Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases

Book excerpt: New surges of interest in geostrategic aspects of basing and "linkage politics" were generated by the U.S. arms resupply to Isreal in 1973 and Soviet armaments to Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Vietnam; Arab attempts to nudge the West out of Mediterranean and Persian Gulf bases and Soviet access problems to Egypt, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia; raw material sources and SALT verification needs; and "surrogate wars" and rescue missions. Harkavy seeks to tie different streams of contemporary international relations theory to great power competition for three-dimensional national security needs, such as new technologies and related defense needs for communications, deep ocean and space surveillance, seismological observations and air isotope sampling.