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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