Evan Taylor 2/29/12

Eastward Bound

Introduction One of the oddest parts of the current war being fought in Afghanistan is its undefined nature. Besides offering a vague notion of needing to fight extremism, little is ever said about why a large American and European army is fighting in Central Asia. What is argued below is that this is because there is no reason, at least not in doctrinal coherence. Instead, Afghanistan is being occupied as the logical outcome of the United States post-Cold War policy. During this nineties, numerous different interests set about trying to influence what role America was to play in the world, all of them advocating for an expansion of American influence, both geographically eastward into the former Soviet Union and ideologically, in the question of what situations military force should be used. As such, these ideas became official government policy, whether through conscious statecraft or back room lobbying. The result of this history is that the United States now attempts to wield political power over a vast swath of Eurasian territory, stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean into Southwest Asia. In terms of geopolitics, this can be seen as an unprecedented intrusion into an area that was traditionally under the influence of regional actors like Russia and Iran. Moreover, Washington saw its strategy as a zero-sum contest, actively trying to deny the influence of these local powers while building up its own. One glaring example of this is in Afghanistan, where only thirteen years after the Red Army retreated northward through the Central Asian Republics (then Soviet Republics), the US Army invaded using proxy forces and military bases located in the Central Asian Republics.

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

However, this is not to say that Washington's strategy of shutting these other powers out of the region has been successful. Russia, Iran, and as of late China all have trade and military relations with the area in question. In fact, it may turn out that the US's reliance on military force has hindered its ability to influence the governments of the region. What follows is an attempt to sketch two decades worth of history. The first section will examine U.S.-Soviet Business dealings in the 1980s and Chevrons interest in Caspian Basin energy deposits. The second section will examine U.S. policy towards Turkey in the 1980s. The third section looks at the administration of George HW Bush in the context of American militarism, while the fourth looks at the Clinton years in much the same way. Finally, the last section will detail the Central Asias transition into a fully securitized region of the American empire.

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

I. The Traders
On the business side, one of the men most responsible for initiating the U.S. move into Central Asia was James H. Giffen, a businessman with a history of promoting trade between America and the Soviet Union. While his name appeared in the business press from time to time throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it was not until the 21st century that he achieved infamy, when the was indicted by the Justice Department in the largest foreign bribery case brought against an American citizen in history. He was charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, banning American business leaders from bribing foreign officials. Giffen's professional involvement in Soviet business went back to 1968, when he turned his doctoral work at Berkeley into a textbook on trading across cold war lines. He then entered private industry, working at Armco, an Ohio steel company that supplied the Soviet oil industry. Giffen rose to be Vice President of the Armco oil-services branch, serving under CEO C. William Verity, who would later be appointed Secretary of Commerce in 1987 by Ronald Reagan.1 Both Giffen and Verity were members of the odd political breed that pressed for increased US-Soviet economic relations during the Cold War. However, this had not been in line with government policy since 1974, when the Jackson-Vanick amendment was added to U.S. trade law. The bill tied preferential trading rates to foreign

governments emigration policies, denying most favored nation status to any Communist country that restricted or charged high fees for the right of its citizens to emigrate. Although in theory the bill was meant to punish human rights violations across
1

Ron Stodghill, Oil Cash and Corruption, New York Times, November 5 , 2006, pg. 4

th

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

Communist countries, it specifically was aimed at Moscows practice of stopping Jews from immigrating to Israel.2 But Giffen and Verity held true to their commercial beliefs, and in 1984 they founded the Mercator Corporation, a private New York merchant bank that specialized in American-Soviet relations. Concurrently, Giffen took over from Verity as chairman of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade Council, a lobby for American businessmen hoping to invest in the Soviet Union. Three years earlier, the council had met in Moscow, their first meeting since the mid 1970s. In a poignant marker for the beginning of the end of the Cold War, Soviet leader Leonard Brezhnev died only five days before the Trade Council meeting was scheduled to begin. However, according to Verity, this threw no loop in the plans, as Soviet officials were on telephone within two hours after Brezhnevs death was announced, urging the Americans to come ahead.3 These developments coincided with Mikhail Gorbachevs rise to power in Moscow, and the reformist politician was reportedly a confidant of Giffen. According to Giffen, Gorbachev enlisted him to set up joint ventures with American corporations, an idea out of which was born the "American Trade Consortium," a group of five large US companies (Chevron, RJR Nabisco, Eastman Kodak, Johnson & Johnson, and Archers Daniel Midland) that wanted to do business in the Soviet Union. Giffen began building the consortium in 1987, and within a year an initial agreement had been signed. To mark the occasion, Gorbachev hosted a Kremlin dinner for over 400 US businessmen, led by C. William Verity, now the Secretary of Commerce.4 In addition to the five "blue-blood"
2

Julie Ginsburg, Reassessing the Jackson-Vanick Amendment Council on Foreign Relations, nd July 2 , 2009. 3 th Trade Trip, Time, December 6 , 1982. 4 Louis Kraer, "Top US Companies Move Into Russia," Fortune, July 31st, 1989.

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

companies, 34 other American businesses also piggybacked on Giffen's deal and planned to establish joint ventures in the Soviet Union. Financially, the consortiums business plan depended heavily on Chevron, which would provide dollars to the other consortium members by exporting Soviet energy. Giffen had negotiated a deal where members businesses would share a pool of hard currency for investment, allowing them to circumvent the Soviet law barring foreign companies from removing profits before their business generate currency.5 By pooling the capital resources generated by energy sales, the corporations could both invest in the East and move profit back to the New York ledgers of Mercator.

Chevron was primarily interested in the large energy deposits of the Caspian Basin. Although the area had sustained an oil industry dating back to the 19th century, centered in the Azeri port of Baku, the supergiant Tenghiz field had only been discovered in 1979. Armed with a pile of geological maps, a team of Chevron advisors visited the area, accompanied by Giffen, in 1987. They were so impressed with the Tenghiz deposit that one Chevron geologists considered it to be the perfect oil field.6 Another

compared it to the 3,850 foot tall Mt. Diablo, near Chevrons San Francisco headquarters. He calculated that if one sawed through Mount Diablo at its base, then turned it upside down and buried it far underground, such that its tip reached a depth of 15,000 feet, that mountain would be Tenghiz.7 At the time, both the Americans and the Soviets had a conservative estimate that Tenghiz contained 10 billion barrels, making it one of the
5 6

Krarr,. 2. Steve Levine, The Oil and the Glory: the Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007) pg. 94. 7 Ibid., 94.

