US forces are shifting... you know to accommodate the new Cold War...

[nico]

The administration indicated that nations such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea, which for decades have hosted hundreds of thousands of US troops, could see a significant decrease in American military presence as the Pentagon focuses on prosecuting the war on terror and meeting other emerging national security challenges.

----

They added that the consultations have only just begun and that no specific decisions have been made about how many troops will be moved, where they will come from, or where they will end up.

But the broad outlines of the new approach call for the United States to move away from the large, fixed facilities in western Europe designed to guard against a threat - namely that of the Soviet Union - that disappeared nearly 15 years ago. The United States still has 68,000 troops in Germany, for example. It also has 100,000 in the western Pacific, including 37,000 in South Korea alone.

General James L. Jones, head of US European Command, has said that 20 percent of the 499 US installations in his area of responsibility - everything from tiny outposts to full-blown bases - should be shut down.

---

The military's new emphasis is likely to be on geographic areas where US forces have increasingly found themselves fighting the global war on terrorism - particularly in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The United States has started expanding its network of small, sparsely populated facilities in Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. In the last couple of years, US facilities have been established in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti), in former Soviet republics (Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan), and in former Eastern Bloc states (Bulgaria, Romania).

---

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, said recent changes in American military technology have made it possible to reduce the size, if not the number, of overseas bases because the US ability to project military power is not necessarily directly tied to the number of ships, planes, or tanks, but their ability to work together.

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"A lot of those forces that were deployed from Germany down to Iraq are just going to stay in Iraq, and a lot of American bases in Germany are going to get closed" said John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.org think tank. "Basically what they are trying to do is come up with some conceptual construct that accounts for the persistent American presence in Iraq and in [Central Asia]."

I think the US has begun to focus itself on one target. What they see as the new "communism", Islamism. They are surrounding the ME with more and more forces, rather naively believing that this will end terrorism. Meanwhile the US is leaving SK a key ally weaker, to deal with a NK threat. Already Rums went to the DMZ and supposedly they are moving Yankees out of the DMZ zone. I think the US is far to overstretched, but I don't think that Uzbekistan or Djibouti are those great of allies for the US. Knowing the US Iraq will become a super base that is smack dab in the middle of the mess. PNAC has oriented itself on domination and submission of the Islamic world. The new Cold War.

[Bells]

Errrmm where was that quote from?

And you are probably correct in saying that this is probably the new cold war. The US and its allies (the few that seem to remain by its side in the ME issue) will not leave the ME. Its war on Iraq has only ensured that they can now remain in the ME through bases in Iraq under the guise of maintaining security, even if they close their other bases in the other ME States (which is unlikely). Could it be a way for them to have more control of the oil in the ME? Most probably yes. I'm sure if SK found massive quantities of oil in their territory, the US would be back in greater numbers. As for Iraq, I doubt that the Iraqi people will have a say in deciding what form of Government they want for themselves without the US okaying it first, after all the US would want an Iraqi Government that would be a so called friend to the US, thereby ensuring that the US keep a level of control over the Iraqi oil. Does this show the US to be a new colonising force? Only time will tell I guess.

[nico]

Sorry I forgot to post the source:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/ne...eployments.htm

I don't disagree with anything you said. Americans are now prepared for a new enemy, too bad that enemy could be living next door, not living in Iraq. Too bad that killing and imperializing the Islamic ppl's for your own security is actually making you less safe...yes just some of the paradoxes of the invisible enemy.

[10-10-220]

Cold War II=WWIII

[Tiassa]

How long, do you think, before the new perpetual war can take its name from a Nirvana track - Endless Nameless?

[Killjoy]

It'd called Megido, brother...

After that...

The Sweet By and By...

[Stokes Pennwalt]

Force allocation in this pattern has been in the works since the early 1990s within the DoD. Any association it has with the current Administration or the PNAC is incidental.

[nico]

I think not stokes; the US in the 90's was re-allocating forces because the plan was to have less overall. Now with the $400 billion Soviet army the US has now, and the re-orientation of the forces in the ME (which is where the PNAC doctrine is targeted) and with the authors of the PNAC at the helm, you would have to be blind not to see the connection.

[Stokes Pennwalt]

Originally posted by nico
I think not stokes

Well ok.

Correlation != causation. The US Army in particular has been moving toward a lighter and more geographically agile force hierarchy since the end of the first Gulf War and the fall of the USSR. It began under the first Bush admin., and a majority of the framework was fleshed out under the Clinton years.

So even if it happens to make whatever tinfoily goals people suspect PNAC has easier to realize, that is no indicator of its functional purpose.

[nico]

It's those goals that are being realized today:

i) Increase of DoD budget to at least 4% of the GDP
ii) Invasion of Iraq (PNAC plans since 1998)
iii) Formal acceptance of NMD
iv) More usable nukes.
v) Focus on the ME
vi) Modernization of US forces
vii) US hegemonic control.

For it is not tinfoil, it is dangerous and it's happening now.

[Tiassa]

It seems prudent to bring up an article which gets occasional play here at Sciforums:

• "Perpetual War," by Dr. Miguel A. Faria, Jr., MD

(George Orwell) further warned us: "When war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous, there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. But though it is unreal, it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs."

In other words, if we are not vigilant and we allow our government to continue to surrender and delegate the power of waging war to our president in conjunction with the United Nations, the conflict may become perpetual warfare – impossible for us to be decisive against the elusive terrorists and, in our own country, a threat to our personal freedom and safety as law-abiding Americans.

Fighting terrorism under the auspices of the United Nations takes us down a perilous path whereby only too late we may find that Big Brother's insane motto "War is Peace" becomes a de facto, living, illogical paradox – a transmutation of our legacy of freedom, "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations" into unending, perpetual warfare.

The Cold War, the Drug War, The War on Terrorism: in the land of the free, there is always a reason to put freedom aside.

• "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." (Thomas Jefferson)
• "Members of society must obey the law because they personally believe that its commands are justified." (Judge David Bazelon)