Foreign Military Bases in Eurasia SIPRI Policy Paper No. 18 Zdzislaw Lachowski Stockholm International Peace Research Institute June 2007 © SIPRI, 2007 ISSN 1652-0432 (print) ISSN 1653-7548 (online) Printed in Sweden by CM Gruppen, Bromma Contents Preface iv Abbreviations and acronyms v Map of British, French, Soviet and US troops based abroad in Eurasia, 1990 vi Map of Russian, US and other troops based abroad in Eurasia, 2006–2007 vii 1. Introduction 1 A historical overview 2 2. Reconfiguring US foreign bases 5 Background 5 The changing policy of US foreign base alignment 6 The new US global posture 12 US domestic criticism 16 Table 2.1. Major NATO and US military bases in Eurasia 8 3. Repositioning NATO and US bases in Europe 20 Germany 23 South-Eastern Europe: the Black Sea bases 24 Central Europe 27 The Eastern Mediterranean region 29 4. South-West and North-East Asia 31 South-West Asia 31 East Asia and the Indian Ocean region 36 5. Russia and the near abroad: from retreat to recapture 43 Central Asia: replaying the ‘Great Game’? 46 Russia’s southern perimeter 56 Belarus: facing NATO’s advance 62 Table 5.1. Major Russian foreign military bases and installations in Eurasia 46 6. Conclusions 63 About the author 69 Preface The basing of military forces on foreign territory, at locations leased from or co-occupied with the local authorities (or, rarely, held extraterritorially), is a prac- tice almost as old as warfare itself. Bases can have an economic, political or demonstrative rationale but in all periods their pattern has been linked with the strategic dictates and relationships of the time. Observing changes in the way they are placed, owned and used can provide many clues to the most significant trends of security evolution. This paper examines what has been happening in basing practices in Eurasia since the end of the cold war. Up to 1989–90, bases were used by the Soviet Union, the United States and their military alliances in an essentially symmetrical way. Each side clustered its for- ward bases in the heart of Europe to block and deter the other, while the larger powers competed for extra-European bases that could serve their global mobility or give an edge in regional conflicts. That pattern has been replaced by a less symmet- ric and possibly transitional situation. In places such as Central Asia, the South Caucasus and the eastern edge of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia and the USA are still engaged in a mutual balancing game. More broadly, however, US basing policy has been transformed by the demands of the global campaign against new (including non-state) threats and of operations in Afghani- stan and Iraq; while Russia’s overall basing pattern has drawn inwards to provide a defensive cordon around its territory and to pin down its remaining allies. Neither great power has found the process simple, and the USA in particular has run into sensitive disputes with friendly host countries as well as suspicions and protests from Russia. US basing has also become a more nationally driven policy, with new examples of NATO’s collective use of facilities limited to the new theatres of conflict outside Europe. Emerging powers like China and India are barely starting to join in the basing game but seem likely to have such ambitions in future. Zdzislaw Lachowski tells the story of Euro-Asian basing changes in meticulous detail in this paper, bringing together a collection of facts and lessons that has not been easily accessible in one place before. His conclusions raise interesting ques- tions about the rationality and viability of current basing strategies, hinting that further changes might be in store as a result of global policy reassessment by future US administrations and further shifts in political relationships and the nature of regimes in the post-Soviet sphere. This analysis should be of equal value to mili- tary and political observers and to those interested in tracking the strategies of the major powers. I am grateful to Zdzislaw Lachowski for his original and thorough research, to Jetta Gilligan Borg and Caspar Trimmer for the editing, and to David Cruickshank for the maps. Alyson J. K. Bailes Director, SIPRI June 2007 Abbreviations and acronyms AWACS Airborne warning and control system BRAC Base Realignment and Closure CBO Congressional Budget Office CFE Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (Treaty) CIA Central Intelligence Agency CIS Commonwealth of Independent States CRS Congressional Research Service CSL Cooperative security location CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organization DOD Department of Defense EETF Eastern European Task Force EFI Efficient Facilities Initiative ERI En route infrastructure (base) EU European Union EUFOR European Union Forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina FOB Forward operating base FOS Forward operating