Jim Lobe, 28 November 2003, Inter Press News Agency (IPS)
Since the New York Times reported in April that the administration was planning to establish and maintain as many as four military bases in Iraq for an extended period of time, much has been written about radical redeployments of U.S. forces in Europe and Asia.
The changes, it has been said, would enhance the forces' ability to strike quickly, lethally and, if necessary, pre-emptively along an ''arc of instability'' that not coincidentally covers both key oil-producing areas from the Gulf of Guinea across the Persian Gulf and into Central Asia and critical points that could be used to contain Russia and China from the Caucasus across to East Asia and the western Pacific.
According to these plans, which are now being discussed formally with affected allies, much of the U.S. military based in Germany and the rest of Western Europe during the Cold War is to be shifted to central Europe and the Balkans, closer to the oil-producing and -transiting Caucasus and Middle East.
Since 9/11, Washington has also established bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan that it used in attacking Afghanistan and that it shows no sign of leaving. Similarly, forces in Japan and South Korea might be partly redeployed, while Washington has made clear its interest in re-acquiring access to bases in the Philippines and Australia.
Last week's visit by a U.S. warship to Vietnam -- the first since 1975 -- also suggested a renewed interest in that country, which borders both China and the potentially oil-rich South China Sea.
As to the Middle East and the Gulf themselves, major shifts -- most notably the abandonment of a major air force base in Saudi Arabia and the redeployment of U.S. warplanes to Qatar -- have also been underway.
But Qatar and even Kuwait, which has acted as a de facto military base for Washington since 1990, could not substitute for the kind of strategic depth and flexibility offered by the four bases identified by the Times as those to which the administration wants permanent access.
They are: the Baghdad international airport; the Talil Air base near Nasariyah; a base in the western desert near Syria; and Bashur air field in the Kurdish region near the convergence of the borders of Turkey, Iran and Iraq and only 500 kms, as F-16s fly, from Baku, the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea.
FULL ARTICLE...
IRAQ-U.S. - Is it the bases?
