NATIONAL | August 15, 2004    

Rumsfeld Briefs Russia on Shift of Forces

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS   (AP)   News

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html

(Suggestion/side note/reminder to Sean-Paul: I had a hard time finding this good compilation post on the topic to post this to, 'cause it didn't have any good keywords in it related to the story.)

US military shake-up: Your views

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/3569302.stm

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-307691.php

August 16, 2004

German communities brace for U.S. exit

By Tony Czuczka

Associated Press

BERLIN -- German officials voiced concern Monday that their country has the most to lose with President Bush's announcement that tens of thousands of troops will come home over the next decade -- changes that will have an economic impact in places where Americans are based.

With some 70,000 U.S. soldiers based in Germany, thousands of local jobs -- from bakers to maintenance workers and office personnel -- depend on the Americans who first came as occupying forces after World War II.

European and Asian countries with U.S. troops have braced for the changes for several years, but Bush's announcement Monday that up to 70,000 uniformed personnel and 100,000 dependents will gradually be moved back to the United States brought home the full impact.

"Base closures would hit us very hard," said city spokesman Ole Kruse in the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg, home of the Army's 1st Infantry Division.

That unit and the 1st Armored Division, based in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt, are frequently mentioned as candidates to return to the United States, though Bush gave no details Monday.

U.S. troops were based in large numbers in Germany during the Cold War to deter a then-feared Soviet invasion. But most of the 100,000 U.S. troops based in Europe are still in Germany.

The United States has also said it plans to reduce troop numbers in South Korea, where they have held static positions for 50 years.

"The world has changed a great deal and our posture must change with it," Bush told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Cincinnati. The United States needs "a more agile and more flexible force" to help fight "wars of the 21st century," he said.

But for places like Baumholder, a town in rural western Germany with a U.S. military training area, that spells problems.

Some 11,500 residents are matched by a U.S. military community of the same size, and the local economy would lose US$150 million (euro122 million) a year if the Americans left, Mayor Volkmar Pees told The Associated Press.

"The Americans are part of us," Baumholder resident Iris Schoen said. "You build up great friendships."

In host countries such as Germany and Japan, the local governments have paid a lot of the cost of stationing U.S. troops based there.

German officials have traveled to Washington in recent months to lobby against troop withdrawals or propose alternative solutions.

For instance, Rhineland-Palatinate state officials say they have suggested that lighter units replace the heavy armor now stationed at Baumholder. Mayor Pees called on the German military to move into facilities vacated by the Americans.

In Bamberg, officials said the local utility company could lose a major customer and that real estate prices would decline if the U.S. military leaves.

"We view this with great concern," city spokesman Steffen Schuetzewohl said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said he wants U.S. troops to be more flexible so they can be used for a wider variety of missions, rather than being tied down to a single country.

Under the Pentagon's plan, both Army divisions stationed in Germany would be returned to the United States and be replaced by smaller units equipped with Stryker light armored vehicles.

In addition, a wing of F-16 fighters based at Spangdahlem near the Belgian border could be moved to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, closer to the Middle East.

"The Americans' announced troop withdrawal is understandable," said Alexander Bonde, a lawmaker from Germany's Greens party, which is part of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government.

"Since most of the European-based American troops are in Germany, it's clear that the bulk of the withdrawal has to happen in Germany," he said.

Details on which bases might be closed have been sketchy, but officials have indicated that the huge Ramstein Air Base and the Landstuhl military hospital in southwestern Germany, as well as the Grafenwoehr training grounds in Bavaria, are not on the table.

For U.S. military personnel and their families, the immediate impact will likely be limited. Many soldiers are expected to return home when their tour of duty would have been up anyway.

Even with Bush's endorsement, the plan will likely be put into practice only somewhere between 2006 and 2011, said a U.S. military official in Europe who is familiar with the process.

"We've all heard the rumors of the details of the plan but that's going to be announced later because negotiations still have to take place," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

More talks with the affected countries will be needed to settle details on the "units, dates and specific numbers," the official said.

"This is really a political process and it's subject to many forces."

Associated Press writers Guido Rijkhoek in Wiesbaden and Lukas Grasberger in Nuremberg contributed to this report.

posted August 17, 2004, updated 1:15 p.m.

US troop withdrawal accepted overseas

Plan reflects changing security needs, but critics charge unilateralism.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0817/dailyUpdate.html?s=ent2

Kerry to Criticize Bush Plan to Redeploy Troops

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  10:50 AM ET

In a speech later today, John Kerry plans to assert that President Bush's plan might hinder national security.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Kerry.html?hp

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FH20Ag01.html

Russia unfazed by US plan

By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - Following President George W Bush's troop shift announcement in the US this week, it was expected that Russia's encirclement fears would revive, given that US forces are to be moved closer to the Middle East and Central Asia. But although the Kremlin's official reaction was relatively calm, it's push for Central Asian influence continues.

"I do not see anything worrying in these plans," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov stated, adding, "No grandiose movements are expected."

Although the plan involves US withdrawal of 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia and major shifts would not begin before 2006, some of the troops from Germany and South Korea reportedly could be moved to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion countries in Eastern Europe and possibly in Uzbekistan. Notably, Romania has air bases within striking distance of Iraq and Central Asia. Russia has previously expressed unease over the US making inroads into Central Asia.

But Washington has been careful not to antagonize Moscow. At the Defense Department background briefing on Monday, it was stated that the realignment was not aimed at Russia. The US would make greater use of training and logistics bases on the soil of new allies like Uzbekistan and Romania, said Pentagon officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

A senior military official went on to say that the kind of cooperation that develops further with Uzbekistan and others in Central Asia depended on those countries and to what extent they wanted to work with the US. "But we're not looking to take forces that are otherwise in Europe today and station them either in Eastern Europe or in Central Asia. That's not part of our plan," the official said.

Regardless, Moscow rarely lets its guard down. Not enemies, but not yet allies was how Ivanov characterized relations between Russia and the US following two days of talks over the weekend in St Petersburg with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Ivanov described his attitude toward NATO's eastward enlargement as "calmly negative", and criticized NATO's expansion into three former Soviet states on the Baltic Sea and warned that NATO warplanes flying patrols over those countries create the risk of accidental incidents.

The patrols are flown by four NATO fighter jets because the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have no air forces of their own. Ivanov, speaking at a news conference with Rumsfeld, questioned the need for the patrols. "We cannot understand how these four planes can intercept al-Qaeda, the Taliban or anything else," Ivanov said. "The only thing they can intercept is a mythical Soviet threat."

Yet despite the US's official pronouncements that the troop realignment is not aimed at Russia, Moscow will likely remain keen to secure Central Asia. As the heads of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a six-member group that includes Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, met at a summit meeting in Tashkent last June, Russian President Vladimir Putin made no secret that Moscow has been pushing to use a variety of groupings so as to exert its influence across the region. "The voice of Russia will be heard here," Putin told reporters after the summit.

Subsequently, Russia has recently moved to push its agenda in Central Asia through security arrangements. Notably, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held a large-scale military exercise on August 2-6. The Collective Rapid Reaction Force, including troops from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, held anti-rebel war-games in the Kyrgyz mountains.

The exercise, code named "Frontier-2004", involved more than 2,000 soldiers from Russia and the three Central Asian members. The maneuvers took place at the Kyrgyz Defense Ministry's Edelweiss mountainous training center near the town of Balykchi on the shores of Lake Issykul. Jets and helicopters from the new Russian air base in Kant struck targets in northern Kyrgyzstan for the first time.

The war-games scenario, approved by the CSTO, involved the deployment of Russian elite troops. According to Russian media reports, units of the Ulyanovsk-based 31st Paratrooper Brigade as well as the Samara-based 3rd Special Force Brigade, as well as the 12th Special Force Brigade of Russia's military intelligence (GRU) were brought from Ulyanovsk and Yekaterinburg to Russia's Kant base in Kyrgyzstan by Il-76MD military cargo planes.

Politicians insisted the war-games were largely anti-terrorist. Following the exercise, Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev said the CSTO also is considering pre-emptive operations in Afghanistan, but gave no details. "We don't have to wait for militants from Afghanistan to cross the Afghan-Tajik border, but we should take preventive measures rather than allow them to come to the region," Akayev said.

"The situation in Central Asia is stable, but we don't rule out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan or any other countries in the region," Ivanov said earlier this month in the wake of the war games. Moscow also indicated plans to double the number of troops stationed at the Kant based by the end of this year.

