—and other ambassadors of the Eastern bloc. I visited Poland, Hungary and Romania and was well received. I cannot complain about the atmosphere in those days. It was the pre-Angolan period. We should not for one moment apologise for of hesitate to congratulate ourselves on the expulsion of the spies who proliferated in Britain.

Where else has detente made any progress? It is true that we have fed the Soviet bloc and some of its satellites. We have done so cheaply. However, I read this morning that the poles are having trouble paying for the grain with which they have been supplied. We have supplied the Soviet bloc with a great deal of technology on credit, and at lower rates than those at which our own people can borrow. The debts that have piled up with the Eastern bloc now total about 55 billion dollars. It remains to be seen how those debts are to be paid. On the whole the credit record of the Eastern bloc has not been bad, but an extremely large sum remains to be paid. No one quite knows how it is to be covered.

We know that there has been a steady build-up of conventional forces throughout the Eastern bloc, which gives it a great preponderance in Europe and in the Far East. There has been a similar buildup of tactical weapons. That is an area in which the Eastern bloc had previously not advanced so much. It has now developed the SS20 and other weapons that are a standing danger to Britain and are not covered by the SALT Agreement.

We have seen the advance of Soviet imperialism in Central Asia—in Afghanistan—as well as in Africa.

In an extraordinary comment the Foreign Secretary said: There can be very few people who would wish to return to the situation that obtained at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, when Mr. Khrushchev said so graphically that the smell of burning hung in the air."—[Official Report, 7th June 1978; Vol. 951, c. 209.] I was in a sensitive defence post at that time, and I must tell the House that it never crossed my mind that there could be war over the Cuban crisis. That was because the Americans had complete nuclear supremacy.

The whole object of the Soviets in putting missiles into Cuba was to be able to reach areas of the United States that they could not reach from the Soviet Union. There were only two problems that caused us anxiety. I think that I saw most of the telegrams and messages that went between us and the Americans. One problem was if the Americans should flinch, and the other was if we left no way out for a reasonable retreat on the part of the Soviets.

In fact, we left a way out. We are now paying the price for it. The way out that we left was an assurance by President Kennedy that he would do nothing to destabilise the Castro regime. The peoples of Angola and Ethiopia are paying for that today.

It is naïve to think that we have made progress since that time. In fact, we have gone back. In the days of Khrushchev there were elements in the Soviet Union that were prepared to stand up to the military. They no longer exist. The military-industrial complex is, alas, in almost total control of the Soviet Union's policy. As a high-grade Eastern European commissar told me not long ago, even if Brezhnev had wanted to stop the Angolan adventure he could not have done so.

The Foreign Secretary should look a little deeper into the problem and should study the causes of Soviet imperialism and not merely the symptoms. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the Opposition exaggerating the symptoms in Africa and not examining the causes. He should consider the causes in the Soviet Union. He should consider the strength of the military-industrial complex and the growing anxiety within the Soviet Union about its energy shortage. It will be a net importer of oil in two or three years. He should bear in mind the difficulties that it has with its subservient or subject nationalities.

The situation is not all dark. There is good news about NATO. It seems that we are all slightly to increase our effort to defend ourselves against the growing multiplication of tanks and aircraft from the other side. It is good news that Mr. Brzezinski has been to China and that the Americans and the Chinese are strengthening their relations. It is good news that the Japanese seem likely to conclude a peace treaty with China. I believe that that can be done without any sacrifice of old friends such as South Korea and Taiwan. At present the Chinese are still militarily weak. They need American support, just as the Americans and Japanese need their presence. I believe that there is a foundation for substantial understanding among the United States, Japan and China. It will be up to the Japanese to strengthen their military effort in the years to come so as to take on rather more of the responsibilities than they can today.

The real danger to the world is not in Europe or in the Far East—that is my hope—but in the area between. It lies in the threat to the trade routes of the world and in the threat to the sources of raw materials. The exits from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean is already under Soviet control. I saw that for myself when I flew out of Djibouti the other day. As the aircraft in which I was a passenger moved a little to the right. Russian air traffic control at Aden said "If you come any nearer, we shall shoot you down." We moved a little in the other direction and air traffic control in Ethiopia, Russian again said "We shall shoot you down if you come any nearer." That exit is no longer free.

