Strategic Basing and the Great Powers, 1200-2000

Robert E. Harkavy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134003747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This is the first book to survey the evolution of the strategic basing systems of the great powers, covering an 800-year span of history, from the Mongol dynasty to the era of the US empire. Robert E. Harkavy details the progression of strategic basing systems and power projection, from its beginnings at a regional level to its current global reach

1
Introduction

One of the oldest and most enduring permanent features of relations between nations (earlier, other types of “entities” such as empires, city-states, etc.) is that of basing access, ad hoc or long-term, for military forces. Nowhere has this been better illustrated than by recent U.S. politico-diplomatic relations in relation first to the Gulf War, and then to the post-9/11 operations in Afghanistan, and then the invasion of Iraq. During the Gulf War, immediately following the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces were given access to bases and aircraft overflight corridors in a surprisingly comprehensive manner, not only by NATO and “moderate” Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, but by former Soviet-bloc antagonists, and by India. In the Afghanistan episode, crucial access for aircraft and intelligence operations was provided by, among other nations, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, Turkey, Great Britain, Diego Garcia and the several ex- Soviet states of Central Asia: Kyrghizstan, Uzbekistan, Tadzikistan and Turk-menistan. But in the operation in Iraq, access was grudgingly given in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Involved were a combination of factors: formal alliances, quid pro quo such as arms transfers and economic aid, political cross-pressures on key states such as Saudi Arabia, international norms about preemptive military actions, and fear of retribution by Iraq and terrorist organizations.

The events surrounding the problems of U.S. basing access in the Middle East in the decade or so after the end of the Cold War also underscored the long-existent interplay of political and technological factors that long has been a hallmark of basing diplomacy. The end of the Cold War, which had featured a rigid bipolar international system, saw the unraveling of alliance structures tied closely to ideological affinity after which basing access relationships became more ad hoc, situational, and relatively less tied to patterns of arms transfers. Hence, the U.S. access in 1990–1991 to Russian airspace and for transport staging in India, among others. Earlier, the advent of newer nuclear submarines carrying long-range Trident missiles had eliminated the need by the U.S. for overseas access for its SSBN force.

On the technological side, however, the development of long-range bombers such as the U.S. B-2 and B-1 (in connection with better capability in aerial refueling) reduced the need for overseas bases for strategic bombing, though in the case of the B-1 and B-2, airfields in Diego Garcia remained important. There was a lot of talk about a future that might see “artificial bases” in the oceans beyond the 12-mile limits of sovereign countries.

In the past, as pertains to the political side of basing, there had been a major divide between access provided by conquest, and that by ad hoc diplomacy or alliances. Hence, over several centuries, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Britain were provided important basing points all over the world by dint of conquest, or by highly asymmetrical power relationships with “local” satraps, as in the cases of Portugal in India and the Netherlands in Indonesia. Within Europe, however, granting of basing access between sovereign and relatively equal states was part and parcel of ongoing diplomacy during periods of both peace and war. Hence, European states came to think of a division between intra-European politics, including bases, and what went on “beyond the line,” i.e., in colonial areas that were objects of political and economic competition.

As we shall later explain, earlier developments in ship propulsion – galleys to sail to coal to oil – had also had a major impact on basing requirements and on the politics of basing access.

Introduction, background, importance of subject

The subject of the (historically) global (or sub-global) basing networks of the rival, contending great powers and global hegemons is one which has been the subject of surprisingly little scrutiny by academic theorists. With one exception over a narrow expanse of time, there is no database of any sort (and the one exception covering the period 1945–1982 has never been put in machine-readable form, nor in an organized data format). It is perhaps only partially the case that this absence of a database (and of accompanying analysis)¹ is the result of the difficulty of counting or aggregating bases in a meaningful way.

But, the subject is an old, enduring and important one, never more so than at present.² Thucydides wrote about Athenian and Spartan basing access rivalry during the Peloponnesian wars, which involved alliance politics in the Greek city-state systems. In the fifteenth century, the famous Chinese “eunuch admiral” Zheng. He³ roamed the Indian Ocean littoral with a large fleet, making use of a number of bases as far away as East Africa and the Persian Gulf and Bab el Mandeb areas. In the thirteenth century, the expanding Mongol Empire made use of bases in Korea and Vietnam, respectively, for launching invasions against Japan and Southeast Asia.⁴ During the age of galley warfare in the Mediterranean in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Venice, Genoa, the Ottoman Empire and Spain conducted a constant and ever shifting contest for strategic bases over a period of several centuries leading up to the battle of Lepanto, where what was at stake was control of the Mediterranean and the trade routes into Asia. Crucial here were Crete, Cyprus and other Greek Islands, the several ports in what are now Tunisia and Algeria, Sicily, Corfu and Malta, and the crucial area at the exit of the Adriatic Sea into the Mediterranean. After that, Portugal, Spain, France, England and the Netherlands competed for overseas basing access in their lengthy struggle over colonial empires, beginning with Portugal on an increasingly global basis.

