projection of US power (Jane's)

The first paragraph says it all - "Washington will continue to plan for
wars anywhere around the world".  Perhaps Iraq will bring Bush down,
perhaps not - but this is the reality on the ground today.

--

18 June 2003A new way of projecting American power -
The number of troops based abroad will be reduced

Little is being said in public and, for the moment,
most of the changes are imperceptible. Yet they amount
to an extraordinary reassessment of the way US forces
will be positioned around the world. Washington will
continue to plan for wars anywhere around the globe.
However, most troops will be positioned in the US,
rather than in forward bases on various continents.

US military planners are engaged in two complicated
processes. The first entails a rearrangement of
existing US military bases around the world, partly to
complete the readjustment begun a decade ago when the
threat of international communism ended and partly to
reduce political dependency on any host nation.

The deployment of US troops in Europe was originally
designed to meet the threat of a Soviet invasion. That
threat has disappeared but tens of thousands of US
forces remain in Europe, largely because neither the
Europeans nor the Americans want to tackle the
sensitive question of their withdrawal. The recent war
in Iraq, however, changed the situation. Washington
discovered that, while it could use these troops and
their equipment in the Middle East, it could not fly
them over the territory of some countries that opposed
the war.

US attention is now moving to the former communist
countries of eastern Europe where the stationing of US
troops makes greater sense. The use of airfields and
ports in Romania or Bulgaria provides easy access to
the Middle East and the Mediterranean, the areas where
the USA is most likely to be engaged in future
warfare.

A similar process is taking place in the Middle East.
Immediately after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein,
Washington announced that it would withdraw its forces
from Saudi Arabia. The official explanation was that
these troops were no longer required; the real reason
is that Washington is keen to free itself from
dependence on the Saudi regime. Indeed, the entire
pattern of US deployment in the Middle East suggests
that the USA is preparing for the possibility that the
Saudi monarchy will eventually collapse. Since the
terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001, the
Pentagon has poured billions of dollars into the
creation of new bases in the smaller Arab sheikhdoms
around the Gulf. The strategy makes sense on two
counts.

First, the smaller Arab monarchies remain dependent on
the US for protection and should the Saudi regime
collapse, the USA would be able to contain any radical
Muslim government that may appear in its wake.

Second, the most spectacular change of strategy came
with the idea of creating 'virtual' military bases
around the world - staging posts for US troops -
rather than long-term, fixed installations where US
forces are stationed for decades. The US has invested
heavily in new transport aircraft - vast monsters that
can airlift whole units, complete with all their
equipment, in a matter of days to any corner of the
globe. The result is that the USA does not need many
fixed bases; all it requires is the certainty that
some areas around the world can be used as staging
posts for the airlift of US forces whenever necessary.
This scheme has the added advantage of precluding
political disputes, for the stationing of US troops
can create huge difficulties. In contrast, the
conclusion of agreements about the possible use of
staging posts in case of crises can pass unnoticed.
Few are aware that Washington has already created a
constellation of such 'virtual' military bases on the
territories of all the former Soviet republics in
Central Asia, conveniently close to Iran, Afghanistan,
India, Pakistan and China.

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