site GUAM Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova IGPBS Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy ISAF International Security Assistance Force K-2 Karshi–Khanabad (base) km kilometre KFOR Kosovo Force MOB Main operating base NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization OBC Overseas Basing Commission OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe PAC Patriot Advanced Capability (missile) QDR Quadrennial Defense Review SACEUR Supreme Allied Commander Europe SFOR Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization UN United Nations WTO Warsaw Treaty Organization 380 240 73 3 Iceland 70 56 65 40 55 28 Nether- lands UK 3 50 3 E. Poland Belgium W. Czechoslovakia Germany 43 Hungary Mongolia 15 9 Italy Portugal 2 5 Spain 3 Turkey Greece South Japan Korea US personnel British personnel French personnel Soviet personnel 17 5 3 Figures are thousands of personnel Viet Nam deployed Guam Philippines (USA) British, French, Soviet and US troops based abroad in Eurasia, 1990 150 72 Nether- 10 lands UK Germany 13 Belgium 1 Ukraine 1 35 16 Moldova 12 37 Kosovo 29 3 Georgia Italy 1 Kyrgyzstan 3 2 Armenia 8 Spain Tajikistan Greece Japan 12 South Korea 12 Afghanistan Iraq Bahrain 1 Qatar US personnel Russian personnel Other personnel Figures are thousands of personnel 3 deployed Guam (USA) Russian, US and other troops based abroad in Eurasia, 2006–2007 1. Introduction On 16 August 2004 the President of the United States, George W. Bush, announced that some 60 000–70 000 US troops stationed in Asia and Europe would be returned to the USA over the coming decade. This realignment of forces signals a major change in US global and regional policies that will affect the struc- ture of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) base deployment (referred to as ‘basing’ or ‘forward basing’ by the military) throughout the world.1 In the 1990s Russia had begun pulling out of its cold war spheres of influence, but it either halted or began to reverse its base withdrawal process at almost the same time as Bush’s plan was made known. Large numbers of foreign military bases are located in Eurasia.2 Most of them are the legacy of the cold war and are situated at places that were possible points of engagement between NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). When the cold war ended, the rationale for this pattern of military basing ceased to be valid. However, concepts change more rapidly than practices, and the USA took almost 15 years to develop a new policy for alignment of forces that could respond rapidly and flexibly to the changed situation. Base realignment is the central elem- ent of a larger transformation of the US global defence posture by updating the type, location, number and capability of the US military forces, and the nature of US alliances. The major stimulus for this realignment was the launch of the so-called ‘global war on terrorism’ following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the USA. The key threats to the USA were redefined as growing religious extremism and other asymmetric threats (e.g. unconventional warfare, crime, and the threat of the proliferation of weapons and technologies of mass destruction). The US ‘global war on terrorism’ focuses on sources of instability in the crisis-prone regions of Asia and the greater Middle East3 and the problem of access to energy resources. 1 In this paper the term ‘base’ is used for a location from which operations are launched or sup- ported, or an area or location containing installations or facilities that provide logistical or other sup- port. See e.g. US Department of Defense, DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, URL <http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/>. Historically, the term base implies unrestricted access and freedom of operation for the user state both at the base and from it. Nowadays, a foreign base is defined as a facility where the user state’s access is restricted (e.g. through status of forces agree- ments). Robert H. Harkavy has proposed using ‘foreign military presence’ for both bases and facil- ities. See Harkavy, R. H., SIPRI, Bases Abroad: The Global Foreign Military Presence (Oxford Uni- versity Press: Oxford, 1989), pp. 7–8. Forward basing pre-positions military personnel or equipment at strategic foreign locations so that they can be used in time of crisis or combat with minimum delay. 2 Eurasia is defined here as the landmass of Europe and Asia, except the Middle East. 3 This paper uses Rosemary Hollis’s definition of the greater Middle East: ‘bounded by Turkey in the north and the Arabian Peninsula state of Yemen to the south, and stretching from Egypt, Israel and Lebanon in the west to Afghanistan in the east’. Hollis, R., ‘The greater Middle East’, SIPRI Yearbook 2005: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2005), p.