The practice of maintaining a long-term, peacetime military presence in another state (or “sovereign basing”) only developed in the last century. Before World War II, a foreign military presence usually meant one of three things: occupation, colonization, or a wartime alliance. This changed radically in the years after 1945.
Robert drove a great deal of traffic to the Duck with his provocative posts on retrenchment and US alliances. His efforts to "grade" allies by strategic importance has led to some interesting...
The crackdown in Bahrain hasn't received as much attention as those elsewhere in the Arab world. In part, that's because what's happening in Syria and Libya are more spectacular. In part that's...
Alex Cooley and I have just published an article at Foreign Affairs Online on Bahrain and the politics of the US overseas basing network. An excerpt:U.S. policymakers have long struggled to...
It remains unclear whether the Kyrgyz government really wants the US out of Manas or whether it wants to extract higher rents. Rob Farley comments that the "United States has been paying considerable rent to use the airbase in question."Yes and no. It can be too easy to focus merely on the size of sidepayments. In fact, that might be part of the problem.Remember that the US doesn't officially pay rent for basing and access agreements. It just so happens that host countries get "unrelated" aid packages and foreign-policy perquisites. This isn't simply a normative issue; the US has strong...
Breaking reports, if true, vindicate a manuscript Alex Cooley and I wrote last year.* Whatever pleasure I get from saying "I told you so," however, is outweighed by my concern about the complications to US operations posed by the potential loss of Manas.The AP:MOSCOW – News agencies are quoting Kyrgyzstan's president as saying that his country is ending U.S. use of a key airbase that supports military operations in Afghanistan.A decision to end the U.S. use of the Manas base could have potentially far-reaching consequences for U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.Interfax and RIA-Novosti...
Rob Farley points our attention to the latest from Iceland:Foreign diplomats hardly believed what they heard when the Icelandic president said that his country needs “new friends” and that Russia should be invited to take use of the old U.S. airbase of Keflavik.In the lunch which took place in Reykjavik last Friday, Mr. Grimsson accused neighboring countries of failing to support the crisis-ridden Iceland, newspaper Dagbladet reports with reference to Klassekampen.An internal memo from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, obtained by the newspaper, describes the diplomats present in the event as...
Social-choice theory (or, in this context, public-choice theory) suggests that leaders sign international agreements as a way of "locking in" their preferred policies. Once a state signs such an agreement, the logic goes, future leaders will face greater costs if they want to change their predecessors' policies.It doesn't take a fancy degree to recognize that's what the Bush Administration has been up to in a number of arenas. Iraq is one of the most important, which is why they can't be pleased that Maliki has, apparently, demanded a timetable for a US withdrawal from Iraq.Iraq will not...
[Cross posted at "Discord and Elaboration"]I think Patrick is on to something when he writes that the current dilemma facing the US in Uzbekistan isn't strictly one of security-vs-morality. Of course, one could (and many have) frame the issue in this way. However I think there is another way to look at the issue. I see the problem as strategy-vs-strategy, or more specifically, intrinsic interests-vs-reputational interests. The Defense Department sees the K2 airbase (K2 is shorthand for Karshi-Khanabad) as an intrinsic interest, one that is vital operationally to fighting the GWOT (Greater...
The Washington Post reports today on the recent NATO-Russia joint communique, which among other points stated that "issues of security and stability in Central Asia, including the recent tragic events in Uzbekistan, was also discussed." According to the Post, this rather bland language papered over an intra-agency dispute within the US government about how best to handle the situation stemming from the 13 May crackdown against a failed uprising in the city of Andijon. The crackdown, which Human Rights Watch has labeled a "massacre," involved the deployment of armed troops to respond to an...