SOUTHWEST PACIFIC

The Southwest Pacific is a vast area which extends 5000 miles east-west along the equator and 4000 miles south.

There are nearly 175 million people in this far flung region and it is extremely rich in natural resources. Australia is one of the few countries left which can absorb an expanding population within a generally temperate clime.

The Indonesian Archipelago marks the crossroads of the Southwest Pacific through which pass 90 percent of the trade between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean areas, amounting to billions of dollars of cargo annually. Control of this area by a hostile power would greatly increase that power's strategic, economic, political, and military strength.

Historically, much of the trade and influence of the Middle East and India converged upon the island chains. Islam penetrated, conquered, and occupied Indonesia, as well as Malaysia, and part of the Philippines, while China penetrated through conquest, occupation, and trade and alliances, as far south as Indonesia. Later, during the era of European discovery, conquest, and colonization, European powers divided up the area between them, establishing major colonies.

The Island nations of the Southwest Pacific have been subject to a variety of political, cultural, and religious influences, all of which have left varying degrees of imprint. The major wars of the European powers during the last three centuries brought about changes in ownership of their colonies here. These lands were, on occasion, factors in the initiation of struggles between the European nations which drew wealth and materials from them, and exported to them.

World War II produced a new political pattern of independent nations throughout the Southwest Pacific and continental Southeast Asia. These new nations have now joined with Australia and New Zealand in various associations of Southeastern and Southwestern Pacific nations for mutual economy and defense, to offset the British

withdrawal from the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia and to more adequately administer a geographic region that, by its size and location, would be fragmented without collective endeavor and support.

Amid all the change in the character of Southwest Pacific affairs, Antarctica remains the same unique laboratory in which man can probe his environmental past for the benefit of his future-not because of its isolation, but because nations have agreed to work in a rare spirit of total cooperation in unlocking the secrets of this polar land.

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Reading List

1. Fields, Jack and Dorothy. South Pacific. Palo Alto, Calif.: Kodansha, 1972.

2. Learmonth, Nancy. Australians: How They Live and Work. New York: Praeger, 1973.

3. Pacific Circle, Two: Proceedings. Biennial Conference of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Ass'n, 3rd. New York: Humanities, 1972.

4. Peacock, James L. Indonesia: An Anthropological Perspective. Pacific Palisades, Calif.: Goodyear, 1972.

5. Shannon, Terry and Payzant, Charles. Antarctic Challenge: Probing the Mysteries of the White Continent. San Carlos, Calif.: Golden Gate, 1973.

SOVIET UNION

No relationship more vitally affects the peace and security of the world than that of the two major continental and nuclear powers, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Since President Nixon's historic visit to the USSR in 1972, the two "superpowers" have entered into cooperative endeavors which have not been matched since at least World War II. Trade with the Soviet Union in 1972 was the highest since U. S.-Soviet relations began in 1933. And prospects for more trade in the coming years are bright.

The Moscow Summit produced a series of specific agreements, the most dramatic of which were a Treaty on the Limitation of Ballistic Missile Systems and an Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. Then there was an agreement designed to minimize the possibility of incidents at sea between the U.S. and USSR navies; measures aimed toward establishing more favorable conditions for the development of bilateral commercial and other economic ties, including the creation of a U.S.-Soviet Joint Commercial Commission; an agreement for cooperation in the fields of science and technology, including provision for the creation of a U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission on Scientific and Technical Cooperation; an agreement on measures and procedures for cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space; an agreement for cooperation in medical science and public health; and an agreement on cooperation in the protection and enhancement of man's environment, including consultations on specific cooperative projects.

The Secretary of State, in his report on United States Foreign Policy 1972, discussed these U.S.-Soviet Bilateral Agreements in these words:

"While the agreements concluded at the summit cannot in themselves guarantee better political relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, we hope they will institutionalize habits of long-term cooperation across a broad front of creative endeavors. We recognize that improvement of relations depends more on action

than on words. Our immediate task following the Moscow summit is to translate areas of agreement into concrete results and to continue progress toward agreement on unresolved issues.

Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recognized the relaxation in tensions brought about by President Nixon's summit meetings, but provided the following caution in his report on the United States Military Posture for FY 1974:

"While these developments provide new hope for a more stable and peaceful world in the future, we dare not ignore the reality of the military power which confronts the United States and its allies today, and which is likely to confront us in the future. The Soviet Union, within the constraints of the Strategic Arms Limitation (SAL) agreements, is continuing to improve its strategic capabilities, particularly with regard to offensive forces. Moreover, the Soviet Union is continuing to modernize its general purpose forces. . . Thus, we are still confronted with the crucial problem of how best to maintain the security of the United States and its allies in the face of the steadily increasing military power of other major nations.

"As I noted last year, the military power of the United States, when compared to other nations in the world, has clearly peaked and is now declining. We no longer have that substantial strategic superiority which, in the past, provided us with such a clear-cut margin of overall military power so that we could, with confidence, ensure the protection of our own interests and those of our allies worldwide. Accordingly, we must plan our national security programs with greater precision and calculate our risks more closely in this new environment. In addition, our allies will have to rely to a greater extent than in the past on their own military capabilities to deter sub-theater or localized aggression."

Thus, the United States is drawn in two directions in its relations with the Soviet Union. On the one hand, there is great hope that the necessary first steps toward the "generation of peace" have been firmly planted. On the other hand, the intransigence which has for so long characterized the Soviet negotiating technique and which has been the basic suspicion in the past, tends to sober U.S. attitudes. There does not yet seem to be an attitude of complete confidence developing among U.S. leaders.