The New Military Reality 30-4-2003 / STRATFOR

>>I noticed that STRATFOR was on the menu of a few ebaters earlier 
on. It seemed vanguard stuff but as time went on I picked up a 
lot of questioning about STRATFOR, basically that it was spinning 
for the CIA. When it first came online the information was free of 
charge, then started to charge fees. I have "financial virginity" 
on the web, I have never spent a cent to access information and 
wish to keep it that way. Just strikes me as wrong. Pity, as a 
lifelong reader of The Economist I had to let go of its online 
as well. I notice that Znet also charges fees - just wonder whether 
some other alternative, like running with credible sponsors, is
the right way to go.<< Berend 

THE STRATFOR WEEKLY
30 April 2003
 
by Dr. George Friedman
 
Beyond Prince Sultan: The New Military Reality

Summary

The United States announced this week that it would be 
redeploying forces from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the region. 
This announcement should not be viewed in isolation, but in the 
broader context of the redeployment of U.S. forces throughout the 
Eastern Hemisphere. The force structure and deployment of the 
cold War era no longer has institutional or strategic coherence 
and will therefore evolve rapidly - not only in Saudi Arabia, but 
in Germany, South Korea and elsewhere.

Analysis

The United States announced this week that it would be shifting 
its forces out of Saudi Arabia. The news is important in itself, 
since it means the restructuring of the U.S-Saudi relationship. 
It is, however, only the tip of the iceberg: The shift is part of 
a broader redeployment of U.S. forces and a redefinition of U.S. 
military capabilities. Far from being viewed in isolation, the 
move should be viewed as the end of the post-Cold War world for 
the United States and the beginning of a new and fundamentally 
different era.

Washington saw the post-Cold War world as one in which military 
power was secondary to economic power, and in which Cold War 
institutions would continue to play a critical function in 
international affairs, despite the fact that their founding 
mission had been overcome. The period between the fall of the 
Soviet Union and the Sept. 11 attacks has been a period of 
inertia in U.S. military planning; the basic assumption was that 
no basic institutional or structural changes were necessary.

The United States continued to be embedded in an alliance 
structure that was designed to contain the Soviet Union. In this 
alliance, the line from the North Cape of Norway to the Caucuses 
represented the primary line of defense. Another line ran through 
the Asian archipelago -- Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, 
Indonesia -- and South Korea. After the Iranian revolution, the 
primary defensive positions in Southwest Asia were intermittent 
bases and a naval presence. 

The main body of forces was maintained in a reserve in the United 
States. Since the United States was in a strategic defensive 
mode, it could not predict where an attack might come. In 
addition, since U.S. forces were deployed on external lines -- it 
was not easy to move forces from one point of the line to another 
-- reinforcements would have to come from the United States. 
Thus, military forces deployed in Europe or South Korea were 
backed up by forces that would come from the United States 
through waters controlled by the U.S. Navy.

Nuclear weapons were seen to be the ultimate guarantor of 
containment. The United States, facing a Soviet force that had 
greater numbers and was operating on shorter strategic supply 
lines, could not guarantee that sufficient conventional force 
could be bought to bear at any point in time to be effective. 
Therefore, the United States treated the threat of nuclear 
weapons -- both tactical and strategic -- as the ultimate 
guarantor of the balance of power.

The end of the Cold War did not end this deployment. Although 
U.S. forces were drawn down substantially, the basic architecture 
of deployments did not change: Through Sept. 11, 2001, the United 
States maintained forces from Germany to South Korea. These 
forces no longer faced a frontier (with the exception of those in 
Korea). They certain didn't face a major power operating on 
interior lines and seeking to break out of encirclement. They 
remained in place partly because of political inertia and partly 
because the infrastructure that had been created in the host 
countries was too expensive to abandon and replicate elsewhere. 

Given that there was no overarching threat to the United States -
- but that Washington had political and some strategic reasons 
for maintaining a land-based presence in the Eastern Hemisphere -
- retaining the Cold War basing structure made sense. The 
structure did not have an immediate military purpose, but was 
useful in the event of unexpected minor operations, such as 
Kosovo. 

The basing structure faced the same problem as the institutional 
structure. Neither NATO nor U.S. forces in Germany were needed 
any longer to contain the Soviet Union or repel an attack from 
the east. However, it was easier to leave things as they were 
than to change things radically, and a good case could be made 
that NATO and U.S. troops in Germany represented a convenient 
anachronism. It had its uses and was easier than re-architecting 
U.S. foreign and strategic military policy. 

