-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/017/nation/Terror_war_remaps_US_troo
p_deployments+.shtml
> In the Philippines, for example, ''that isn't really 600. You have to
> rotate them in and out. If they stay for a while you're talking about
> 1,800.
>>>This is everywhere: 600 in country; 600 just rotated out (beyond
the first insertion); 600 ready to go in: 1800. And this is in all
locations, past #, present #, future # = 3X#. This is how all the
forces get burned out. A<>E<>R <<<
}}}>Begin
THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
Terror war remaps US troop deployments
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 1/17/2002
WASHINGTON - The United States' expanding war on terrorism is
redrawing the decades- old map of American military deployments
around the world - particularly its historically large troop
formations in Europe and East Asia - in order to sustain simultaneous
operations in a variety of new hot spots, according to defense
officials and private experts.
The just-announced dispatch of hundreds of US troops to the
Philippines to assist local security forces in their battle against
Muslim extremists is the first major international expansion of the
United States' antiterror campaign. Other potential new fronts
include countries as diverse as Indonesia, Malaysia, Yemen, Somalia,
Sudan, Iraq, Iran, and Syria - nations that are either fighting
terrorist forces within their own borders, or are suspected of
harboring and supporting them.
Closer to home, in South America, the Bush administration is
discussing plans to expand US military involvement in Colombia's
civil war.
''We are interested in a lot more than Al Qaeda,'' Secretary of
Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday. ''For it to have our
interest ... a terrorist network ... need not have been directly
connected to Sept. 11.''
The United States will be especially ''attentive to the risks posed
by nations that do have weapons of mass destruction programs and
relationships with terrorists,'' Rumsfeld said.
''If we have to go into 15 countries, we ought to do it, to deal with
the problem of terrorism.''
That pursuit is expected to shift US military strength away from
Europe and East Asia to near-permanent bases in Central and Southeast
Asia, and other regions where the military has had few ties in recent
history. It will require a new strategy that is less regional and
more global in nature, one that depends on the near-constant transfer
of combat forces from place to place.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has maintained an
estimated 100,000 troops in Europe, mostly in Germany, and another
100,000 in East Asia, primarily in Japan and South Korea. The goal
has been to deter a resurgent Russia and growing Chinese military, to
avoid another war between North Korea and South Korea, to meet
growing demands for peacekeeping troops, particularly in the Balkans,
and to rotate troops in and out of the Persian Gulf as needed.
The Bush administration was once wary of increasing military
deployments around the world - President Bush campaigned against them
last year - and has criticized the addition of peacekeeping missions
that strain the military in such places as Bosnia, Kosovo, and the
Sinai Peninsula between Israel and Egypt.
But Sept. 11 ushered in a new way of thinking, and a new target.
Reducing the threat posed by a global terrorist network requires a
global operation, and the White House seems resigned to that.
''We're going to use all the instruments of national power and our
military in ways that we need to use it to do our best to do away
with this threat,'' said Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
To conduct these operations, US forces will need host country
support, like it is receiving from the Philippines, or bases in
neighboring countries - as has been granted for the war in
Afghanistan.
Signaling that it is preparing for the long haul in Central Asia,
even as Afghanistan's terrorist threat is severely weakened, defense
officials said they'll move ahead with plans to establish additional
bases of operation in the region. The US military currently has a
presence in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
''We recognize the importance of having multiple places in the region
to launch our aircraft from,'' said a senior defense official. ''We
are enjoying widespread support from all the countries in the region,
even if they don't want us to talk about where our military forces
are.''
In Southeast Asia, where terrorist havens are being monitored in the
Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the United States is also
likely to look for new places to station its forces. Subic Bay in the
Philippines, the home of a large US force for nearly a century until
the early 1990s, is a candidate.
''For the first time since the Cold War we are in a war of necessity
rather than a war of choice,'' said Robert Pfaltzgraff, president of
the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis at Tufts University.
''Vital national interests are at stake. The Bush administration will
take the forces it believes it needs to operate in various countries
that are supporting or harboring terrorists, and they will come from
wherever they need to come from.''
It remains unclear what effect the new deployments will have on
defense spending. Some resources will likely be shifted, such as
using the money saved by closing unneeded domestic military bases to
pay for new operations overseas.
However, US military commanders are already complaining that, after
Sept. 11, resources are strained - particularly the Air Force, which
wants to scale back some of its air patrols over US cities. Bush is
expected to request tens of billions of dollars in additional defense
spending when he sends his fiscal year 2003 federal budget to
Congress next month.
The Bush administration has already taken steps to reduce the number
of US peacekeeping troops in the Balkans, which currently stand at
about 8,000. The United States also is looking to bring home the
small force that has been in the Sinai for 22 years following the
peace agreement between Israel and Egpyt.
While Washington is asking its European allies to do more, it has
also been lobbying Japan to play a larger security role in Asia.
Tokyo has recently changed its pacifist constitution in order to
allow its forces to operate further from Japan's shores.
''I think we ought to be doing the things we need to be doing, and we
ought not to be doing the things that others can do better or that we
should have been doing in the first instance but no longer need to be
doing,'' Rumsfeld said.
The war on terrorism makes what just a few months ago might have been
considered impossible now seem potentially possible.
While the numbers of troops to date are relatively small in number -
4,000 in Afghanistan and about 600 set to go to the Philippines - the
''problem is sustainability,'' according to Pfaltzgraff, the Tufts
professor.
In the Philippines, for example, ''that isn't really 600. You have to
rotate them in and out. If they stay for a while you're talking about
1,800. If you multiply that with operations in Somalia, Iraq, and on
down the list we're talking about thousands of troops.''
The most likely places those forces will come from are in Germany,
Japan, and Korea, Pfaltzgraff said. ''You would probably have to do
some recalculation of what you have there.''
However, the downside of such a shift could be the resurrection of
old hostilities, such as between Japan and China, as the US
military's stabilizing presence over the past half- century is
reduced in order to fight a global and prolonged war on terrorism.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 1/17/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
End<{{{
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