CIAO DATE: 08/04

Worldwide reorientation of U.S. military basing: Part II: Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and the Pacific

Colin Robinson

Center for Defense Information

October 2003

The first article in this series sketched the outlines of the U.S. military’s basing realignment: the shift to rotating forward deployments at austere bases and how that will affect the U.S. presence in Europe and Africa. While the changes there have attracted the most attention, U.S. planners have also been considering moves in Asia and the Pacific, while expanding the bases in Central Asia established since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The build-up in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, the removal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia, and the shift of facilities in Korea away from demilitarized zone (DMZ), while not part of the grand design, complete the picture of a tectonic shift in worldwide U.S. military policy.

Central Asia: Challenging Russia in its own Backyard

Following the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia regarded the five ex–Soviet states of Central Asia as part of its own sphere of influence, and some influential circles in Moscow were extremely unhappy when after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks the United States started establishing bases and negotiating landing rights across the region.

The U.S. airbase in Kyrgyzstan, at the capital Bishkek’s international airport, named Manas, has received the most attention, especially after it was unofficially named ’Ganci Air Base’ after one of the fire–fighters who fell at the World Trade Center. The base’s main role now seems to be supporting the overall air effort, providing a base for air–to–air refuelling tankers, and some attack aircraft. There is at least one other major airbase, at Karshi Khanabad in Uzbekistan. ‘K2,’ as it is nick–named, is a major supply conduit into northern Afghanistan, with a joint service supply organization supporting the U.S. forces in Afghanistan centered in Bagram, outside Kabul. There are also a number of other smaller facilities, alongside numerous landing–clearance agreements. All the other states of Central Asia — Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and even avowedly neutral Turkmenistan — have granted overflight rights, allowed fuel supply arrangements to be set up, or granted landing permissions for U.S. military aircraft. Apart from the varied bases and camps in Afghanistan, where the U.S. effort is concentrated in Bagram and Kandahar, two to four bases remain in Pakistan. Pakistani bases were critical for the initial stages of Operation Enduring Freedom, and now the major base at Jacobabad hosts small teams of the CIA, FBI, and Special Operations Forces still engaged in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

The bases in Central Asia are officially described as being temporary; there only as long as the operations in Afghanistan are necessary. But that same form of words was used to justify the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia from 1991 to 2003. The United States similarly may have a military presence in the former Soviet states for a long time to come.

The Middle East

In Saudi Arabia, the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq offered an opportunity to wind up a U.S. military presence that had become burdensome for both sides. The Saudi government had increasingly resented the U.S.–backed UN sanctions regime on Iraq, and the United States had become unhappy with Saudi cooperation on anti–terrorism efforts “well before” the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. ^[1] Neither was the U.S. government happy with Saudi refusals since February 1998 to let the U.S. bases there be used for attacks against Iraq. On entering office, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush wished to restore the pre–1991 status quo; i.e., low–profile mutual commercial interest on the part of two countries not sharing many of the same values.

Thus the last U.S. forces left the remote Prince Sultan Air Base near Al Kharj in September 2003, with the Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar aircraft ending their nearly 20–year deployment there after being first sent to the region in the early 1980s to monitor the Iran–Iraq war.

Djibouti, on the other hand, is a relatively new relationship for the United States. It is a small country sited at a very strategically valuable spot at the bottom of the Red Sea, adjoining Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Yemen is just across the narrow Bab El Mendeb strait that links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. The major power most interested in the country for decades has been France, which granted the state its independence in 1977 and still maintains more than 3,000, mostly Army, personnel there. But in October 2002, following the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States decided to establish a forward base in the Horn of Africa region to attack terrorists operating though–out the sub–region.

Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa was initially established aboard the U.S. Navy command ship Mount Whitney, which reached the Gulf of Aden in November 2002. The United States then established a base at Djibouti’s international airport and built it up to a strength of some 2,000, primarily Special Operations Forces operating against terrorist throughout the region. They have been supported by Special Operations helicopters from the U.S. Air Force. Djibouti was, in a way, the prototype for the overall austere basing strategy, with rotated rather than permanently assigned forces, and reflected the U.S. military’s reluctance to spend large sums on troop support facilities.

The Pacific

While the new U.S. basing policy was received with open arms in Eastern Europe among the former Warsaw Pact states, when the United States started exploring the issue informally with its allies in the Pacific, it met a much cooler reception. The need for U.S. bases in the Western Pacific, beyond Hawaii, falls into two categories: bases for troops to operate from within the region, and naval staging posts to support the transit of carrier groups toward the Indian Ocean and Middle East. Inquiries have been made in the previous six months or so with both the Philippine and Australian governments, and been turned down in both cases.

