55 
visit to Somalia in February 1972. I believe that the buildup in support 
facilities dates from that period and it would be useful to compare 
the detailed chronology with developments in Egypt at the same 
period, remembering that it was July when Sadat asked that Soviet 
forces be withdrawn. It brings to mind how the British, when they 
foresaw the need to withdraw from the Canal Zone in the late 1940’s, 
set about building up a new military base in Kenya to take its place 
as a Strategic pivot of British defense policy.'”! 
While providing further factors of grand strategy to explain the 
pattern of Soviet bases, this still doesn’t answer whether the Soviet 
Union would use its presence in Somalia, or other strategically located 
countries, to deny passage to selected ships or even to U.S. forces. 
There are countless scenarios involving the use of naval force in 
this and other ways.'” and it seems unlikely that the Russians have 
themselves reached any irrevocable decisions on this score. However, 
if they did decide to use force at sea, past experience suggests they 
would be more likely to employ a proxy. Meanwhile, in terms of 
their broader foreign policy objectives, they continue to have this 
major interest in stability at sea, so that they can use the oceans 
for their various purposes. As the inferior naval power, and having 
a considerable financial and political investment in merchant and fish- 
ing fleets, the Soviet Union may be more wary than most of disrupting 
the maritime status quo by interfering with the free passage of ships. 
Which brings us to the question of the future availability of forces. 
I have already noted that the prospects for surface warship construc- 
tion beyond 1980 are still unclear, but at that date we could expect 
the Soviet Navy to have 4 or 5 aircapable antisubmarine “‘cruisers”’, 
about 35 large antisubmarine ships of 6,000 to 9,000 tons and about 
65 destroyer-sized units. The latter would include the 20 major conver- 
sions, whose hull and machinery would by then be 20 to 25 years 
old, the ages of the remaining ships being fairly evenly spread between 
1 to 18 years. As for submarines, besides some 60 strategic ballistic 
missile units, the navy might expect to have about 130 tactical-attack 
nuclear units and perhaps as many as 150 nonnuclear units less than 
25 years old. 
It would appear that most if not all of the nuclear submarines, 
will be assigned to the war-related roles, which require the continuous 
discharge in peacetime of what are essentially wartime tasks. If we 
are to believe Gorshkov, it would seem that a certain proportion 
of the surface forces will be required to operate in support of the 
submarines, and there will also be some units required for in-area 
duties. Nonnuclear submarines have a primary role of fleet-area 
defense but are also used on forward deployment and when replaced 
by nuclear units, they would become available for other employment. 
There is relatively little to go on. What evidence there is suggests 
that until 1980 at least, present levels of deployment will be main- 
tained, and the use of Soviet forces for political purposes will relate 
to the opportunities presented rather than some master plan. Beyond 
that, there are several questions outstanding. In particular, when (or 
'P_ Darby, “British Defence Policy East of Suez,’ Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 37. As it 
happens, plans were subsequently changed, the Kenyan base was never completed and Cyprus took 
over this role on a much diminished scale. 
'721 discuss some of these in an article written in 1969. See “Soviet Naval Policy: Prospects for the 
Seventies.”’ Soviet Naval Developments, pp. 500-512. 
