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Old 05-04-2021, 05:57 PM
shrike6 shrike6 is offline
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Join Date: May 2010
Location: Civgov Heartland
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I don't want to put a wet blanket on this but I don't buy that the Soviets would nuke the Suez Canal. They relied on the Indian Ocean too much to send supplies to Vladivostok and other points in the Far East. To put some perspective on this, in 1958 they were the 12th largest user of the Suez. When the canal closed in 1967 they were the 7th largest user. When the canal reopened in 1977/8 they were the 5th largest user. By 1979 they were the 4th largest. 90% of the Soviet cargo going thru the Suez was for national trade, thats right national trade not international. Between 1972 and 1975 only 10% of Soviet container traffic from western terminals to eastern terminals went via the Trans Siberian land bridge. Also in the 1980s the three ports getting the most expansion in the Ussr were Vladivostok, Petropavlosk, and Nakhoda. Sorry I dont buy the Soviets cutting off a vital transportation link for themselves. They had just as much to lose by the Suez being out of commission as we do.

"We think that the freedom of navigation in that region (Indian Ocean) is of vital importance not only to the United States, and we even think that it is not of that importance to the United States, whose coast is on the opposite side of the globe - as it is for the Asian and African countries as well as for the Soviet Union.
-Leonid Zamyatin, Chairman of the International Information Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union May 1981 interview with Bratislava Pravda

We have taken the line of . . . tackling the problems of raw material, fuel and energy, food and transport. The U.S.S.R. has strongly advocated a reduction of arms in the Indian Ocean over the last ten years and has championed the 'zone of peace' proposal of ASEAN
- Leonid Brezhnev General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1977 60th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution speech.


Anyways got my 10 cents in.
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