623 
tants, as it did in Angola, between their clients and scoring unilateral 
gains on land, and potential U.S. counterintervention forces. Because 
of domestic constraints, the Soviet position will be sufficient to deter 
the United States from becoming involved. The operational capabilities 
of the Soviet Navy in its current state are less relevant to these 
situations than the visibility of the Soviet presence and its implications 
in terms of power perceptions, vis-a-vis the West and vis-a-vis the 
third world countries that are concerned.'’*' The Soviet leadership 
may have interpreted—as indeed some observers maintain—the U.S. 
decision not to engage itself more directly in the Angola conflict 
as an indication that the Soviet naval presence off the Angolan coast 
deterred the United States from openly supporting the other factions 
in the Angolan dispute. 
The current Soviet trend toward constructing larger surface combat- 
ants for the blue-water Navy appears to contradict the views of 
those who argue that the Soviet Navy is still primarily a coastal 
defense force. The Soviets claim that the new Kiev class aircraft 
carriers are designed for ASW warfare, but the carriers are also capa- 
ble of projecting power ashore, particularly in third world countries. 
Any venture in the third world by Soviet client forces will depend 
on the swift supply of ammunitions and war material. The current 
5-year plan shows that the Soviet Union is planning to construct 
a large number of roll-on/roll-off and Seabee barge ships, vessels 
which are uniquely equipped to bring goods ashore in countries which 
do not have sophisticated port facilities. Seabee vessels, for example, 
continued to supply the North Vietnamese off the coast of North 
Vietnam, in spite of the U.S. mining of the Port of Haiphong. Admiral 
of the Soviet Fleet S. G. Gorshkov recently stated that maritime 
transportation, fishing, and scientific research on the sea are part 
of the Soviet Union’s naval might.'%? 
Third. Soviet ocean activities in the Indian Ocean may continue 
to grow rapidly. Soviet fishing in the North Atlantic is likely to be 
curtailed in the future, as a result of management efforts aimed at 
maintaining a high optimum yield, made possible by unilateral action 
or multilateral agreement—U.N. Law of the Sea Conference—on ex- 
tended coastal state jurisdiction over ocean resources. The thrust of 
the still growing Soviet distant-water marine fishing effort may shift 
from the North Atlantic to West Africa and the Indian Ocean. The 
Indian Ocean contains many underutilized resources waiting for ex- 
ploitation. 
The Indian Ocean will grow in strategic importance with the pro- 
jected doubling of U.S. oil imports from the Middle East over the 
next 5 years. The Soviet Navy has one major naval base in Somalia, 
and its presence in the Indian Ocean, particularly in the northern 
part of the Indian Ocean, is growing fast. By contrast, the British 
Navy, which once ruled the waves in that part of the world, has 
left the Indian Ocean. The U.S. Navy is not large enough to perform 
its missions in the North Atlantic and North Pacific and also to 
maintain a permanent presence in the Indian Ocean. A soviet attempt 
to fill the vacuum the West left behind would be a natural develop- 
14! Thid., p. 36. 
192 Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 19, 1976. 
