Written on 5:11 PM by CommuniKation

Kyoko Suda
Bruce Wydick
Graduate Editorial
Representative
Richard Lambert

Following the events of September 11, 2001, a key
consideration dominates American military strategy. Should
the United States obtain Central Asian military bases? Does
the United States need such bases in Central Asia to protect
itself from terrorist attacks, now or in the future? The evi-
dence suggests it should not and needs not. But foreign real
estate attracts American defense planners the way that
Nimitz-class aircraft carriers attract admirals, B2 stealth
bombers and heavy Abrams tanks generals. In other words,
they can never have enough. With the campaign in Afghani-
stan only phase one of a longer struggle against terrorism,
the lust for land has taken the United States back to a Cold
War mindset. From approximately 1947 to 1989 the United
States tried, with some success, to ring the Soviet Union with
bases from northern Norway to the Korean peninsula, an arc
of containment that swept down from Western Europe
through the Middle East, all the way up to Northeast Asia.
1
With the extended demise of the Soviet Union, which com-
menced in 1989 and concluded in 1992, the logic for these
containing-bases collapsed
Base Closings in the U.S., Europe, and Asia
Faced with this reality and declining budgets, the
Defense Department ‘bit the bullet’ and admitted in the early
1990s that it needed fewer bases, both at home and abroad.
Congressional delegations screamed when one of ‘their’ bases
went on the block, but a complicated formula forced the
closures. California alone, a state that in the nineteenth
century looked like a military reservation, lost heavily when
the U.S. Navy abandoned all its facilities in the San Francisco
Bay Area and the U.S. Army relinquished the jewel of its West
Coast properties, the Presidio of San Francisco. Internation-
ally, American base closures impacted mainly Europe,
especially western Germany, where U.S. military townships
dotted that Cold War frontier state. Impacted localities such
as Monterey County, California and the counties (kreis)
around Nuremberg, Germany suffered economic earthquakes
as payrolls and tax-rolls declined.
2
Civilian contractors and
local merchants took the hit.
More than any other great power, the United States
replicated itself on overseas bases. Throughout NATO
Europe, U.S. military bases turned into American towns.
Grade and high schools sprang up, large family housing
projects like Pattonville near Stuttgart appeared on the
landscape, along with military shopping malls (dry cleaners,
beauty parlors, movie theatres, bowling lanes, commissaries
with food flown in from the U.S., base/post exchanges similar
to department stores, auto-mechanic garages, and even ski
resorts with hotels in Garmisch and Berchtesgaden. Similar
replication happened with Asian allies. Outside the city of
Taejon, South Korea, the U.S. base at Camp Ames had paved
roads and permanent cinderblock buildings long before the
nearby village had electricity or running water.
American defense down-sizing did not impact Asia as
much as it did Europe. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines
asked the United States to leave Subic Bay Naval Base and
Clark Air Force Base, while the Nixon Administration’s
`Vietnamization’ program gave the American military what it
hoped was a chance to withdraw with honor from bases in
South Vietnam.
3
But most Northeast Asian facilities remained
relics of the Cold War. (The U.S. gave Camp Ames and other
bases back to South Korea, consolidating American defense
activities closer to the hub cities of Seoul and Pusan). The
number of U.S. bases in Japan declined, mainly because of
their cost. But some resurfaced in tiny Okinawa, which now
hosts thirty-eight U.S. bases. Okinawa is now faced with yet
another American base, this one to be built in the ecologically
sensitive bay at Nago.
4
Base Openings in the Balkans, Persian Gulf,
and Central Asia
In Kosovo, where former President Clinton committed
the nation for no more than a six-month sojourn to enforce
peace, his administration built a permanent base. Camp
Bondsteel, Kosovo, which started as little more than a tem-
porary tent site, has become a small, self-supporting town of
wooden barracks and command centers, helicopter mainte-
nance buildings, a water treatment plant, a movie theatre, a
gymnasium and a hospital.
5
Why not let the European Rapid
Reaction Forces enforce peace on this Euro-zone periphery?