Furthermore, Kyrgyzstan may become Russia's major military and political ally in Central Asia, the country's foreign minister, Askar Aitmatov, indicated last week. "Russia remains a true friend and the principal strategic partner of Kyrgyzstan. Long-term relations with Russia are the priority of our foreign policy," Aitmatov said in a speech at the Russian Kant air base during Russian Air Force Day celebrations. "The opening of the Russian air base in October last year became an indication that Russian-Kyrgyz relations are relations between allies," he said.

Moscow has also been keen to boost military ties with Uzbekistan. For instance, Russia and Uzbekistan agreed to hold major joint war games in southern Uzbekistan later this year, Ivanov announced last June.

The Kremlin has recently come up with a series of overtures towards Uzbekistan, once seen as the US's staunchest ally in Central Asia. It was hardly a coincidence that on Tuesday, Russia announced it had apprehended three men suspected of helping to organize a series of bombings in Uzbekistan earlier this year and may extradite them to their homeland for trial. The three suspects are reportedly linked to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

In the meantime, regardless of Washington's assurances that its troop redeployment is not aimed at Russia, Moscow's perceived strategic purpose remains to strengthen its influence in Central Asia. However, the new security arrangements are yet to prove their viability as vehicles of Moscow's clout in the strategic region.

Sergei Blagov covers Russia and post-Soviet states, with special attention to Asia-related issues. He has contributed to Asia Times Online since 1996. Between 1983 and 1997, he was based in Southeast Asia. In 2001 and 2002, Nova Science Publishers, NY, published two of his books on Vietnamese history.

One revealing tidbit at the briefing, for those unfamiliar with the scope of the global US military basing complex was this:

There are only 230 major US military bases in the world, 202 of which are in the United States and its territories. But there are 5,458 [chuckles] distinct and discrete military installations around the world, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that many of them are 100 acres or less. Again, a legacy from the Cold War, a legacy from post-1945. We don't need those little pieces of property anymore.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH20Aa01.html

Reshaping Washington's global footprint

By David Isenberg

It appears the barbarian hordes will have a few less Americans to attack in the future, or at least have to travel to different places to attack them.

That is one of the conclusions to be drawn from the Bush administration's Global Posture Review, which was officially released on Monday by President George W Bush at a speech to the annual convention of the 2.6 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati. The plan involves redeploying US military forces currently stationed around the world (commonly referred to as the "global footprint"), and it has been in the works since August 2001, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set it in motion.

Unlike the plans of the previous administration, such as the Base Force in the first Bush administration and Bottom Up Review and 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review during the Bill Clinton years, this plan is more ambitious in that it doesn't just adjust overall force levels, it also aims to pull 70,000 to 100,000 troops out of Europe and Asia. If this really happens it would be the biggest military reconfiguration since the end of the Cold War.

Currently, more than 100,000 US troops are based in Europe, about 70% of them in Germany, and another 100,000 in Asia-Pacific. Most of the troops to be moved from Europe and Asia will return to the US, along with an estimated 100,000 support staff and family members.

But this is not to say that America plans to reduce its ability to intervene militarily around the world. As one military official said, "It's not our view that this will result in a force structure reduction in any of the services. That's not what this plan is about. This really is not just about reductions in place, but this is about a realignment globally of our forces and capabilities. And that's been the focus. This is not a troop cut or a force structure reduction in the armed forces."

As Bush said:

And so, today I announce a new plan for deploying America's armed forces. Over the coming decade, we'll deploy a more agile and more flexible force, which means that more of our troops will be stationed and deployed from here at home. We will move some of our troops and capabilities to new locations, so they can surge quickly to deal with unexpected threats. We'll take advantage of 21st century military technologies to rapidly deploy increased combat power.

In fact, the US will still maintain nearly 190,000 of its 1.4 million troops in foreign postings. Of course, the devil is in the details and the details are still fairly vague.

At the Pentagon on Monday the usual suspects - unnamed senior military officials - gave a background briefing. Among the few specifics they offered were that a significant portion of the redeployed forces will come from Europe. Much of them will be embedded in the two heavy divisions that are in Germany. These would be the Army's First Armored and First Infantry Divisions. But they will also send a new light armored Stryker Brigade to Germany. The US Army's V (5th) Corps, headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, will be restructured. But there will still be a very substantial ground presence in Germany when this is done.

Indeed, the Pentagon will probably rely even more heavily on transport hubs such as its Ramstein air base in Germany to ferry troops and equipment from the US to combat zones. They plan to deploy forces in accordance with a concept called "global military force management", which will move away from the old linear type of deployment where one unit has to arrive in a theater before the other can come home.

The officials also noted that a reduction in forces from Germany will not lessen the US military's capabilities to deploy globally. They pointed out that in Europe they have added a battalion to the 173rd Brigade in Vicenza, Italy and are going to round out that brigade with three battalions. They also have two F-16 squadrons at Aviano, Italy. The brigade is a significant combat punch in that part of the world, which is now able to move quickly to areas further to the east because it is an airborne brigade, what Rumsfeld has famously called the "New Europe".

The Pentagon also plans to rely more on temporary bases in previously non-allied countries such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

But because future force levels are dependent on negotiations that are still ongoing with many other countries, there are other nations, such as Turkey, where no firm decisions have been made. The US has two F-16 squadrons in Spangdahlem. According to one of the officials at the briefing, "For the moment, that's where they're going to stay, notwithstanding continuing dialogue with the Turks on perhaps more flexible use, shall we say, of Incirlik."

Guam is likely to see more forces rotate there as needed. B-52s and B-2s already use Anderson Air Base there, and three nuclear submarines are based there. Countries like Poland and Romania and Uzbekistan will likely see rotational deployments of US forces but not like the big numbers that are in Germany today.

They plan to pull about 12,500 of the 37,000 out of South Korea, at least on a temporary basis. The 3,500-strong army brigade which moved from South Korea to Iraq this month is not likely to return.

But at the same time the Pentagon plans to consolidate troops further to the south in Korea which it feels will make them much more effective. But they were noncommittal about whether the current 40,000 troops in Japan will be reduced. An official at the briefing said, "I don't want to go into a number here today."

The Pentagon has promised an US$11 billion modernization plan to upgrade South Korean facilities as part of efforts to increase its capability, even though it is reducing troop levels.

Left unanswered was the question of how this would affect negotiations with North Korea. Some commentators said the withdrawal of US forces from South Korea would be giving away a useful bargaining chip.

One revealing tidbit at the briefing, for those unfamiliar with the scope of the global US military basing complex was this:

There are only 230 major US military bases in the world, 202 of which are in the United States and its territories. But there are 5,458 [chuckles] distinct and discrete military installations around the world, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that many of them are 100 acres or less. Again, a legacy from the Cold War, a legacy from post-1945. We don't need those little pieces of property anymore.

A May 2004 Congressional Budget Office report reviewed global basing options and concluded that in regard to the cost-effectiveness of this realignment, the US could eventually save $1 billion a year, but first it would have to invest $7 billion.

David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues. The views expressed are his own.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6029638

S.Korea, U.S. End Troop Cut Talks Without Agreement

Fri Aug 20, 2004 08:01 AM ET

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea and the United States closed a round of defense talks in Seoul on Friday aimed at scheduling a reduction of U.S. troops on the Korean peninsula without agreeing on the timeline of the realignment.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said the defense posture in the country would continue for some time but its air defense power needed to be strengthened.

The United States has proposed to cut its 37,500 troops now deployed in the Korean peninsula by a third by the end of 2005, but Seoul, concerned about a reduction in deterrence against communist North Korea, has asked for a delay in the schedule.

"We have reached consensus that there is a need to extend the timeline," South Korea's deputy minister of defense for policy, Ahn Kwang-chan, told a news conference after the talks.

"But we decided to continue discussions on the timeline of reduction of individual forces that are subject to the reduction."

U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Richard Lawless said a brigade of 3,600 U.S. troops redeployed in Iraq this month would be part of the reduction.

"And beyond that, we have not reached agreement on either the full scope of the timeline or the composition of the other forces to be redeployed from the peninsula," he said.

South Korea's position would be considered in future talks, Lawless said.

The troop reduction is part of a global force realignment by the United States announced this week that would involve up to 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia within a decade.

Ahn repeated the position stated by both governments, that no reduction of deterrence against North Korea would result from the troop realignment.

The United States has an $11-billion plan to boost military capabilities on the Korean peninsula, which would also see units utilize technology to improve mobility and firepower.

Roh said South Korea's military dependence on the United States itself need not be a serious problem for now.

"The U.S. military in Korea would continue to have the current posture for some time," he said at a South Korean airbase on Friday without specifying the time period.

"But over the long term, our force capabilities must be strengthened, including air force capabilities," he said.

U.S. and South Korean lawmakers have expressed concern about the impact of the realignment on security on the Korean peninsula, saying North Korea remains a dangerous presence.

