Changing USA’s Global preparedness;

In a reorganization of its military bases beyond the stability of cold-war bases in Europe and the Far East , USA is now looking for new alliances with nations from Southeast Asia to the Horn of Africa, which promise quick access to the remotest corners of the globe. "We're going to be fighting this global war against irregular forces in much different places than we were willing to fight in the past," says Robert Work, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments here. "And in [these places] there are no long-term allies."

"We're going to find this is going to be a rolling process," Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy, told Congress last year. "Some of what we're planning to do is either not doable because we can't get the kind of legal arrangements or other commitments that we want, in which case we're going to have to make adjustments, or we may find that some countries are so eager to work with us on certain things that the deals they're offering induce us to change some of our plans," he added.

The shift is part of the Pentagon's Global Posture Review, which looks at overseas bases in much the same way that the Base Realignment and Closure process is now looking at domestic bases. The Pentagon believes that its current network of home and overseas bases is a relic of the cold war and needs change which should be flexible enough to meet unforeseen demands.

During the cold war, "we had forward garrison forces configured to fight near and where they were based," said Ryan Henry, the Pentagon's principal deputy undersecretary for policy, in congressional testimony. "Today we no longer can predict where, when, or in what manner our forces may be called on to fight." "It's a reshuffling of the deck," says Charles Peña, a defense analyst at the Cato Institute.
Already, the American military has expanded its presence to unfamiliar areas, from Senegal to Singapore. Yet that is taking American forces into more volatile areas. There, they can help stabilize unsettled regions through their presence and training. But in these regions allegiances to America can easily ebb and flow. As happened with Turkey and Saudi Arabia when invading Iraq .Of course it is too much for these worthies to study history and interstate relations . From the corporate sector they believe countries can be treated like machines, bought and sold at will.
 
The arrival of American troops at their doorstep after September 11 did trigger worry in Russia and China but neither country objected vigorously to the US setting up bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. But soon it transpired that US had plans to invade Iraq to control its oil and the region as well as bases in central Asia were part of plans of US administrations to control central Asia’s energy and other resources.

By now it is quite clear that the US War on Terror, beginning with the attack on Afghanistan was exploited by Washington to place its forces for strategic control of regions , as spelt out by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a controversial organization whose members  dominate the echelons of power in Washington.

The idea that that the US should control the oil and gas resources and territories of Central Asia was highlighted in the early 1970s by Zbignew Brzezinski and later explained in his book ‘The Grand Chessboard’. A former advisor to Rockefeller and President Jimmy Carter Brzezinski's book reads like a document for strengthening the neo-cons case for the war on Iraq for its oil . But seeing the mess in Iraq , Brzezinski is now singing a different tune .

(K Gajendra Singh, served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in 1992-96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the 1990-91 Gulf war), Romania and Senegal .  He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies, in Bucharest .  The views expressed here are his own.- Gajendrak@MWCNEWS.NET

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