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WASHINGTON: The United States is planning to build at least six bases across the Middle East and Central Asia in the next 10 years for “deep storage” of munitions and equipment to prepare for regional war contingencies. According to William M Arkin, author of more than 10 books on military affairs, and a former US army intelligence analyst and nuclear weapons expert during the Cold War, the plan came to attention this month through contracting documents that call for the continued storage of everything from packaged meals ready to eat (MREs) to missiles in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, as...

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2006 – The U.S. government has announced plans to remove its forces from Naval Air Station Keflavik, in Iceland, this fall, but reaffirmed its ongoing commitment to the island nation's security. U.S. Ambassador Carol van Voorst and U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns notified Icelandic Prime Minister Halldor Asgrimsson and Foreign Minister Geir H. Haarde of the decision yesterday, Terry Davidson, a State Department spokesman, confirmed. The State Department officials assured the Icelandic leaders the United States will continue to honor its agreement to provide Iceland's defense under the auspices of NATO and will work with the...

Poland to become the stronghold of US-led policies in Europe 09.02.2006 Source: Has the USA simply found a supporter in Europe or has Poland lost its notorious pride? This week Polish President Lech Kaczynski makes his first official visit to the United States as a head of state. He gave an interview to journalists last Friday and from this it is possible to deduce that Poland aspires to the role of being America’s main ally in Europe. Furthermore, Lech Kaczynski has given his transatlantic ally a "present" by promising that he wouldl leave a contingent of Polish troops in Iraq...

HEIDELBERG, Germany — The reshuffling of U.S. Army Europe continued Thursday with the announcement that dozens of Germany-based units will be inactivated, changed or moved later this year. About 7,200 military positions and 11,000 family members will be affected, with about 4,800 positions being moved to the U.S. or elsewhere, and 2,400 being reassigned within Europe, according to Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, USAREUR’s deputy chief of staff for operations. In addition, 40 U.S. and 38 German civilians assigned to the units will be either moved or lose their jobs. The moves are part of the Army’s plan to establish four...

LONDON (Reuters) - Libya expects the United States to remove it soon from its list of state sponsors of terror, clearing a major obstacle to investment in some of the world's most coveted oilfields, a top Libyan official said on Wednesday. He was "positive and confident" the former pariah state would be wiped from the list, with the expected backing of the Oasis Group of U.S. oil firms that have just negotiated their return to fields they were forced to abandon in 1986. "I would expect logically they will be willing to put the right message across to the U.S....

US moves diplomats out of Europe Rice said the US must be "where the action is" The US is to reduce the number of its diplomats posted to Europe, and will send more to other countries, including China, India, Nigeria and Lebanon. "America must begin to reposition our diplomatic forces around the world," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday. She said it was an anomaly that the US had the same staff levels in Germany as in India, more than 10 times the size. She said the redeployment would help foster democratic and economic change. Ms Rice told...

BUCHAREST, Romania | “It took them more than 60 years – but better late than never!” This is how 82-year-old Dimitrie Balus greeted the news that the United States would soon station troops permanently in Romania. The Transylvanian villager is one of the many Romanians who after World War II hoped for American troops to come and liberate their country from Russian occupation. Sixteen years after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and three years after former Warsaw Pact member Romania joined NATO, it’s official: the Americans are coming. NO MORE COLD WAR U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and...

WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 4: In a bureaucratic reorganisation that reflects new geopolitical thinking here, the Bush Administration is all set to combine its engagement with Central Asia and the Subcontinent. Soon, the State Department and the National Security Council in the White House will pursue future diplomatic activity relating to the two regions together. Besides seeking to revive historic links between the regions, Washington hopes to embed Afghanistan in an enduring regional framework and create the basis for Indo-Pak economic cooperation, say analysts. India, which has nursed ambitions of a larger role in Central Asia, is expected to be the linchpin...

Rice signs US-Romania bases deal The deal marks a major shift in US strategy in Europe US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has signed a deal allowing the US to use military bases in Romania. It is the first such deal to be signed with a former communist country in eastern Europe. Ms Rice arrived in Romania from Germany, on the second leg of a European tour overshadowed by a controversy about CIA operations. She stressed that the US does not carry out or condone torture, but did not comment on alleged secret CIA prisons. She has defended the CIA...

United States to open military base in Romania 2005-12-06 21:09 By Radu Marinas BUCHAREST, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Romania and the United States signed a deal on Tuesday to open U.S. military bases in the former Soviet bloc country, naming an airfield entangled in controversy over alleged CIA jails in Europe as one location. The new bases are part of a shift in the Pentagon's focus from Cold War European facilities towards smaller bases closer to hot spots such as the Middle East. But the deal comes at a sensitive time for both Washington and Bucharest, following allegations that the...