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

worlds ten largest fields. However, over time this calculation has risen to 18 billion proven barrels, all contained in one massive column 1,500 feet tall. Moreover, Chevrons geologists were also enticed by the fact that seismographs showed Tenghiz as only part of a larger oblong atoll of deposits. One image in particular seemed to indicate the

presence of another field offshore containing two subterranean reservoirs, four times the size of Tenghiz, or a minimum of 40 billion barrels of oil.8 But energy expert Michael Klare points out that it is not even the size of these reserves that is most significant, "but the fact that production in this region is likely to rise in the years ahead while production in many other oil-bearing areas is likely to decline."9 For Chevron, the prospect of adding such a large concession to its bottom line came at a fortuitous moment. Although it had been a member of the hegemonic Western oil cartel that Italian President Enrico Mattei had deemed the Seven Sisters, the turbulence of the 1970's recalibrated the industry in favor of producing states. Due to a string of nationalizations, the oil majors had lost control of their crude oil holdings, which were now in the hands of state owned companies like Saudi Aramco. This meant that the Western companies were relegated to selling the oil abroad and providing technical service, denying them the ability to control production and price, and taking huge amounts of oil out of their booked reserves, the amount of proven oil underneath fields they held concessions to.10 From 1977 to 1984, the Seven Sisters saw their booked reserves drop by an incredible two-thirds.11

8 9

Ibid., 95. Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001) pg. 85. 10 Antonia Juhasz, The Tyranny of Oil (New York: Harper Collins, 2008) pg. 104. 11 Ibid., 101.

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

Balancing this out was a dramatic rise in price, nominally known as the "oil shocks." Oil prices rocketed upwards by 400% in 1973-1974, following Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy to end the Yom Kippur war, and then again in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution. But the second half of the 1980's saw what Daniel Yergin terms "the third oil shock," which beginning in 1985 sent prices plummeting. Yergin notes that, "it was not merely that prices were collapsing; they were also out of control. For the first time in memory, there was no price setting structure. There was not even an official OPEC price. The market was victorious, at least for the time being."12 The oil majors were also using the market for a different strategy, that of the leveraged corporate merger (a strategy helped out immensely by the Reagan's administrations attitude towards anti-trust statutes). In her history of the oil industry, Antonia Juhasz writes of the period that American oil companies set out to hunt for oil not in the field but rather on Wall Street, by buying up other oil companies.13 In 1984, this practice hit record heights when Texaco acquired Getty Oil for $10 billion, followed one month later by the acquisition of Gulf Oil by Chevron. At the time, this was the largest merger in corporate history, and Chevron saw its oil reserves nearly double to 4 billion barrels and its natural-gas reserves increase by three-quarters.14 The combination of lost oil reserves, a wildly fluctuating market, and a culture of speculative monopoly on Wall Street made the promise of access to Soviet Oil to avaricious to turn away from.

Initially, Chevron was not offered the Tenghiz field but instead the adjacent Korolev field, one-twelfth the size. However, knowing that this was to be a long-term
12 13

Daniel Yergin, The Prize (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991) pg. 751. Juhasz, The Tyranny of Oil, 104. 14 Ibid., 112.

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

commitment, Chevron agreed to develop it so we could get in on exploration, according to Richard Matzke, then president of Chevron Overseas Petroleum.15 This paid off, for in January 1990 Giffen convinced Gorbachev that the Korolev field was not large enough to generate the necessary capital for the other members of the consortium, an argument that Gorbachev bought.16 As a result, Chevron signed a protocol of

intentions at the Soviet Embassy in early June, giving the oil company exclusive rights to explore an 8,900 sq. mile area that included the Tenghiz field, but stopping short of establishing a joint venture that would allow oil to actually be sold.17 The following month, Nurulstan Nazerbaev, the President of the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan and a leader close to Gorbachev, visited the United States and met with Bush administration officials, members of Congress, and businessmen. The main purpose of his trip was to push for foreign investment in Kazakhstan, part of his plan for economic sovereignty without political separation from Moscow, which stressed privatization of property, dissolution of monopolies, expansion of entrepreneurship, and the independence of enterprises.18 In December, Nazarbaev announced that a joint venture between the

Republic and Chevron would be signed the following month.19 In the simplest terms, Chevron managed to jump the gun, beginning the capitalist exploitation of the Soviet Union before the Cold War actually ended. As a result, when the USSR formally disbanded in December 1991, Chevron already had a political and
15 16

The Scramble for Oils Last Frontier, Business Week, January 11, 1993. Ibid., 2. 17 th Soviet Venture may include Tengiz, Oil and Gas Journal, June 11 1990; Stuart Auerbach, Soviets Grant Chevron Corp. Rights to Explore Largest New Oil Field, rd Washington Post, June 3 1990. 18 Clyde Farnsworth, President of Soviet Republic Seeks U.S. Business Deals, New York th Times, July 30 , 1990. 19 Jeff Pelline, Chevron to Pump Oil in Soviet Union, San Francisco Chronicle, December th 12 , 1990.

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

economic agenda laid out for the newly independent states and their energy reserves. While they would not have hegemonic control over the area, all negotiations began on their terms, and the rest of the industry had to horse trade in order to get concessions. Richard Barnet, in his analysis of the relationship between government and business in foreign affairs, distinguishes between two scenarioscrisis management and long-term policy. Concerning the former, business leaders may be informed as a courtesy due to the powerful, but they will not have an active role in making the decisions. However, concerning the latter, he writes: The role of corporate managers in shaping long-term policies, such as those affecting investment, availability, and use of resources, which are ultimately more important, is much greater. On these, businessmen make their weight felt in two ways. The first is through continuous lobbying of the executive and Congress, most of it private and informal. The second is through the conduct of their business. By making ordinary business decisions affecting foreign countries, corporate managers set the direction of American foreign policy. 20 In this sense, the Chevron approach served as the model for the entirety of American policy towards the former Soviet Union and the commanding heights of its economy. It was all one big oil field, controlled by Moscow elite, to be tapped, barreled, and sold for profit by the American political industry, with Harvard University and the International Monetary Fund filling the roll of the Seven Sisters.

20

Richard Barnet, The Roots of War: The Men and Institutions Behind U.S. Foreign Policy, (New York: Penguin Books, 1972) pg. 185.

