contribute. In Defense Department jargon these are the new “lily pads” that we are trying to establish all over the globe’s “arc of instability,” which is said to run from the Andean region of South America through North Africa and then sweep across the Middle East to the Philippines and Indonesia. In a May 2005 report, the Overseas Basing Commission defines this arc as containing “more than its fair share of ethnic strife, religious and ideological fanaticism, failed governments, and—above all— antipathy and hatred toward the West in general and the United States in particular.”18 Why this would make it an ideal place to expand our military presence, other than the fact that it is congruent with many of the oil-producing states of the world, is not made clear.
These “lily pad” facilities contain prepositioned weapons and munitions (running the risk of theft or appropriation for other purposes) to which U.S. access has already been negotiated, but they are to have little or no permanent U.S. presence, except in times of emergency. These are places to which our troops could jump like so many well-armed frogs from the homeland or our major bases elsewhere. Lily pad facilities now exist in Dakar, Senegal, for example, where the air force has negotiated contingency landing rights, logistics, and fuel-contracting arrangements. In 2003, it served as a staging area for our small-scale intervention in the Liberian civil war.
Other lily pads are located in Ghana, Gabon, Chad, Niger, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe in the oil- rich Gulf of Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, and at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda as well as on the islands of Aruba and Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles near Venezuela.19 Lily pads are under construction in Pakistan (where we already have four larger bases), India, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia; and in North Africa, in Morocco, Tunisia, and especially Algeria (scene of the slaughter of some one hundred thousand civilians since 1992, when the military took over, backed by our country and France, to quash an election). Six are planned for Poland.20
The models for all these new installations, according to Pentagon sources, are the string of bases we have built around the Persian Gulf in the last two decades in such antidemocratic autocracies as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, even though most of these are actually too large to be thought of as “lily pads.”21 Mark Sappen-field of the
Thomas Donnelly and Vance Serchuk of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the unofficial Washington headquarters for the neocons, explain how the new structure of MOBs, FOSs, and CSLs is supposed to function. Invoking American Wild West imagery, they cheerfully assert, “Transformation involves a world’s worth of new missions for the U.S. military, which is fast becoming the global cavalry’ of the twenty-first century. Among the many components in this transformation is the radical overhaul of America’s overseas force structure, which seeks to create a worldwide network of frontier forts.. . . The preeminent mission of the U.S. military is no longer the containment of the Soviet Union, but the preemption of terrorism.. . . Like the cavalry of the old west, [the armed forces’] job is one part warrior and one part policeman—both of which are entirely within the tradition of the American military. . . . The realignment of our network of overseas bases into a system of frontier stockades is necessary to win a long-term struggle against an amorphous enemy across the arc of instability.”23
Aware that Germans are growing increasingly dissatisfied with the way the U.S. military is damaging the environment around its bases and its refusal to clean up its messes, the AEI recommends building more “frontier stockades” in the poorer countries that Donald Rumsfeld so famously termed “the New Europe”—Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania, in particular—because of their “more permissive environmental regulations.” The Pentagon always imposes on countries in which it deploys our troops Status of Forces Agreements, which usually exempt the United States from cleaning up or paying for the environmental damage it causes. Part of this attitude, however, simply reflects the desire of the Pentagon to put itself beyond any of the restraints that govern civilian life anywhere, an arrogance increasingly at play in the “homeland” as well. For example, the 2004 defense authorization bill exempts the military from abiding by the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, even though both already contain possible exemptions for genuine national security needs.
The Pentagon s grand scheme has many critics, some of whom it did not anticipate because it has become so accustomed to having its own way with the budget and with Congress. In the Department of Defense’s report to Congress,
In a preemptive strike to protect bases in their respective states, the two mother hens of the Senate’s Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee—Chairperson Kay Bailey Hutchison (Republican from Texas) and ranking minority member Dianne Feinstein (Democrat from California)—promptly demanded that the Pentagon close overseas bases first, bringing the troops stationed there home to domestic bases, which could then remain open. Hutchison and Feinstein also included in the Military Construction Appropriations Act of 2004 money for an independent commission to investigate and report on overseas bases that were no longer needed.24 Secretary Rumsfeld opposed this provision but it passed anyway and was signed into law by the president on November 22, 2003. The commission did its work quite thoroughly and revealed itself as rather more expert and realistic on overseas bases than the undersecretary of defense for policy. Its May 2005 report on the overseas basing structure is harshly critical of sloppy work at the Pentagon, particularly with regard to base construction and accounting for the funds it spends, something unusual in our “imperial presidential” system.
Most Americans do not know that some “host nations” for our military bases abroad pay large sums to the United States to support our presence in their countries. Somewhat like the Romans of old, who taxed their colonies mercilessly, the Americans have added a modern basing twist to military imperialism. They have convinced sovereign nations in which our bases are located that they have an obligation to help pay for them in order to deter our common enemies. This is called “burden sharing.” Japan spends by far the largest amount of any nation—$4.4 billion in 2002—and every year tries to get its share cut. Perhaps whenever Japan finally succeeds in lowering its “host nation support,” the Pentagon will start moving our troops and airmen out of the numerous unneeded locations there. Until then, however, Japan’s American outposts are too lucrative and comfortable for the Pentagon to contemplate relocating them. On a per capita basis, the small but rich emirates of the Persian Gulf are the biggest spenders on this form of protection money. Bahrain pays a total of $53.4 million, Kuwait $252.98 million, Qatar $81.3 million, and the United Arab Emirates $217.4 million.25
The Overseas Basing Commission noted that Germany paid $1.6 billion in 2002 dollars for its U.S. bases, Spain $127.6 million, Turkey $116.8 million, and the Republic of Korea $842.8 million. Yet these are the key nations the Pentagon wants to punish for their lack of cooperation on Iraq. If the United States actually brings its troops home, the host-nation support will have to come from the U.S. taxpayer. The commission also notes laconically that the “extent to which host-nation funding would be available to support new basing requirements in any countries not currently hosting U.S. forces remains to be seen.”26 In addition, it concluded that the Pentagon was wildly unrealistic in estimating the costs of reshuffling our empire. “The secretary of defense has stated that no extra funds will be asked for in the budget process to pay for the implementation of the Global Posture Review. . . . DoD [Department of Defense] has estimated the implementation of the Global Posture strategy to be between $9 billion and $12 billion with only about $4 billion currently budgeted from fiscal years 2006 through 2011.”27 As a result of its tours of overseas bases and a careful recalculation of construction costs,
