INDIAN OCEAN AND JAPAN IN US STRATEGY 5 TABLE I DEPLOYMENT OF US FORCES IN EAST ASIA, AS OF APRIL 1974 Country: U S Servicemen: Japan & Okinawa 55,000 South Korea 38,000 Thailand 36,000 Philippines 16,000 Taiwan 6,000 Offshore (7th Fleet) 21,000 Total 172,000 SOURCE: Department of State Bulletin April 29, 1974, p 472. Businessmen have developed the "Pacific Basin" concept to describe the outreach of American capitalism in Asia. "For most of modern history/' Standard Oil of California's Board Chairman, 0 N Miller, wrote in 1973, the focus of trade and industry was on the nations washed by the Atlantic Ocean. But twentieth century communication and transportation have shrunk the once formidable time and distance barriers of the Orient, and today within the Pacific Basin's vast, but now accessible regions are some of the most rapidly expanding national economies of the world.5 America's Vietnam war spending helped spur the rapid economic growth in these countries, and now US corporations want to appropriate much of the area's new wealth. As noted by former Bank of America president Rudolph A Peterson in a speech to California businessmen, "there is no more vast or rich area for resource development or trade growth in the world today than this immense region, and it is virtually in our own backyard."6 Expansion to Indian Ocean: Diego Garcia In recent years the "Pacific Basin" concept has been stretched even further to encompass the Indian Ocean, which, since the 1967 closure of the Suez Canal, has been more accessible from the Pacific than from the Atlantic or Mediterranean. Already, the Indian Ocean has become one of the most important arenas for big power naval rivalry: a Soviet squadron has been stationed there since 1967, and U S warships have been deployed regularly since 1971. The reasons for the growing naval build-up are not difficult to identify—the tankers which provide 90 per cent of Japan's petroleum supply, 60 per cent of Europe's and an increasing proportion of North America's, all must pass through the Indian Ocean on their way to and from the oil ports. These waterways also link some of the most populous, important, and resource-rich Third World nations in the world, including Iran, Pakistan, India and Indonesia. Rocco M Paone, a professor of foreign affairs at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, has termed