be absolutely accurate on your say-so, but I think the reality is that there are more, not less bases than one would think. It would be nice if there were an honest discussion about where our resources are going and why.
The Globalization of Military Power: NATO Expansion
NATO and the broader network of US sponsored military alliances
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research, May 18, 2007
http://globalresearch.ca/This new regional balance in the Persian Gulf is part of a broader alliance in the Middle East that is linked to NATO. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, the United States, Britain, and NATO, besides the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) are all part of this coalition in the Middle East. <5> This militiary alliance or coalition essentially represents an eastern extension of NATO's "Mediterranean Dialogue." The Middle Eastern members of this coalition, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, are labeled the "Coalition of the Moderate," whereas Iran and Syria are said to lead a "Coalition of Radicals/Extremists."
Aside from the implications of a confrontation with Iran, this cooperation between the GCC and NATO confirms that NATO is preparing to become a global institution and military force. The Middle East is an important geo-strategic and energy-rich area of NATO expansion. The vanguards of NATO in the region are Turkey and Israel.
The United States has also been building its missile arsenal in the Persian Gulf and transporting large amounts of military hardware and radar systems into the Persian Gulf. Originally, the justifications for the deployment of military hardware into the Persian Gulf was the "Global War on Terror," then the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and now the new justification has become protecting America's Persian Gulf allies, including the U.A.E., Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, against an Iranian ballistic missile threat.
The GCC-NATO Conference is mandated under the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and was held under the theme of "Facing Common Challenges," which directly denotes Iran as the target of military-security cooperation between the GCC and NATO. <6>__Furthermore, the GCC-NATO Conference took place after military games were held in the Persian Gulf by GCC members, the United States, Britain, France, and Australia- which also demonstrates that cooperation between the two branches of NATO, the Franco-German entente and the Anglo-American alliance, was initiated before the historical 2006 NATO Conference in Riga, Latvia. <7>__The GCC agreements with NATO are also significant because they mean that the Persian Gulf is potentially being shared and divided by the Franco-German entente and the Anglo-American alliance. __Although Sheikh Thamer Ali Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah and Kuwaiti leaders have tried to play down the meaning of the cooperation between Kuwait and NATO, the cooperation between both sides gestures towards NATO expansion and likely confrontation with Iran. The Kuwaiti official also highlighted that the goal of the conference was to make use of NATO's diverse experiences given its multinational composition.__With the Anglo-American military build-up and the extension of NATO into the Persian Gulf, the leaders of the GCC have been emboldened in their cooperation with the U.S. and British militaries. Recently the Defence Minister of Bahrain, Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, has said that the Arab Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf have "the capability to respond to any attack from neighbouring Iran," and would "respond with force" if Iran blocked the Straits of Hormuz as a result of any U.S. military strikes or attack on Iran. <8> It is also no coincidence that the leaders of Kuwait have also declared that they are ready for an American-led attack against Iran and the eruption of war in the Middle East. <9>
It should be noted that any attacks by Iran on the Arab Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf would be in response to their cooperation with the U.S. and their approval of the use of their airspaces, waters, and territories against Iran by the U.S. military and its allies. The leaders of these nations also supported the U.S. and Britain in their war and invasion of Iraq and are the hosts of large U.S. ground, air, and naval bases.
NATO's ultimate goal: Encircling Russia, China, and their allies
"The first and most important area where change must come is in further developing our ability to project stability to the East"
-NATO Secretary-General Manfred Wörner
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Globalization/NATO_Expansion.html737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire
by Chalmers Johnson
The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up.
Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 -- mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets -- almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty.
Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base's "worth" is based on a Department of Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it). During fiscal 2005, the military high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners.
The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords.
These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston.
The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure.
In some cases, foreign countries themselves have tried to keep their U.S. bases secret, fearing embarrassment if their collusion with American imperialism were revealed. In other instances, the Pentagon seems to want to play down the building of facilities aimed at dominating energy sources, or, in a related situation, retaining a network of bases that would keep Iraq under our hegemony regardless of the wishes of any future Iraqi government. The U.S. government tries not to divulge any information about the bases we use to eavesdrop on global communications, or our nuclear deployments, which, as William Arkin, an authority on the subject, writes, "
violated its treaty obligations. The U.S. was lying to many of its closest allies, even in NATO, about its nuclear designs. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, hundreds of bases, and dozens of ships and submarines existed in a special secret world of their own with no rational military or even 'deterrence' justification."
In Jordan, to take but one example, we have secretly deployed up to five thousand troops in bases on the Iraqi and Syrian borders. (Jordan has also cooperated with the CIA in torturing prisoners we deliver to them for "interrogation.") Nonetheless, Jordan continues to stress that it has no special arrangements with the United States, no bases, and no American military presence.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chalmers_Johnson/737_US_Military_Bases.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
