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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2011
In recent years a sizeable literature has emerged concerning the Indian Ocean, owing in particular to the growth of perceived superpower rivalry and the resulting proposal by some littoral and regional states, notably Sri Lanka and India that the Indian Ocean should be declared a zone of peace. The strategic importance of the ocean has been dramatized by the build-up of the U. S. base in Diego Garcia. Every port and island has become of potential strategic importance as well. In the early 1970s, concern was expressed in the West over reports of Soviet bases at Berbera and Socotra in Somalia and the possible use of Gan in the Maldives after British withdrawal. As a highlight to this wider canvas, the Cocos-Keeling Islands emerged briefly in 1972 both as an internal Australian political issue which embarrassed the then ruling Liberal-Country party government and as a potentially embarrassing international issue at a time when Australia was preparing Papua-New Guinea for independence. However, the Cocos-Keeling Islands quickly slipped back into the obscurity from which they had briefly emerged, both during the period of Gough Whitlam's Labour government and later when the Liberal-Country party came back to power.
1 Hanks, Robert J., “Indian Ocean Negotiations: Rocks and Shoals”, Strategic Review, Winter 1978Google Scholar During the 1971 JVP insurgency in Sri Lanka, the Indian Navy made a brief naval display off the island.
2 Fuller, Jack, “Dateline Diego Garcia: Paved-over Paradise”, Foreign Policy, no. 26 (Fall 1977).Google Scholar
3 Australian Information Service: Radio Australia News, Australian High Commission, London, 12 Feb. 1979.Google Scholar
4 Radio Australia News, “UN Welcomes Australia's Purchase of the Cocos Islands”, 7 July 1978.
5 BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Pt. 3 FE/5838/A3/5, 14 June 1978.
6 Decolonization, U. N., no. 11, Apr. 1978.
7 Mullen, Ken, Cocos Keeling (Sydney, 1974), p. 70.Google Scholar
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9 Australia: Department of Territories Annual Reports of Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, 1963-64, p. 8.
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10 Ibid., p. 2.
12 Ibid., p. 6.
13 Hastings, op. cit. The whole question of exodus from the Cocos is reminiscent of the planned depopulation of Diego Garcia.
14 Blechman, Barry M., and Weinland, Robert G., “Why Coaling Stations Are Necessary in the Nuclear Age”, in International Security, Summer 1977.Google Scholar
15 Dyason House Papers, op. cit.
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19 Australia: Department of Territories: Annual Report of Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Report for 1965–1966, p. 4.
20 See Beznoruah, Manoranjan, U. S. Strategy in the Indian Ocean (New York, 1977)Google Scholar, for a discussion on the formation of BIOT.
21 Australia: Department of Administrative Services Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Report for 1975, Parliamentary paper no. 335/1976 (Canberra, 1977)Google Scholar. See also footnote 28.
22 “ANZUS: A Strategic Role in the Indian Ocean”, The World Today, Oct. 1978.
23 Report for 1975, op. cit.
24 Harris, Owen, “Australia's Foreign Policy under Whitlam”, Orbis 19, no. 3 (Fall 1975)Google Scholar. Australia provides a base for U. S. nuclear submarines.
25 Turner, Nicholas, “OMEGA: A Documented Analysis”, Australian Outlook 26, no. 3 (Dec. 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 Ibid., p. 300.
27 The United States has also got a satellite tracking station in the Seychelles.
28 The Situation With Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Indepen dence to Colonial Countries, U. N. Documents A/10023/Add. 7 (29 Oct. 1975).
29 Radio Australia News, 7 July 1978.
30 Dyason House Papers, op. cit. p. 3.
31 Radio Australia News, 12 Feb. 1979.