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

10

II. The Warriors

It was in Turkey that the Cold Warriors made their impact felt. For American-

Turkish relations, the military coup d'etat that took place in Ankara on September 12, 1980 serves as a turning point. The coup leaders, who reportedly had the silent

approval of Turkey's western allies, desired a long term project to rebuild totally the political and economic structures of the Turkish state.21 In order to facilitate this project, the Parliament was dissolved, political leaders were taken into custody, political parties and trade unions were directed to disband, and martial law was declared countrywide.22 However, the coup leaders planned to resolutely push Turkey into the dominion of the U.S. military complex, and thus Washington saw these autocratic developments as benign. As a prime example of the role major newspapers play as an enforcer of US policy, the New York Times ran a fawning profile of Ankara's new generalissimo only one day after he had seized power, beginning with the sentence General Kenan Evren, the leader of the new Turkish military government, faces the double task of defeating terrorism and bolstering his country's position as NATO's bastion in the troubled Middle East, while the Washington Post ran a short factsheet entitled, Turkey: A Key U.S. Ally Bridging Europe and Asia.23

21

Dietrich Jung & Wolfango Piccoli, Turkey at the Crossroads, (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2001) pg. 93-94. Ibid., 94. 23 Drew Middleton, Man in the news; Friend to the West, Foe of Turkish Terrorists, New York Times, September 13, 1980; Turkey: A Key U.S. Ally bridging Europe and Asia, th Washington Post, September 13 , 1980.
22

10

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

11

During the three years of military rule that followed the coup, a form of gunboat diplomacy took place between Washington and Ankara. With simultaneous negotiations taking place over both its massive external debt and its military acquisitions, Turkey was transformed into the prototypical outpost of the neocolonial project. While Washington based international lenders like the IMF and World Bank imposed strict financial dictates on government spending and export laws and enforced the privatization of state-run industries, the Pentagon and State Department colluded to negotiate US arm sales and basing rights. In essence, this was the realization of the hawkish position on Turkey that had circulated among US strategists throughout the Cold War. The Anatolian plateau, geographically situated in the underbelly of the Soviet Union and atop the vast resource pools that are the Persian Gulf and Africa, would now be squarely under the political thumb of Washington. Tellingly, the American ambassador to Turkey was Robert Strausz-Hupe, a venerable and experienced Cold Warrior. Although often overlooked in political history, Strausz-Hupe had been an influential elite in Washington policy circles. Born to a wealthy Austrian family in 1903, he immigrated to America at age twenty, eventually ending up in New York City, where he worked at a Wall Street bank and wrote for Current History magazine. His eye was focused across the Atlantic, to his native Europe, where totalitarian societies were being nurtured in both Hitler's Germany and Stalins Russia. This time period influenced Strausz-Hupe greatly, and in his worldview he never abandoned this prism of totalitarianism. After World War II, he was offered a prestigious position at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School, where he founded the Foreign Policy Research Institute in 1955. This would become his pulpit from which he

11

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

12

preached a hard-line, totalizing view of the Cold War as a battle between ideological extremes. Considering this, it is not surprising that he was in control of US policy towards Turkey during the final decade of the Cold War. 24 Also not surprising is that Strausz-Hupe nominated another hardliner, Richard Perle, an Assistant Secretary of Defense, to be his point man for negotiations. Normally, Perles Pentagon post would not involve diplomatic relations, the purview of the State Department, but Perle was the exception. Perle himself told an audience at the Foreign Policy Research Institute it is even rarer for an American ambassador to invite a Defense Department official to take charge of a sensitive negotiation that would normally be handled by the Department of State, yet that is precisely what Ambassador Strausz-Hupe did in Ankara in the 1980's.25 Over the decade, Perle negotiated a major defense

agreement and basing rights for Washington, reaffirming the Anatolian plateau as a military ally. At the close of the decade, he went into private practice in order to financially benefit from his government service, forming International Advisors Inc., a consulting firm that contracted to the Turkish government, along with his associate Douglas Feith. It was also at the close of the decade that Turkey set into motion its panTurkic identity that aligned the country with the Caucasus and Central Asia over the next twenty years. Pan-Turkism, an Ottoman-era ideology that imagined one united people stretching from the Mediterranean into Western China, was reintroduced into official language as the Soviet Union collapsed.
24

As the decade turned, Turkeys cultural,

Andrew Crampton and Gearoid O Tuathail, Intellectuals, institutions and ideology: the case of Robert Strausz-Hupe and American Geopolitics, Political Geography (Vol. 15, No. 6/7, 1996), pg. 534. 25 Richard Perle, The First Annual Robert Strausz-Hupe Lecture, Foreign Policy Research Institute (Volume 7, No. 11), September 1999.

12

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

13

linguistic, historical and religious bonds with the newly independent states were frequently mentioned as the basis for Ankaras influential future role in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. As such, a Turkish speaking community of states stretching from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China increasingly became part of official discourse.26 In autumn 1991, a meting was held in Ankara between Turkish president Turgut Ozal and the presidents of all five republics plus Azerbaijan. Here, Ozal pledged to support their declaration of sovereignty and emergence of a Pan-Turkic world, a move that immediately alerted Iran, Pakistan and the Arab countries to Turkeys efforts.27 However, on the maps spread out on drawing room table, a pan-Turkic world also serves as a geopolitical wet dream, a march of hard and soft power straight into the heart of Eurasia. In terms of energy, it provided for an East-West pipeline corridor from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Ceyhan, a Turkish port on the Mediterranean Sea. In terms of great-power rivalry, it served as a challenge to both

Russia and China, incorporating territory traditionally under their influence. On February 12th, 1992 Washington, President Bush met with the Turkish Prime Minister in Washington. Afterwards, Bush, at a press conference on the White Houses south lawn, stated Turkey is indeed a friend, a partner of the United States, and its also a model to others, especially those newly independent republics of Central Asia. In a region of changing tides, it endures as a beacon of stability.28 Meanwhile, James Baker was on a five-day whirlwind tour of the Caucasus and Central Asia, visiting Moldova,
26 27

Jung & Piccoli, Turkey at the Crossroads, 179. Ahmed Rashid, The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism, (London: Zed Books, 1994), pg. 211. 28 th John E. Yang, US, Turkey Pledge Aid to New States, Washington Post February 12 , 1992.

13

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

14

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. In an unusually frank assessment back in Washington, one of Bakers aides stated that the secretarys conclusion of Central Asia was that some of these new countries are going to make it, and others are going to join the swelling ranks of third world basket cases, just limping along. Those that are most likely to make it are those like Turkmenistan that have economies based on agriculture, oil, gas and minerals.29

III. The Plan

In Washington, much of the US strategy for Eurasia followed over the past twenty years was determined during the George HW Bush administration, and especially in Secretary of Defense Dick Cheneys Pentagon. In recent American history, it would be hard pressed to match the radical militarism practiced in government by Dick Cheney and his followers. In the two major tours of Washington duty they served, from 1989-1992 and 2001-2008, American soldiers preemptively invaded Panama, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan, and reportedly did everything in their power to start a war with Iran. By and large, these are the men who have made famous the idea of the neocons as a powerful elite sect, and to a degree, this idea is correct, at least as it relates to the phenomena of the same individuals repeatedly being appointed to powerful positions within Government.