Those struggles became increasingly global, but some important coasts and chokepoints were consistently crucial: the Mediterranean, the entire East Africa/South Asia/Southeast Asia/Indian Ocean littoral, the Caribbean, Brazil and numerous oceanic islands, the Canaries, Azores, Mauritius, Ceylon, Indonesia, the Philippines etc.⁵ Long before Mackinder and Spykman, the “rimland” was a constant bone of contention.

At the peak of the British Empire, observers pointed to the “keys” to that Empire, its main naval bases: Gibraltar, Cape Town, Mauritius, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malta, Suez, Aden, Mombasa, Bombay, Trincomalee and many others.⁶ During the Cold War, the U.S. and the USSR conducted a continuing struggle for ideological “client states,” which was centered on the use of arms transfers to acquire and maintain critical air, naval and technical intelligence facilities. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the importance of bases was underscored by the U.S. use of air transit and tanker refueling facilities in the Portuguese Azores Islands and in Spain to conduct an air and sea lift on behalf of Israel.

In 1975, in the case of the Angolan War, and in 1977–1978 during the “Horn War” between Ethiopia and Somalia, the Soviets used numerous air staging bases and overflight corridors to ship arms to clients, in the former case involving Algeria, Mali, Benin and Congo-Brazzaville.⁷

In the period leading up to World War II, Germany was availed by Spain of access for its submarines in the Balearic and Canary Islands.⁸ At the outset of World War II, as Germany took over most of continental Europe, the U.S. and Britain moved quickly to secure crucial strategic basing points in Greenland, Iceland and the Azores Islands, the former two still nominally parts of conquered Denmark.

During the Gulf War in 1990–1991, the U.S. and its coalition partners had extensive access to naval and air bases and air overflight rights to assist their logistics operations, greatly at variance with long-established Cold War patterns.⁹ More recently, the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 highlighted the critical nature of basing access, as illustrated by the examples of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Pakistan, British-owned Diego Garcia and the former Central Asian Soviet republics of Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrghizstan. Beyond these visible events is the less visible and day-to-day diplomacy of port visits (“presence” or showing the flag), coercive diplomacy and arms resupply.

Even after the end of the Cold War, bases in relation to strategic nuclear forces remained important, though the definition of “strategic” may now have acquired an altered meaning, no longer simply referring to the possibility of U.S.–USSR homeland exchanges and related problems of deterrence. In the matter of possible U.S. deployment of anti-ballistic missile defenses, in relation primarily to Iraq (earlier) and Iran, the use of crucial radars in Great Britain and Greenland (where radars for the BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) had long been operational) became an issue between the U.S. and some of its European allies. Likewise, more recently, a potential radar installation in Poland and missile sites in the Czech Republic have become issues between the U.S. and Russia. Deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in the Far East remained an issue, now perceived largely in relation to China and North Korea and involving a panoply of technical facilities (communications, intelligence, nuclear detection). The DSP satellite systems, crucially involving infrared detection of multiple missile launches could, presumably, observe Chinese and North Korean as well as Russian launches.¹⁰ Nuclear detection facilities (large seismic arrays) likewise would be focused on new threats. And while the U.S. global SOSUS system appears largely to have been dismantled, there are likely remnants in the Far East and northwest Indian Ocean areas, for obvious reasons. The newer nuclear threats in Iran and North Korea will undoubtedly induce replacements for access for theater missile defense systems as well as ports for AEGIS ships mounting such systems, in regional ports. Access for B-1 and B-2 bombers in places like Diego Garcia will also require continued access for “strategic” systems. And, as the prospect of a new Cold War involving the U.S. and China loomed, China was reported as having achieved some access for technical facilities in the Coco Islands belonging to Burma, provisionally also with the building of deep water ports in Bangladesh and Pakistan.¹¹

Not only does the crisis following 9/11 highlight the current importance of basing diplomacy. So too does the whole panoply of diplomatic activity concerning U.S. relations with Russia and Europe. Continuing U.S. access in Central Asia and the Caucasus depends on continuing improved relations with Russia, which maintains a sphere of influence in these vital (for Middle Eastern operations) regions. But, U.S. ambitions to build an effective ballistic missile defense with reference to Iran (maybe yet Pakistan) depend critically on access to radars in Greenland and northern Britain, and also perhaps Poland, which would involve upgrades of the long-existent BMEWS.

