So, when the Secretary of State and Foreign Minister Baronzov met at Geneva at the end of January 1985, each had to look not only at his interlocutor across the table, but also, even more searchingly, over his shoulder at the silent ranks of his allies and supporters. A week was spent agreeing on the agenda for their meeting and a further two weeks on that for the summit. At last it was settled that President Thompson and President Vorotnikov (the offices of President of the USSR and Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had by then long been firmly unified) should meet on 15 February to discuss all threats to peace and any situation likely to lead to nuclear hostilities.
Political observers and media commentators were puzzled and divided over the mood of the participants and the prospects for peace or war. Each side had stepped further into the uncharted sea of confrontation than any of their predecessors since Cuba and the Berlin blockade. The point was, did they find the temperature to their liking? Each had found a keen front man — the US in Iran and the Soviet Union in Egypt — but both were aware of the instability of such protagonists. Their more solid supporters were more than usually hesitant. In one respect each had a similar requirement: to be sure of energy supplies from the Middle East until alternative sources could be established. Public opinion in the US still felt that abundant cheap energy was a god-given right of the American people. They had elected Thompson in the belief that he would be better at getting it for them than Carter had been at persuading them they didn’t need so much. Vorotnikov had other preoccupations. The Russian people could be relied on to accept what they were given, but with Eastern Europe the choice was more difficult: either to advance more quickly towards Western consumer standards, or to restore the somewhat eroded dictatorship of the CPSU and enforce acceptance of a lower standard. The former would require more oil, the latter more Soviet troops. Both, with the growing threat from China, might be in short supply. A foreign bogey would, as usual, encourage compliance, but a bogey in the Indian Ocean might be inadequate for the purpose.
After two days of recrimination and brinkmanship, the result emerged — one that should perhaps have been more easily predictable: peace with honour. The standstill was confirmed; the control of oilfields remained as it was, that is, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq stayed with Egypt and the USSR, Iran and the Lower Gulf stayed with the West. There was to be no supply of arms to either side in Africa or Arabia (significantly, there was no reference to Iran, Cuba or Jamaica); mutual notification of naval movements was agreed, with exchange of satellite photographs to confirm it; and there would be a resumption of SALT and negotiations for MBFR (mutual and balanced force reductions).
In fact no one was satisfied with what they had got, but some were more dissatisfied than others. Thompson made much of having snatched peace out of the jaws of war (with a confused memory of a Churchillian antithesis mixed with a phrase of Chamberlain’s), and of the time won to build more ships and develop indigenous oil resources. He did not actually wave a piece of paper from the White House balcony, but the general atmosphere had more than a hint of August 1938.
The Soviet Union started building pipelines and oil terminals to move her new oil north instead of south, its former direction. More important in the short term, the Soviet leaders devoted urgent attention to the means of restoring Soviet authority in Eastern Europe, penetrating the communist parties in Western Europe, and guarding their frontier republics against the growing presence of China. The build-up of Soviet military strength continued.
The Chinese were perhaps the most disappointed of all. In the uneasy triangle of forces so accurately forecast for 1984 by George Orwell they had hoped for much from the sharpening of US-Soviet confrontation in the Middle East and Southern Africa. They feared little from the US. Their doctrines led them to believe in the ultimate victory of their system over capitalism. They could afford to wait for history to produce its inevitable result. But rivalry with another seat of communism was different. There was nothing in holy writ to show how this would turn out. Besides, even in an age of rockets, a land frontier seemed a good deal more vulnerable than several thousand kilometres of Pacific Ocean. The standstill agreement at the US-Soviet summit deprived China of the good fortune which had seemed to be coming its way in an intensified struggle between the two rival superpowers. The ensuing reassessment showed China still a long way behind in nuclear potential and conventional sophistication. Numbers of men seemed hardly to make up for these deficiencies. It was necessary to seek some other way of compensating for the Soviet predominance in armaments.
The home front in the USSR — or at least in the Soviet areas contiguous to China — seemed to offer a possible target. It would have been dangerous for China to invoke nationalism as a subversive slogan before Sinkiang and Tibet had been fully brought under control. Now the risk of regional insurgency was far less there than in the Soviet republics in central Asia. Moreover, there were elements from many of these Moslem people, ethnically and linguistically Turkish, living in China’s far west. With a modest growth of cultural freedom and with economic development springing from Japanese investment in the new co-prosperity sphere, it should not be too difficult to create centres of attraction in China for the Uzbeks and the Kazakhs. A movement for real autonomy in the Soviet republics on the Sino-Soviet border could have enormous advantages for China, at least in providing another preoccupation for Soviet policy makers, in drawing off Soviet troops who might otherwise be threatening China, and in creating suspicion as to the loyalty of units recruited in those areas.
Meanwhile, back in the West the phoney peace was beginning to wear thin. It goes without saying that neither the US nor the USSR trusted the other enough to make any real attempt at disarmament. On the contrary, Warsaw Pact preparedness increased at the same rate as before while NATO continued to make some modest improvements. Political skirmishing was resumed. Three elements in particular contributed to the build-up of instability: oil, the Middle East and the Balkans, none of them new but each spreading its effects like secondary growths after an unsuccessful operation.
The disruption of oil supplies and the resulting shortages all over the world were like a running sore, making calm thought more difficult, leading to internal and international tensions, distorting economies and increasing unemployment. The new patterns of distribution were fragile and susceptible to political uncertainty. The control of the North Arabian supplies by the Egyptian-dominated UAR was in these circumstances hardly a guarantee of stability.
This was the sixth attempt at Arab union in which Egypt had been involved. All the previous ones had failed after longer or shorter periods. The few centres of population in Saudi Arabia could be controlled by military force. The association with Iraq was more uneasy. The age-old cry of Arab unity was tarnished by the only too visible presence of Soviet technicians at the oil fields and the ports. Even in this day and age the old hatreds between Sunnis and Shias were likely to erupt when Saudis and Iraqis were too closely intermingled. Arab unity is a dream which has inspired some of the noblest thinkers of that race, but in actual history Arab division has been more constant and more influential. The personal rivalries of Arab politicians have always fed on the discrepancies of tribe and dogma and social stratification.