29

Thomas Friedman, Bakers Trip to Nations Unready for Independence, New York Times, th February 15 , 1992.

14

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

15

These are the Pentagon apparatchiks, the paper pushers and agenda writers like Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Lewis Scooter Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad, men who played huge roles in facilitating the previously mentioned drives to war. They were Cheneys aides and assistants during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush, where they witnessed the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the Soviet Union. A decade later, they attempted to replicate this experience in the Middle East under H.W. Bushs son George. And when asked to produce their own national security doctrine for a post Cold War world, they infamously planned for world domination. In an article published at the start of George W. Bushs marketing campaign for an invasion of Iraq, David Armstrong, the Washington bureau chief for the National Security News Service, wrote of their beliefs: The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.30 The document in question is the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, a biannual planning document charting the future of Pentagon policy. In charge of writing this strategy was Paul Wolfowitzs Pentagon Policy office. According to a report published in The New Republic, On Saturday mornings, Wolfowitzs deputies convened a seminar in a small conference room in the Pentagons E Ring, where they sat Cheney in front of a parade of Sovietologists, many of whom, were mavericks who believed the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse.31 James Mann, in his group biography Rise of the Vulcans,
30 31

David Armstrong, Dick Cheneys Song for America, Harpers Magazine, October 2002. th Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman, The Radical, The New Republic, November 20 , 2003.

15

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

16

elaborates on these meetings, writing that they were led by Zalmay Khalilzad, and participants included Wolfowitz, his deputy Scooter Libby, and long time military strategists like Andrew Marshall, Albert Wohlstetter, and Richard Perle.32

In March 1992, when a polished draft of the strategy was circulated among the Pentagon, it was leaked to New York Times reporter Patrick Tyler, by an anonymous individual who believed that this post-cold war strategy debate should be carried out in the public forum.33 And the individuals concerns were justified, as Tyler writes the classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.34 When the draft was covered in the Times and The Washington Post, it garnered uproar from all angles in Washington. Senator Joe Biden, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, characterized it as an attempt by the Pentagon to erect a Pax Americana, a global security system where threats to stability are suppressed or destroyed by US military power, and the spokesman for Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton called it one more attempt by defense officials to find an excuse for big budgets instead of downsizing.35 Even within the Pentagon the leaked paper elicited cold shoulders. Zalmay

Khalilzad felt that even Wolfowitz didnt want to be associated with it, leaving
32

James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bushs War Cabinet, (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), pg. 210. 33 Patrick E. Tyler, U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals, New York Times, March th 8 , 1992. 34 Ibid. 35 Patrick E. Tyler, Lone Superpower Plan: Ammunition for Critics, New York Times, March th 10 , 1992.

16

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

17

Khalilzad to feel ostracized for a number of days. That is, until he was approached by Secretary Cheney, who told Khalilzad that his paper had discovered a new rationale for our role in the world.36

As many understand Wolfowitzs Defense Planning Guide to be the first draft of the Bush Doctrine, George W. Bushs National Security Strategy of 2002, it has received much analysis in the 17 years since it was originally leaked. James Mann covers it in Rise of the Vulcans, his group biography of George W. Bushs foreign policy advisors, as does George Packer in The Assassins Gate, his history of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Additionally, the National Security Archive at George Washington University has an extensive casebook on the matter, including inter-office memos and declassified documents.37 Pointing out the breadth of research into the DPG is to say that its importance should not be taken lightly, for it eerily predicated policies that arose ten years later, supposedly under the justification of the war on terror. Part of the notoriety that the DPG has accumulated is due to the cast of characters employed by both in the 1992 Pentagon and in the first term of the George W. Bush administration. At the time, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney ruled over his five-sided empire. Third in command, at the post of undersecretary of defense for policy was Wolfowitz. This was a very influential office to hold, as the undersecretary for policy is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary on all matters of national security and defense policy. And within Wolfowitzs office, where

36 37

Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 211. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb245/index.htm

17

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

18

the DPG was crafted, the picture becomes even clearer, for it is the exact same cast that controlled American foreign policy after 9/11. Wolfowitzs top aide at the time was Scooter Libby, who held the title of principal undersecretary of defense for strategy and resources, and one of Libbys leading assistants was Zalmay Khalilzad.38 In 2001, Wolfowitz would move up one spot in the Pentagon hierarchy to deputy secretary of defense, Libby would become Vice President Cheneys chief of staff, top national security advisor, and national security advisor to the President, and Khalilzad would first serve on the National Security Council before 9/11, then as a special envoy to post war Afghanistan, then as a special envoy to free (read: exile) Iraqis in 2002, then as ambassador to Afghanistan, and finally as ambassador to postwar Iraq. From Manns description, it is clear the Khalilzad gets the credit as the lead architect of the paper up until its leak in March 1992, aggregating opinions from inside and outside the Pentagon. But after March, Libby took it in his hands to rewrite the paper. One of his purposes was to tone down the rhetoric of dominating other states, or potential rivals as it was put. But the other reason was to correct what he saw to be a flaw in the papers reasoning. While it was sufficiently bellicose to state that the U.S, would stop a country like Germany or Japan from achieving equal military power, in practice Libby believed this amounted to very little. He was of the opinion that the U.S.s existing weaponry and technology would make it the most powerful nation in the world for a decade or two.39 But Libbys concern was for the US to permanently be the world military leader, and thus he believed the DPG should point the country on a path
38 39

Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 209. Ibid. 212.

18

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

19

to become so militarily strong, so overwhelming that no country would dream of ever becoming a rival.40 While Libbys finalized DPG hid much of this sentiment behind window dressing terms like strategic depth and shaping the future security environment, his report still set the ground for what Senator Biden had called a Pax Americana. In January 1993, just days before the Clinton Administration assumed power, Secretary Cheney declassified the paper, now called Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy.

Coinciding with the Pentagon review was a plan to expand NATO, the longtime Atlantic military alliance between the United States, Great Britain, and fourteen other states. In May of 1990, President Bush took the opportunity of a commencement speech at Oklahoma State University to explain to a stadium sized crowd that the Cold War era military alliance would not only remain intact, but would look to expand, in what Bush euphemistically called building a new continent. He declared, Our enemy today is uncertainty and instability, a threat to be combated by a sound, collective military structure, with forces in the field backed by larger forces that can be called upon in some crisis.41 He also signaled that the US would keep nuclear weapons in Europe, a

controversial topic at the time, stating we will not allow Europe to be safe for a conventional war. Two months later, NATO leaders met in London, where they set out to transform themselves from a military alliance into a political alliance building East-West

40 41

Ibid. 212. George HW Bush, Remarks at the Oklahoma State University Commencement th Ceremony in Stillwater, May 4 , 1990.