South Korea remains technically at war with the North, which has the world's fifth-largest military of 1.14 million in active duty, under a truce that suspended the 1950-53 Korean War.

Commentary: Baffling friends and enemies

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- America in Europe enjoyed a comfortable marriage through the 25th silver anniversary of NATO and the 50th gold mark, but is now throwing away the wedding ring after 55 years, known as the emerald celebration.

So spoke a prominent NATO statesman who did not wish to be named. President Bush's decision to bring home some 70,000 troops and 100,000 dependents from Germany, Japan and South Korea unleashed a flood of learned speculation about hidden motives. Probably all wrong. They ranged from a geopolitically tone deaf to an irredeemably myopic Uncle Sam.

One school of think tank lucubrators concluded this was another example of the superpower's decision to move troops around the world unilaterally, without having to submit a decision to intervene in a hot spot abroad to the whims of recalcitrant allies. Another set of thinkers mused it was a subliminal impulse toward isolationism, a reflection of imperial overstretch, leaving NATO in the lurch

The latest Pew Research Center poll shows dissatisfaction with the Bush administration's handling of Iraq is affecting opinions on foreign policy "as much as, or more than, concerns about terrorism." The last election when foreign and defense issues outweighed economic matters, according to the Pew Center, was in 1972 during the Vietnam War.

The Pew survey lends weight to a third school of European policy wonks, which says President Bush is unable to announce the return of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, so he changes the public's focus by promising to bring some 70,000 servicemen and women home from abroad. Why? The president's answer taxes credulity: for them to have "more time for their kids, and to spend with their families."

The two divisions scheduled for transfer from Germany to the U.S. are already close to their families. Wives and husbands of troopers enjoy family life off duty. They are an integral part of the German economy. Only a small German minority approves of Bush's decision. The overwhelming majority regrets it. America's uniqueness as the world's only superpower is its military presence abroad, not at home.

One former NATO supreme commander, speaking not for attribution, said: "The timing of this thing is appalling. The Europeans see us in a withdrawal mode at a time when Iran and militant Islam appear to be on a roll in the Middle East." North Korea's self-sequestered pariah hermit Kim Jong-il may misread a one-third reduction in U.S. troop levels in South Korea as a signal to hang tough on the nuclear front.

National security council adviser Condoleezza Rice's hardening talk about Iran's secret nuclear weapons development, coupled with "neo-con" privateers calling for a pre-emptive strike against Iran, are also diluted with the wrong message to Iran's superannuated clerics. There are many more dimensions to America's troop presence in Europe than a purely military one. What about elementary psychology? When Germany is finally barren of U.S. troops, America will have lost its nulli secundus uniqueness in Europe, unmatched since the Roman Empire.

For NATO's new members in central and eastern Europe and the three Baltic states -- what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called "new Europe" -- U.S. troops in Germany is their security blanket against a revival down the road of Russian aggrandizement. Not to worry, Washington answers, because lily pads are being established in Romania and Bulgaria on the Black Sea, where a few hundred men and women will be based. In case of emergency, regular units can then quickly be dispatched to the lily pads, pick up additional equipment, refuel, and continue refreshed to theaters in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Africa.

American commanders in Europe are baffled at an announcement about moves that are still a decade away. One general, speaking privately, said "accommodations for two divisions and families are not available in the United States today even if base closings are postponed. New facilities will have to be built. This will cost several billion dollars, and Congress is yet to see the bill."

The Europeans are not reassured at a time when they begin to detect signs of Iraqi fatigue setting in across the United States. The headlines about 1,000 U.S. killed in Iraq will come to dominate front pages as Bush is in the closing stages of a rough campaign. There is much European media speculation about another Vietnam -- i.e., America phases out of Iraq short of restoring peace and stability. Prominently displayed in both the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, read by decision-makers the world over, maverick geopolitician Edward Luttwak's op-ed -- the U.S. should "threaten to leave Iraq" -- was widely quoted as a Pentagon trial balloon.

It is usually wise, wrote Luttwak, "to abandon failed ventures sooner rather than later. Yes, withdrawal would be a blow to American credibility, but less so if it were deliberate and abrupt rather than a retreat under fire imposed by surging antiwar sentiments at home (see Vietnam). So long as the U.S. is tied down in Iraq by over-ambitious policies of the past, it can only persist in wasteful futile aid projects and tragically futile combat. ... For geographic reasons, many other countries have more to lose from an American debacle in Iraq than does the United States itself. The time has come to take advantage of that difference."

This from a defense intellectual who said in early 2003 Iraq would be a cakewalk and Ahmed Chalabi was America's best hope to run a free Iraq.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FH24Ad04.html

China's view of US 'lily pad' strategy

By Ehsan Ahrari

US President George W Bush's August 16 troop-realignment speech - officially described as Global Posture Review - is read with great interest in the People's Republic of China. Unofficially billed as a "lily pad" bases strategy, it is aimed at creating a network of smaller bases closer to potential hot spots of the globe. Those bases will be used to perform offensive military operations worldwide, taking the fight to the enemy. Even though it is not focused on China, however, given that it describes a long overdue post-September 11, 2001, strategy of the United States' global force alignment, Beijing knows that it will affect its own strategic interests, not only as a rising power, but also as a wanna-be superpower.

In the contemporary strategic environment, no country in its right mind is willing to take on US troops on the basis of a force-on-force war-fighting strategy. At the same time, the greatest challenge to the lone superpower comes from terrorist groups that are constantly probing the world, seeking to destabilize the regional balance of power, and knowing full well that the global sheriff would be there to respond. By overextending its global presence, the transnational terrorists hope to make the United States vulnerable to their attacks. From Washington's vantage point, the agility and flexibility of those terrorist groups must be matched by developing similar characteristics in America's fighting forces to meet that challenge. Thus the Bush administration, after systematically examining the altered international strategic realities during the past three years, has formally released its Global Posture Review.

The US intends to realign its forces in order to make them "more agile and more flexible". About 60,000-70,000 uniformed personnel, and 100,000 civilian family members and civilian employees will move from overseas bases to the United States over the next decade. Two army divisions will leave Germany and return home. In addition, 37,000 troops currently deployed in South Korea, will also depart from their bases. Further negotiations with Turkey and Japan about potential troop redeployment are continuing. In all probability, the US force presence in Turkey might be somewhat reduced because of that country's refusal to station the US forces or allow them passage to northern Iraq during the invasion of Iraq. The greatest lesson for the Pentagon for such future contingencies is to have highly tenable backup plans. However, as a major Muslim ally, Turkey still figures prominently in America's global "war on terrorism". Thus it is politically not feasible to exclude Turkey from the future global posture. Regarding the US force presence in Japan, some troops might move, but with a clear understanding that Japan would increase its military activities with the US forces, primarily in the realm of regional naval activities, such as those in the Malacca Strait and in other joint naval exercises in the coming years.

Since Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East are regions where transnational terrorist groups are exceedingly active now, and are expected to have even a stronger presence in the coming years, the Bush administration intends to make its enhanced force presence last at least 10 years.

China's interpretation of America's lily-pad global force presence strategy is variegated, and is based on a high degree of realism. In a recent article in the People's Daily, it calculates that the Bush administration attaches less significance to "old Europe" - for its refusal to unquestionably toe the US line before its invasion of Iraq - than the "new Europe". The latter region became important in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "eastward march", even though the United States is purposely being tacit about that aspect of its global strategy, which is still aimed at containing Russia. In the Chinese calculation, containment remains as a major aspect of America's Global Posture Review involving their homeland. Thus this strategy is being studied with great care in Beijing with a view to developing timely countermeasures.

In Central Asia, Beijing's countermeasures will be highly intricate, nuanced and dynamic for a variety of reasons:

First, leaders in Beijing have no doubt that radical Islamists of Central Asia - a region that they regard as comprising Pakistan in the western extreme, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and China's own Xinjiang autonomous region - continue to be the most potent enemies of China and the United States.

Second, Beijing's leaders know that they cannot envisage America's presence in Central Asia in a purely black-and-white fashion, ie, regard it as purely good or bad. From Beijing's point of view, it might best be described as containing elements of both good and bad. It is good in the sense that the US is definitely deterring the Islamist proactivism by prolonging its force presence in a number of Central Asian countries, viz, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. However, that force presence also has a potential of turning "bad" if the United States uses it in the long run to establish its hegemony in the area, a potential development that threatens China's own aspirations.

Third, the US presence in Central Asia is still promising because it also complements China's own proactivism and presence in that area within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Fourth, the US presence in Central Asia is dynamic in the sense that China, Russia, and the United States may still negotiate avenues of cooperation in the coming years and reduce the destabilizing aspects of Islamist groups.