In the past, this subject pertained almost entirely to naval bases and ports of call, and associated army forts and garrisons. Now, beginning with the Cold War and extending on to today, a superpower will require a bewildering array of technical facilities – satellite downlinks for missile launch detection, underwater sonar detection of submarines, navigation, ocean surveillance, down-range monitoring of missile tests, navigation and positioning of ships and planes, solar flare detection, radar picket lines, etc.

In particular, the relevance of basing access to the Cold War nuclear arms race and arms control agreements is worth noting in retrospect. In the late 1950s, the U.S. had forward-based medium range ballistic missiles in the U.K., Italy, Turkey, Taiwan and Okinawa.¹² It had earlier stationed B-29 bombers in the U.K.; later, F-111Es armed with nuclear weapons. Morocco and Spain provided access for the B-47 bomber “Reflex Force.”¹³ Nuclear-armed strategic submarines utilized for hunting Soviet nuclear-armed submarines were based in Faslane, Scotland, in LaMaddalena, Sardinia and in Sasebo, Japan. All across the Arctic rim (Labrador, Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland, etc.) were tanker-refueling bases. To the reverse, the USSR, lacking the equivalent of the U.S. Eurasian rimland basing system, packed a lot of facilities (communications, satellite downlinks, etc.) into Cuba, in close proximity to the U.S., which is what triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis and kept U.S.–Cuban relations on a tense basis for a long time.

Bases in history

As a “unit of analysis,” we are using “base” or “basing access” to provide the basis for historical analysis. Most people assume they know what a base is – there is the vivid imagery of an air, naval or missile base, replete with arrays of attendant weapons systems and related infrastructure. But, otherwise, there are a host of definitional and semantic problems surrounding this subject, shifting through the centuries, and in some respects involving important political considerations.

In the late Cold War period, for instance, the term “facilities” came commonly to replace “bases,” particularly in U.S. national security circles. The distinction involved matters of relative sovereignty between users and hosts. Where, as had normally been the case, the user country, most often the U.S., had near complete discretion when it came to use of the “base,” it could then be defined as such. Hence, if the U.S. could on its own decide to use an air base in the Philippines or Thailand for a military mission (or was required to provide no more than pro forma notifications), then, it was a “base.” Likewise, use of the latter term was preferred if the user was not much subject to onerous status of forces agreements that might, for instance, preclude local prosecution of foreign personnel for criminal activity.

By the 1970s, however, with the fading context of post-World War II, many countries hosting U.S. (maybe also Soviet) “bases” began to insist on their sovereign rights over foreign military enclaves. Increasingly permission needed to be granted for launching military missions from the host’s territory. The Philippines and Japan began insisting on permission; likewise, Britain gave permission for the U.S. bombing raid on Libya in 1986, but this subsequently led to a political firestorm over Britain’s characterization as a stationary “aircraft carrier” for the use of the U.S. in Europe.¹⁴ Not only “traditional” air and naval bases were at issue. Some nations also began to demand a share in the intelligence “take” from overseas U.S. collection facilities such as electronic listening posts. This shift of sovereignty led some to abandon the use of the term “base” and, in its place, “facility” came into vogue as a matter of allegedly precise definition. Others preferred the more neutral term “installation.” Others modified “base” with “basing access,” or “strategic access.”¹⁵ The latter could accommodate a broader range of activities, including aircraft overflights, occasional ship port visits, or even access for intelligence assets, i.e., spies and covert operations.

If that was not confusing enough, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) took to the terminology of FMP – Foreign Military Presence. This entailed also a rather broad construing of what earlier had been called “bases,” involving some ten sub-categories.¹⁶ The “presence” needed to be stationary on the ground, so overflights were not included. Generally, however, by the early twenty-first century, “bases” and “basing access” had appeared to come back into vogue; whether or not this was related to the end of the Cold War was not very clear.

In earlier times, there were also definitional pro...