The Third World War (9 page)

13 Operation Southern Africa The Jamaicans arc keen that the friendly countries in black Africa should extend external and internal guerrilla war against the’white homeland states’ of the former Union of South Africa and their associated ‘Uncle Tom’ states There are three reasons why we should support this action, provided it can be organized in time First, the economic success of the ‘Uncle Tom’ states, and the surprising continuing propenty of the white homelands, mean that a process of right-wing coups d’etat is liable to spread all up black Africa—and also, which naturally worries Jamaica, into the black Caribbean Second, the white homelands do still follow a baaskap policy in some respects, many Americans, especially black Americans, will not regard them as respectable allies beside whom American troops should fight Third, the confused military set-up in South Africa should create advantages for us We have the capability there to keep on putting the Americans in very embarrassing situations indeed With the troubles in the Middle East because of our operation there the Americans will also be anxious about the supply lines for oil round the Cape In addition, I suggest (for your ears only) that the Red Army ‘volunteer officers’ we send to Southern Africa should be those whom we could not wholly trust to put down workers in Warsaw, and whom we would most like to have out of Moscow. Instead of repeating Stalin’s Red Army purges of the 1930s (which we have not the power to do), let us send the less reliable officers to lead bands of black natives wandering over the undefended veldt’ The black natives will stop these gentlemen from being too liberal. It does not matter much that there will be no time for a coherent military plan, because Operation Southern Africa will not have a coherent military objective. The political objectives will be: (a) to put the Americans in an embarrassing position by compelling lame-duck President Carter to commit American forces to unpopular pro-white South Africa action, from which President Thompson will have to retreat embarrassingly; and (b) to make it clear to the international business world that continued investment in the white homelands and in the ‘Uncle Tom’ states will not remain peaceful and profitable for long. At the end of Operation Southern Africa it woutd possibly be desirable that at least one of the three white homelands should pass over to black ruie, so as to mark Thompson’s humiliation.

14 Operation Yugoslavia. If we are to make a move in Europe, it would be better to ‘capture Yugoslavia’ than to ‘recapture Poland’(which is not lost anyway). The arguments in favour of Operation Yugoslavia are; (a) the weak federal government in Yugoslavia is unpopular with most of the Yugoslav people, and the various state governments are all unpopular with the people of the other states; (b) if Soviet troops intervened on the side of one state against another, we would have some support from the people (while in Poland we would have practically none); (c) our communist friends in the Soviet-run Serbian Committee for the Defence of Yugoslavia want Red Army troops in Yugoslavia (after the murder of the mayor of Wroclaw, they feel quite naked and unprotected without any Russians there); (d) in Slovenia and Croatia our troops would be arresting politicians rather than storming worker-held factories; and (e) a swift overnight move of this sort would serve notice to Polish and other workers that the Red Army is in a high state of readiness and can move very quickly.

My objection to Operation Yugoslavia at this stage is that it would be more likely than the other four operations to have wide repercussions. Indeed, an operation in Yugoslavia has been considered by the Soviet High Command in the same strategic contingency plan as a move into West Germany. If we thought that all the communist countries of Eastern Europe were liable to erupt in coups d’etat, which would be followed by coups d’etat in the Soviet L) nion itself, then I would certainly be in favour of invasion of either Yugoslavia or West Germany or both. But we have not reached that situation yet. We have merely reached a situation where it is desirable to humiliate and discredit President Thompson. Let us start on this humiliation in the Middle East and Southern Africa.

15 During the operations of the next few weeks we shall need to keep China-Japan neutral. We must also keep Western Europe neutral, possibly by intimidation.

It was to be a far from peaceful Christmas.