19

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

20

structures of peace, according to diplomats quoted by the New York Times. 42 During the following year and a half, the Alliance set about making their transformation a reality. In October, it was proposed that a new political group be created within the Alliance that included the states of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council.43 By the fall of 1991, NATO had completed its transformation in time for a meeting in Rome, where the alliance released for the first time ever a public document, its new Strategic Concept.44 Beginning in December 1991, when the Soviet Union formally broke up, American and British officials pushed for an immediate transformation of their Atlantic alliance, both eastward and towards global realignment. John Weston, Londons

ambassador to NATO, stated in an interview that he considered his job purpose to be securing the maximum amount of tolerable change, and George Bader, a director of European and NATO policy in Paul Wolfowitzs office, was quoted as one of many Pentagon staffers who argued that the traditional definition of out of area (and therefore prohibited) theaters for NATO operations must be radically revised.45 In fact, in a 1997 speech at the John Hopkins Institute for International Affairs, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott congratulated Paul Wolfowitz, because while he was directing Pentagon policy, it was at his behest that the first military-to-military contacts took

42

Craig R. Whitney, Evolution in Europe: NATO Leaders Gather, In Search of a Purpose, th New York Times, July 5 , 1990. th 43 European Security: Still divided, Economist, October 12 , 1991. 44 The Alliances New Strategic Concept, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_23847.htm 45 Hella Pick, Londons new Man at NATO packs two hats in his kit, Guardian, January th 24 , 1992; Hella Pick, US Seeks Global Fire-Fighting Role for Revamped NATO, Guardian, th May 12 , 1992.

20

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

21

place in the former Soviet Union.46 An early review of this period in Londons International Affairs stresses that there was a definite push, led by Washington, to move eastwards and towards real-world military cooperation, and accordingly, that there was a consensus that enlargement at least had to be addressed at a summit.47

III. The Disastrous Rise of Misplaced Power

When Bill Clinton and his staff moved into the White House in January of 1993, he faced a situation much like Barack Obama faced after his recent 2009 coronation. Both men, with little policy experience in foreign affairs, assumed control of a military administration whose purpose had been radically transformed by Bush/Cheney rule before them. Whereas Obama is today making decisions on whether to employ the "Bush Doctrine" of a preventive attack, Clinton faced a choice on whether to expand the American military and financial presence into territory that had previously been inaccessible, "rolling forward" into the former Soviet Union. As it is clear today, Clinton took no divergence, and continued with the expansionist military doctrines set by his predecessor, while the question is still out on Obama. As an individual, Bill Clintons relationship with American militarism was pragmatically twisted. He was the first president since Roosevelt not to have served in the military, and claimed to have despised the Vietnam War, a message that fit with his youthful, populous image. And yet, in his presidential campaign, Clinton spoke of a
46

Strobe Talbott, Farwell to Flashman: US Policy in the Caucasus and Central Asia, st Address at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, July 21 , 1997. 47 John Borawski, Partnership for Peace and beyond, International Affairs, (Vol.71, No.2, April 1995), pg. 236.

21

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

22

New Covenant for American Security, which promised to change nothing in a national security state that had just claimed to have won the Cold War.48 This divide between Clintons personal politics and his Presidential platform resulted in him assuming control of a military bureaucracy that he had no interest in engaging with, a feeling happily reciprocated by the Pentagon. In reality, however, this was not a detriment to the national security state at all, but a boon: As soon became apparent, the utter absence of credible executive authority in military matters across the Potomac River meant the Niagara current of open-ended arms procurement, force projection, nuclear swagger, and defense industry dominance of Congress could flow on unchecked. American military forces had more commitments abroad in the 1990s than in any decade since 1950. The Clinton defense budget reflected that, with totals increasing from $260 billion to more than $300 billion. Under Clinton, the Pentagon would even renege on commitments that had been made under Reagan and Bush to Gorbachev and Yeltsin, most egregiously on the question of NATO expansion.49 With a White House adverse to implementing any sort of doctrinal approach to foreign affairs, much of the United States foreign policy in the 1990s was decided upon by institutional lobbies, motivated not by the interests of the American populous but by their own narrow agendas. Just as Dwight Eisenhower had warned in his prophetic 1961 farewell address, the military-industrial complex had gained an unwarranted influence over the councils of government, resulting in what the World War II General had called the disastrous rise of misplaced power. Below, four factions of this complex, the NATO bureaucracy, the media, academic institutes, and the armaments industrywill be briefly discussed. Although the interests of these groups may seem disparate, uniting them was a mutual affinity to push the boundaries of the American Empire eastward. *****
48

James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, (New York: Hought-Mifflin, 2006) pg. 451. 49 Ibid., 454.

22

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

23

Following their 1990 London meeting, when NATO strategists set in motion the military alliance's transformation into a globetrotting "political" alliance, the bureaucratic structures were methodically set in place in order to facilitate this transformation. Originally, this structure was known as the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), and membership was open to any NATO member and any of the newly independent states in Europe or the former Soviet Union. Under its directive, foreign and defense officials, former Cold War enemies but now supposed friends, met to plan what was to be the new Eurasian military posture. Then, in the fall of 1993, a new program was initiated to expand the NACC, the Partnership for Peace. In the conservative Washington Times, journalist Warren Strobel wrote, The security map of Europe could be altered in startling ways under a U.S. plan to transform the 44-year-old NATO alliance from an umbrella over Western Europe to a fulcrum of East-West cooperationEven four years after the Berlin Wall's fall, some of the plans seem radical.50 Bill Clinton, in a rhetorical twist, referred to this as not drawing any lines in the sand, meaning that there were no longer any European boundaries of containment for Western might.51 Additionally, a new military school aimed at the officer classes of the Partnership for Peace countriesThe George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies opened in the Bavarian resort town of Garmisch. Luckily for the American officers stationed there, they could take time off from instructing Belarusians and Uzbeks in the finer points of militarism and relax at the Edelweiss Luxury Ski Resort across town, exclusively available to Pentagon employees and American soldiers. After occupying the lodge in 1945, the military liked it so much they decided to stay, for 65 years and
50

Warren Strobel, Old foes would be allies in U.S. plan, Washington Times, November 8 , 1993. 51 Borawski, Partnership for Peace and beyond, 234.

