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superpower has easier air or land access to a zone of confrontation, 
the best way to reduce that superpower’s temptations to intervene 
locally with military force may well be for the opposing superpower 
to deploy impressive naval forces in the area. The option of the 
distant superpower to build up and then reduce its regional naval 
deployments on an ad hoc basis may be more conducive to tension 
reduction than presumably symmetrical naval limitations in areas of 
tension. 
The Indian Ocean is probably the leading candidate for attempts 
to limit superpower naval deployments in the hope of avoiding an 
unnecessary arms race. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union 
requires the Indian Ocean as a deployment area for maintaining an 
adequate global balance of military power against the other. And 
the Indian Ocean littoral is not yet a central arena of the superpower 
rivalry. Moreover, the littoral states have asked that the superpowers 
make the Indian ocean a “‘zone of peace.”’ 
Both the United States and the Soviet Union, however, are dragging 
their anchors in resistance to an Indian Ocean arms limitation agree- 
ment, let alone a complete military disengagement; rather both are 
proceeding apace to enchance their naval deployments and facilities 
there, each citing the unilateral increases of the other as justification 
for its own augmentations. 
Although the superpower naval competition in the Indian Ocean 
(like their competive arming of Angola factions) may emanate from 
national interests on each side that are external to the main U.S.- 
U.S.S.R. power rivalry, the local competition can persist and become 
a special arena for that rivalry. The Soviet Union’s deployments, in- 
cluding its maritime facilities in Somalia, are important aspects of 
its effort to counter China’s suspected drive for influence in South 
Asia and Africa. Thus it is hardly likely that the Soviets would be 
willing to substantially reduce their own presence, even if the United 
States indicated enthusiasm for an Indian Ocean disengagement agree- 
ment. The latter is an unlikely development in any case, since U.S. 
naval deployments in the region (to be sustained by the base at 
Diego Garcia) are part and parcel of the U.S. interest in maintaining 
military capabilities that could be focused on the Persian Gulf or 
on attempts to interfere with Western or Japanese tanker traffic 
through the Indian Ocean. 
Perhaps some restraint on superpower deployments in the Indian 
Ocean could be effected by a dialog between them to clarify the 
purposes of their respective policies in the region. Additional restraint 
might come from an agreement on overall naval inventory limits that 
did not formally restrict deployments in any theater: i.e., each side 
would continue to be free to make its own regional allocations under 
a global ceiling. Since a drawdown on deployments in one theater 
to increase naval power in another theater could not be redressed 
by inventory increases, there would be disincentives to superpower 
militarization of nonvital ocean areas. 
MUTUAL TOLERANCE OF OVERLAPPING DEPLOYMENTS 
Probably the most realistic response to the expanding Soviet 
maritime presence would be a flexible attitude on both sides to the 
