Two apparently unconnected developments in recent weeks form an essential part of the wider understanding of how the United States intends to pursue its war on terror: the decision to make radical changes in worldwide troop dispositions and the re-emergence of a creature of the cold war years, the Committee on the Present Danger. Each illustrates the vital concern of the current administration and its ideological supporters that the much-vaunted Project for a New American Century is not derailed.
The changes in overseas deployments are considerable. Around 30,000 troops are being transferred to the United States from Germany alone, and another 40,000 from other European countries and from east Asia. In an overall perspective, the total active strength of the US armed forces is about 1,400,000, excluding the coastguard and reservists. There are currently about 400,000 deployed overseas including 155,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan, although these particular deployments include tens of thousands of reservists.
Thus, the 70,000 being brought back to the US come from a total of long-term overseas deployments of around 230,000. To put it bluntly, the Bush administration is deciding to bring back nearly one-third of all its troops stationed across the world outside areas of immediate conflict.
A reordering, not a retreat
Yet despite appearances this is not a retrenchment, because it is happening in parallel with two other developments. The first is the impending reconfiguration of many of the forces being brought back to the United States. For example, a current US army division usually comprises three combat brigades of about 4,000 troops each, together with a range of support elements. Some divisions are likely to be developed into four units of action of about 3,000 troops that are much more heavily geared to short periods of action in combat zones across the world, even if they are routinely based in the United States.
The second, closely-linked development is that just as the United States starts to close down major bases in Europe and east Asia, its remaining facilities will be joined by large numbers of new stand-by bases across east and central Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. It will maintain large bases in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, each housing many thousands of troops; elsewhere, facilities are being built that may normally be maintained by hundreds of people drawn mainly from the army and air force but which can rapidly be transformed into large, fully-operational bases. The navy and the marine corps are already more independent, although key bases such as Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean will remain very much in the frame.
In a wide arc from east-central Europe and across the Caspian basin to Central Asia, the stand-by bases are already being built, and various forms of military cooperation are also underway in some of the new oil-rich areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The end result will be a network of bases stretching across the world, but without the massive overseas troop deployments that largely encircled the Soviet Union during the cold war.
All the United Statess military branches will feel the impact of these changes. The navy and marine corps will continue to be configured for rapid deployment, the air force will maintain its global reach, and the army will have adequate forces based routinely in the United States that can be deployed in areas in crisis in the foreknowledge that local facilities should be available wherever most needed.
Along with a massive array of new equipment and intelligence facilities, this all adds up to a vigorous and expanding programme focused on a very large military response to al-Qaida, its affiliates and assorted rogue states. As such it is going to be a costly endeavour and helps to explain the surge in US defence spending that is reminiscent of the massive defence budgets at the height of the cold war in the early 1980s.
A reawakened right
All this is very good news for the major arms companies. It also represents solid progress for the neo-conservatives who believe that ensuring that the new American century must be at the centre of US foreign policy. Why, then, is there also the need to reform the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD)? Havent the neo-conservatives in Washington already won the battle for hearts and minds? To answer these questions, it is worth looking at the CPDs previous incarnations.
The original CPD was set up during Harry Trumans presidency in 1950 as a bipartisan, conservative, anti-communist lobbying group that was highly active for several years as the cold war got into its stride. It was revived in 1976 just as Jimmy Carter was elected; it played a powerful role, along with other groups such as High Frontier and the Heritage Foundation, in undermining Carter, especially in his relations with Moscow.
The CPD was strenuously opposed to arms control initiatives; it argued strongly for US nuclear superiority and was closely linked to a group known as Team B that had been authorised by President Gerald Ford and was organised by George Bush senior, then head of the CIA. Team Bs main purpose was to publish independent analyses of Soviet power, but these were invariably worst-case assessments.
Ronald Reagan was himself a member of the CPD in the late 1970s, and over thirty members of the body were appointed to government posts when he defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980, most of them taking up jobs connected with national security. With Reagan then in power and rearmament and aggressive anti-Soviet policies the order of the day, the CPD disappeared into the background and faded away as the cold war eventually ended a decade later.
Now it has been revived, with the Soviet menace easily and smoothly replaced by Islamic terrorism. Once again it is a bipartisan group, comprising forty-one members drawn from Democrat and Republican ranks but with a strong presence of neo-conservative hawks. At its head is James Woolsey, the former CIA director who famously characterised the post-cold war predicament of the United States as a superpower that had slain the dragon but was now living in a jungle full of poisonous snakes [(see an earlier column in this series, The American army rethinks, July 2004)]. Its membership reads like a check-list of Washington conservative stalwarts: among them, Kenneth Adelman, Frank Gaffney, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dov Zakheim and William Van Cleave.
The new CPD is co-chaired by two Senators, Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Jon Kyl, who has close connections with the Christian right. Writing in the Washington Post (20 July 2004), the two announced the CPDs relaunch as a signal to face up to the present danger our generation faces: international Islamic extremists and the outlaw states that either harbour or support them.
The language used is markedly reminiscent of the cold war era. As Lieberman and Kyl remark:
The past struggle against communism was, in some ways, different from the current war against Islamist terrorism. But Americas freedom and security, which each has aimed to undermine, are exactly the same. The national and international solidarity needed to prevail over both enemies is also the same. In fact, the world war against Islamic terrorism is the test of our time.
Preparing for the war of ideas
The question remains as to why the CPD should have undergone a rebirth just at a time when defence budgets are up and Bushs war on terror is being pursued with such vigour. What is the point of speaking to the converted? There are probably two explanations. The first is that the war itself is not going as well as expected, with US forces deeply mired in Iraq and unable to bring al-Qaida under control.
Moreover, the United States is experiencing a surge in anti-Americanism across the world while having to contend with European allies that are increasingly dubious of US policies and motives. In such circumstances, the committee is ready and willing to steady the ship and provide the ideological rationalisation for maintaining current policies.
The second reason may be more subtle, and speaks to a longer-term strategy of recognising the possibility and implications of a John Kerry victory in November. This is not to say that Kerry is in any way likely to be a liberal left-winger in his approach to al-Qaida, nor that he would find it easy to change policies in Iraq. But a Kerry administration would bring in a range of more liberal advisers from The Brookings Institution and other think-tanks, and the neo-conservatives would certainly lose some influence in and around the White House hence the need to prepare for the possibility.
If George Bush does win re-election, the Committee on the Present Danger can advance its work by providing backbone to a sympathetic administration. If he doesnt, the CPD will be a significant part of the process that works from the start of a Kerry administration to challenge and undermine any change in policy that might limit the potential to turn the new American century into a reality.