The exit from the Persian Gulf, where the oil comes from, is still free. However, it is interesting that the nearest Soviet-controlled airfield is only 300 miles from the Straits of Hormuz at the east end of the Aden Protectorate, and with the absorption of Afghanistan into the Soviet Central Asian system it is only 300 miles from the south of Afghanistan to the Straits of Hormuz.

The Straits of Malacca, which were protected for a long time by Britain and Australia, are now not protected by any naval power. The Cape route is still open, although from Luanda, Maputo and Nacala it can be threatened. What I have said about the threat from Aden to the Straits of Hormuz is enough to indicate the danger to our vital oil supplies.

I turn to Africa. I think Sir Winston Churchill once said that the purpose of recrimination is to prevent the repetition of error. More than two years ago in a debate on Central and Southern Africa, when it was thought that our interest was only in what might be called European-led Southern Africa, my right hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan) and I both said that we thought Zaire would prove to be the next victim on the list. It very nearly has been, and it still may be.

I understand the Foreign Secretary's argument that we must not consider Africa as exclusively an East-West problem. We know that. Anyone who has studied the history of British or French imperialism knows perfectly well that most inroads were made by using and exploiting tribal disputes and divsions. The Soviets are doing the same. However, what the Foreign Secretary said on the subject was juvenile. He said that the central problem is economic social and political and that the military problem is merely the symptom. Unfortunately, it is the other way round. What he was saying was either naive or cynical.

There would be no serious disturbance anywhere in the African continent without Soviet Intervention. There would have been no MPLA Government established in Angola without. There would have been no Agostinho Neto Government established in Angola without Soviet-Cuban intervention There would be no serious guerrilla movement challenging the status quo in South-West Africa or in Rhodesia unless it had been equipped and indoctrinated by the Soviets. There would be no war—the Foreign Secretary was the first to admit it yesterday—between Somalia and Ethiopia if the Soviet Union had not equipped both sides. First it backed Somalia, only to change sides and support the Ethiopians. The resistance in Eritrea is largely fomented by arms given to the Eritreans originally by the Soviet Union. There is even the same situation in the South Sahara.

None of these conflicts could have escalated to the dimension that has been achieved today without Soviet intervention. It is perfectly true that the basic problem that must be solved is economic, social and political. I could not agree more. But let us think of what is involved in the relationship of the military to the economic, social and political account.

It took the French and Belgian paratroops 48 hours to recover Kolwezi. It would take—I speak with some experience of these matters having been at the Colonial Office and seen something of administration—a dozen years to restructure Zaire and make it into a viable, modern State.

Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary took credit for his policy in the Horn of Africa. He said that, because we had stood back, not intervened and not encouraged the invasion of the Ogaden, that had strengthened our position for intervention in Zaire. I wonder whether it crossed his mind or the minds of his colleagues that if there had been resolute action in the Horn of Africa the Cubans and the Soviets would not have dared to authorise the raid into Zaire. It was the appeasement policy steadily pursued by the West in Angola and in the Horn of Africa which encouraged the new adventurism. Every time that we appease and stand idly by and allow these things to happen, there will be more aggression.

The right hon. Gentleman talked a lot about principle. What principle was he advocating? It was not clear to me. He said that our policy was to be based on principle. At one time the principle was Majority rule. We threw over the idea of majority rule in Rhodesia several months ago with the Anglo-American plan. We are concerned not with getting majority rule, but with getting the Patriotic Front included in the settlement. It has been the same with South-West Africa.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet pointed out, Mr. Nkomo's little speech at his birthday party yesterday was not encouraging for the kind of solution that we want to see. It seems odd that the Foreign Secretary should denounce Soviet-Cuban aggression in Africa and say that it is unacceptable but not indicate what he intends to do about it and that he should at the same time continue to give support to political leaders who spend half their time in Moscow and the other half in Cuba.

