The geopolitical position of the Red Sea is of special importance : bordering the eastern coast of Africa and the western coast of the Arabian peninsula, it is a vital route for the transportation of oil through Bab el-Mandeb in the south to the Suez Canal in the north. [...] While the Saudi initiative appeared directed at giving the Red Sea a regional dimension, the evolution of the situation in the Horn of Africa and the progressive strengthening of the Soviet presence around the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb seemed destined to give it a primary importance at the global level in the context of relations between the two superpowers. [...] A few months after the end of the Ogaden war, the physical elimination of the president of the PDRY, Salim Robea Ali, at the end of a rapid and dramatic sequence in which the president of the YAR 6 The Red Sea Setting was also assassinated, brought the more unilaterally pro-Soviet faction of the UPONF to power in Aden. [...] the crucial threat to the Alliance would be neither the destruction of the Arabian wells, nor the disruption and the interruption of supplies, nor the military conquest of the Persian Gulf, but Soviet political control over the region and its oil. [...] By means of the stabilization of the superpowers' naval presence in the area (Haass 1978 : 53-7) , Carter envisaged renouncing the basing of SSBNs in the Indian Ocean with the aim of preventing the establishment of Soviet bases and the expansion of their existing facilities in the area ; undercutting the USSR's activism in Africa ; and ruling out the impending need to create a Fifth Fleet in the I.
- Pages
- 151
- Published in
- Italy
