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Putting our foot down in the "arc of instability"

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There’s a splendid new term for our garrisoning of the globe. It’s called our “footprint.” And as an image it has all the immediacy of a giant squishing a bug into the mud. Take this description from a Washington Post piece (New Bases Reflect Shift in Military),

“The new network of bases corresponds to what defense officials call an ‘arc of instability’ that runs from the Andean region in the Southern Hemisphere through North Africa to the Middle East and into Southeast Asia. ‘When you overlay our footprint onto that, we don’t look particularly well-positioned to deal with the problems we’re now going to confront,’ Hoehn said.”

The speaker, Andy Hoehn, is “the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, the architect of the realignment” — and the realignment now being planned in the Pentagon will, according to the Post, be the “most extensive” since Cold War’s end.

“the Bush administration is creating a network of far-flung military bases designed for the rapid projection of American military power against terrorists, hostile states and other potential adversaries. The withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, announced Thursday, and the recent removal of most U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia are the opening moves in a complex shift that should replace most large, permanent U.S. bases overseas with smaller facilities

“The bases are being built or expanded in countries such as Qatar, Bulgaria and Kyrgyzstan, and the U.S. territory of Guam.”

The thing that makes this sort of “planning” amusing in a grim way is that that “arc of instability,” running from the “Andean” region (read: Colombia) to Southeast Asia (including undoubtedly Indonesia and the Philippines) is more or less what was once known as the Third World and now might better be called the world’s oil lands. It literally involves garrisoning the globe. The piece goes on, for instance, to assure us that the military has no intention of pulling out of the “temporary” Central Asian bases set up during the Afghan war. And we’re also, it tells us, in the hunt for new bases or, in another charming phrase, “operating positions” in Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal and Italy), Northern Australia, and possibly basing rights in Vietnam among other places, among, in fact, all places.

Journalist Greg Jaffe reporting in today’s Wall Street Journal (“In Massive Shift, U.S. Is Planning to Cut Size of Military in Germany”) is quite blunt in his description:

The speaker, Andy Hoehn, is “the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, the architect of the realignment” — and the realignment now being planned in the Pentagon will, according to the Post, be the “most extensive” since Cold War’s end.

“the Bush administration is creating a network of far-flung military bases designed for the rapid projection of American military power against terrorists, hostile states and other potential adversaries. The withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, announced Thursday, and the recent removal of most U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia are the opening moves in a complex shift that should replace most large, permanent U.S. bases overseas with smaller facilities

“The bases are being built or expanded in countries such as Qatar, Bulgaria and Kyrgyzstan, and the U.S. territory of Guam.”

The thing that makes this sort of “planning” amusing in a grim way is that that “arc of instability,” running from the “Andean” region (read: Colombia) to Southeast Asia (including undoubtedly Indonesia and the Philippines) is more or less what was once known as the Third World and now might better be called the world’s oil lands. It literally involves garrisoning the globe. The piece goes on, for instance, to assure us that the military has no intention of pulling out of the “temporary” Central Asian bases set up during the Afghan war. And we’re also, it tells us, in the hunt for new bases or, in another charming phrase, “operating positions” in Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal and Italy), Northern Australia, and possibly basing rights in Vietnam among other places, among, in fact, all places.

Journalist Greg Jaffe reporting in today’s Wall Street Journal (“In Massive Shift, U.S. Is Planning to Cut Size of Military in Germany”) is quite blunt in his description:

“The push — part of the most radical redeployment of American forces since the end of the Cold War — is driven by the increasing importance that the U.S. is placing on protecting key oil reserves in Africa and the Caucasus region In the Caucasus region the U.S. is likely to have as many as 15,000 troops, some rotating through small, spartan bases in places such as Azerbaijan. U.S. officials also expect to maintain about 5,000 to 10,000 troops in Poland, where they have access to large training ranges without the same environmental restrictions that have made training in Germany increasingly hard In North Africa, Pentagon officials are looking at establishing semipermanent bases in Algeria, Morocco and possibly Tunisia It is considering smaller, more austere bases in Senegal, Ghana, Mali and Kenya. U.S. officials said that a key mission would be to ensure that Nigeria’s oil fields are secure.”

