Portugal's Strategic Territories

Abstract

Portugal is lacking in heavy industry and is not in a position to contribute to the common cause on a large scale with raw materials and troops. Fully mobilized, her Army numbers 700,000 men, now rapidly being equipped with modern American and British mat?riel. Her Air Force is small and in the event of war seems destined to be used more for scouting and Atlantic rescue work than for combat. Her Navy comprises about 60 vessels, counting train ing ships, hydrographie ships and patrol boats; but it does not include a cruiser, battleship or aircraft carrier. Experts say that the Portuguese Navy is at least ten units below desirable strength, and although sloops, destroyers and submarines now regularly exercise with the other Pact fleets off the At lantic coast, no program has yet been set in motion to remedy this deficiency. Portugal's neutrality during the last war, and the loan of her Azores bases to the Allies within the framework of the 600-year-old Anglo-Portuguese Al liance, showed that her adjacent islands are of immense strategic value in warfare in the Atlantic. Last year the United States concluded an agreement with Portugal for the use of the full facilities of these bases in peace and war. The agreement also provided that the same facilities should be extended to Great Britain in the case of war, and that American officers should train Portuguese personnel at the Lajens air base. With the threat to world peace coming from the East, all of Portugal's vast overseas Empire assumes importance. Her overseas possessions?East and West?cover some 2,170,276 square kilometers. Their coastlines, not includ ing those of the adjacent islands, stretch along 5,534 kilometers of the At lantic and Indian Oceans or of other Asiatic seaboard. They vary in size from the vast 1,246,700 square kilometer tract of Angola in Africa to tiny Macao, 16 kilometers square, on the coast of China. The strategic significance of the Azores hardly needs emphasis. The Cape Verde Islands, which hold the key to the southern part of the Atlantic, are no less important as bases, lying as they do off the French West African coast, and on the air route to the South Americas. The large airport on Sal Island is already the nucleus of what may become a strategic wartime base. Angola and Guinea, with 1,816 kilometers of coastline on the Atlantic, may be regarded as an integral part of Atlantic defense. They also offer a vital outlet to the inland territories of Africa. Angola is an important source of foodstuffs and raw materials, producing sugar, cotton, rice, coffee, maize, sisal and vegetable oils, among other crops, as well as asphalt, copper, com mercial and other diamonds, mica and manganese. Although not a natural market for the United States, wartime needs and the tremendous develop