Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [62]
Running for president in 1976, Jimmy Carter vowed to remove American troops from the Korean peninsula, an effort that failed in the face of concerted military and congressional opposition. In the meantime, the Pentagon gained access to Singapore, improved its facilities on the Pacific island of Guam, and began developing a major new base in the Indian Ocean on the British-owned island of Diego Garcia—a project that entailed expelling the island’s inhabitants.1
As the Soviet threat subsided and then disappeared, so too did the traditional rationale for this continuing presence. So the Pentagon devised a new rationale. Rather than defending key allies from external attack, U.S. forces abroad were now needed to facilitate the emergence of a new world order. In any case, they had to stay.
The Pentagon’s post–Cold War mission, explained Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in 1998, was “to shape the environment,” creating conditions conducive to international stability and economic growth. “How do we do that? We have to be forward deployed.” Although other elements of national policy might change, Cohen insisted, the presence of U.S. troops on bases worldwide remained absolutely essential.
[W]e’re going to keep 100,000 people in the Asia Pacific region, so that’s off the table; and we’re going to keep 100,000 people in Europe [so] that’s off the table.
We have to be forward deployed in Europe and in Asia in order to shape people’s opinions about us in ways that are favorable to us. To shape events that will affect our livelihood and our security. And we can do that when people see us, they see our power, they see our professionalism, they see our patriotism, and they say that’s a country that we want to be with. So we are shaping events on a daily basis in ways that are favorable to our interests. You can only do that if you’re forward deployed.
Presence not only reassured your friends, it also impressed anyone tempted to be unfriendly. Forward-deployed forces, Cohen continued, influenced the views of would-be adversaries, persuading them “that they really don’t want to challenge us in any given situation.”2 That such a presence might actually provoke rather than allay challenge, or that prolonged exposure to U.S. forces might evoke antagonism rather than respect, were propositions the defense secretary and others in the Pentagon were not prepared to contemplate.
Cohen was reciting what now became the textbook explanation for maintaining the Pentagon’s global footprint. Even if the demise of the Soviet empire had rendered Europe whole and free, that did not mean American troops were coming home anytime soon. Over the course of nearly two centuries, a series of warlords—Napoleon, the kaisers of Imperial Germany, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin—had endangered European peace and stability. After 1989 the warlords had finished their run: Europeans faced negligible security threats. Yet American soldiers, sailors, and airmen remained at their stations in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom anyway.
Beyond Europe and Asia, the Pentagon assigned top priority to reinforcing the U.S. military presence in areas where it had previously been insignificant. In this regard, attention focused especially on the Persian Gulf. President Carter had declared in 1980 that the United States would henceforth view an attempt by any outside power to gain control of this