The Ryabukhin plan was accepted by the Politburo, and almost immediately began to move out of control-The chronology of subsequent events was as follows:

30 November 1984. Egypt, having renewed a military relationship with Soviet Russia, overthrows by subversion the governments of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait. It proclaims a new and immensely rich United Arab Republic (including these countries) and calls a meeting of
OPEC
heads of government for 7 December. Iran is invited to this
OPEC
meeting, which is to be held on neutral territory, but the new
UAR
threatens that there could be immediate military action against any country which interferes in the UAR’s ‘proper sphere of interest’ and which sends forces to the Trucial Coast and Oman.

This is clearly a threat to Iran. Israel is offered guarantees which ensure her neutrality.

2 December. Rioting, led by students, in Soweto and some other townships which are capitals of’Uncle Tom’ black-ruled states or cantons of the former Union of South Africa. These are black states that have good economic relations with the three white South African states and daily send many commuters to work in them. Some of these riots are put down, with bloodshed, by the local black police.

3 December. Strikes in Madras, which appear to be politically inspired. A Pan Am aircraft is hijacked on its way to Singapore and lands in Bangladesh at Chittagong. The Chief Ministers of two capitalist states in the old Indian Union and the executives of some American multi-nationals active in Madras are aboard it. The hijackers announce that they are being held hostage until the demands of the Madras strikers are met. Two days later American marines (invited, it is claimed, by Bangladesh) try to storm the aircraft, as the Germans did in 1977 in Somalia. The Americans fail. The aircraft is blown up with total loss of life.

5 December. At a meeting in Zimbabwe the Organization of Socialist African States claims that the ‘fascist police’ in Soweto on 2 December used weapons that were clearly heavier than any allowed to states of the former Union of South Africa under the Brzezinski Agreement. That agreement is therefore now declared at an end. The white homelands and ‘Uncle Tom’ states must be dissolved and their component parts made subject states of a new black-ruled Confederation of Africa South. Military action will be taken to enforce this.

7 December. At the
OPEC
meeting the new
UAR
demands a sharp increase in the price of oil. It also announces an oil boycott against any country that does not meet its political demands. These include recognition of the proposed Confederation of Africa South. There is to be strict boycott against anybody who aids and abets the white homelands and ‘Uncle Tom’ states. The
UAR
insists that majority votes in
OPEC
are enforceable upon all members, and that the boycott may be policed by “friendly naval forces’, which the newspapers suggest means the
USSR
. Iran dissents strongly.

8 December. The Soviet Union proclaims support for the
OPEC
decision. It also activates its existing base and missile facilities in Aden. This may be in order to help enforce the oil boycott.

9 December. An unsuccessful attempt is made to hijack an aircraft carrying Iranian finance and petroleum ministers from the
OPEC
meeting home to Tehran. On the same day there is an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Shah.

// December. Forays from Zimbabwe and Namibia are made into the former Union of South Africa. Poland and some Indian states announce that they are withdrawing their forces from the U N troops on the border. Polish, Mexican and Indian commanders on the spot declare that they are under UN orders and will obey these. There are signs that Polish and Indian troops in Africa are more in agreement with right-wing dissidents at home than with their existing governments.

13 December. Round-ups of intellectuals and some workers’ leaders are reported from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. These do not appear to be very successful, and reports appear in Western newspapers of communiques from an organized ‘underground’ in these countries and what is by now almost an open dissident movement in Poland.

20 December. Black African forces advancing, in some disorder, from Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique are now known to be commanded by Soviet, Cuban and Jamaican officers. These clearly do not have their troops under disciplined control,

24 December. The
UAR
announces that it has discovered an Iranian plan to send forces into the Gulf states. It threatens that if this happens it will take direct military action against Iran, including air attack on Tehran. Iran threatens immediate retaliation and asks for US help.

25 December. In a Christmas message to the world, the ‘lame-duck’ President Carter proposes high-level discussions with the Soviet Union in accordance with the Agreement for the Prevention of Nuclear War of 1973, to consider means to end tensions in Africa and the Middle East. His proposal is that there should be a standstill of military forces all round the globe in their existing positions. There should also be a ban on the export of all arms to either side in Africa or the Middle East. He proposes-that the US Navy enforce the blockade of the west coast of Africa; meanwhile the Soviet Navy should enforce the blockade of the east coast of Africa and the Gulf, with assistance to be invited from the US Navy. Both superpowers arc to enforce a blockade of arms-carrying ships passing through the Mediterranean.