Fifth, finally and most important of all, America's force presence in Central Asia, as China envisages it, should be constantly watched with a view to altering its own strategy in that area.

America's presence in Central Asia is a source of some comfort, but at the same time a reason for anxiety, for China. The comforting aspect involves containing, or even curtailing, the influence of Islamist forces, especially in Afghanistan and the Afghan-Pakistan border area, where the top al-Qaeda leadership is hiding but still hopes to widen the scope of its destabilizing activities in the contiguous areas in the future. But China is worried by the continued inability of the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to extend its authority in his country, and especially in areas contiguous to Tajikistan.

At the same time, the growing US-Pakistan nexus is being watched in Beijing with a considerable amount of suspicion. As a junior partner of the Sino-Pakistan nexus, Pakistan looms large in the calculations of China's mandarins who are in charge of their country's maneuvering vis-a-vis India, another rising power in its immediate neighborhood. So China does not want to see Pakistan becoming too significant an actor in America's regional strategy, for it may not remain as useful to China's own power game with India.

Even though the US-India strategic partnership is not related to America's lily-pad global strategy, Beijing has viewed with great suspicion its sustained evolution. The US-India strategic partnership has not only outlived the transition from the Democratic administration of former president Bill Clinton to the Republican Bush administration, but also it has been expanding its scope, even in the post-September 11environment. China has no doubt that this partnership has swung the pendulum of advantage in favor of India. However, the transition in India from the former Bharatiya Janata Party-led government to a government led by the Congress party might turn out to be somewhat deleterious for the continuing evolution of that strategic partnership, or so China's leaders probably hope. With the return of Congress to power, India is manifesting some old foreign policy predilections of the Jawaharlal Nehru era, outdated nostalgia for the moribund Nonalignment Movement, or the return of the Cold War-era insistence on India's independent foreign policy. There is no suggestion that the US-India strategic partnership would undergo any amount of unraveling or lose its insignificance. However, any amount of setback would be a matter of great satisfaction to China. Now Beijing would be carefully studying any future linkages between the new lily-pad bases strategy and the US-India strategic partnership.

The Middle East, on the contrary, figures heavily in the Bush administration's Global Posture Review. It has not been an area where China had a major strategic presence. However, that is about to change in the coming years. China's growing energy dependence compels it to ensure access to Middle Eastern oil (and oil from the Caspian Sea) by concluding a number of bilateral and multilateral agreements. The Middle Eastern arms markets were lucrative sources of hard currency for China during the Iran-Iraq War. As long as the Western arms remain hostage to the frequently unpredictable political climate in Washington, Berlin and London, China (along with Russia) will be a beneficiary, largely because of its willingness - or even eagerness - to sell arms to Middle Eastern countries.

After the toppling of Saddam Hussein, and in the prevalence of escalating anti-Americanism in the Middle East, China is hoping to emerge as a major seller of arms, and, consequently, a significant strategic actor in the area. In this sense, regardless of whatever significance Washington attaches to the Middle East from the perspectives of its new Global Posture Review, China enviages it as a promising area for its own aspirations to minimize America's presence and influence, albeit by taking a circuitous route.

In the final analysis, Global Posture Review is not envisaged by China as really giving the lone superpower an inordinate advantage over China's own global and regional ambitions. Beijing knows that it carries no political baggage in the Middle East compared to the hostilities that the United States is currently facing. It can cash in on that comparative advantage and it still hopes to move ahead in South Asia and East Asia, where the United States has a noticeable advantage for now.

Ancient civilizations have a powerful sense of history and an attendant uncanny sagacity to study their competitor's advantage, and then arrive at a conclusion that their own disadvantages are only transitory. That dialectical process enables them to assiduously strive to transform the strategic environment to their benefit, no matter the odds. Thus, China will continue its regional and global maneuvers to take a few steps backward and readjust in order to make further advances, America's new and dynamic Global Posture Review notwithstanding.

Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm

Japan, U.S. may increase base sharing

Yomiuri Shimbun

The number of military bases in Japan designated for use by both the Self-Defense Forces and U.S. troops may be increased as part of the planned realignment of U.S. military capabilities, Japanese and U.S. government sources said Saturday.

Tokyo and Washington both want to maximize the effectiveness of their forces and believe more joint facilities would be a big step in that direction.

Under the proposals, the Air Self-Defense Force would be allowed to use the U.S. Air Force's Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture.

The ASDF's Air Defense Command (ADC) and Air Support Command (ASC), both now based in Fuchu, Tokyo, would be shifted to the USAF's Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo.

The ASDF and the USAF already share Misawa Air Base in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture, while the Ground Self-Defense Force and the U.S. Marine Corps use the GSDF's Higashi-Fuji Training Range in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, and the Yausubetsu Training Range in eastern Hokkaido for joint military drills.

The two governments decided to increase joint use of bases after concluding that greater cooperation between U.S. and Japanese forces in times of peace would mean they were more ready to work together in the event of an emergency.

The move also would mean Japan taking on more of the cost of maintaining the bases--a change likely to be welcomed in Washington.

The plan for the ASDF to use Kadena Air Base surfaced partly due to restrictions on ASDF operations at Naha Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture that result from the fact the base is also a busy airport.

In light of this, some of the ASDF's facilities in Naha may shift to Kadena. With tension mounting between China and Taiwan, and Okinawa close to both, the base's remaining operations will likely be focused on air defense. Shimojijima island in southeastern Okinawa Prefecture is being considered as a base for joint military drills.

The plan to shift the ADC and ASC headquarters to Yokota Air Base has met with a positive response from the ASDF since the facilities at its existing headquarters are obsolete. The ASDF is also keen to have use of Yokota's runways.

The governments are also considering increasing the number of live-fire drills for U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army units at the GSDF's Higashi-Fuji and Yausubetsu training ranges. The proposal may meet opposition from residents near the ranges, however, with local people claiming existing drills already pose an excessive burden.

The governments intend to work out details of the plans for the common use of military bases at a vice ministerial-level meeting of foreign and defense authorities and at the Security Consultative Committee, a bilateral meeting of defense and foreign ministers, known as the "two plus two."

Title : US pushing Japan to be base for force extending reach to Middle East: report  

By :  

Date : 22 September 2004 0840 hrs (SST)  

URL : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/107894/1/.html  

TOKYO : The United States is pushing Japan to become a base for a force that can deploy to the Middle East, a move that exceeds the bounds of their current security alliance, a report said.

The realignment plan would make Japan a host for command bases for Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps that could deploy to "the arc of instability" from Africa and the Balkans through the Middle East to Southeast Asia, the Asahi Shimbun reported, citing government officials.

Working-level talks on the plan started in November after Washington announced a global military realignment plan, the paper said.

Tokyo has been reluctant to adopt a plan it sees as going beyond the scope of the Japan-US Security Treaty, which says American troops are stationed in the country to maintain peace and stability in Japan and the Far East.

"In order to make the US plan happen, we must revise the bilateral security treaty or change our interpretation of it. But we can't do that," the Asahi quoted a senior government official as saying.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi discussed US plans for military realignment with President George W. Bush in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

During the talks, Bush said Washington aimed to make its deterrent force based in Japan more effective but reduce the burden on local communities, the Japan Broadcasting Corp. and Jiji and Kyodo news agencies reported. - AFP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4507469,00.html

Pentagon Expands Outposts in Middle East

Wednesday September 22, 2004 7:46 PM

By ROBERT BURNS

AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. military is quietly expanding its network of small outposts worldwide to help fight terrorism in Middle Eastern and African hotspots, even as it prepares to send home tens of thousands of troops from Cold War bases in Germany and South Korea.

Among the places the military already has placed or hopes to establish such new ``lily pads'' or jumping off points: Bulgaria and Romania in Eastern Europe; a pier in Singapore, Azerbaijan in Central Asia, and a tiny island off the oil-rich coast of West Africa.

``Freedom of action,'' is a term the Pentagon uses to describe the flexibility it seeks, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is to brief senators on the plan Thursday.

When President Bush announced in August that 70,000 troops and 100,000 of their family members in Europe and Asia would move to bases in the United States, much of the public reaction was focused on the historic scale of withdrawal.

Less has been said about the other side of the equation, the calculation that the U.S. military will be better positioned for the war on terrorism - and other potential threats ahead - if it has a wider range of options for basing and using troops.

Thus the Pentagon is trying to move away from big concentrations of troops at permanent overseas bases in favor of rotating troops for short tours at training ranges and other remote outposts.

In short, the size, location and capabilities of the U.S. military overseas are about to undergo the most profound changes since the end of World War II and the Korean War, Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said in an interview Wednesday.

