Soviet expeditionary force during the cold war

But that seems like a huge waste of sophisticated naval warships as likely all the escorts of Kuznetsov will be lost too

What about a strategy akin to portugese island or Fort bases strategically located around the world ? before start of any planned hostilities their garrisons can be swelled, defences improved with more SAM ,artillery, SSM etc brought in by soviet merchant marine so they can survive on their own for a while until broader political/military objectives are met? At the same time they can be used to project power against smaller hostile nations by basing strike aircrafts and submarines there.

Well if they were expecting all the escorts to be lost too then I guess they considered it as necessary losses.

Having a strategy like the Portuguese could probably work (and they had something akin to that by the 1970s and 1980s when you think about) but would it be really useful?

Looking at maps of the cold war alignments in 1970, 1975 and 1980 (from Wikipedia's cold war history series) we see:

1970:

1280px-Cold_War-1970.png



1975:

1280px-Cold_War-1975.png



1980:

1280px-Cold_War_Map_1980.svg.png



that for the countries that the USSR would have an interest in providing such support with between 1970 and 1980 is restricted to Syria, Egypt (until the late 1970s), Vietnam and its Indochinese allies, Cuba, Benin, Nicaragua (but only after 1979), Congo, Angola, Somalia (until around 1977), Ethiopia (after 1977), Mozambique, and a few other countries in the Middle East and Africa. For countries directly bordering the USSR there is little to no need for naval supported bases because there is a direct land route.

Of the ones listed Cuba already had regular support in the form of equipment and subsidies and the Cuban Missile Crisis had shown that the US would be very hostile towards permanent Soviet bases on the island (though the Soviets maintained a signals intelligence base). In any case the Missile Crisis had resulted in an understanding that the US wouldn't invade Cuba once Soviet missiles and bases were removed. By 1975 Cuba's Revolution was so secure that Castro could send Cuban forces on a large scale to Angola. By then there was no conceivable scenario where the Soviets would need to send forces to Cuba outside of World War III having kicked anyway so that would be outside the scope of your original post. Anywhere else in the Americas around 1973-1980 is really not going to fulfill the necessary conditions as in pretty much every other country besides Cuba the governments were either pro-socialist for only short periods (Chile, Grenada) or their local allies are actually the rebels and expeditionary warfare would have been pointless as the rebels were probably either going to win due to local circumstances (Nicaragua) or not (El Salvador).

By 1975 also Vietnam was basically victorious in the Vietnam War. The US had pulled out in 1973 (and there was a very negligible chance of the US returning), South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia all finally fell in 1975 and even after the Sino-Soviet split in 1969 the Chinese were still supplying military aid to the North Vietnamese over 1970-1973 in levels still higher than the year immediately prior (i.e. 1964) to their active involvement in the Vietnam War. The major threat to Vietnam and Laos after 1975 was from China and the USSR could likely better relieve pressure on Vietnam by just stationing more troops in the Soviet Far East and Siberia and force China to have to keep an eye to the north rather than focus their full attention on Vietnam.

This only leave the Middle East and Africa. Within Africa, the countries in northern and western Africa were fairly stable. They were either neighboured by non-aligned countries (Mali mostly, Benin's eastern border with Nigeria) or even if bordered by western aligned countries they had good enough relations with them (Guinea, Ghana, Benin) that there was little chance of a regional conflict (in any case Guinea vacillated between supporting the USSR and supporting the USA, no doubt depending on the needs and offers at the time). As the West African states (despite political orientation) had all mostly formed the regional economic community of ECOWAS in the 1970s its difficult to see where a need to support Benin or Guinea would come into play for the Soviets. In eastern Africa, Nyerere of Tanzania had little to fear from Mozambique after it became independent and although Kenyan-Tanzania relations deteriorated a lot in the 1970s there wasn't any serious threat of Kenya invading Tanzania. Ditto Malawi which joined Tanzania in the SADCC in 1979-1980 to cooperate on economic development and ending apartheid in South Africa. I'm not sure about Tanzania-Zairean relations but in any case Zaire had long been a weak state with government control over the east having been fragile from the days before the end of Belgian colonialism. The only real threat was Idi Amin from Uganda who was just about crazy enough that he did start a war with Tanzania, but Tanzania was able to mostly handle that itself (with some help from Libya). Mozambique had become independent and the need for Soviet help was lessened by the fact that the only real threat could have come from South Africa and on that front, Mozambique had a lot of immediate neighbours (the other Frontline States of Angola, Tanzania, and Zambia who would likely support her if South Africa were to invade; Botswana was also a Frontline State but had to walk a fine line given its position with South Africa).

So that leaves Ethiopia (after 1977; before that it would have been Somalia from 1970-1977), South Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Egypt (until the 1970s) and Libya. Prior to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel and turn to the West in the 1970s there would have been little need to actively support Libya and even after that turn there was little appetite for regional conflict by Libya's neighbours (by contrast it was Libya that had the appetite with war in Chad). Iraq had no Arab neighbour really strong enough to take it on in a direct conflict and the only neighbours that it would really have to worry about and that the Soviets would need to take into consideration where Turkey and Iran. As Turkey is a NATO member, getting involved in some Turkish-Iraqi conflict would be delicate at best. On the other hand after the Iranian Revolution when Iran got on everybody's shit list it would have been much easier to support Iraq against Iran. South Yemen didn't have much to fear from Oman I think and in any case a peace process between North and South Yemen in 1972 had envisioned both countries unifying. The only reasonable places left where expeditionary forces and large bases could then really be conceivably needed were Syria (in relation to Israel) and Ethiopia (in relation to Somalia). Up until the 1977 Ogaden War the USSR was briefly supporting both Ethiopia and Somalia as both were socialist or socialist-aligned countries (or appeared to be developing that way). As the Soviets couldn't foresee that they would develop relations to such an extent in 1973-1974 then by the time the Ogaden War came about there wouldn't have been time really for such a strategy to develop. That leaves Syria which is what spurred the Kuznetsov design/strategy in the first place. It was likely less expensive to develop the Kuznetsov and consider its use to allow Soviet forces to be deployed in the Eastern Med than to maintain a standing force in Syria between 1973-1985. As Turkey also borders Syria it might also have made more sense to plan to deploy forces there to assist Syria in the case of a war being lost to Israel (and have a naval force large enough to act as a deterrent to US blocking action against such a deployment) than to keep forces there and likely increase tensions with Turkey and spur US deployment to Turkey.
 
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