(To borrow a Russian term, the Balkans are Europe’s ‘near
abroad’.) Perhaps because officials like former Secretary of
State Madeline Albright spent much of the 1990s urging
NATO to expand toward the Russian border. This reckless
and regretful policy hobbled Eastern Europe, which needs
economic membership in a dynamic European Union, not
military memberships in an mission-less alliance. It also
wasted Western European military assets. As Kenneth Waltz
wrote: “Rather than learning from history, the United States
repeats past errors by expanding NATO eastward and extend-
ing its influence over what used to be the province of the van-
quished. This alienates Russia and pushes it toward China…”
6
Thus did the U.S. divert its European allies from their real
task of putting out border brushfires on their own, a backyard
defense well within the capabilities of a rich West Europe.
U.S. Base Mania in Central Asia
by Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Ph.D.
Abstract
Before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the
Defense Department had no military bases in Central Asia. Half a year
later it has over a dozen. Why? According to Bush Administration
spokesmen, the Armed Forces need these bases to support the War on
Terrorism in Afghanistan. Yet their successful (so far) Afghan counter-
terrorism effort has been waged from either the decks of four aircraft
carriers in nearby waters, from the British Indian Ocean base at Diego
Garcia, or from bases in Afghanistan itself. The lust for land bases in areas
near China’s borders or in former Soviet republics will draw America into
local quarrels for which it has no solutions. The old Cold War tendency to
make these bases permanent has already manifested itself in a demand
for recreational facilities, pizza parlors, and coffee houses! This paper
explains why ‘base-mania’ is the wrong way to fight terrorists.
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Engagement in Kosovo came after the Clinton Administration
ceded much of Bosnia to Bosnian Serbs and strengthened two
pipsqueak dictators, Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman and Serbia’s
Slobodan Milosevic.
7
The U.S. intervened in Kosovo only
belatedly and moved the forward headquarters of the 5th U.S.
Corps from Heidelberg, Germany to the Hungarian-Croatian
border. From there it created Camp Bondsteel.
Another case of base mania occurred following Operation
Desert Storm. In 1991 the Pentagon decided it needed to stay
in Kuwait and turned two small warehouses into the present
500-acre complex known as Camp Doha, Kuwait, headquar-
ters for U.S.Army Central Command-Kuwait (ARCENT-KU).
Here the Pentagon rotates battalion-sized task forces nearly
continuously, flying one unit in from the U.S. while it takes
another back. The U.S. Army conducts joint ‘Intrinsic Action’
training with Kuwaiti elements; the U.S. Marine Corps calls
theirs ‘Eagle Mace’; while Special Operations Forces, the
sneak and peek troops, cover their joint activities under code
name ‘Iris Gold’. Not far from Camp Doha sits Ahmed al-
Jabat Air Base, Kuwait, a home-away-from home for U.S. Air
Force aircraft. And King Hamad of Bahrain allowed the U.S.
Fifth Fleet to build its headquarters on this strategic Persian
Gulf island.
Will Camp Bondstell and Camp Doha act as models for
woebegone Afghanistan and its wounded neighbors? “That’s
affirm,” as the military say and the New York Times reports.
Several locations have won approval: in Afghanistan the
Bagram Air Base north of Kabul and Kandahar Airport are
now home to the 101st U.S. Airborne Division, formerly of
Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Major General Franklin Hagenbeck,
when asked why U.S. troops at Bagram “cannot enjoy pizza
and cappuccino, as their comrades do at Camp Bondsteel” ,
the general replied that “when you start creating a Bondsteel
there’s an impression, rightly or wrongly, that you’re going to
be there for an extended period of time.”
8
Outside of, but near to, Afghanistan there is Khanabad
Air Base in Uzbekistan, and a new air base going up outside
Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, as a “transportation hub to
house as many as 3,000 troops and accommodate warplanes
and support aircraft.” Also to be located at Bishkek’s Manas
International Airport will be a U.S. military surgical ward,
gym, and a military exchange (i.e., shopping center). This
base is only three hundred miles from the Chinese border.
(The State Department has signed a one-year Status of Forces
Agreement with the Kyrgyz government to legalize this
expanded Pentagon footprint in Asia’s Wild West.) To mask
the appearance of unilateral military expansion, the U.S. has
invited France to station six Mirage 2000s in Bishkek “for
combat air operations in northern Afghanistan.” Another
agreement has been concluded with Tajikistan’s government
for a base near Tashkent while talks continue with
Kazakhstan for U.S. use of an airfield there.
9
Add to this the
February 9, 2002, agreement between the U.S. and Pakistan in
which Islamabad’s military government agreed to allow the
U.S “to use Pakistani facilities for joint exercises, training,
deployments and other military operations.”