``During the Cold War we had a strong sense that we knew where the major risks and fights were going to be, so we could deploy people right there. They could be garrisoned where they were going to have to fight,'' said Feith, the new basing plan's chief architect.

``We're operating now in a completely different concept,'' he told The Associated Press. ``We need to be able to do that whole range of military operations anywhere in the world pretty quickly.''

Feith said the changes would be done in a ``rolling process'' over a 10-year period.

But the Pentagon already has lined up some ``forward operating sites,'' sometimes referred to as ``lily pads,'' that have few, if any, permanent American troops. Some store U.S. war materiel, others are merely ``gas-and-go'' way stations.

A few examples:

-An air field in Dakar, Senegal, in West Africa, where the U.S. Air Force has landing and fuel contracting arrangements. Air Force planes staged from there during 2003 peacekeeping efforts in Liberia.

-Entebbe airport in Uganda.

-Singapore, the island nation at the crossroads between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Singapore built a deep-draft pier at Changi naval station that can accommodate a U.S. aircraft carrier, and U.S. Air Force planes use Singapore's Paya Lebar air base.

-Manta air base in Ecuador. U.S. forces periodically operate there with Ecuadoran troops as part of a regional counter-drug operation. The United States also runs counter-drug surveillance flights from the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curacao.

-Djibouti, the Horn of Africa nation where U.S. forces have been working since December 2002 with several countries to try to deny sanctuary to al-Qaida terrorists.

William Arkin, a defense analyst and author, said he believes the Pentagon's main interest in a wider network of ``lily pad'' bases is its desire to protect the international oil supply.

``It's empire, pure and simple,'' he said.

Among locations the Pentagon is considering adding:

-The tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, off the coast of West Africa. It is among places Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander of U.S. European Command, has mentioned as a potential U.S. forward operating site, but not a base. Sao Tome holds a strategic position in the Gulf of Guinea from which the U.S. military could monitor the movement of oil tankers and protect oil platforms.

-In Bulgaria, which joined the U.S.-led NATO alliance this year, the Sarafovo and Graf Ignatievo air fields could serve as bases for U.S. troops to deploy on rotational training tours.

-In Romania, the Americans have shown interest in the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, the Babadag training range and the Black Sea military port of Mangalia.

-In Australia, where Pentagon officials have said they have no plans for permanent bases, U.S. forces likely will conduct joint training with Australian forces.

The Pentagon says it will maintain a big presence in places like Ramstein air base in Germany and Camp Humphreys in South Korea, important Air Force and Army hubs.

But Rumsfeld wants to avoid constraints that encumbered the Army, for example, when it sought to send forces by rail from Germany to Italy during the buildup to the Iraq invasion, and neighboring Austria denied passage.

The Navy, meanwhile, is developing an approach called ``sea basing.'' It calls for building a fleet of large ships capable of launching and sustaining a combat force - Army or Marine - thousands of miles from shore. In combination with aircraft carriers, a new generation of extended-range helicopters and high-speed transport ships, that would minimize the need for access to land bases abroad.

Overall, the Pentagon says the number of U.S. bases and other installations overseas will drop by about a third in the next decade, to about 550 sites.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3535828

Thu 23 Sep 2004

10:47am (UK)

Rumsfeld to Outline U.S. Military's Future Global Role

"PA"

The US military will abandon 35% of the Cold War-era bases and buildings it uses abroad over the next decade, even as it seeks to expand a network of sites around the world to help fight terrorism.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was outlining the plan to the Senate Armed Services Committee today.

In a report to Congress, the Pentagon offered details of the "global defence posture."

The planned changes, once completed, will result in "the most profound reordering" of U.S. military forces overseas since the current global arrangements were set 50 years ago, according to the report.

The most widely noted aspect of the plan, which was announced in broad terms last month by President George Bush, is the withdrawal of 70,000 troops and 100,000 of their family members from bases in Germany and South Korea.

But the Pentagon will be building up its network of "forward operating sites," sometimes called "lily pad" bases. These are more austere than the large, fully developed bases - dubbed Little Americas - where US forces stood guard during the Cold War.

"During the Cold War we had a strong sense that we knew where the major risks and fights were going to be, so we could deploy people right there," said Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary of Defence for Policy.

"We're operating now in a completely different concept," said Feith, chief architect of the global realignment plan.

"We need to be able to do that whole range of military operations -from combat to peacekeeping - anywhere in the world pretty quickly."

The Pentagon is seeking maximum flexibility in the decades ahead in responding to terrorism and other potential threats, including those to oil supplies. So the military wants a range of basing and access agreements with as many countries as possible and in as many regions as it can.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040923wo03.htm

Reducing U.S. 'footprint' won't be easy

9/24/2004

Aya Igarashi / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

NEW YORK--While the Japanese government has obtained a pledge from the United States that it will make efforts to reduce burdens on local governments hosting U.S. forces in Japan, differences between the two nations on the issue are still large, and the course of bilateral discussions appears uncertain.

At a summit meeting Tuesday with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, U.S. President George W. Bush said the United States would try to reduce the burdens shouldered by local governments when it realigned its forces stationed in Japan. Tokyo intends to hold bilateral discussions with Washington over the issue in an earnest manner, but observers are concerned about the future course of the discussions.

Japan had asked that the United States maintain effective deterrence through the Japan-U.S. security alliance in the area surrounding Japan while also reducing the burden on local governments in areas in and around U.S. military bases in the nation. After the incident in which a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter crashed into a university campus in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, in mid-August, local governments stepped up their opposition to the presence of the U.S. forces in the prefecture. Out of concern that local governments' opposition would negatively affect the course of bilateral discussions on the U.S. plan to realign its reforces and imperil the future of the alliance, the Japanese government urged the U.S. side to clearly show that it understood the importance of reducing the burden on local governments imposed by the U.S. forces' presence.

During a meeting Monday in Washington with senior officials of the U.S. State and Defense departments, Shin Ebihara, director general of the Foreign Ministry's North American Affairs Bureau, and Kazuki Iihara, director general of the Defense Agency's Defense Policy Bureau, for the first time presented Japan's draft plan for the realignment of U.S. bases in the nation. By doing so, the Japanese government attempted to demonstrate its intention to engage actively in the realignment process.

During the summit meeting, Koizumi and Bush reconfirmed the importance of working closely on issues involving North Korea and Iraq. To work effectively on these issues, the two governments consider that it is necessary to achieve good results in the discussions over the realignment plan, which will form the basis for the Japan-U.S. security alliance.

But specific details, such as which U.S. bases in Japan will be subject to the realignment process, were not discussed during the summit meeting. A source close to Koizumi said, "All that could be done was to confirm principles." A high-ranking U.S. government official also said the two nations had agreed on the basic ideas of the realignment plan, but had yet to work on details.

The main plank of the draft plan presented by the United States is relocating the headquarters functions of the U.S. Air Force's Yokota base to Guam and relocating the command of the U.S. Army's 1st Corps Force's in Washington State to Camp Zama in Kanagawa Prefecture. Functions would be partially scaled down at the Yokota base, while those of Camp Zama would be expanded.

To immediately reduce the burdens on local governments, the United States also proposed that the U.S. Naval Air Facility in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, be relocated to the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and that functions of marine corps bases in Okinawa Prefecture be relocated.

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-369487.php

September 23, 2004

Cold-War era bases to be abandoned

By Robert Burns

Associated Press

Over the next decade, the military will abandon 35 percent of the Cold War-era bases and buildings it uses abroad, even as it seeks to expand a network of bare-bones sites in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe to help fight terrorism.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was outlining the plan Thursday to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In a report to Congress, the Pentagon offered details of the "global defense posture." The planned changes, once completed, will result in "the most profound reordering" of U.S. military forces overseas since the current global arrangements were set 50 years ago, according to the report.

The most widely noted aspect of the plan, which was announced in broad terms last month by President Bush, is the withdrawal of 70,000 U.S. troops and 100,000 of their family members from bases in Germany and South Korea. That has gained attention in part because it means fewer U.S. bases probably will be shuttered in the 2005 round of base closings than if there were no withdrawal.

Less well understood is that even while troops will return to the United States from Germany and South Korea, the Pentagon will be building up its network of "forward operating sites," sometimes called "lily pad" bases. These are more austere than the large, fully developed bases -- dubbed "Little Americas" -- where U.S. forces stood guard during the Cold War.

"During the Cold War we had a strong sense that we knew where the major risks and fights were going to be, so we could deploy people right there," Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said in an Associated Press interview Wednesday.

"We're operating now in a completely different concept," said Feith, chief architect of the global realignment plan.

"We need to be able to do that whole range of military operations (from combat to peacekeeping) anywhere in the world pretty quickly."