Is there anyplace left out? Any country in particular that is both weak and ruled either autocratically or despotically? If so, do e-mail Don Rumsfeld ASAP. It must have been an oversight.

All this is being announced as if it were simply a streamlining and reduction of our military stance (and its true that imperial military and financial overstretch is a distinct long-term worry for our ruling strategists). We will be cutting down on the vast Cold War bases in Germany and Korea as well as the post-Gulf War I bases in Saudi Arabia and replacing them with “spartan” bases and lots of prepositioned equipment. But I wouldn’t hold my breath on all of this, not until all the various interest groups domestic and foreign have kicked in — and not at all in the Middle East. As David Isenberg points out in a round-up of U.S. bases in the Middle East and Central Asia in the Asia Times (The ever-growing U.S. military footprint),

“The war in Iraq is over, so that means that the troops are coming home and the United States is reducing its presence – what military planners like to call its “footprint” in the region, right? Well, wrong, actually.

“Contrary to much of the recent news coverage about Pentagon pronouncements on the US seeking to reduce its presence in Saudi Arabia, the fact of the matter is that when one looks at the big picture, the US has a huge military presence in the region. And it is not going anywhere. Considering the rhetoric that has come out in the past month from the neoconservative camp and administration officials about their unhappiness with countries such as Syria and Iran, the US military ability to reach out and touch someone must be taken very seriously.”

I’ve included below a summary piece from the Boston Globe on the Pentagon’s “footprint” — and not just in the “arc of instability” either where, as the piece points out, “regional combatant commanders” like General Tommy Franks of Centcom, “have gained a stature that, in many cases, overshadows the role of ambassadors in the regions.” The Pentagon has also been creating its own arc of instability in Washington by trying to take over the functions of other agencies, including those of various intelligence agencies (hence, to a large extent, the present weapons-of-mass-destruction imbroglio, which seems significantly to be an intrabureacratic turf war over Pentagon expansion).

The Globe‘s piece is interesting but thoroughly mainstream in its inability to print the one word that might begin to make some sense of all this: militarism. There’s a taboo word for you in our media, unless, of course, you’re talking about other countries.

If you want a sense of how our ever-larger military “footprint” and the fact that the Bush administration generally imagines global relations largely in military-to-military terms actually works, take a look at America’s War on Terror Goes Awry in Pakistan, a piece by journalist Ahmed Rashid posted at Yale Global online (but found by me at the invaluable www.warincontext.org). Rashid, author of the book Taliban, writes about how the Taliban is now alive and thriving in Pakistan’s border regions with Afghanistan:

“In a rich irony, the Americans have in fact strengthened the [Pakistani] army in order to fight terrorism. Since September 11, the US has pandered to the army’s policies by once again forging an alliance with it, much as it did during its fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the Cold War.

“Now the Bush administration is asking Musharraf for up to 6,000 troops to be part of the peacekeeping forces in Iraq and may well try to enlist Pakistani intelligence in helping undermine the Iranian government. Washington already owes Musharraf for catching Al’Qaeda leaders, even though the army has refused to apprehend a single senior Taliban leader – most of whom live in Pakistan.

“But Washington’s short-sighted policies. will only hasten Pakistan’s turn towards Islamic fundamentalism. and make a mockery of Washington’s rhetoric about furthering democracy in the Islamic world. Left unchecked, the rise of the MMA – the latter-day Taliban – in a nuclear-armed Pakistan will have grave consequences for the region.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if the American people someday decided to put their foot down about all this? Tom

Expanding role of Defense Department spurs concerns
Some say officials overstep bounds, limit other agencies

By Robert Schlesinger
The Boston Globe
June 8, 2003

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense’s responsibilities have grown beyond anything that military commanders had imagined at the end of the Cold War, according to national security specialists; some have voiced worry that the department’s expanding roles could tax the Pentagon’s resources or compromise some civilian authorities.

Nearly 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is no more talk about a budgetary ”peace dividend” or trimming US forces. The US military is not only operating in more places around the world than at any other time since World War II, but it has also expanded into areas previously reserved for other government agencies: establishing a new intelligence unit, launching a homeland defense command, and exerting growing influence in foreign policy.

To read more of this Boston Globe piece click here