ABSTRACT
Brief excursions into Lebanon and Grenada notwithstanding, there can be scant disagreement with the contention that events in and around the Indian Ocean have been a dominant factor for the United States (US). Despite blockage of the Suez Canal during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Indian Ocean and its crucial arms, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, remained a strategic backwater insofar as the US was concerned. Unfettered access to ports and airfields throughout the western Indian Ocean and southern Africa, combined with close cooperation from South Africa’s small, but professional navy, appeared to guarantee the security of Western shipping carrying the all-important oil, as well as vital minerals and metals, along the fabled Cape Route. If one stands back from a map of the northwest quadrant of the Indian Ocean, which includes the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, a mosaic of Soviet encirclement begins to take shape.