The Pentagon is seeking maximum flexibility in the decades ahead in responding to terrorism and other potential threats, including those to oil supplies. So the military wants a range of basing and access agreements with as many countries as possible and in as many regions as it can.

It foresees three types of overseas arrangements:

• Main operating bases with permanently stationed forces and family support structures. Examples including Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Camp Humphreys in South Korea and Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan.
• Forward operating sites maintained by a limited number of military personnel and possibly stored equipment. These sites will support rotational rather than permanently stationed forces. Examples are Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras and Thumrait and Masirah Island air bases in Oman.
• Even more austere sites, which the Pentagon calls "cooperative security locations." With little or no permanent U.S. presence, these may be maintained by contractor or host nation personnel. They will allow access for U.S. forces in special circumstances and be a focal point for regional cooperation. An example is the air base in Dakar, Senegal, and Entebbe airport in Uganda.

Among locations the Pentagon is considering adding:

• The tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, off the coast of West Africa. It is among the places Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander of U.S. European Command, has mentioned as a potential U.S. forward operating site, but not a base. Sao Tome holds a strategic position in the Gulf of Guinea from which the U.S. military could monitor the movement of oil tankers and protect oil platforms.
• In Bulgaria, which joined the U.S.-led NATO alliance this year, the Sarafovo and Graf Ignatievo air fields could serve as bases for U.S. troops to deploy on rotational training tours.
• In Romania, the Americans have shown interest in the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, the Babadag training range and the Black Sea military port of Mangalia.
• In Australia, where Pentagon officials have said they have no plans for permanent bases, U.S. forces likely will conduct joint training with Australian forces.

The terms under which U.S. forces could use these sites and facilities will have to be negotiated. Feith said the Pentagon wants to avoid the kind of environmental or political constraints that have limited U.S. military training and deployment options in Europe in recent years.

"If countries are going to subject us to the kinds of restrictions that may mean we're not going to be able to fulfill the purpose of having troops deployed there, then we're going to have to think whether to have troops deployed there," Feith said.

Senior Bush administration officials already have held talks with many countries, including Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBME20KIZD.html

n First Step Toward Missile Defense, U.S. Navy Prepares to Deploy Ships off North Korea

By Eric Talmadge Associated Press Writer

Published: Sep 24, 2004

ABOARD THE USS CORONADO (AP) - In the first step toward erecting a multi-billion-dollar shield to protect the United States from foreign missiles, the U.S. Navy will begin deploying state-of-the-art destroyers to patrol the waters off North Korea as early as next week.

The mission, to be conducted in the Sea of Japan by ships assigned to the Navy's 7th fleet, will help lay the foundation for a system to detect and intercept ballistic missiles launched by "rogue nations."

Washington hopes to complete the network over the next several years.

"We are on track," Vice Admiral Jonathan Greenert, commander of the 7th Fleet, told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday aboard the USS Coronado, which is based just south of Tokyo. "We will be ready to conduct the mission when assigned."

The deployment will be the first in a controversial program that is high on President Bush's defense agenda. Bush cleared the way to build the system two years ago by withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned ship-based missile defenses.

He said protecting America from ballistic missiles was "my highest priority as commander in chief, and the highest priority of my administration."

The project - likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet, only at three times the speed - is exceedingly complex, prompting many critics to argue that it will never be reliable or effective. It is also expensive, with an estimated price tag of US$51 billion over the next five years.

Even so, the missile threat is hard to deny.

More than 30 nations have ballistic missiles, according to the U.S. Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency. Though exact times depend on where the launch occurs, missiles could in less than 30 minutes reach virtually anywhere within the United States.

Greenert refused to give a specific date for the first deployment from the 7th Fleet, but said a deadline of Oct. 1 - next Friday - announced by Navy Secretary Gordon England in March has not changed.

Greenert, who assumed command of the Navy's largest fleet last month, also refused to name a target for the Sea of Japan patrols.

"I can't specify adversaries, but you're looking at rogue nations," he said in his first interview since taking the fleet command. "Take it from there."

The country best fitting that description in East Asia is communist wildcard North Korea, which has missiles capable of reaching the American west coast and is believed to either already possess or be well on its way toward successfully developing nuclear weapons.

The North shocked Japan in 1998 by launching a multistage "Taepodong" ballistic missile over Japan's main island. Tokyo responded by beefing up its own surveillance capabilities and launching its first spy satellites in March 2003.

Though Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won a promise in 2002 from the North for a moratorium on further long-range tests, distrust runs deep.

This week, Japanese naval ships were dispatched to the waters off North Korea amid reports that Pyongyang was preparing to test launch a "Nodong" missile, which can reach much of Japan - and the more than 50,000 U.S. troops stationed there - in just minutes.

North Korea is believed to have at least 100 of the missiles.

Because of the North Korean threat, Japan has become the first country to agree to work with Washington on the missile defense project. It is upgrading its own destroyers and acquiring better U.S.-made interceptors - the ship-launched Standard Missile-3 and the ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3.

"The Japanese are very interested in developing a missile defense," Greenert said.

He said the role of the 7th Fleet destroyers will be to provide long-range search and tracking of missile activity. Eventually, data gleaned by the ships would be transmitted to Ft. Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where, if necessary, interceptor missiles would be launched.

But for now, tracking and monitoring are as far as the mission can go. The interceptors won't be fully deployed at the American bases until next year.

November 11, 2004

U.S., Japan begin realignment talks

Associated Press

(Kyodo) -- Senior officials from Japan and the United States began three days of talks in Washington on Wednesday about the planned realignment of U.S. troops in Japan, a Japanese official said.

The talks are the first of their kind after Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed in October in Tokyo to place priority on principles rather than specifics in future talks on the realignment.

Participants in the Washington talks are expected to reaffirm that the two countries will set out strategic goals and roles played by U.S. troops and Japan's Self-Defense Forces before discussing concrete realignment proposals.

Kazuyoshi Umemoto, deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry's North American Affairs Bureau, and Chisato Yamauchi, deputy director general of the Defense Agency's Defense Policy Bureau, are leading the Japanese delegation.

Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Lawless is representing the United States.

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-500785.php

US military on the scent of oil

By Colonel Daniel Smith

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus) Asia Times

History was made on April 2, 2004, as the three ex-Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania formally joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Almost immediately, much to Moscow's consternation, four Belgian fighter aircraft were positioned in Lithuania, from where they will patrol the airspace of the new members.

NATO officials insisted the deployment did not foreshadow new bases or a permanent troop presence on Russia's frontier. But Kremlin concerns were not eased when Ukraine, which lies between other NATO countries and Russia's Black Sea coast, agreed to allow NATO forces to transit its territory. Left unsaid was "to where?" Given the geography, the obvious answer is "to countries in the lower Caucasus and Central Asia" - Russia's frontier.

A few days before and half a world away, on March 31, the US Navy made more history as it officially ended a 60-year presence at Puerto Rico's Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. Envisaged in World War II as the linchpin in the Caribbean Basin defense system, in its last years the station supported naval exercises on nearby Vieques Island, which ended in May 2003.

These are but two of the latest changes in a worldwide reassessment by the Pentagon of where the United States wants air and naval bases and ground-force posts, access or basing rights, and transit agreements. Such reviews and realignments are not new; since 1988, the Pentagon has conducted four major rounds of base closings or restructurings of its domestic installations and will implement a fifth round in 2005. Foreign bases have undergone only one large restructuring round - after the 1991 Gulf War - but smaller adjustments have been made in response to both political-military circumstances (continually rotating a ground-force brigade into Kuwait in the 1990s to deter Saddam Hussein) and demands of host governments (consolidating marine bases on Okinawa and leaving navy facilities at Subic Bay in the Philippines).

The Pentagon hopes that its plan, the Global Posture Review, when fully implemented, will allow for rapid, tailored responses to contingencies that could arise from any one of a number of "vital national-security interests". However, two of these circumstances are paramount: countering any new outbreaks (and containing existing ones) in the "global war on terror" - with Afghanistan, Iraq and the hunt for Osama bin Laden as subsets - and reliable access to energy resources.

The 2003 Defense Department's "Base Structure Report" lists 702 foreign bases owned or leased by the Pentagon, with about 6,000 more installations in the US and its possessions. As vast as this network seems, the report inexplicably fails to include any locations in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Qatar and Kosovo. And to these must now be added at least 14 garrisons in Iraq.

Then there is "under-reporting". In Asia, the 10 US Marine Corps facilities on Okinawa, including the sprawling 485-hectare USMC Futenma Air Station, have only one entry. The array of intelligence gathering and other military installations in Britain are nowhere to be found in the report, possibly because they all are technically Royal Air Force facilities. Moreover, while a surface-based "boost-phase" missile defense system to counter North Korean missiles can be deployed on ships in the international waters of the Sea of Japan, effective coverage by a surface-based system to counter Iranian missiles would require launch sites in at least Afghanistan and Iraq (and possibly Turkmenistan), according to a Congressional Budget Office study completed in July.

