraft in support. Marshal P. Y. Pavlovsky was understandably a worried man, not merely because of his unhappy situation but also because he felt that the new men in Moscow would be no friends of his. He clearly could not continue a war by himself — setting aside any question of whether his men, in all the circumstances, would be willing to fight. But he did not care at all for the idea of having, perhaps, to surrender to Chinese forces. Nor would his men. Far better to hand over to the Americans, or even to the Japanese, though that thought did not give him much pleasure either.

It was then that he decided that there were at least some problems that could be solved. He would bring in his outlying garrisons and get them under his own hand. So he gave orders to the divisions in Mongolia to move back into Soviet territory, and for the troops to come back from the Northern Islands. He did not want to have to hand them back to the Japanese forces who would almost certainly arrive before too long.

The return of the Northern Territories did not take long. Before August was out the Japanese self-defence forces were in. It was an emotional occasion. Quite a flotilla went there, with the Japanese Prime Minister on board the flagship (his words hit the headlines: 'Prime Minister Sato Eisaku secured the return of Okinawa; I am deeply honoured that it has fallen to me to secure the return of our Northern Territories'). Garrisons were installed. The Japanese press went wild.[26] There were some murmurings in the corridors of the United Nations about premature, some said 'illegal', acts, but Tokyo was content to deal with that little difficulty some other time. Ambassador Kunihiro in New York would have no problem with that.

But to return to Marshal Pavlovsky, sitting in Headquarters, Far Eastern Military District, at Khabarovsk with a group of officers around him, including the Deputy Commander of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. By now, into the early days of September, some things were beginning to fall into place, others were falling about his ears.

The Marshal had, several days ago, received very clear instructions from the Americans that he was to arrange the surrender of his forces to emissaries who would arrive very soon. In the meantime he was held responsible for their good conduct and so on. The Commander of the Pacific Fleet had also received orders to recall all his ships to Vladivostok, Sovetskaya Gavan, Magadan and Korsakov. These orders had come from the Americans too. Moscow had been told about them and had simply wired back 'Comply'. That was clear enough, no problem there. But was Moscow in charge? And what of? Pavlovsky had also received news that was altogether more unsettling and heady: in Omsk, Colonel General Chervinsky, whose guts he detested but who was, he had grudgingly to admit, a man not without a certain panache, had set himself up as a sort of independent military leader and taken over his area. As far as he could gather this was tolerated by the Americans — fools they must be — perhaps so that he could keep law and order. If he knew Chervinsky he would keep lots of other things as well. All the same, it was an interesting idea.

Pavlovsky had been musing over it for days and had made up his mind; he now had to carry others with him. He would copy Chervinsky. It might not last for long, but it could achieve what he was intent on doing, which was to ensure that the Soviet Far East came under whatever administration the US had in mind, and not under the Chinese. He was quite sure he would have no problems with his staff on that particular point. Much more difficult would be to persuade the Americans to let him keep his weapons. He was chilled at the thought of his forces being disarmed and left facing China and its millions. There was no future in that.

The Marshal was in fact surprisingly successful. Washington had also been wrestling with the problem of how to keep China from demanding all the Soviet equipment. Of course, not all of it was still there; many men had simply left their units, with their own weapons, and gone home. Aircraft had flown off too, to airfields further away from the Chinese. All Soviet soldiers, certainly those of Russian origin, wanted to get away from the Chinese. Two warships had been scuttled and more might be yet; it was hard to put guards on everything. The Americans decided that Pavlovsky could be left with most of his forces for the time being and should operate a sort of military government in the Far Eastern coastal region — a Chervinsky under licence, so to speak. All the heavy equipment and the important naval vessels were under strong American guard, mounted by troops diverted from South Korea. Some of the latest submarines were towed off by the US Navy.

That raised the question — a vital one — of the nuclear warheads with both the ground and air forces in the Far East. The naval ones were less of a problem — it was clear where they were — but the warheads with the ground and air forces were less easily located and accessible. Acutely worrying at the beginning, of course, was the fear of unauthorized nuclear action. Peking sent very urgent signals to Washington and was, it was plain, more than anxious to get hold of warheads itself. In fact this whole question of what was to happen to the Soviet weapons caused great friction with China. The United States was left in no doubt by any of its allies in Asia that they did not want China to get more than a very small proportion of them, and no nuclear weapons. The Chinese readiness to invade Vietnam for the second time had been disturbing. Some weapons the Americans wanted themselves, naturally.

Peking was rebuffed by Washington; China had not been at war, but some conventional weapons would certainly be handed over. In the meantime China had nothing to fear, Soviet forces would be separated from their heavy weapons before their formations were disbanded altogether. Nuclear weapons would be guarded by special US units and later on handed over to the United Nations, to the UN Fissile Materials Recovery Organization (UNIFISMATRECO). Marshal Pavlovsky and the Pacific Fleet staff did in fact work admirably to trace warheads and see that they were handed over.

Soviet soldiers and sailors in the Far East were thus left initially under their own command, to be demilitarized eventually. Pavlovsky, an efficient and tough man, remained in charge even when a civilian administration was slowly formed. He looked balefully at the Chinese and they at him, but his business was essentially with the Allied Demilitarization Commission, made up mostly of Americans. On these China had no more than liaison groups. But the American head of the commission had many a difficult time with the Chinese; their aims and his were not exactly coincident and the strains were evident.

The map of Asia was, as a result of all these events, 'tidied up' a little. Some problems were solved, some were probably merely moved on to the back burner. What would happen in the region in the decades ahead was hard to predict, since it depended in large measure on the policies of a China steadily growing in power and confidence and no longer checked by its Soviet adversary.