Militarizing the Black Sea, the American Way
The AFP on Tuesday presented yet another reason for why America disapproves of Europe – it’s just not militaristic enough. The criticism centers on lagging in defense spending from most European states, and the inability of these states (under NATO command) to field enough troops when and where needed.
Far from questioning whether it’s actually an overly ambitious and imperialistic US foreign policy that’s to blame for creating a situation of unreasonable military expectations, the US Ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, could only lament: “…if we are going to be in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia, if were going to have an outreach to the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, you need forces, well-equipped, well-trained forces.”The ambassador’s unhappiness over the perceived European failure partially has to do with a continual forced disregard of the implications of such statements; after all, his comment starts off with an ‘if.’ In any other time, the American people might be inclined to treat it as a big ‘if.’ Yet how often do American policy planners in this intervention-mad age question that fundamental conditional? Why should Europe feel it has to necessarily serve as both human resources provider and consumer of American military technology, when there has never been a proper debate over the relative benefits of such missions and especially, such ‘outreach’ as Mr. Burns mentions?
Fear not, good interventionists! There’s no similar qualms in Bulgaria. This ambitious up-and-coming ally is only to happy to offer itself as an experimental body for the execution of Donald Rumsfeld’s new plan – to replace the giant and no longer strategic bases in locations like Germany with “mobile,” rapid-reaction camps much closer to Iraq and the Middle East.
The US has five locations in mind for its new bases. One of these, Sarafovo Airport in the Black Sea city of Bourgas, was already used as a station for “…refueling aircraft during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,” according to the AFP. The same agency quoted Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov that an “eventual permanent deployment” of US soldiers “would involve up to 3,000 people who would be stationed in one or two bases.” Now, the US Congress is to choose from several locations which, in addition to Sarafovo, will include another airbase, an army camp, a firing range, rocket-launching pad and a naval base as well.
On an official recent visit, Gen. James Jones, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), announced the continuation of training operation ‘Active Endeavor,’ which began after 9/11 and utilized some 40,000 warships in Bulgaria’s stretch of the Black Sea. However, in order to lead these war games, the US must break international conventions (imagine that!) in the process: “…the USA could not carry out the operation in the Black Sea because of the Montreaux Convention of 1936, reported Bulgaria’s Standart on 12 January. “That is why part of the US navy ships will sail under Bulgarian flag to take part in the operation.” (The story of how the US got around this little snag, to help supply KFOR in Kosovo through Bourgas’ port in 2001, can be found here). The newspaper also claims that NATO special commandos will be trained at another base, the Novo Selo firing range.
Gen. Jones claimed that the US military “will have a unique presence in Bulgaria… completely different from that seen so far across Europe,” according to the Sofia News Agency.
According to the AFP, Jones cryptically revealed that “…there is much more potential here involving NATO than we are currently discussing.”
Now, what could this mean?
Probably it is a tacit admission of the imperial desire to make the Black Sea into an American lake, much the same as the Mediterranean was once a Roman one. When we consider that Turkey is a major US ally, that Romania is also in line for hosting US bases, that client state Georgia is similarly in the bag and that even the Ukraine has now come out of the deep freeze – what with the recent US-enabled victory of Viktor Yushchenko as president – it quickly becomes obvious that US machinations in the Black Sea have at least as much to do with whittling away Russia’s stretch of seacoast as they do with fighting the so-called war on terror. Putin’s loss of Ukraine, especially, damages Russia’s influence in this vital waterway and could (if Ukraine realigns itself with the West, as seems likely) conceivably result in the permanent expulsion of the Russian Black Sea Fleet from bases it continues to occupy on the Ukrainian section of Black Sea coast. An agreement reached between the two countries gave Russia a lease on property through 2017.