A bit of history

"Manifest destiny" is common shorthand for the series of wars, purchases and broken agreements that fueled continental expansion westward by European settlers in the New World and their 19th-century descendents. It also covers myriad motives that led to the annexation of Hawaii (July 7, 1898), declared by a congressional joint resolution, and to the Spanish-American War (March-August 1898), from which the US acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, a "permanent" lease of Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, and direct political control of Cuba until 1902 and of the Philippines until 1946.

As the 20th century began, US industrial prowess merged with the country's traditional reliance on freedom of the seas for unhindered trade to present an alternative power center to those in a Europe heading toward the collapse of the post-Napoleonic "Concert of Europe". But if war, with its embargoes and exclusion zones, was bad for US commercial interests, so too would be a Europe under a single power that could regulate access to continental trade to the detriment of the United States.

This latter consideration drove two interrelated US policies that, with modifications, remain relevant today. The first is tactical: the acquisition of strategically located bases or basing and port visiting rights for US warships (and now land-based aircraft and ground forces) - "coaling stations" in the vernacular of the day. Although US aircraft carrier battle groups include highly efficient re-supply vessels, being able to count on immediate access to a port for emergencies, shore leave or swapping crews is prudent diplomacy.

The second, a strategic policy, opposes any attempted hegemony of the Eurasian continent. By coincidence, at the time the US first acquired overseas possessions, Sir Halford Mackinder proposed (December 1904) what became known as the "Heartland Theory":

+Who rules Eastern Europe commands the heartland.

+Who rules the heartland commands the world island (Eurasia and Africa).

+Who rules the world island commands the world.

While Mackinder's formulation most likely did no more than lend an air of gravitas to an already determined policy imperative (if even that), the question of continued access to European markets helped tip the US to oppose imperial Germany. The same logic can be detected in president Franklin Roosevelt's support for Britain (eg, lend-lease) in the period between the Nazi invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939) and Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). In a sense, World War II then "morphed" into the Cold War, with the communist Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China replacing fascist Germany - at least until the Sino-Soviet split in 1959.

While the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 and of the USSR itself in 1991 ended the 45-year ideologically based East-West competition for Europe, Europe itself had steadily been creating its own collective identity - the European Union. Ironically, through the World Trade Organization, the US is encountering resistance to some of its trade, price and tax policies that, while not doing so physically, psychologically and economically threatens to close access to the heartland for US business and trade.

Emerging energy dependence

As World War II ended, US opposition to a hegemonic Europe was expanded to a new region. In February 1945, president Franklin D Roosevelt met with the ruler of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Foreseeing that oil would become increasingly vital to the US across virtually all sectors, Roosevelt struck a bargain: a guarantee of access to Saudi oil in return for a guarantee of US protection. In 1991, after being briefed by US intelligence on Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait and the dispositions of Iraqi troops along the border areas, the Saudis called on the US to honor Roosevelt's 1945 promise.

The 1991 war was not the first time that "black gold" was the catalyst of war. Adolf Hitler's need for petroleum for Germany's military machine and industry lay behind his assault on the Soviet Union, and Roosevelt's actions to cut Japan's access to oil contributed to Tokyo's decision to attack the US. Now, under the "Bush Doctrine", oil has become the catalyst for preventive war.

Why this is so obvious is from the vast quantities of petroleum the US economy consumes - 26% of global consumption by 5% of the globe's population. Fourteen of the top 15 foreign sources of crude oil in the first two months of 2004 were countries with direct access to the US (Canada and Mexico) or access to the world's oceans for direct transport. (The 15th, landlocked Chad, whose oil sector first came on line in late 2003, exports its oil through Cameroon.) Maintaining this immediate access keeps prices low without seriously impeding the profligate "easy rider" mentality of a significant portion of the public.

The changing US military base blueprint

Before going further, it might be useful to explain the Pentagon's latest terminology pertaining to overseas bases and describe current basing-related actions.

In an August 16 joint Defense and State Department background briefing on the Global Posture Review, briefing officers noted that 202 of the 230 major US bases worldwide are in the US or its possessions. But they also pointed out the US military is present in 5,458 "distinct and discreet military installations around the world". These are broken down into three main categories:

+Main operating bases (MOBs) with permanently stationed forces and families. Current US bases in Germany fit this category. But when the new Stryker-equipped medium brigade replaces the four heavy brigades now in Germany, it will probably be stationed at the vast Grafenwoehr/Vilseck/Hohenfels training complex - a "forward operating location" (see below). Conversely, Ramstein Air Force Base and Spangdahlem (which houses two US F-16 squadrons) will remain MOBs. Italy will be the home of other MOBs such as the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vicenza, US Navy Europe headquarters in Naples, and two F-16 squadrons at Aviano.

+Forward operating locations (FOLs) with "warm" facilities having pre-positioned equipment and a small military support group but no families.

+Cooperative security locations (CSLs) with austere facilities occupied only for training, exercises and other military "interactions". Locales in Thailand for joint "Cobra Gold" exercises with Thai and other regional partners are examples.

About a month after the joint departmental briefing (September 23), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described for the Senate Armed Services Committee the general strategy behind the Global Posture Review:

In Asia, our ideas build upon our current ground, air, and naval access to overcome vast distances, while bringing additional naval and air capabilities forward into the region. We envision consolidating facilities and headquarters in Japan and Korea, establishing nodes for special operations forces, and creating multiple access avenues for contingency operations. In Europe, we seek lighter and more deployable ground capabilities and strengthened special operations forces - both positioned to deploy more rapidly to other regions as necessary - and advanced training facilities. In the broader Middle East, we propose to maintain what we call "warm" facilities for rotational forces and contingency purposes, building on cooperation and access provided by host nations during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In Africa and the Western Hemisphere, we envision a diverse array of smaller cooperative security locations for contingency access.

 Currently, a congressionally mandated Overseas Basing Commission is gathering evidence on which it will make recommendations for streamlining the Pentagon's "footprint" abroad. The commission's final report is now due next August 15. Its work will complement that of the Base Realignment and Closure panel that will begin meeting in 2005 to review domestic military installations and recommend closures, realignments and consolidations.  

Energy security and US military presence

At first glance, an overlay of US military base locations or allied nations and the top 15 countries from which the US derives its oil shows significant divergence.

Excluding NATO allies Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom, only three of the remaining 12 current main suppliers have basing agreements with the US - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Ecuador - while one, Iraq, is currently occupied by US military units.

As part of the war to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, the US secured FOLs in Uzbekistan (Khanabad Airfield) and Kyrgyzstan (Manas Airfield near Bishkek) for about 1,000-1,200 personnel. These two bases are still active FOLs. In Afghanistan itself, the US seems sure to retain control of Bagram airfield outside Kabul as well as a FOL outside Kandahar. Moreover, an airbase at Shindand, which lies only 16 kilometers from the Iranian border, is home to some 100 US Special Forces personnel with helicopter support. The Iranians reportedly suspect that Shindand might be converted into an eavesdropping base or a forward operating base for a future US attack.

That said, the picture changes when non-NATO countries that (1) are the main sources or potential sources of oil for the US market, (2) have the largest petroleum deposits, and (3) have transit facilities vital for moving the oil are compared with countries that have military agreements with the US, host a US military presence, or have been identified as a possible host.

 Other important bridgeheads in the Persian Gulf include Bahrain and Qatar, both of which host key US facilities; the United Arab Emirates; and Oman. In Eastern Europe, after the end of major hostilities in Iraq, 150 US marines remained at an FOL at the Black Sea port of Constanta, Romania. Conversely, US presence at the airbase at Incirlik, Turkey, has been sharply reduced from 3,000 to 500.

The challenge of maintaining dominance

Dominant military powers have always had to deal with countries not part of their "empire" - whether the empire is formal or informal. This rule still applies in the 21st century despite the US claim to overwhelming "global" power and reach. And a corollary also still applies: the "natural" tendency of those outside the empire is to work together to split off parts of the imperium or even undermine the entire edifice of empire.

As the 21st century began, the two main outsiders were Russia and China. They had a love-hate relationship during the 20th century, one that, after 1959, included a series of military encounters along their very long and still militarized border. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon played "the China card" against the Soviets by establishing diplomatic relations with China and opening trade.

But the 21st century brought another challenge to US dominance: the rise of sub-national groups intent on terrorizing whole populations. The initial reaction of the administration of President George W Bush after the attacks by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, seemed oriented to rally the world against terror. Yet within 18 months, the combination of the president's ultimatum to other nations to be "with us or against us" and the US invasion of Iraq allowed unilateralism to triumph. The US, mired in Iraq, was arguably much less secure as a result.

