COLD WAR POLITICS OF SUPERPOWERS IN SOUTH ASIA Abstract

had given new life to the threat to choke off oil supplies to the industrial
nations and the US was concerned to maintain regional stability and preserve
economic and commercial interests.
Economic Interests
The economic importance of South Asia is linked with the concentration of
many of the raw material resources of the world, such as oil, rubber,
manganese, copper, tea, cotton, rice, jute and gold in the various littoral
states. 41 This raw material is a real backbone for industrialized nations,
including Europe and Japan and threats to the sources of important raw
material and supply lines could affect the economy of the free world. Thus, the
US is committed to preserve peace and assure access to raw materials and
markets and to gain economic and commercial benefits from South Asian
economies.
Stalin highlighted the economic vulnerability of the west to resource
interdiction back in 1921 when he argued: “If Europe and America may be
called the front, the non-sovereign nations and colonies, with their raw
materials, fuel, food and vast stores of human material, should be regarded as
the rear, the reserve of imperialism. In order to win a war one must not only
triumph at the front but also revolutionize the enemy’s rear, his reserves. 42 In
the same way, the Soviet president Leonid I. Brezhnev explained to Somalian
President Said Barre, that “our aim is to gain control of the two great treasure
houses on which the West depends⎯the energy treasure of the Persian Gulf
and the mineral treasure house of Central and Southern Africa.” 43 Thus, the
Soviet presence in Afghanistan was a formidable threat to Europe in the west,
China and Japan in the east and the countries of Central Asia, the Persian
Gulf, the Middle East and Africa to the south. More broadly speaking, the
bountiful oil resources of the Gulf region are essential to the West and will
remain indispensable until economically viable alternative sources of energy
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