10
(This Texas
roundup of Stans—Persian for place—rivals Alexander the
Great’s incursion over two thousand years ago.)
Moreover, what will Russian and Chinese elites think of
their new backdoor neighbors, the U.S. military? President
Vladimir Putin’s surprise decision following September 11 to
side with Washington caught many Russian specialists off
guard.
11
The U.S. should build upon Russia’s support, not
ignore it, nor allow it to wither because of base mania behind
the Hindu Kush. Many of the bases the U.S. wants were
former Soviet bases in what Russians call their ‘near abroad.’
As for China, President Jiang Zemin and his likely successor,
Hu Jintao, can hardly brush aside the case of American bases
astride arteries of the ancient Silk Road. Chinese elites, unlike
their American counterparts, remember history. Ming dy-
nasty China sent envoys to Herat—a former imperial capital
now within Afghanistan—before Columbus failed to find a
western route to China.
12
Why antagonize these two great
powers, which, along with India, have vital interests in the
region?
Rationale for Bases: War on Terrorism
The ostensible reason given for requiring Central Asian
bases is the U.S. desire to destroy the al-Qaeda as a function-
ing terrorist organization. A mainly pan-Arab grouping, the
al-Qaeda’s hijacking of a non-Arab government, the Taliban,
which had itself hijacked one of the world’s greatest religions,
Islam, has certainly demonstrated that their operatives know
their business.
13
But are American bases in Central Asia and
Arab countries the appropriate response?
With the World Towers inferno the al-Qaeda made
themselves targets. To evade destruction, they went back
underground. Where did they hunker down? The best guess
is not Afghanistan where many Afghans would sell them for
the price of a rug. Nor Cairo and Riyadh, which tend to
execute dissidents on the spot. More likely places are the
European cites of the Islamic Diaspora. For example, Islam
has emerged as the fastest-growing religion in Britain with
numbers ranging from 1.5 million to 2.5 million. ( With over 5
million, France has the largest Muslim population in Western
Europe. Parisistan versus Londonistan.) The British rap sheet
of ‘Shoe Bomber’ Richard Reid, who terrorized American
Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami, is instructive. He had a
Black Jamaican immigrant grandfather and a father who
married a white British woman, the daughter of an accoun-
tant and magistrate. Both father and son did time in British
jails, where they converted to Islam. British scholars like
Ziauddin Sardar suggest that “Islam is a sort of natural
religion for underdogs and that’s one reason why Afro-
Caribbean people have found its message very attractive.”
14
Assuming that Europe now contains vital remnants of al-
Qaeda, central Asian military bases will not help find them,
nor will military forces. Instead, it rests with police agencies,
intelligence services, and financial institutions.
15
A Better Solution
If recent history suggests anything about long-term
hospitality in the Islamic world, the U.S. will probably get
invited out soon after it settles in. Saudi Arabia is a perfect
case in point. The almost 4,500 strong military force that the
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U.S. stations there, along with almost 1,000 British military,
today find themselves proto-prisoners and terrorist-targets.
The 1996 bombing of the U.S. Air Force Khobar Towers
barracks in the Saudi city of Dhahran killed nineteen U.S.
airmen. Now concentrated mainly at the Prince Sultan Air
Base outside Riyadh, U.S. forces once numbered 500,000
during the Persian Gulf War. Saudi strategists expected that
the Desert Storm military would go home once they finished
their job—expelling Iraq from Kuwait. But they stayed on
because Washington held that the job remained undone so
long as Saddam Hussein was in power. Baffled at first, the
Saudis countered: no flights to bomb Iraq, then no over-
flights of Iraq. Nonetheless, last summer the Pentagon
proceeded to open a state-of-the-art command center on the
Prince Sultan Air Base.
Saudi royals have now begun to hint that the Americans
have overstayed their welcome.
16
Among the reasons are the
secular attitudes of the American military that conflict with
Saudi religious authorities determined to defend their sacred
soil. For example, Saudi elites see nothing but American
arrogance in the case of Lieutenant Colonel Martha McSally,
the highest ranking female pilot in the U.S. Air Force. Since
the American military arrived in-country with the Gulf War,
the Defense Department established a policy that female
members should wear the traditional Saudi head-to-toe
robe—the abaya in Arabic—when going off base. McSally
challenged the abaya rule in a Washington D.C. court,
arguing that that policy is unconstitutional and improperly
forces American women to conform to others’ customs.
