I thought this was interesting: 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.