th

23

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

24

counting. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Edelweiss was one of the budget lines put on the Defense chopping block, but the establishment of the Marshall Center saved it. 52 At a Stanford conference on Central Asia in 1997, Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry said that the school was so important for him that he planned his schedule around its commencements and has given all six commencement addresses so far.53 Functionally, institutions like the George C. Marshall Center can be thought of as nodes in the expanding geographical structure through which the military operates. When a new node lights up, as it did in the German Alps in 1993, it has two distinct affects on the United States global posture. First, it creates the tangible necessities of the structure--the airports, the supply routes, the briefing rooms. No matter the technology developed by DARPA, the military is still run as a massive physical logistics exercise. But also created is the intellectual drive to back up that structure. Charles Boyd, an Air Force General serving as deputy commander of the European Command at the time, described the George Marshall Center as part of the new Marshall plan, with intellectual capital instead of material capital.54 Contingency plans emerge for possible emerging threats lurking behind every corrupt politician or leftist movement. When small crises arise, as they always do in international affairs, the combination of already existing physical structures and contingency planning allows for a lightning quick, and thus ill thought through, response. As a sign of how far east Washington wanted to move, military assistance to Kazakhstan was first added to Washingtons budget in 1993, with $163,000 allocated
52

Steve Vogel, Program Teaches Democracy to Former East Bloc Officers, Washington th Post, August 13 , 1994. 53 New Central Asian countries draw attention at Stanford conference, Stanford News th Service, May 29 , 1997. 54 Vogel, Program Teaches Democracy to Former East Bloc Officers.

24

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

25

under the State Departments International Military Education and Training (IMET) Program. In the following two years, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were also given IMET funding.55 According to the State Department, the IMET program is seen to be a low cost and highly efficient institution that facilitates the development of important professional and personal relationships that have provided U.S. access and influence in a sector of society that often plays a pivotal role in the transition to democracy.56 In 1995, the United States began hosting large training exercises for NATOs new Partnership for Peace forces. The first, titled Cooperative Nugget 95, was held over 18 days in August at Fort Polk, Louisiana. 970 soldiers attended from 14 Partnership for Peace countries, and they received training from American, British, and Canadian instructors.57 Then, in December, the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan agreed to form a collective security force, the Central Asian Battalion, at the behest of NATO and Central Command.58 This was one of six such groupings formed by NATO between 1995-2000, an overlapping mosaic of alliances stretching across Eastern Europe and Central Asia.59 In line with its function as a pan-Turkic hub, Turkey also served as a military trainer and supplier for Central Asia during the 1990s. A joint report issued by the World
55

Victoria Garcia, Kazakhstan Report, Columbia International Affairs Online: Center for Defense Information, December 2003, (http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/gav10/). 56 US Department of State: Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, http://www.state.gov/t/pm/65533.htm, (accessed on 12/8/09). 57 14 former Soviet Bloc Nations Join NATO Exercises in U.S., Washington Post, August th 9 , 1995. 58 S. Neil MacFarlane, The United States and Regionalism in Central Asia, International Affairs, (Vol. 80, No. 3) pg. 452. (note: CENTOCOM was not in control of region until 1998.) 59 NATO: U.S. Assistance to the Partnership for Peace, GAO Report to Congressional Committees, July 2001, pg. 15.

25

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

26

Policy Institute and the Federation of American Scientists highlights the role of the IMET program in the Turkish-American military relationship, under which the U.S. has trained 23,268 Turkish personnel since 1950. In fact, between 1989 and 1999 Turkey had been the biggest recipient of U.S. military training, outstripping even first-line allies like Israel and Egypt.60 Subsequently, these Turkish officers then imparted this knowledge to their Central Asian counterparts. Cevik Bir, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Turkish Army, noted in 1996 that 2,000 army officers from Central Asian nations such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are studying in Turkish military schools and academies.61 It is worth mentioning that in 1996 Turkey also signed an extensive five-year military agreement with Israel, tying its military and foreign policy even closer to the West. The agreement called for the exchange of military information, experience, and personnel, as well as joint training exercises, the exchange of military observers at each others exercises, reciprocal port access, for naval vessels, and for each countrys planes to exercise in the others airspace for one week four times a year.62 Also strengthened in this agreement were the longstanding intelligence ties between Turkey and Israel, as revealed by Deputy Chief of Staff Bir in his April 1996 address to the Washington Research Institute when he stated that Israel had requested Turkeys assistance in collecting intelligence information. Israels first priority target was Syria, while Iran was the second.63 The third part of the agreement, which was finalized later that September,

60

Arming Repression: U.S. Arms Sales to Turkey During the Clinton Administration, World Policy Institute/Federation of American Scientists, October 1999, pg. 11. 61 John Pomfret, U.S. Operations in Turkey Seeks to Train, Unite Croats and Muslims, Washington Post, June 6, 1996. 62 Jung and Piccoli, Turkey at the Crossroads, pg. 161. 63 Ibid., 162.

26

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

27

involved a sharing of military technology between Turkey and Israel. For the Turkish armed forces, the Israeli military made a unique partner, due to its technology, reliability, and the capacity to cover almost all defense needs, allowing Turkey to engage in a plan for rearmament and modernization costing in the order of US $150 billion in twenty-five years.64 In an excited essay published in the New York Times that summer, Thomas Friedman referred to this as a Turkish Delight. Opening with the sentence One of the best diplomatic stories going these days is a little known cloak-and-dagger thriller involving bombs in Syria, an assassination attempt in Turkey, missing bags of money in Ankara and covert Turkish-Israeli military cooperation, Friedman concludes that the Turkish-Israeli accord is quite simply, a major strategic realignment in Middle-East Asia. Israels peace process with the Muslim world has given Turkey the cover to openly align itself with Israel.65 ***** Besides the military bureaucracies of NATO, there were also a number of institutions within the United States that heavily lobbied for military expansion. One was the major American news media. Right from the very beginning, the press saw the newly independent states to be pawns in a geopolitical chess game. When Secretary of State Baker took the very first diplomatic tour of Central Asia, in February 1992, The Washington Post ran a story entitled Power Competition in Central Asia: US, Other Nations Vie for Influence in Former Soviet States.66 In The New York Times, Thomas

64 65

Ibid., 163. Thomas Friedman, Foreign Affairs; Turkish Delight, New York Times, June 16th, 1996. 66 David Hoffman, Power Competition in Central Asia: US, Other Nations Vie for Influence th in Former Soviet States, Washington Post, February 13 , 1992.