General Tommy Franks has since modified the policy to state
that the abaya is no longer required but strongly encouraged.
No grand clash of civilizations here; just a choice of clothes.
But little things such as this often erode relations between
these two key allies who then misinterpret each other and
clothe their arguments in terms such as Orientalism (anti-
East) and Occidentalism (anti-West).
17
The U.S. should have followed the advise of two of its
senior people in the area. General Charles Horner, the U.S. Air
Force commander during the Gulf War argued “very hard to
get all of our people out of there” when Washington with-
drew most of its combatants following the U.S. rout of Iraqi
forces from Kuwait. After the 1996 Khobar Towers attack,
then-U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Wyche Fowler Jr.,
suggested that it might be wiser to withdraw rather to confine
American service personnel to sand-box stalags for their own
protection. 18 Washington-based officials rejected this advise
from the field, believing they knew best. But the basing issues
pale compared to Saudi rage against what they perceive as
America’s one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinians issue.
19
Crown Prince Abdullah has stepped forward to offer his
American ally solutions for both the base problem and the
Israeli-Palestine war. His suggestion on bases is a gracious
way for the U.S. to depart. “You (Americans) would still have
access to Saudi bases after a withdrawal” said one adviser to
the crown prince.”
20
Inasmuch as the two nations might face
future troubles together, the then leaders could arrange a
temporary solution to those threats. Meanwhile, Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States,
has tried to placate disaffected Congressional members who
feel betrayed by the desert kingdom.
Betrayal has nothing to do with it. The Saudis have
bought over $30 billion in weapons over the past decade.
With a population of 23 million they can defend their country.
And Abdullah knows well the military politics of his region.
Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has hosted joint U.S.-
Egyptian military exercises in the land of the pharaohs.
Almost simultaneous with the start of bombings in Afghani-
stan, 23,759 U.S. troops joined 43,350 Egyptian troops in land,
sea, and air combat maneuvers. Eight other nations partici-
pated, each contributing an average of about 564 personnel.
Code named ‘Bright Star’, Cairo and Washington have con-
ducted these biennial, autumn war games for the last twenty
years. At their terminus, the Americans terminate—they go
away. Abdullah likes the going away part and apparently has
no plan for yearly returns in any possible Saudi scenario.
21
Skeptics should not sell this crown prince short. He holds the
spigot to the kingdom’s much needed oil, and he proposed a
striking solution to the Israeli-Palestine cancer that threatens
sure-death for the region. But rather than bring the Saudi-
based troops home, the Pentagon sees a replacement for its
Arabian base just over the border in Qatar with its vast
hangars and 15,000 foot runways at Al Udeid Air Base.
22
Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups to the Rescue
The Saudi bases were a mistake from the beginning. The
U.S. should have remained over-the-horizon, its fleet patrol-
ling nearby waters. That is what carrier battle groups do
superbly. They patrol in international waters and function as
floating bases that the Pentagon can move about the world’s
oceans. Four of these blue-water behemoths were deployed
into harm’s way after September 11: the U.S.S. Enterprise
Battle Group in the Arabian Sea, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson Battle
Group in the Persian Gulf, the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt Battle
Group in the eastern Mediterranean, and the U.S.S. Kitty
Hawk in the Indian Ocean. (The Roosevelt’s Battle Group had
just arrived from its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, and the
Kitty Hawk’s Group had to dash down from its overhaul in
Yokosuka, Japan.)
In the recent past, the U.S. Navy has paid short-term
rents for pier space for such carriers in Singapore, one of the
few places that can take these giant warships. Note the verb
‘rent’, the adjective `short-term’. Moreover, American naval
battle groups can and do use the British Indian Ocean base at
Diego Garcia, which also offered U.S. Air Force B-52s run-
ways from which to lumber north to drop their payloads on
Afghanistan. And stealth bombers flew round trip from the
U.S. to strike at Afghan targets. None of the above operations
required permanent Central Asian bases.
23
The above combination will not always work. While the
celebrated historian Paul Kennedy seems overawed by the
size and power of U.S. aircraft carriers, he fails to see their
weaknesses.
24
They make excellent targets for Russian
manufactured Moskit anti-ship cruise missiles, called Sun-
burns (SSN-22) by the Chinese who bought 48 in 2000 and
have stockpiled more ever since. With a range of 80miles, a
speed of Mach 2.34, its high-explosive warhead can sink most
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U.S. ships. And the warhead can go nuclear, up to 200-kiloton,
six–times as powerful as Hiroshima.
