[casi] Iraq: First "footprint" in garrisoning the globe

["ppg" <ppg@DELETETHISnyc.rr.com>]

Tom Engelhardt writing today in his regular internet column, tomdispatch.com
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=744

Putting our foot down in the "arc of instability"


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.
J
ournalist 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."


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