Chalmers Johnson - The Sorrows of Empire - Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

All these Afghan and Pakistani bases, plus some small CIA camps on the Tajik-Afghan border for liaison with the Northern Alliance warlords, directly supported the short military campaign of the fall and winter of 2001 that overthrew the Taliban. But the bases that were built in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are another matter. Less than a month after September 11, 2001, the United States negotiated long-term leases with both countries—reacting incredibly fast for a government responding to an unexpected event.

These bases did not extend the reach of American air power in Afghanistan to any appreciable degree. Aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea were just as close to targets in southern Afghanistan and much cheaper to operate. Nor were these bases meant for the deployment of large numbers of ground forces. The Kyrgyzstan base was 620 miles from the Afghan border, and Washington’s strategy in the war did not involve the use of large concentrations of American troops. In fact, the Kyrgyz and Uzbek bases were brought to bear only tangentially during the war, and they were too far from Iraq to be of much use in the war already being planned against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Nor were they intended to supply significant amounts of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, since that remained largely in the hands of the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations like the Red Cross, which are not normally allowed to use U.S. bases. 46Nor were they there to protect the local regimes from Islamic militants since these governments would not entrust that mission to Americans and have agreements with the Russians to deal with such problems. (The Russians, for instance, have deployed some 20,000 troops in Tajikistan for that purpose.)

According to the New York Times, the Kyrgyz and Uzbek facilities are virtual copies of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. “Their function may be more political than actually military,” acknowledged Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in an interview, but he did not specify what that political function might be. 47The biggest of the bases is located on thirty-seven acres at the formerly civilian Manas International Airport, nineteen miles west of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The Americans have renamed it Chief Peter J. Ganci Jr. Air Base after the highest-ranking officer of the New York Fire Department to perish in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Kyrgyzstan initially leased Manas for a year, but President Akayev assured American officials that he was willing to renew the lease for as long as necessary. American military headquarters in Kyrgyzstan are not actually located at the base but in downtown Bishkek at the local Hyatt Regency, where the military also set up an employment office to hire local workers. The base houses some 3,000 servicemen and women and includes a recreation and fitness center, live American sports programming on wide-screen TVs, and an Internet cafe. French air force pilots and their Mirage jet fighters, as well as British and Danish troops, are also stationed at Manas. Instead of using either of the two industrial-sized kitchens provided by the United States, however, the French have set up their own cooking facility, catering to French tastes. One airman told the New York Times, “I could tell from the start that this would be one of the better bases.” 48

In Uzbekistan, the twin of Manas is located at an old Soviet air base at Khanabad, near the city of Karshi, about a hundred miles north of the Afghan border. By May 2002, a thousand American soldiers from the Tenth Mountain Division and a squadron of F-15E fighter jets were deployed there. Russian sources claim that Uzbekistan has leased the base to the United States for twenty-five years. The Pentagon denies this but refuses to say how long the lease actually is. The president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, declined to publish this agreement because it reportedly pledged him to “intensify the democratic transformation of society.” 49The Pentagon has given Vice President Cheney’s old company, the Kellogg Brown & Root subdivision of Halliburton, an open-ended contract to provide logistics for the Khanabad base—everything from cooking the meals to fueling the aircraft, the same services Halliburton supplies so profitably to Camp Bondsteel and many other military facilities around the world.

Elsewhere in the Central Asian republics, the Bush administration has said it will build at least one base in Tajikistan but has not yet specified where. It already has overflight agreements with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan and is sending Kazakh officers to America for training. Kazakhstan has given permission for the airfield in its former capital city, Almaty, to be used in case of emergency, and the United States is negotiating for basing rights on the Caspian shore of Kazakhstan. The only Central Asian republic that has denied the United States bases or overflight rights is Turkmenistan, which adopted a policy of neutrality toward the struggle in Afghanistan.

The assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, who was sworn in on May 31, 2001, is a career diplomat, Elizabeth Jones. She speaks Russian, German, and Arabic and was, from 1995 to 1998, ambassador to Kazakhstan. She used to drive around the Kazakh capital with a yellow bumper strip on her car that read, “Happiness Is Multiple Pipelines.” In December 2001, at a press conference in Almaty, she promised, “When the Afghan conflict is over, we will not leave Central Asia. We have long-term plans and interests in this region.” 50As I hope to show, there is ample reason why we should believe her.

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THE SPOILS OF WAR

Over the years, the real purposes of many of these overseas bases has changed from tactical and strategic locations of military value to elaborate American housing and logistic installations away from home. They provide locations and facilities for some units that would have no reason for existence if based in the United States, and they furnish justification for interesting and attractive overseas travel and adventure for the troops and their families.

COLONEL JAMES A. DONOVAN, USMC (RET.),

Militarism, U.S.A. (1970)

Wars and imperialism are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Each thrives off the other. They cannot be separated. Imperialism is the single-greatest cause of war, and war is the midwife of new imperialist acquisitions. Wars usually begin because political leaders convince a people that the use of armed force is necessary to defend the country or pursue some abstract goal—Cuban independence from Spain, preventing a Communist victory in a Korean civil war, keeping the banana republics of Central America in the “free world,” or even bringing democracy to Iraq. For a major power, prosecution of any war that is not a defense of the “homeland” usually requires overseas military bases for strategic reasons. After the war is over, it is tempting for the victor to retain such bases and easy to find reasons to do so. Commonly, preparedness for a possible resumption of hostilities will be invoked. Over time, if a nation’s aims become imperial, the bases form the skeleton of an empire. In recent centuries, wars launched from such bases have been the primary means through which imperialism has prospered and expanded, although an induced economic dependence can sometimes achieve the same effect. Since the end of World War II, American governments have offered many rationales for the bases they were collecting around the world, including containing Communism, warding off the “domino theory,” fighting “ethnic cleansing,” and preventing the spread of “weapons of mass destruction.”

From the time of the Romans and the Han dynasty Chinese to the present, all empires have had permanent military encampments, forts, or bases of some sort. These were meant to garrison conquered territory, keeping restless populations under control, and to serve as launching points for further imperial conquests. What is most fascinating and curious about the developing American form of empire, however, is that, in its modern phase, it is solely an empire of bases, not of territories, and these bases now encircle the earth in a way that, despite centuries-old dreams of global domination, would previously have been inconceivable.