Beijing bought two Sovremenny-class guided missile
destroyers from Moscow to go with these Russian anti-ship
weapons. Indicators point to their willingness to buy more,
particularly upgraded versions. Professor Kennedy may want
to correct his use of decrepitude to describe the Russian mili-
tary. Apparently their version of the military-industrial-edu-
cation nexus still delivers complex weapons systems that
work when tested, the first thing that the Chinese did before
paying. Seen from Washington this equipment is offensive;
from Beijing defensive.
25
But it and other developments mean
that the traditional carrier faces a future mainly in low-tech
environments.
The Afghanistan conflict has proved the continued
usefulness of carriers as floating bases in minimum intensity
combat. Paul Kennedy correctly notes that in this conflict the
U.S. pulled its forces from international bases it shared before
September 11, 2001. Yet, as of March 2002 the U.S. has “a ring
of new and expanded military bases established in thirteen
locations in nine countries near Afghanistan since September
11”.
26
Unfortunately, that is not a recipe for catching terrorists
and more security but for a continuing cycle of violence
aimed at the U.S. Exasperated by this base mania, Senator
Robert Byrd, D-W.Va, who chairs the Senate Appropriations
Committee, grilled Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
about the war’s costs and how “the Pentagon seems to be
looking for opportunities to stay longer and expand our
presence in the region.”
27
The United States has made a case that it is fighting a just
war in Afghanistan.
28
The Bush team must not let that war
turn unjust by expanding it. Timothy Garton Ash, a British
admirer of the U.S., warned his American friends of “the peril
of too much power.”
29
There is also peril in wasting power on
extraneous bases and weapons. Prize-winning journalists like
Thomas Friedman might want to reconsider the next time
they congratulates the U.S. on its immense military power.
Yes, the U.S. Air Force does fly airplanes that can land in the
dark, a feat that amazes Friedman.
30
But as these military
transport aircraft began to go into service, U.S. civilians began
to lose their passenger train service. As the U.S. began to
build high-tech M.A.S.H. facilities across Central Asia, it has
not begun a national heath care program at home. This does
not bode well for America’s future.
If Pentagon history helps, in the 1960s two whiz kids, led
by the economist Charles Hitch, came to their Defense
Department jobs prepared to ask a tough question—How
much is enough?
31
If asked today about Central Asian
military bases for the U.S., the number given should not rise
above zero.
ENDNOTES
1. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of
Postwar American National Security Policy (New York, Oxford
University Press, 1982) pp 36-51. The U. S. did not drift into the Cold
War bases by accident as Dean Acheson makes clear in his magisterial
autobiography, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
(New York, Norton, 1969) 276-284, 529-568.
2. Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Economic Earthquakes (Berkeley, Institute of
Governmental Studies,1994) 9-21, 196-97; “Pentagon to Cut Back 61
Overseas Sites, New York Times, May 23, 1992, p3. New York City took
a defense base cut similar to the San Francisco Bay Area losing
Governors Island, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the Navy base on
Staten Island. Jim O’Grady, “A Borough’s Old Naval Base Gives it
Silver Screen Dreams”, New York Times, March 31, 2002, 8; “White
House Will Sell Small Island to New York”, San Francisco Chronicle,
April 2, 2002, A3; Edward Epstein, “Navy Gives S.F. Land to Build at
Shipyard”, San Francisco Chronicle, January 24, 2002, A1.
3. Ricardo T. Jones, “One Hundred Years of Philippine-United States
Relations: An Outline History”, Aileen San Pablo-Baviera and Lydia
N. Yu-Jose, eds., Philippine External Relations: A Centennial Vista
(Manila, Foreign Service Institute, 1998) 363-451. Robert S.
McNamara, et al, Arguments Without End: In Search of Answers to the
Vietnam Tragedy (New York, Public Affairs, 1999) 367-68.
4. Chalmers Johnson, ed., Okinawa: Cold War Island (Cardiff, California,
Japanese Policy Research Institute, 1999). Following the Korean War
in the early 1950s, the number of U.S. bases in Japan declined from
almost two hundred to nearly ninety, depending on how you count
small service installations. The remaining ninety were mainly gigantic
naval and air bases. “South Korea: U.S. To Close Bases”, New York
Times International, March 30, 2002, A4. In the Korean case it is
consolidation, not closure per se. The current number of American
troops, 37,000, would remain the same, backing up 600,000 South
Korean troops.