The situation has changed dramatically for the United States. The 
campaigns since Sept. 11 have made the luxury of maintaining an 
irrational force deployment structure unsupportable. U.S. troops 
no longer serve a symbolic presence as they did in the 1990s: 
They are being used in an ongoing war against Islamic militancy, 
and they need to be deployed accordingly. While an argument can 
be made that, for example, Germany remains a useful point for 
housing strategic reserves in the Eastern Hemisphere, it is no 
better than many others, and it poses serious and obvious 
political challenges.

The countries that were important to the United States during the 
Cold War are simply, geographically, not significant to the 
current war. Northern Norway is no longer significant, the Fulda 
Gap is irrelevant and the significance of the Sea of Japan 
concerns a third-rate power -- North Korea -- not a superpower. 
The countries that pose problems for the United States 
immediately are countries like Syria, Iran or Pakistan -- some 
because of their current policies, some because of their 
potential policies. Influencing events in these countries cannot 
be done within the institutional or strategic framework of the 
Cold War alliance structures.

The United States' strategic problem now is influencing the 
behavior of Islamic governments. Washington has two military 
paths toward this end: One is the deployment of U.S. forces 
directly into cooperative or defeated Islamic countries, the 
other is forging alliances with non-Islamic countries whose 
strategic interests coincide with those of the United States and 
whose geography is suitable for operations. 

What is clearest, however, is that pure geography is not enough. 
The most strategically significant country in the region is 
Turkey. Turkey refused to allow the United States to use its 
territory to invade Iraq. As an Islamic country, the political 
costs of permitting this were simply too high. In spite of 
historical ties, strategic interests and geographical usefulness, 
the United States did not have access to Turkey. In the same 
sense, it did not have full access to Saudi bases.

Therefore, it follows that the geographic proximity of Islamic 
states collides with the political difficulties involved in 
gaining their cooperation. Basing in the Islamic world requires 
enormous politico-military influence in order to be reliable. 
Without that, the internal processes of Islamic countries are as 
likely to go one way as another. Thus, any U.S. basing policy 
that depends on the willingness of Islamic governments to permit 
the presence of troops - and on permission to use their soil for 
waging war -- leads to the real possibility that troops deployed 
there might not be available when needed.

The U.S. basing structure, therefore, has three requirements:

1. It must be close enough to various potential theaters of 
operations to be valuable.
2. If troops are based in an Islamic country, that country must 
have specific reasons why it cannot reverse its policy.
3. Basing in non-Islamic countries -- or cooperation near the 
Islamic world -- is critical.

During the war in Iraq, Ankara's decision not to permit the 
basing of U.S. troops in Turkey made Bulgaria and Romania 
particularly valuable to the United States, for a range of 
logistical purposes. Operations in the Horn of Africa make Kenya 
an important potential ally. Above all, the danger that the 
political evolution in Pakistan will create severe problems for 
the United States makes a close relationship with India 
important. 

There are issues outside of the Islamic world. In Europe, the 
future evolution of Russia is not clear, and many outcomes are 
possible. Poland and the Baltics represent the forward line of 
interest for the United States there. In this scenario, Hungary -
- able to support operations throughout central Europe -- becomes 
particularly important. In Asia, the uncertain evolution of China 
requires a redefinition of forces that might anticipate problems 
without precipitating them.

The "footprint" that is being adjusted is global, not merely in 
the Middle East. Within a year, we would expect to see 
substantial American forces in southeastern Europe and very few 
in Germany. With this geographical change comes an institutional 
change: Bulgaria and Romania are not in NATO, but they are far 
more important to the United States than are Belgium or Denmark. 

It isn't at all clear that having Bulgaria or Romania in NATO is 
in the U.S. interest. NATO operates by consensus. and the 
opposition of Germany, France and Belgium rendered NATO's 
apparatus inaccessible to the United States for purposes of the 
Iraq war. The United States did get support in Europe, but 
primarily on a bilateral basis.

It would appear to us that the value of multilateralism as 
opposed to bilateralism has declined. NATO was created as an 
instrument of collective security, in which an attack on one 
meant an attack on all. This might have worked in the days of a 
singular Soviet threat (it was never tested), but it did not work 
for the United States in 2003. Bilateral relationships have 
tremendous flexibility: They can be tailored to the situation 
with as many obligations as each side chooses. Multilateralism 
can be a trap in which the failure to reach consensus paralyzes 
the ability to act. If Washington was to try to create a workable 
multilateral system -- which we doubt it will do -- it will be 
built around countries relevant to the current challenge. That 
will exclude many traditional allies but include many countries 
not hitherto regarded as critical to American geopolitical 
calculations.

The decision to leave Saudi Arabia, therefore, should be viewed 
in the broadest possible context. It does not represent a shift 
in U.S.-Saudi relations alone, nor does it represent merely a 
shift in the Persian Gulf. We are now seeing a fundamental 
restructuring of American forces on a global basis. The 
consequences will last a generation.
...................................................................

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