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Bases of America's Military Adventurism

Washington’s policy-makers are cashing in on Bush's "war against terrorism" to fast-track U.S. military expansionism and adventurism throughout the world particularly in Asia. As Cold War alliances such as NATO are being used and reoriented to fight America's wars, new long-term global and regional security programs are in the drawing board.

BY BOBBY TUAZON
Bulatlat.com

RED ALERT: Photo by Sid Balatan Opposition to the deployment of U.S. forces in southern Philippines and continuing joint military exercises nationwide is expected to heighten in the light of reports that the U.S. military is building more bases wherever its special forces are or will be deployed in the "war against terrorism."

A month ago, Bulatlat.com cited a Washington Post report revealing that the U.S. Air Force is building a base somewhere in the new war zone of Central Asia that by June will be run by 3,000 personnel and American and allied aircraft. The new base is located in Bishkek, the remote capital of Kyrgyztan, a former Soviet republic. U.S. defense officials said the base, now being constructed at Manas International Airport, will be used to maintain not just air operations over Afghanistan but also a robust military presence in the region well after the war.

In Afghanistan itself, U.S. forces are digging in for a long stay after their war against the al Qaeda and Taliban is over - perhaps long enough to be embroiled in a factional infighting among that country's warlords that is expected to intensify. U.S. special forces and other troops have taken over what used to be al Qaeda and Taliban bases and camps and a long-term military infrastructure is being built.

But Afghanistan and Kyrgyztan are not the only countries that host new U.S. military bases. Military installations, communication stations (just like in the Philippines' Basilan) and airfields (like the one in Gen. Santos City) are being built in 13 other locations in nine countries in Central and South Asia, including Pakistan and Uzbekistan, another former Soviet republic. Georgia has offered locations for war exercises jointly with U.S. forces.

Long-term military presence

Last December, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that American forces would stay in the region after the fighting ended. On Jan. 14, asked whether the United States anticipates a long-term military presence or increased military engagement, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said, "for sure."

These telltale signs of U.S. military expansionism are just the latest phase in America's growing and permanent military presence in other locations where wars had been launched or are still ongoing. More than 10 years after Operation Desert Storm, the United States still maintains its military installations in southwest Asia and the Middle East. Thousands of U.S. troops still remain in Bondsteel, Kosovo two years after Bill Clinton launched genocidal air strikes there.

This week, independent sources said, as U.S. Vice President and oil magnate Dick Cheney toured the Middle East to muster support for a renewed American offensive against Iraq, Pentagon has begun planning and building new bases in the oil region. New airbases will be constructed in Jordan, the Arab Emirates and Kuwait while U.S. Reserve and National Guard units are preparing for deployment.

The new U.S. bases which beef up existing ones and massive troop deployments in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Middle East countries - not to mention a powerful fleet in the Persian Gulf - will eventually form an arc of firepower that would encircle Iraq. Pentagon officials had earlier said that the U.S. military will not hesitate to unleash its nuclear missiles on Baghdad to bring about a change in government in Iraq or if that country threatens to use its chemical weapons.

Likewise, anonymous U.S. military sources said special forces units are being retooled for new missions in the Middle East even as military missions are ongoing in Afghanistan and Central Asia, Central and South America, the Philippines and Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world.

New missions

Not quite incidental to Cheney's Middle East tour was Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's statement that the Pentagon can take on any additional mission that U.S. President George W. Bush orders.

"You can be absolutely certain that to the extent that the United States of America decides to undertake an activity, that we will be capable of doing it," Rumsfeld said at a press conference.

In an Associated Press report, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., noted that leaders of the Pentagon's four military services have that precisely to prepare for new military missions at least 51,400 more troops are needed: Army, 40,000; Air Force, 6,000; Marines, 2,400, and Navy, 3,000. The current cap on Army personnel is 480,000; Air Force 358,800; Marines 172,600; and Navy, 376,000.

If more U.S. warm bodies are needed to engage in more foreign missions, so too are plans to expand forward stationed forces and military bases throughout the world. As of the latest count, there are more than 200,000 troops (half of these in Asia-Pacific) on foreign soil and more than 50,000 personnel afloat in foreign waters. In recent years, an average of 35,000 of these personnel have been involved in contingency operations, mostly around Iraq and in the Balkans.

Aside from these, the United States maintains more than 800 foreign military installations including 60 major ones. The globe's only superpower also maintains military presence in 140 countries including significant deployments (i.e., multiple hundreds or thousands of troops) in 25 countries. It has security arrangements with at least 36 countries.

In recent years, the United States has also conducted 370 conventional and special war exercises yearly. Not only has the number of exercises increased but also that of contingency operations, sites of armed engagement and personnel involved.

Shift to Asia

Since the 1980s - long before the Cold War ended and "terrorism" became a rallying call for America's borderless wars - U.S. overseas armed presence has shifted substantially toward Asia. While this large continent once hosted less than 40 percent as many U.S. troops as Europe, today it hosts a number equal to Europe - and is increasing.

This "superpower overextension" is partly because, according to American defense analysts, the United States' freedom of action in Asia is greater than that in Europe. Here, U.S. military hegemony is guaranteed by a strong naval and air power and by several bilateral security treaties and basing arrangements. Besides, U.S.' vassal states and junior partners in the region have not developed a regional security institution comparable to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe and beyond.

Bush's "war against terrorism" has given the United States the pretext to accelerate its military expansionism and adventurism throughout the world. As its Cold War alliances such as NATO are being expanded, reoriented and used to fight America's wars, new long-term global and regional security programs are in the drawing board.

2001 Quadrennial Defense Review

One wonders why this is so? The answer can be found in part in the Pentagon's 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review that was issued soon after the Sept. 11 bombings. The review is the Bush administration's new security program throughout the world and was devised partly for budgetary purposes.

The Review reads in part: "During the latter half of the 20th century, the United States developed a global system of overseas military bases primarily to contain aggression by the USSR. U.S. overseas presence aligned closely with U.S. (economic and geopolitical) interests and likely threats to those interests. However, this overseas presence posture, concentrated in Western Europe and Northeast Asia, is inadequate for the new strategic environment, in which U.S. interests are global and potential threats in other areas of the world are enlarging."

To carry out America's new global security thrust, the Pentagon is tasked to use "new combinations of immediately deployable forward stationed and deployed forces; globally available reconnaissance, strike and command and control assets; information operations capabilities; and rapidly deployable, highly lethal and sustainable forces that may come from outside a theater of operations...including forcible entry forces."

Specifically, the security program will require new basing systems, additional bases and stations, more access to military facilities and exercises in many countries and more deployable naval units in the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Arabian Gulf and other seas.

This essentially echoes what the U.S. government laid down in 1950 through the National Security Council's NSC #68 which articulated its comprehensive cold war strategy "designed to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish...even if there were no Soviet threat." The Soviet Union served then as America's "evil empire" and a "monolithic menace." The same document read: "American prosperity depends upon a world order imposed by the United States."

The logic that has long guided Washington's global security strategy was also articulated in a 1992 paper prepared by the Pentagon's Defense Planning Guidance which Wolfowitz headed. The paper, a copy of which was leaked to the New York Times, argued that the United States must continue to dominate the international system and thus to "discourage" the "advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or...even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." America's self-interests are, of course, greater than what the paper describes. Bulatlat.com

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