5. Eric Schmitt & James Dao, “U.S. Digging in for the Long Haul:
Military Increasing Flexibility, Constructing More Bases in Central
Asia”, New York Times, reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle,
January 9, 2002, page 1.
6. For an in-depth look at these hapless European borderlands see
Andrew Janos, East Central Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of
the Borderlands from Pre- to Post Communism (Stanford, Stanford
University Press, 2000) 368, 371-72. The quote comes from Kenneth
Waltz, “Globalization and American Power”, The National Interest,
Spring 2000, 46-56.
7. Warren Bass, “The Triage of Dayton”, Foreign Affairs, September/
October 1998, 95-108.
8. Schmitt & Dao, “U.S. Digging in for the Long Haul”, New York Times.
Thomas E. Ricks, “For U.S. Troops, Afghan Air Base (Bagram) is a
Bombed-Out Hellhole” , International Herald Tribune, March 10, 2002,
5. General Hagenbeck, U.S. Army, is the commander of land
operations in Afghanistan.
9. Vernon Loeb, “Foothold for U.S. Forces in Steppes of Central Asia:
Build-up of New Bases Signals Military Presence will Remain Long
After War in Afghanistan is Over”, Guardian Weekly, February 14,
2002, 36.
10. Chronicle New Services, “Pakistan, U.S. Set Defense Pact”, San
Francisco Chronicle, February 10. 2002, A19.
11. “Lurching Ahead: While President Vladimir Putin Wows the West,
Russia is Changing Slowly” , The Economist, December 1, 2001, 46-47.“
The Yankees Are Coming: And the Russians Are Upset”, The
Economist, January 19, 2002, 37. Robert Cottrell, “Putin’s Risky
Strategy: The Russian President’s Efforts to Integrate With the West”,
Financial Times, February 12, 2002, 14. Andrew Jack, “Russia Offers
Support to Keep the Peace: Moscow Considering Providing Aircraft
and Economic Assistance in Effort to Forge Closer Ties with Kabul”,
Financial Times, February 13, 2002, 5. Martin Malia, Jack F. Matlock,
Robert Legvold “Odum’s Russia: A Forum,” The National Interest,
Winter, 2001/02, 114-129.
12. Shih-Shan Henry Tsai, Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle
(Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2001) 161, 188-90. (In 2001,
Jiang Zemin twice had to smooth over relations with the Bush
Administration over aircraft issues; the uninvited landing of an
American spy plane at Hainan Island and then the bugging of his
presidential Boeing during a refit at San Antonio, Texas. In 2002 he
now faces U.S. Air Force units on his southwestern borders. Henry
U.S. Base Mania / Hatcher · 14
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Chu, “Jiang’s U.S. Built Plane Is Reportedly Bugged”, Los Angeles
Times, January 19, 2002, A7. “China & America: The Plane Truth—It
Could have Been a Disaster” The Economist, January 26, 2002, 38. In
the case of the aircraft, the culprits could have been either C.I.A. or
their Chinese counterparts. The latter happened to Mao Zedong. For
the bugging of Mao’s private railroad car see Jonathan Spence, Mao
Zedong (New York, Viking, 1999) 155.
13. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in
Central Asia (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000). Also see his
Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (New Haven, Yale
University Press, 2001). The term hijacked is borrowed from Karen
Armstrong whose Islam: A Short History (New York, Modern Library,
2000) pays high tribute to the glories of Islam. Also see her essay “The
True, Peaceful Face of Islam”, Time, October 1, 2001. Bernard Lewis
added to the debate with What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle
Eastern Response (New York, Oxford University Press, 2001).
14. “Farewell, Londonistan? Anti Terrorism Legislation is Driving
Islamist Extremist Out of Britain”, The Economist, February 2, 2002, 54;
Michael Elliott, “The Shoe Bomber’s World”, Time, February 25, 2002,
46-50; Elizabeth Bryant, “France’s 5 Million Muslims Hear the Call of
Political Power”, San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 2002, A14.
