410 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



In fact, nuclear weapons, because of this power, have altered this problem 

 in a subtle but major manner which it is easy to overlook but which cannot be 

 ignored. 



We have magnificent military power with which to dominate the ocean, the 

 land, the atmosphere, and nearby space. Nuclear strategic weapons to be de- 

 livered either by manned bombers, intercontinental missiles from launching pads 

 within our land space, or by Polaris missiles from submersibles or other nuclear- 

 powered craft scattered over or in the whole expanse of the world ocean, give 

 us the absolute power with which to obliterate any nation or section of mankind. 



The trouble is that our major power competitor, Russia, has sufficiently close to 

 the same military power that a conflict on this scale between the two would 

 likely obliterate both, and a considerable sector of the rest of mankind as well. 

 Both powers, and the rest of the world (possibly excepting mainland China), 

 undestand this strategic situation and thus these weapons and this military 

 power are effectively neutralized until the final Armageddon. Military seapower 

 can only be used by the United States or Russia in brush-type wars in which the 

 other has not a vital interest or in situations which will not bring about a 

 direct confrontation between these two major powers from which one or the 

 other will not retreat (as did Russia in the Cuban missile incident). 



Thus the power struggle over the control of the ocean in a general, overall 

 strategic sense has slipped subtly away from the grasp of the military for the 

 time being because nobody will let them pull the strategic trigger. The strategic 

 consideration now increasingly becomes the worry that the occupation, through 

 use, of the ocean in an almost peaceful world could quickly be shifted to its 

 control in a less peaceful world, or that it could quietly and imperceptibly lead 

 to an alteration of the iK)wer balance between Russian and us by peaceful eco- 

 nomic means that could become a tactic for our slow strangulation under condi- 

 tions considerably short of major war. 



A probably not very accurate analogy might be drawn from our history of the 

 occupation of the central arid portion of our continent where the settlers so 

 often by occupation and use subtly, or not so subtly, pressed the cattle barons, 

 who had the power and the legal rights, off the land and settlers' rights came to 

 dominate wherever settlers could survive by use and occupation of the land. 



RUSSIA'S USE OP THE OCEAN 



Throughout its entire long history up until after the end of World War II 

 Russia has been almost the epitome of the classical landpower and the very 

 reverse of a seapower. Its ocean frontiers to the north, and seasonally on the 

 northeast and northwest, were icebound. It came late to access to ice-free ports 

 on the Black Sea, and even later to access out into the Mediterranean, through 

 the Dardanelles, and later yet to secure outlet from the Mediterranean into 

 the world ocean. 



Russia in recent years has bent every strength to rectifying this situation. 

 Nothing motivated Stalin more strongly in the last phases of World War II than 

 securing ice-free ports on the Siberian coast and rendering secure access from 

 its own ports to the North Atlantic from the Barents Sea and the Baltic. Only 

 NATO support of its stubborn Scandinavian neighbors to the north and its 

 Greek and Turkish neighbors to the south prevented its domination of these 

 peoples to secure access to the world ocean. It now has effectively gained that 

 access through the strategic neutralization of major military power noted above, 

 although it still labors vigorously to additionally safeguard its egress from the 

 Mediterranean through the Red Sea and through Gibraltar with various activities 

 in North Africa and through the Arab world. 



Very large efforts in science, technology, and economic activity have been, and 

 are being, engaged in by Russia to move out of its landlocked situation into a 

 position where it can fully use the ocean without the consent of any other power 

 and so that, in case of need, it can interdict the use of the ocean by another power 

 sufficiently to serve the Russian purpose. In these efforts it has been most 

 successful to date. 



Heretofore there have been two primary uses of the oecan by man aside from 

 the military use : transportation of things and fishing. Russia was not a major 

 merchant marine operator before the last war, and the United States was. 



I am informed that the Russian merchant marine will exceed the carrying 

 tonnage of the U.S. merchant marine in the near future. Their fleet is new 

 and modern ; ours is even now using large numbers of World War II vessels. 



