Hark to one of the giants of our time, Andrei D. Sakharov: "I often remember how in 1955 a high official of the Soviet Council of Ministers spoke to a group of scientists in the Kremlin and told them that now (Shepilov, a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, had just returned from Egypt) the principles of a new Soviet policy in the Middle East were being worked out. He said that the long-term aim of this policy was using Arab nationalism to create difficulties in the oil supply of European countries and thus make them more pliable [upravlyayemymi]. Today, when the world economy is disorganized by the oil crisis, all the cunning and effectiveness of the oily undercurrent of the defense of the just cause of the Arab peoples' is evident - even if the West does as if the USSR had nothing to do with it." (My Country and the World, Vantage Books, NY, 1975.)
So when Radio Moscow was oozing out sweet talk about detente in English, while its Arab transmissions were calling for stricter enforcement of the embargo against the US in 1973-4, this was an integral part of a very deliberate policy whose foundations were laid 22 years ago.
Aided by a grotesque array of dupes in the US, that policy has borne fruit: Since the 1973 embargo, when 15% of US oil consumption was supplied by the Arabs, that fraction has grown to 37%, and it is still growing. On March 16, 1976, the total fraction of imported oil and petroleum products (Arab or not) reached 50%. The US now imports more oil than it is producing.
Meanwhile, the Soviet policy of disrupting Western energy sources not only continues, but is branching out. The West European Communist parties are in the forefront of the anti- nuclear hysteria there. The same pattern emerges in Australia and Japan. The laugh here is that these parties, which ordinarily only debate whether to tow the Moscow line 200% or 250%, have mounted their concerted attack at a time when the Soviets are going nuclear at a feverish pace, and moreover, are ridiculing "Western alarmists" opposing nuclear power, who, they claim, are in the pay of the oil companies. (The idea of Ralph Nader being an Exxon stooge is typical of Soviet mental acrobatics - strictly for domestic consumption, of course.)
20% of all new Soviet power construction in the next 5 years will be nuclear. Last year, the USSR had 6,000 MW nuclear on line; by 1980, this is to grow to 21,000 MW they have no Comrades of the Earth to contend with. And that will not just be old-fashioned light water reactors. A fast liquid-metal breeder at Shevchenko, on the Caspian Sea, has been in the public power net off and on, that is (see following item). A new breeder, twice as large, is now to be built at Byeloyarsk. A complete breeder program to provide the backbone of the power grid to the end of the century is now in the works, reports a Moscow-based Westerner quoted in Business Week.
The Soviet policy is simple:
Atomkraftwerke - NEIN!
Atomniye elektrostantsii - DA!
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Vol. 4, No. 8
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 4 Issue/No.: Vol. 4, No. 8 Date: April 01, 1977 01:12 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.) Title: There's too many of you others!
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