15. The strategic spotlight should shine on Secretary of the Treasury Paul
O’Neill and his associates, not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
and his allies. Cutting the flow of funds to terrorists will strangle their
operations faster than any `smart’ bomb. Glenn R. Simpson, “O’Neill
Met Muslim Activists Tied to Charities”, Wall Street Journal, April 18,
2002, A4. International police operations spell disaster for terrorists
faster than do Special Forces’ raids. Timothy Mapes, “Jakarta Boosts
Regional Ties in Campaign Against Terror: Police Come From
Malaysia in Pursuit of Suspects”, Asian Wall Street Journal, March 7,
2002, 1. Shared intelligence can rejuvenate a moribund C.I.A.
Washington Post writer John Pomfret reported that President Jiang
Zemin and his followers chose to side with the U.S. after September
11. “As a result, Chinese intelligence cooperation with the United
States has resumed after being nearly dormant since the Cold
War…Western sources say that the Chinese, in two publicized
meetings and subsequent undisclosed ones, have handed over useful
material on Islamic radicals.” John Pomfret, “September 11 Attacks
Made Friends of U.S., China”, San Francisco Chronicle, February 8,
2002, H5.
16. David Ottaway & Robert G. Kaiser, “Saudis May Seek U.S. Exit:
Military Presence Seen as Political Liability in Arab World”, Washing-
ton Post, January 18, 2002, A 20; James Dao, “Frustration With Saudis
Fires Talk of U.S. Pullout”, New York Times reprinted in San Francisco
Chronicle, January 16, 2002, A13. “Saudi Arabia & America: Time to
Move On”, The Economist, January 26, 2002, 43.
17. Brian Whitaker, “US Drops Saudi ‘cover-up’ Rule”, The Guardian,
January 24, 2002, 2. Political Scientists argue whether Samuel P.
Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(New York, Simon & Schuster, 1996) helps or hinders the debate
about Islam & the West. These is no denying that Huntington’s thesis
has had an impact; whether helpful or not remains uncertain. On
Huntington’s influence see Robert D. Kaplan, “Looking the World in
the Eye”, The Atlantic Monthly, December 2001, 68-82. Huntington
came back again to insist he never meant that the West was better
than the “Rest”—“The West: Unique, Not Universal”, Foreign Affairs,
November/December 1996, 28-46.To match Edward Said Orientalism
(New York, Vintage, 1994) we have Ian Burama & Avishai Margalit,
“Occidentalism”, The New York Review of Books, January 17, 2002, 4-7.
18. Ottaway & Kaiser, “Saudis May Seek U.S. Exit”, Washington Post.
19. Elaine Sciolino, “Don’t Weaken Arafat, Saudi Warns Bush”, New York
Times, January 27, 2002, A6, and Neil MacFarquhar, “Saudi in Strong
Plea to Israel and Arabs: An Appeal for Peace Amid Skepticism and
Disarray”, New York Times, March 26, 2002, 1.
20. Ottaway & Kaiser, “Saudis May Seek Pullout of U.S. Troops”,
Washington Post.
21. William German, “Enigma on the Nile”, San Francisco Chronicle,
January 18, 2002, A29. `Bright Star’ grew out of the Camp David
Accords which Egypt singed in 1978. Small at first (ground forces),
operations have expanded since 1985 (air forces) and 1987 (special
forces and naval elements, and 1996 (forces other than U.S.-Egyptian
invited to join).
22. Paul Krugman, “Awkward Realities of Oil”, San Francisco Chronicle,
September 27, 2001, A23; David E. Sanger with Serge Schmemann,
“Bush Welcomes Saudi Proposal on Mideast Peace”, Washington Post,
February 27, 2002, 1; Elaine Sciolino, “U.S. Re-Examining its Military
Presence, Plan in Saudi Arabia”, San Diego Union-Tribune, March 10,
2002, 8. Bradley Graham and Thomas E. Ricks, “Contingency Plan
Shifts Saudi Base to Qatar”, The Guardian Weekly, March 11, 2002, 27.
23. In fairness, some local governments made ground areas available to
the U.S. military on an ad hoc basis for which the U.S. apparently
paid. If Washington now wants to offer more assistance, it should
funnel financial aid to international organizations that work on poor
countries’ transportation infrastructures—road, rail, air-and-sea ports.
24. The Yale University historian Paul Kennedy apparently fell victim to
a naval recruiting bombast in his February 5, 2002, article published
in the Financial Times. Titled “The Eagle Has Landed”. It had Kennedy
waving the U.S. flag as heartily as Prime Minister Tony Blair. A little
navy history would correct Kennedy’s error. The `flat top’ carrier was
the critical naval weapon of World War II just as the battleship was of
World War I. During the Cold War the submarine replaced both. It
remains the warship that can hide. The last time when carriers hid
successfully was when the Japanese Imperial Navy hid part of its
fleet before Pearl Harbor. Technology now makes it impossible to
repeat that Japanese success. For example, when launched the U.S.S.