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The Bush administration is quietly seeking to build with Britain, Japan and India a globe-spanning coalition system that can contain China, claims a leading neo-conservative thinker. 'Over the past six months, the Bush administration has upgraded its budding strategic partnerships with India and Japan. Along with the steady special relationship with Great Britain, what is beginning to emerge is a global coalition system -- it is too soon to call it a true alliance -- for the post-Cold War world,' argues Thomas Donnelly, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In a new essay...

The Big Four Alliance The New Bush Strategy By Thomas Donnelly Posted: Friday, December 2, 2005 NATIONAL SECURITY OUTLOOK AEI Online   Publication Date: December 2, 2005   December 2005Over the past six months, the Bush administration has upgraded its budding “strategic partnerships” with India and Japan. Along with the steady "special relationship” with Great Britain, what is beginning to emerge is a global coalition system--it is too soon to call it a true alliance--for the post-Cold War world. Much work remains to be done to translate the expressions of similar political interests and values into usable military strength. Still,...

Coming upon the recent news that the US Navy is pulling the plug on Naval Station Rota, the US Navy has just announced the withdrawal of forces from La Maddalena as Part of "Transformation." In a move to adjust its forces to meet current and future readiness needs in the European theater, the United States and Italy have decided to remove U.S. Navy forces from La Maddalena, Sardinia. In a carefully worded announcement, the US claims that "the capabilities provided by the installation are no longer required due to the realities of the new century’s security environment." A cynic might...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. and Polish officials are discussing building a base in Poland from which U.S. interceptors could shoot down long-range missiles as part of a global defence network, a Pentagon official said Wednesday. It would be the first American strategic missile defence site outside U.S. territory, and would be designed to defend all of Europe against intercontinental-range missiles - primarily those launched from the Middle East. No decision has been made to proceed with a missile defence base in Poland and alternative sites in Europe are a possibility. But the Pentagon official said Poland appears to be the...

The world’s understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict seems to be entering a new period different from what it had been in the past 10 years. Call it the Third Paradigm era. A paradigm is a way of envisioning something, a guiding concept, a framework for definition. People may not be aware they hold such an underlying paradigm, but it guides their thinking. The Paradigm One Era: During this time, roughly from Israel’s creation in 1948 until well into the 1980s, the conflict was defined in terms of being aggression against a legitimate state. Israel, under attack by those who wanted...

TOKYO (AP) - Plans to realign U.S. military forces in Japan triggered protest rallies Sunday and drew harsh opposition from local officials and citizens' groups, who say not enough troops are leaving the country and the burden of hosting them is just being shifted from one community to another. On Japan's southern island of Okinawa - which hosts most of the 14,460 U.S. Marines in the country - activists staged a 5,000-strong rally to protest crimes, noise and pollution long associated with Marine bases and to demand that more U.S. troops be moved out of Japan than the 7,000 Marines...

MAHAJAN (India), October 16 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will not set up any military blocs in the near future, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday. "The era of blocs and unions is becoming a thing of the past in the 21st century," Ivanov said. Speaking of Russia's cooperation with India and China, Ivanov said it was mutually beneficial and developed in all areas, including culture, trade, and military technology. Ivanov also said Russia was happy with the progress India and China had recently made in their bilateral cooperation.

Pat Robertson, a former GOP presidential candidate and host of the "700 Club" daily Christian TV show, noted, "If you read back in the Bible, the letter of the apostle Paul to the church of Thessalonia, he said that in the latter days before the end of the age that the Earth would be caught up in what he called the birth pangs of a new order. And for anybody who knows what it's like to have a wife going into labor, you know how these labor pains begin to hit. I don't have any special word that says this...

WARSAW -- In Mitteleuropa, the roles have reversed. The boring, steady Germans last Sunday opted for political chaos by failing to elect a government. A week later, the passionate but messy Poles expressed no ambivalence in picking a clean slate of leaders. Polish former communists were chucked out after a single term, keeping alive a losing streak for incumbents dating back to the birth of democratic Poland. The fresh Polish twist is found in the victor's camp. Two conservative parties built a majority around the very ideas that Angela Merkel and her center-right allies failed to sell Germans on. Law...

Some once famously dissenting ideas now govern U.S. foreign policy, maturing as they go. BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Thursday, July 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT The post-Cold War era has seen a remarkable ideological experiment: Over the past 15 years, each of the three major American schools of foreign policy--realism, liberal internationalism and neoconservatism--has taken its turn at running things. (A fourth school, isolationism, has a long pedigree, but has yet to recover from Pearl Harbor and probably never will; it remains a minor source of dissidence with no chance of becoming a governing ideology.) There is much to be learned...