Those who reveled in the US "victory" over the Soviet empire, and who came to power in 2001, were oddly blinded to the Cold War lessons of the power of cooperative relationships. They seemed to think that the US was so dominant that it could achieve unilateral security - completely ignoring the basic principle that every action intended to move closer to this goal generates one or more counteractions. The post-major-combat phase of the Iraqi adventure finally compelled the administration to reverse its tactics and invite United Nations help - only to lose it and the vital assistance of non-governmental agencies because of the continuing chaos in many parts of Iraq.

There have been other negative consequences of US unilateralism in the struggle to contain and reduce the number of terrorist acts. Washington has attempted to gain support by adding to its list of suspect individuals and groups whoever is named by "allies" in the "war on terror". For example, on April 1, Ambassador J Coffer Black, the State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator, appeared before the subcommittee on international terrorism of the House International Relations Committee to testify about al-Qaeda and the "global war on terror".

On al-Qaeda, he asserted that the organization still poses a significant threat despite the loss of its training base in Afghanistan and the arrest or death of 70% of its seasoned leaders and more than 3,400 "operatives or associates". On the "war on terror", he singled out six terror organizations or locations for particular mention: Ansar al-Islam and the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network, both in Iraq; the Salafist group for Call and Combat and the Salafiya Jihadia, both in North Africa; Jemaah Islamiya in East and Southeast Asia; and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. He also referred to "thousands of jihadists around the world who have fought in conflicts in Kosovo, Kashmir, Chechnya and elsewhere".

Some observers believe the mention of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was a quid pro quo for basing access in that country. Yet the Central Asia-western China "terror" scene is confused, to say the least. For years, China had played down the frequent incidents of violence in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). But after October 7, 2001, when the first US bombs hit Afghanistan, Beijing started playing them up, attributing them to East Turkestan Islamic "terrorists" who formed part of the international terrorism network and hence should be a legitimate target of the US-led coalition.

At first, Washington resisted Beijing's ploy. After a December 6, 2001, meeting with Chinese vice foreign ministers Li Zhaoxing and Wang Yi, Francis Taylor, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, said: "The legitimate economic and social issues that confront the people in western China are not necessarily terrorist issues and should be resolved politically rather than using counter-terrorism methods." Eventually, however, opposition turned to ambivalence until finally the East Turkestan group was added to the list.

Another group, Hizb-e Tehrir (HT) or Party of Liberation, claims it has substantial membership across Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Its agenda includes a caliphate that would unite east and west Turkestan (China's XUAR and the Central Asian Republics, respectively). Russian media link them to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which reportedly has adopted HT's vision.(1)

Looking ahead

Where does this leave the future? Clouded, to say the least, until the Overseas Basing Commission finishes its work. But others are examining some options based on criteria laid down by the Pentagon. In May, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a study examining overseas bases and options for realignment ranging from maintaining the status quo through minor consolidation to complete withdrawal of most permanently based forces.

One of the main criteria the CBO considered was the "time needed to deploy a heavy army brigade combat team [BCT] by sea" to potential conflict zones - one of the administration's rationales for change. (Rumsfeld's "transformation" program envisions meeting a 10-30-30 timeline: 10 days to move forces to any place on the globe, 30 days to defeat an enemy, and 30 days to reconstitute for another war.) CBO looked specifically at Nigeria, Azerbaijan (potentially important future sources of oil), Uganda and Djibouti (potential staging bases for conducting operations in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula to counter instability and terrorism).

CBO compared times to move a BCT from hypothetical FOBs in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania with current bases in the Indian Ocean at Diego Garcia (equipment on ships) and in Germany. Azerbaijan is the only destination which could be reached more quickly (six days) from FOBs - and then only from Bulgaria and Romania. In all cases, departures from Poland take as long (or one day longer) as from Germany, while departures from Bulgaria and Romania take one, three and six days longer than from Diego Garcia to reach Nigeria, Djibouti and Uganda, respectively.

(Changing the BCT from tank-heavy to the new Stryker configuration would save even more time compared to current times, but this difference rests more on the fact that the Stryker-equipped BCT can be moved by air more efficiently.)

CBO also looked at times required to move combat service and combat service support units that sustain the BCTs. Elapsed time from Germany was equal or quicker than from the US in all cases, but from Qatar, which hosts an entire division's equipment, Uganda and Djibouti could be reached nine and seven days quicker, respectively, than from Germany.

The CBO study suggests two conclusions. First, relocating bases in Europe does not improve operational response time except to the Caspian region. Nonetheless, the Pentagon seems determined to continue to draw down the biggest troop MOBs outside the US while increasing the number of FOLs and CSLs to enhance its "freedom of action". The latter two types of bases undoubtedly will multiply in sub-Sahara Africa, Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia.

Second, notwithstanding current consolidations under way in Germany (13 facilities closing) and in South Korea (18 facilities closing), what remains unchallenged in the CBO report is the contention by outside observers that future US base locations in Europe, the Middle East, Southwest and Central Asia will be tied to oil sources and oil transport considerations.

Even with additional closings and consolidations to the 702 overseas "installations" (army 381, navy 44, Marine two, air force 275) identified by the CBO, the US will continue to maintain the most extensive foreign basing structure of any country. For the Pentagon, it seems, not only is "location everything", it's "everywhere".

End note 1. South Asia Analysis Group Paper 499 July 24, 2002, US and Terrorism in Xinjiang.

Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, a retired US army colonel, and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

US looks for sites in Bulgaria to build military bases  

www.chinaview.cn 2005-01-11 18:48:28

    SOFIA, Jan. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- The commander of US and NATO forces in Europe, Gen. James Jones, was to arrive in Bulgaria on Tuesday to inspect possible sites for US military bases, the Defense Ministry said.

    "Talks will focus on expanding military cooperation between Bulgaria's army and the US forces in Europe," a statement releasedby the ministry said.

    On Wednesday, the general will visit the Bezmer airfield and the Novo Selo training area, both located in central-eastern Bulgaria, to inspect the sites chosen for future US military basesin the Balkan country, it said.

    Bulgaria, a staunch ally of the United States in the Iraq war, sent troops to Iraq as well as to Afghanistan and Bosnia.

    As a new member of NATO, the country has also agreed to host NATO bases and training grounds for US troops.

    Ahead of the inspections, Jones would meet with Bulgaria's Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov and military chief-of-staff Nikola Kolev on Tuesday. Enditem

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-01/11/content_2446102.htm

January 14, 2005

Move to E. Europe bases could begin this year

By Paul Ames

Associated Press

CASTEAU, Belgium -- U.S. troops could start moving from Cold War-era posts in Germany to new bases in Romania and Bulgaria this year as part of American efforts to create a more mobile overseas force, the top U.S. commander in Europe said Friday.

Marine Gen. James L. Jones said the United States was looking at up to five facilities in each country for use by Army, Air Force, Navy or Marine units.

"This is part and parcel of the transformation of our footprint in Europe, which has been in need of surgery for some time," he told reporters at NATO military headquarters in southern Belgium after a trip to Romania and Bulgaria.

Plans for the bases are expected to be drawn up soon, and Jones said the move could start quickly if Congress and the two countries go along.

"There's no reason why we could not start with deployment this year," said the general, also NATO's top operational commander.

The move east is part of an overhaul announced by President Bush last year that aims to withdraw 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members from bases in Germany and South Korea.

Under the plans, the United States would move away from many of its big, permanent bases where troops are stationed long-term with families and large back-up infrastructures. Instead, it would use smaller, more austere facilities where troops would rotate in for shorter deployments.

"These are purely military sites without family, without infrastructure changes," Jones said. "We're not talking about rebuilding Ramstein," he said in a reference to the sprawling U.S. base in western Germany.

more at:

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-599941.php

Mullen: Naval Forces in Europe 'looking to south and east' in 2005

By Jason Chudy, Stars and Stripes

European edition, Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Naval Forces in Europe will be "looking to the south and east" in the coming year, expanding transformation and continuing to fight the global war on terrorism, according to Adm. Mike Mullen, the Naples, Italy-based force commander.

Mullen recently released his 2005 priorities in a 10-page letter to European-based naval forces. Mullen cites U.S. European Command's policy of "looking to the south and east," namely African and Eastern European nations, early in the guidance, saying that naval forces will play a key role in EUCOM's efforts to work with these nations.

more

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=27757

Mullen's Letter here.

Which might explain this: For the fourth consecutive week, the Navy has reported an increase in the number of its reservists called to active duty.

Call up roster, all forces March 9:<