I do not know whether the Foreign Secretary read about the dissident leader from the SWAPO movement, now in England, who yesterday said that we should accept and stand by the agreement reached between South Africa and the five Western Powers. It looks for all the world as though we are trying to run out on it and to make the South African raid into Angola the excuse for going back on that agreement. I hope that this is not true, but it looks as though that may be the case. I hope that the Minister, when he replies, will be able to clear up that matter.

The new policy seems to be not about principles but about dealing with people who have the power. Well, Vorster and Smith have the power, but the Government will not deal with them. The right hon. Gentleman protests too much. He is talking not about principle but about expediency—anything to avoid the dreaded confrontation with the Soviets.

The situation in Africa is not lost by any means. If we were to give genuine help to the Somalis and to the Eritrean Liberation Movement and if the French were persuaded to stay in Djibouti, the Soviets would find themselves with their Cuban allies in a landlocked Ethiopia and have little choice but to negotiate the evacuation of Cubans from that area.

Zaire can be saved by the necessary mixture of whatever African forces—Moroccan and Egyptian—are now moving into the country, with French help. I should like to hear more generous praise for the action of the French. It seems to me that they have spoken for Europe in this critical situation.

We have to think not only of economic, social and political change, which is slow, but of some military measures. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford was absolutely right to insist on the importance of this aspect.

I do not know whether the Minister has seen the new proposal which has emerged about Rhodesia. I gather that Mr. Sithole has proposed that the British Government should appoint an observer to sit on the Executive Council, the Ministerial Council and even on the military Security Council, not to intervene, not to sabotage what they are doing but just to see and to report back whether this is a genuine operation. Mr. Graham and his American colleague are in Salisbury now. It would be interesting to know the reaction of the Government to what seems a constructive proposal. Will the Minister also make clear our attitude to the South-West African settlement agreed with Mr. Vorster not long ago? Are we standing by that or are we giving it up because SWAPO does not seem to be co-operating?

It is difficult to escape the impression that Her Majesty's Government are following what might be called the weaker strand of American policy—that they are, as it were, helping Ambassador Young, whom some of us had the opportunity to hear privately in committee recently and to form our own judgment on his views, against the slightly stronger line advocated by Mr. Brzezinski.

Frankly, we are seeing a new situation. I say "a new situation", but it has been developing for three or four years. From the end of the war for a generation, American leadership and American economic and military power assured the prosperity and security, broadly speaking, of the free world. Then came defeat in Vietnam, devaluation of the dollar and the Watergate crisis.

Defeat in Vietnam meant that the Americans were no longer prepared to undertake any large-scale military commitments overseas, except perhaps in Europe. Devaluation of the dollar meant that, although they had at last achieved their ambition of making the dollar the only reserve currency in the world, the Americans were not prepared to administer it with the disciplines necessary to make it a valid reserve currency. Watergate meant that the authority of the White House, as we had known it from Roosevelt to Nixon, had been eroded and would no longer command the same importance in the world, at any rate for several years to come.

We are facing what I might call 1947 in reverse. In 1947, Ernest Bevin in office, Winston Churchill in Opposition and West European leaders turned to the Americans and said "You must come and help us." NATO, the Truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan grew out of that. Now it is the other way round. The Americans are signalling to us and to the Japanese to play a larger part than we have played so far. If we fail to respond, it will be at our cost and at the cost of the whole free world.

Of course, Britain cannot carry the burden alone, but we have had a traditional role—that of being the nucleus of alliances. We have the European Community, we still have some connections with the Commonwealth and we still have some special understanding with the United States. We have been enabled in the past to stand up to threats of hegemony by the Spanish, the French and the Germans.

We know where the danger comes from today. What Sir Neil Cameron said in Peking was perfectly true. Everybody knows it and no one in his heart can criticise it.

We need to give a lead to Europe and to the United States. We must persuade the Americans not to become the policemen or the bankers of the world again but to give strong support to policies which we in Europe, given a year or two years, are caable of undertaking by ourselves and which Britain can play a major part in shaping. The Government are not doing that.