The Third World War: August 1985

The United States now faced a huge new problem. This was not wholly unforeseen, but in the event it was greater, and came to a head sooner, than had been expected. Very considerable forces of all arms of the Soviet Union, disposing of immense masses of war material, with hordes of technicians, advisers and civilian operatives of every sort, were now spread over vast areas with no coherent purpose and no further reason for being where they were. Some units and formations went on fighting, for a while at least, wherever they happened to be, to whatever local end seemed to their commanders sensible. Others sought the earliest opportunity to surrender to the nearest American headquarters, at any level. One startled US captain signalled to his superiors that he had at his disposal two Soviet generals, an acre of officers and ten acres (approximately) of Soviet rank and file, all now disarmed, and he requested orders. Local belligerents made a beeline for Soviet weapons, equipment and stores, and more than one Soviet unit, compelled to defend itself against raiders, found itself in action with the support of some microcosm of the US forces to which it had surrendered. Soviet ships usually made for port and tied up. Many aircraft simply flew home, or as near to it as fuel allowed. Many thousands of men drifted away, leaving heavy weapons, equipment and stores where they lay for whoever chose to take them away.

To tell the story of the mounting of the United Nations Relief and Repatriation Organization (UNRRO), which soon took over from the United States in the concentration and maintenance of the remnants of Soviet forces deployed in Africa and the Middle East, and then set in hand the long and complex business of getting the men (and women too) back to their homes, is no part of our present task.

The operation still goes on as we write, having had to face many more difficulties than those confronting the United Nations Displaced Persons Organization, set up at the same time in Europe. No history of the time, however, would be complete without reference to one of the least tractable problems to emerge in the immediate aftermath of the war. There will be traces of its impact in Africa and the Middle East for a long time to come. It will be many years, for example, before the last weapon brought by the Soviet Union into Africa and the Middle East in the chapter of the world’s history which ended so abruptly in 1985, ceases in one hand or another to serve a purpose.

The elimination of Soviet support, direct or by proxy, heralded the end of any further external intervention. The security of South Africa was assured by the success of her own armed forces in resisting and defeating tactical attack, with some help from the efforts of the US Navy. These efforts, though aimed directly at the peripheral operations of the Soviet Union, also had the result that both the Soviet proxy fighters and the indigenous guerrillas were largely cut off from the sinews of war. The end to the strategic external battle was far indeed from bringing to an end the only sort of struggle of enduring concern to the Africans — the internal one. Bitter battles between Angola and her neighbours, and within Angola, were matched by frontier incidents in Zaire and a renewal of the disruption of Mozambique. South Africa, though everywhere penetrated, held firm at the core. Her front-line adversaries, while clinging to the idea of confrontation, began to look to their own internal welfare. Far from a Confederation of Africa South coming into being and flourishing, a de-federation of those dedicated to set it up was already in progress.

The impotence of the Soviet proxies in Southern Africa had been demonstrated. The success of Iran in the Persian Gulf and southern Arabia had been such that even before the nuclear exchange in Europe precipitated the end she was already concentrating forces on her northern borders for the invasion of the Soviet Union. The aimless manoeuvrings of the Egyptian Army on the shores of the Red Sea signified little. Soviet initiatives on the outskirts of the main battle had been stifled and a great strategic prize retained firmly in the grasp of the United States. If this success did not in itself ensure that the Western Allies would win the war in Europe against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact it made two important contributions. By stabilizing a situation in the Middle East to the advantage of the West, and securing the oil flow along the sea routes, the US had already gone some way to ensuring that the war, particularly if it were to be prolonged, would not be lost. By setting up a situation in which Soviet initiatives on the periphery were almost from the beginning seen to fail it hastened the general realization that the military might of the USSR was very far indeed from being invincible, and thus added to the growing weight of encouragement to its enemies nearer the centre.