William Pfaff: The 'war on terror' distorts America's military moves
Thursday, August 19, 2004
U.S. bases
PARIS The Bush administration's decision to reduce the number of American soldiers stationed abroad is a belated reaction to a U.S. military deployment that has been gravely outdated since the end of the cold war, and that is poorly adapted to the current official strategic scenario. Even reduced in troop strength, the vast U.S. global military base system will remain at odds with how the world is developing.
.
Taking troops out of one place and moving them to another does not increase their total number. Closing German, South Korean or Okinawan bases will not send more troops to Iraq. These base closures and redeployments in any case will take years, not months.
The whole question of America's worldwide base system remains sadly confused by ideology and vested interest.
...snip...
If the Iraq occupation and resistance go on for years - which is the conventional and necessary assumption made in the Pentagon, although possibly not the realistic one - the regular army and Marine Corps will have to be expanded, which Senator John Kerry is proposing. However, the progress of the Iraq war is discouraging enlistment, even though real (rather than official) unemployment rates are high in the United States, because of the number of young unemployed not on official rolls.
There is a political significance in the troop redeployment expected in Europe. It is thought likely to convey the message that former Communist Europe is now America's Europe - Washington's "disaggregated" Europe - and its ally in a search for influence inside the expanded European Union.
..snip..
The global base system rests on the assumption that it is true and useful to consider the "war on terror" as a war, and that the right way to wage it is with globally deployed armies and air forces.
That idea, in my view, is false, and potentially damaging. The evidence suggests that American bases tend to destabilize, provoking nationalist or religious resistance. This was the case in the Shah's Iran, and in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War. It is the case now in Iraq. If the war on terror is really global, then every American base in the Islamic world (and even elsewhere) is a potential generator of new terrorism. What the Pentagon sees as a global system of security bases, of a kind that was justified when there was a conventional military threat from the Soviet Union, makes little sense if the real threat of terrorism comes from people quietly installed in Manhattan, Paris or London.What does the control of Najaf in Iraq, or the chase for Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan, have to do with those people? We already know that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism....cont'd
http://www.iht.com/articles/534717.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