27

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

28

Friedman wrote from Turkmenistan under the headline Republics Promise to Protect Rights of the US playing the great game, of geopolitics in historically contested Central Asia, referencing the undeclared 19th century imperial contest between Britain and Russia. 67 The Economist followed up on Friedmans imperial theme, writing now that the tsarist empire's Soviet successor has collapsed, the independent khanates are springing up as republics -- and a new round of the great game is beginning.68 Various sides were defined in this strugglethe US was countering Iran, the US was countering Moscows communist economies, Islamist fundamentalism was the real threatbut the media consensus was that Washingtons moves were to be thought of in an imperial, great power manner. While no pundit had yet pinned down what Americas new purpose in the world would be, it was clear that a peace dividend was not going to be the preeminent talking point following the Soviet Unions collapse.

This was also the position taken by a key sect in the scholarly community. Throughout the 1990s, a number of academic institutions created centers focused on the former Soviet Union. One of the first to do so was the private Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, publishers of Foreign Policy magazine. According to John B.

Roberts, in the early nineties a group of foreign policy elite was convened by the Carnegie Institute for International Peace to change U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War.69 Roberts, who participated in the group as a publicist, writes that the meetings, led by Carnegie President Morton Abramowitz, were my introduction to Clintons
67

Thomas Friedman, Republics Promise to Protect Rights, New York Times February 12 , 1992. th 68 Between Marx and Mecca, The Economist, May 16 , 1992. 69 John B. Roberts, Roots of Allied Farce, The American Spectator, June 1999, pg. 36.

th

28

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

29

Cabinet-in-waiting, with Madeline Albright, Henry Cisneros, John Duetch, Richard Holbrooke, Alice Rivlin, David Gergen and Admiral William Crowe in attendance. Roberts, however, did not take to the new direction being considered, what is now known as humanitarian intervention. The final report of the group, Changing our Ways: Americas Role in the New World, urged a new principle of international relations: the destruction or displacement of groups of people within states can justify international intervention.70 According to Roberts, the report also proposed the revolutionary idea that a U.S. led military strike was justified, not to defend the United States, but to impose highly subjective political settlements on other countries. sovereignty in favor of international intervention.71 Another influential institution was the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), part of John Hopkins University. In 1996, when Paul Wolfowitz was dean, the Central Asia and Caucasus Institute was established at SAIS, led by longtime Soviet scholar S. Frederick Starr. According to journalist Ken It discarded national

Silverstein, Starr views the region almost exclusively through the prism of American geopolitical interests and with little interest in issues like human rights and corruption.72 Accordingly, Starr and his institute sought personal relationships with many of the dictatorial leaders in Central Asia. Starr even went so far as to write the preface to the English edition of Uzbek President Islam Karimovs book, Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century.73 In 1999, Harvard started a similar initiative, the Caspian

70 71

Ibid., 37. Ibid., 37. 72 Ken Silverstein, The Professor of Repression, Washington Babylon/Harpers Magazine, th May 24 , 2006: (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/05/sb-professor-repression3284828). 73 Ibid.

29

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

30

Studies Program and Azerbaijan Initiative, led by Graham Allison, and heavily funded by oil companies through the Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce.74 The effects of these institutions are numerous. They provide trained experts for journalists to quote; they serve as a bridge between foreign officials and U.S. government employees; they fund and host events for policy-makers; they work as peer-review gatekeepers; and most importantly, they mask partisan and political agendas behind a veneer of scholarship. However, these are not novel ideas, as they mimic much of what occurred in the academic community at the start of the Cold War. Describing Harvards Russian Research Center, where he had served as a fellow, Richard Barnet writes: These centers, meant to reflect and rationalize official government views of the Soviet Union, concentrated on developing information for implementing official policy rather than on testing its validityThe war potential U.S.S.R. and the stability of the regime were the principal academic questions to be examined.75 The American Defense Industry also played a part in pushing for military expansion. Following the 1995 merger between aeronautics giants Lockheed and Martin Marietta into Lockheed Martin, executives from what was now the worlds largest arms manufacturer created the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. Chairing the committee was Bruce Jackson, the Director of Strategic Planning at Lockheed Martin. In 1997, the New York Times characterized Jackson and his ilk as acting like globe-hopping diplomats to encourage the expansion of NATO, which will create a huge market for their wares.76 As an individual, Jackson is the epitome of a national security elite. His father, William Jackson, was the first National Security Advisor, serving under Dwight
74

Kennedy School Launches New Caspian Studies Program, Harvard Kennedy School Press th Release, September 24 , 1999. 75 Barnet, Roots of War, 44. 76 Jeff Gerth and Tim Weiner, Arms Makers See Bonanza in Selling NATO Expansion, New th York Times, June 29 , 1997.

30

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

31

Eisenhower, and his childhood neighbors included George Kennan and William Bundy. After attending Massachusettss elite St. Marks boarding school and Princeton University, Jackson held a variety of Pentagon positions during the Reagan-Bush years, where he aligned himself with burgeoning neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Stephen Hadley, all three of whom would sit on the board of the NATO expansion committee in the following decade. According to an unidentified prominent neoconservative, Jackson is a nexus between the defense industry and the neoconservatives. He translates us to them, and them to us.77 The U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, is best understood as a quasigovernmental body. While not sanctioned by the nominal power centers in the White House or on Capitol Hill, it nonetheless spoke with an authoritative edge, blessed by the other nodes in the American power structure. Just like so many advisory boards and Blue Ribbon panels before it, Jacksons committee serves as an example of a group of businessmen being called together at the initiative of the national security bureaucracy to articulate and to publicize novel and controversial ideas already held by a few members of the bureaucratic elite.78

All of these different interest groups are the manifestation of the constant focus on militarism as an element of Washingtons foreign policy. The idea of studying a region and then building up and selling arms to a foreign army is an age-old imperial tactic, and in essence U.S. history is no different. Following both World War I and World War II, when new international boundaries were formally drawn, Washington took it upon itself
77

John B. Judis, Minister without Portfolio, American Prospect, April 30 , 2003; Richard th Cummings, Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Playboy.com, January 16 , 2007. 78 Barnet, Roots of War, 181.

th

31

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

32

to assist these newly independent states in becoming military fortresses. From Saudi Arabia in 1933 to South Vietnam in 1954 to Uzbekistan in 1992, Washington has gifted upon every sort of government every sort of training in warfare, terrorism, and domestic security. As one researcher put it in Londons austere International Affairs, The

emergence of the energy and security agendas in Central Asia clearly reduced the previous emphasis in the American agenda on democratization and good governance, as the pursuit of such objectives might have complicated the pursuit of more concrete strategic objectives.79 John Laughland, a human rights activist and journalist put it more bluntly, describing the Western treatment of the newly independent states: Promoting a system of political and military control not unlike that once practiced by the Soviet UnionThe new NATO is both a mechanism for extracting Danegeld [a Viking-era protection tax] from new member states for the benefit of the U.S. arms industry and an instrument for getting others to protect U.S. interests around the world, including the supply of primary resources such as oil. It is, in short, a racket.80

V. The Inevitable
By 1997, the effect of these different interests had coalesced such that it was inevitable that the United States would play a major role in the future security of Central Asia. U.S. officials now spoke of the region in terms of National Security of the United States, not usually a mere rhetorical flourish. In Strobe Talbotts previously mentioned speech at John Hopkins, he stated "an area that sits on as much as 200 billion barrels of oil...matters profoundly to the United States."81 Nearly $1 million worth of arms

subsidies was added to the regional budget, and NATO chief Javier Solana made a round

79 80 81

MacFarlane, 452. nd John Laughland, The Prague Racket, Guardian, November 22 , 2002. Talbott, Farwell to Flashman.

