96 
the evidence shows a willingness to accept political costs as long 
as the strategic objective is furthered. Of course, once such an infra- 
structure is established, it can be used to support other missions 
in the best Mahanist traditions. However, if the wartime/peacetime 
role is downgraded, or lapses, then the level of political commitment 
is likely to drop. 
COUNTERING IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION 
In the Soviet lexicon, the term “imperialist aggression” includes 
the deployment of U.S. seabased systems within range of Russia, coun- 
tering which has already been covered under the war-related role. 
For our purposes it is more useful to limit the scope of this task 
to challenging/countering the peacetime employment of Western 
forces against the interests of “progressive states’’ and the “national 
liberation movement’. In areas such as the eastern Mediterranean, 
where additional naval forces were deployed during the 1967, 1970, 
and 1973 crises, this task is upstaged by the more important war- 
related task of countering the carrier’s nuclear strike potential, and 
Soviet naval units clearly had the latter as their only priority until 
the danger of escalation was past. The berthing of Soviet naval units 
in Port Said in 1967 might come within the category of countering 
imperialist aggression, except that it took place a full month after 
the end of the war, and reflected the newly gained access to Egyptian 
port facilities. The first clear example of this task is therefore the 
establishment of the “Guinea Patrol’ in December 1970, apparentl 
to deter further Portuguese-supported seaborne attacks on Conakry.” 
The next example was the despatch of Soviet naval detachments to 
the Indian Ocean in December 1971, in reaction to the deployment 
of British and U.S. carrier task forces during the Indo-Pakistan war.*® 
This was followed by the reactive deployment of Soviet forces to 
the South China Sea after the U.S. mining of Haiphong in May 1972,%9 
and there were further reactive deployments to the Indian Ocean 
during the 1973 Arab/Israeli crisis. The most recent example was 
the visit of Soviet units to Latakia in November 1974, when Syria 
feared an attack by Israel.*° 
INCREASING PRESTIGE AND INFLUENCE 
Showing-the-flag through naval port visits increased sharply after 
1968, but the majority of such visits continue to be “operational” 
(i.e., to meet the operational requirements of the visiting ships), and 
include a very high proportion of submarines.*! However, the task 
of “increasing Soviet prestige and influence” assumed a new dimension 
in 1972. It has since encompassed port-clearing operations in Ban- 
gladesh (April 1972—mid-1974) naval involvement in the Iraq/Kuwait 
border dispute (April 1973), ferrying Moroccan troops to Syria 
(April-July 1973) and minesweeping the Gulf of Suez (July-November 
47 J. McConnell, ‘‘The Soviet Navy in the Indian Ocean”, op.cit., p. 398. 
48 J. McConnell and A. M. Kelly, ‘““Superpower Naval Diplomacy in the Indo-Pakistani Crisis”, 
Center for Naval Analyses, Washington, Professional Paper No. 108, February 1973; reprinted in 
Soviet Naval Developments, pp. 325-343. 
49R. G. Weinland, “Analysis of Admiral Gorshkov’s ‘Navies in War and Peace’,” “Soviet Naval 
Policy,” p. 567. 
*°T am indebted to R. Weinland for this point. 
“'Oral presentation by Anne M. Kelly to the third annual seminar on Soviet Naval Developments, 
Halifax, September 1974. 