Ronald Reagan will stand 22 stories tall from keel to masthead and be
longer than the Empire State Building is high (1,100 feet). In its
galleys cooks will serve 18,000 meals every twenty-four hours to its
six thousand passengers. Michael Fabey, “It’s Time to Toast Carrier
Reagan: Special Reagan Christening Edition”, Daily Press of Newport
News-Hampton, Virginia, March 4, 2001, 3
25. Every weapon not controlled by the U.S. seems threatening to
William Safire. See his “Who’s Hu in Beijing”, New York Times,
February 14, 2002, A3.
26. Paul Richter, “Aid to Georgia New Step for U.S. War”, Los Angeles
Times reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 2001, A11.
27. “Byrd Demands Answers About War on Terror”, San Francisco
Chronicle, February 28, 2002, A10.
28. Richard Falk, “Ends and Means: Defining a Just War”, The Nation,
October 29, 2001, and “Is This Really a Just War?”, November 26,
2001, 2, 57-61. Falk, a well known anti-war spokesman, has opposed
every U.S. war since World War II but supports the war in Afghani-
stan as a just war. To read a wider spectrum of views see Katrina
Vanden Heuvel, ed., A Just Response on Terrorism, Democracy and
September 11, 2001 (New York, Nation Books, 2002). The classic study
of just war theory remains Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust War: A
Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York, Basic Books,
1977).
29. Timothy Garton Ash, “The Peril of Too Much Power, New York Times,
April 9, 2002, 31. Some scholars think the U.S. should now make
room for others to share power. See Benjamin Schwarz and Christo-
pher Layne, “Must the United States Remain a Superpower”, Atlantic
Monthly, January 2002, 36-42.
30. Thomas L. Friedman, “No One Fights Better in the Dark”, San
Francisco Chronicle, February 6, 2002, A21.
31. Charles J. Hitch, Decision Making for Defense (Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1965) and Alain C. Enthoven & K.Wayne Smith,
How Much Is Enough? (New York, Harper & Row, 1971).
U.S. Base Mania / Hatcher · 15
Page 7
USF Center for the Pacific Rim
Asia Pacific: Perspectives · May 2002
http://www.pacificrim.usfca.edu/research/perspectives
Patrick Lloyd Hatcher is Kiriyama Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific
Rim for Spring 2001. A military historian by profession, Hatcher taught in both the history and political science departments at the
University of California at Berkeley prior to his retirement. One of Cal’s most sought after guest speakers, he was honored with the
MacArthur Award from the Institute of International Studies at Cal in 1987 and was the recipient of the UC Berkeley Instructor of
the Year Award in 1988.
Currently at work on his fourth book, America’s Korean Odyssey, Hatcher is also the author of North Atlantic Civilization at War
(M.E. Sharpe, 1999) and Suicide of an Elite: American Internationalists in Vietnam (Stanford, 1990) as well as numerous articles and
other writings. He helped narrate the film “Napoleon and Wellington” and is often seen on KRON-TV (NBC) in the Bay Area as a
national security specialist.
Patrick Hatcher received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to embarking on an academic
career, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. From 1996 to 1999 Hatcher served as a judge for the Kiriyama
Pacific Rim Book Prize and in 1999 he chaired the panel of nonfiction judges. He has taught at other Bay Area institutions, including
St. Mary’s College, UC Davis, and Golden Gate University. Hatcher has led educational tours for the Library of Congress, the Art
Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the University of California Alumni Association’s Bear Treks
travel program.
U.S. Base Mania / Hatcher · 16



Editors
Stephen J. Roddy
Shalendra D. Sharma
Editorial
Consultants
Barbara K. Bundy
Hartmut Fischer
Richard J. Kozicki
Stephen Uhalley, Jr.
Xiaoxin Wu
Editorial Board
Yoko Arisaka
Bih-hsya Hsieh
Uldis Kruze
Man-lui Lau
Mark Mir
Noriko Nagata
John K. Nelson

Kyoko Suda
Bruce Wydick
Graduate Editorial
Representative
Richard Lambert

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