32

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

33

of visits that spring to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, meeting with military with diplomatic officials in order to expand cooperation between the alliance and Central Asia.82 In 1997, the Central Asian Battalion held their largest drills yet, which began with 500 paratroopers from the 82nd airborne making the longest flight in human history to Shymkent, Kazakhstan, where they would lead a week of aviation and ground training drills with troops from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Turkey, and Russia.83 Two months later, when Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev visited Washington, the two nations formalized their military ties by signing a Defense Cooperation Agreement that called for, among other things, 40 similar missions to take place in 1998.84 A training exchange program was also set up between different state National Guards and Central Asia. In what Chalmers Johnson describes as a

military version of sister-city relationship, Kazakhstan was paired with Arizona, Kyrgyzstan with Montana, and Uzbekistan with Louisiana.85 Resource Wars, Michael Klare writes of this change: The extension of American military power into the Caspian Sea regions is, by itself, a momentous geopolitical development. As shown by the CENTRAZBAT exercises, it will require Washington to build and sustain military relationships with the Central Asian republics, as well as to construct a globe-spanning logistical capability. In time, it could also involve the establishment of American military bases in an area that was once part of the Soviet Union.86 In his prescient book

82

Birgit Brauer, NATO chief explains expansion plans to Central Asian nations, Associated th Press, March 11 , 1997. 83 R. Jeffrey Smith, U.S. leads peacekeeping drill in Kazakhstan, Washington Post, th September 15 , 1997; DoD News Briefing, General Henry H. Shelton, Chairman JCS, th November 17 , 1997. 84 Ibid. 85 Robert G. Kaiser, US Plants Footprint in Shaky Central Asia, Washington Post, August th 27 , 2002; Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004), pg.175. 86 Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000) pg. 5.

33

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

34

The year after Klare published these words, the US did establish basing relationships with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, in conjunction with the Winter 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. In the first week of October, Uzbek leaders signed accords with Donald Rumsfeld, allowing the US military to use the Khanabad airbase. Within a week, more than 60 planes had dropped off supplies and 1,200 soldiers were on the ground, primarily light infantry troops from Fort Drums tenth mountain division, the first soldiers to be deployed to former Soviet territory. In December, Kyrgyzstan followed suit, offering up the Manas International Airport to the US, located on the outskirts of the capital, Bishek. Air Force engineers immediately got underway building a thirty-acre compound at Manas, the equivalent of six city blocks, in order to house 3,000 people, which they named Peter J. Ganci Air Base, after the highest-ranking Fireman to die on September 11th.87 A report in the Washington Post at the time contains some remarkable statements pertaining to this radical change in US military posture. Secretary of State Colin Powell is quoted as saying America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind we could not have dreamed of before, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is quoted as admitting that the two new bases may be more political than actually military. Most blunt, though, was Thomas Donnelly, the Deputy Executive Director of the Project of The New American Century. In an email circulated among military analysts, Donnelly wrote that the imperial perimeter of the United States is expanding into Central Asia. The Post reflects on these opinions and concludes all
87

Eric Schmitt and James Dao, U.S. is Building up its Military bases in Afghan Region, New th York Times, January 8 , 2002; Vernon Loeb, Piece by Piece, Air Force Flies In a Presence; th Installation for 3,000 Takes Root at International Airport, Washington Post, February 9 , 2002; C.J. Chivers The Signs of a Buildup are Becoming More Evident, New York Times, th October 10 , 2001.

34

Evan Taylor 2/29/12

35

told, more than 50,000 US military personnel now live and work on ships and bases stretching from Turkey to Oman, and eastward to Manas airport, 19 miles outside Bishkek and 300 miles from the Chinese border.88 It may be thought that these bases were established in order to facilitate an occupation of Afghanistan. This however, is not quite accurate. While the presence of military garrisons in Central Asia may have had some affect on the Afghan campaign, the bases are better viewed as representing the logical outcome of the expansionist policies that had been followed for the last decade. The bases did not have one single purpose, but merely served as the farthest possible garrisons on the imperial perimeter to which PNACs Donnelly referred. In The Sorrows of Empire, social scientist Chalmers Johnson writes of the disconnect between both the Afghan and Iraq wars and the establishment of the Central Asian bases, giving force to the argument that they are fundamentally a symptom of the expanding mission creep that is the project of Western dominance, what Johnson calls our Empire of Bases: [Manas and Khanabad] did not extend the reach of American air power in Afghanistan to any appreciable degree. Aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea were just as close to targets in southern Afghanistan and much cheaper to operate. Nor were these bases meant for the deployment of large numbers of ground forces. The Kyrgyzstan base was 620 miles from the Afghan border, and Washingtons strategy in the war did not involve the use of large concentrations of American troops. In fact, the Kyrgyz and Uzbek bases were brought to bear only tangentially during the war, and they were too far from Iraq to be of much use in the war already being planned against Saddam Husseins regime. Nor were they intended to supply significant amounts of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, since that remained largely in the hands of the United Nations and non governmental organizations like the Red Cross, which are not normally allowed to use bases. Nor were they there to protect the local regimes from Islamic militants since these governments would
88

Vernon Loeb, Footprints in Steppes of Central Asia; New Bases Indicate U.S. Presence Will be felt after Afghan War, Washington Post

35

Evan Taylor 2/29/12 not entrust the mission to Americans and have agreements with the Russians to deal with such problems.89

36

Instead, the military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were simply an expression of US militarism, an impulse on the part of our elites to dominate other peoples largely because we have the power to do so, followed by the strategic reasoning that, in order to defend these newly acquired outposts and control the regions they are in, we must expand the areas under our control with still more bases.90.

89 90

Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 183 Ibid., 152.

36