26 December. The Soviet Union says it will talk only to President Thompson after his Inauguration Day on 20 January. It blames lame-duck President Carter for much of the world’s present ills, but meanwhile agrees that a standstill should be enforced by both the US and the
USSR
.

28 December. Iran declares that it is not bound by the standstill agreement. Acting contrary to US advice, it reinforces its existing troops in Oman and secures an invitation from the United Arab Emirates to send defensive forces to Abu Dhabi. Television pictures, secured by an American camera team, of Iranian troops landing in Oman, and of armoured cars with Iranian markings alongside Omani troops, are distributed worldwide, and are triumphantly used by the Russians to support their claims of Iranian belligerency. The
USSR
says this is a blatant breach of the standstill, and that US naval forces (which are supposed to be co-operating in preventing such breaches) have connived at it.

29 December. A Soviet submarine sinks an Iranian transport. A US intelligence ship is attacked by missiles in the Gulf of Aden.

The Soviet attacks on the 29th can with some justification be called the first shots of the Third World War. Symbolically they were fired at sea and in Middle Eastern waters. Both maritime affairs and the Middle East had each been a focus of intense Soviet interest and planning for many years (see Appendix 2).

Having got over the initial shock of the submarine attack, the Iranian government set in train measures to assume complete control of the waters of the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The luckless US intelligence ship, limping slowly toward Mombasa, following a friendly offer of help from the government of Kenya to the outgoing President in his last days of office, was to be joined by a US carrier group which had been on passage south in the Red Sea, on a routine relief of the standing US Navy Indian Ocean Force. Having cleared the Straits of Bab el Mandeb this carrier group was under orders to carry out an armed reconnaissance of Aden, where it located and identified beyond doubt the group of fast missile boats of Soviet origin which had attacked the US intelligence ship. Also reported was a formidable force of the latest Soviet maritime strike-reconnaissance aircraft. A request to Washington for approval to strike both fast missile boats and maritime aircraft was not approved, and the intelligence ship remained, for the time being, unavenged but still afloat.

It was possible, without too much loss of face, either domestically or externally, for the US Administration to refrain, with due public claim to be acting in the best interests of keeping the peace, from taking immediate offensive action in response to the attack upon the intelligence ship. Instead, the US carrier group made all speed to join the damaged ship and escort it to Mombasa. while strong protests were made to Moscow, coupled with demands for an international court of enquiry, apologies and compensation. Then came news that a Soviet patrol submarine of the Tango class had been brought to the surface in the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian anti-submarine forces and the crew taken prisoner. In short, the first essay by the Soviet Navy in the actual use offeree in support of Soviet policy had misfired.

After its initial errors, the Soviet naval command (perhaps smarting under a stem rebuke from the septuagenarian Gorshkov, and acting upon his advice— as Admiral of the Fleet and even after his retirement, Gorshkov had been insisting for years on the necessity of Soviet mastery of the seas for the triumph of Marxism-Leninism) ordered the Victor class nuclear-powered fleet submarine which had been detailed to intercept and trail the damaged US intelligence ship to sink her by torpedo. This she did, despite the presence of the US carrier group, without being detected, let alone destroyed. The confidence of the Politboro in the Soviet Navy’s capacity to act in support of their political objectives was restored. The naval staff ‘Correlation of Forces’ paper (see Appendix 2) was carefully read. It had become apparent that naval-air operations involving actual combat differed drastically from the peaceful penetration of ocean space with propaganda cruising which the Soviet Navy had learned to carry out in such exemplary fashion since it first took to the oceans in the 1960s.