With the withdrawal of permanently stationed U.S. forces from the Philippines in 1992, U.S. forces in Southeast Asia were reduced to a naval logistics headquarters, Task Force 73, and a fighter training support unit in Singapore. But with the development of the new basing strategy in early 2003, the United States tried without success to develop further bases in the region — although the Philippines has allowed exercises to take place in which U.S. Special Forces deploy to the southern Philippines to assist in countering the long–running communist insurgency. A visiting U.S. National Defense University delegation received a negative answer when they asked about potential reassessment of the position in a meeting with the Philippine Visiting Forces Commission.

Australia would have been an even more attractive proposition from the point of view of supporting Middle East deployments. There are already U.S. two satellite ground stations and a naval communications station in Australia, but no combat forces. The western Australian port of Fremantle has hosted U.S. aircraft carrier group visits numerous times, and the home–porting of a carrier group there would have immensely reduced the U.S. Navy deployment strain. The nearest other carrier base currently, Yokosuka, Japan, is just under twice the distance to the Persian Gulf than Fremantle. However, it is not known what type of facility the Defense Department was seeking from Australia. Preliminary stories in the Washington press stating the United States was interested in bases in Australia led to questions in the Australian press. Finally, in mid–August, Richard Armitage, the visiting U.S. deputy secretary of state, said that no request was to be made, as Australia was not geographically best positioned. While it is likely that there was some consideration of an Australian base, there remains little chance of major U.S. forces being stationed in Australia.

In terms of ground forces, Armitage was virtually correct, and until very recently, there has been no serious consideration of stationing another carrier group, apart from the Kitty Hawk and her group at Yokosuka, anywhere outside the continental United States.

Whether Australia was under consideration as a carrier base or not, the Navy is now reversing that previous thinking and is seeking to station another carrier and its associated strike group further forward in the Western Pacific. While no decision has been made, both Hawaii and Guam are under consideration to move a carrier forward to. Yokosuka is some 3,200 miles from Singapore, where the carrier groups transit the Malacca Strait to enter the Indian Ocean and head toward the Middle East. All the other Pacific coast carriers are based on the U.S. West Coast, about 8,000 or more miles from Singapore. Moving a carrier to Hawaii would chop that distance to just over 6,700 miles, while a Guam site would be just a little more advantageous than Yokosuka, at 2,900 miles. However, the site decision will not be able to made on purely military considerations, as adding 5,000 people to the population of Guam is an entirely different matter from adding those people to the population of Hawaii. It is not known when the final decision will be made, but Hawaii may be in a better position than Guam thanks to the availability of support facilities. One of the deciding factors may be an active airfield to base the carrier’s 80–plane air wing while in port; Hawaii may hold the advantage in that respect, having more attractive facilities available.

The final base shift now underway in the Pacific is also not strictly related to the current austere basing proposals, but is a consequence of the unique situation on the Korean Peninsula. The United States has 37,000 troops, including the 2^nd Infantry Division, in South Korea to help defend it from the million–man North Korean Armed Forces. The 2nd Infantry Division has been stationed for decades as part of the initial defense lines just south of the fortified border. In mid–2003, the decision to move the division south away from the front lines was announced, partially to remove some of the U.S. ’tripwire’ factor that would see America quickly involved in any war on the Peninsula, and partially to make the troops available for other missions in the region, which will help to relieve the stress on the Army. As a first step, troops currently spread along the border area in a number of camps will be concentrated into two major locations, and then all the fighting forces will be relocated south of the Han river, some distance south of the current confrontation line. No timing has been agreed for the move, which will take some years, but the United States will move out from Yongsan headquarters site in central Seoul by 2006.

The grand design behind the austere bases strategy has not been able to be implemented in the Pacific, but U.S. forces there, as well as those in the Middle East and Central Asia, are being re–orientated to better suit them for the challenges ahead. U.S. forces will have to face a period of adaptation if rotationary six–month deployments are to become commonplace far from the troops’ homes and loved ones. Recruiting, and especially personnel retention, will suffer. Only time will tell how serious the consequences are and thus how effective the new pattern will be.

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Endnotes

Note 1: International Institute for Strategic Studies, The US&-;Saudi Relationship — towards greater equilibrium?, Strategic Comments, Vol. 9, No.4, June 2003.   Back.