AFTER TWO WARS:

REFLECTIONS ON THE AMERICAN STRATEGIC 

REVOLUTION IN CENTRAL ASIA

Stephen J. Blank

July 2005

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FOREWORD

 In the course of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military 

has deployed forces to hitherto undreamt of destinations in Central 

Asia and the Caucasus. These deployments reflect more than the 

exigencies of specific contingencies, but rather are the latest stage in a 

revolution in strategic affairs that has intersected with the coinciding 

revolution in military affairs. Thanks to the linked developments in 

these two processes, the Transcaspian area has now become an area 

of strategic importance to the United States for many reasons, and 

not just energy. 

 In this monograph, Dr. Stephen Blank explains how this newly 

won access to the Transcaspian has come about and why it will 

remain important to the United States. He then offers analysis and 

recommendations as to how we might retain access to deal with 

future contingencies. By examining intersecting geopolitical and 

strategic trends, Dr. Blank carries on the Strategic Studies Institute’s 

mission of providing timely and relevant analysis to help the national 

security community better understand and meet the strategic and 

policy challenges of our time. To that end, the Strategic Studies 

Institute presents this work.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

STEPHEN J. BLANK has served as the Strategic Studies Institute’s 

expert on the Soviet bloc and the post-Soviet world since 1989. Prior 

to that he was Associate Professor of Soviet Studies at the Center 

for Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education, Maxwell Air 

Force Base, and taught at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and 

at the University of California, Riverside. Dr. Blank is the editor of 

Imperial Decline: Russia’s Changing Position in Asia, coeditor of Soviet 

Military and the Future, and author of The Sorcerer as Apprentice: 

Stalin’s Commissariat of Nationalities, 1917-1924. He has also written 

many articles and conference papers on Russia, the Commonwealth 

of Independent States, and Eastern European security issues. Dr. 

Blank’s current research deals with weapons proliferation and the 

revolution in military affairs, and energy and security in Eurasia. His 

most recent SSI publications include “The Foundations of Russian 

Strategic Power and Capabilities,” in Beyond Nunn-Lugar: Curbing the 

Next Wave of Weapons Proliferation Threats from Russia, edited by Henry 

D. Sokolski and Thomas Riisager, April 2002; and The Transatlantic 

Security Agenda: A Conference Report and Analysis, December 2001. Dr. 

Blank holds a B.A. in History from the University of Pennsylvania, 

and a M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.
v

SUMMARY

 Since September 11, 2001, the United States has fought two 

wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In these wars, the United States has 

accomplished or more precisely revealed a strategic revolution. Most 

notably, U.S.-led coalitions sustained forces in Central Asia and the 

Caucasus over an extended period by sea and air for the first time in 

history. Thus, American leaders and commanders revealed that the 

new military capabilities hitherto associated with the Revolution in 

Military Affairs (RMA) could be deployed anywhere in the world, 

that U.S. forces would and could be optimized for global power 

projection capabilities, and that new theaters like Central Asia were 

of considerable strategic importance to Washington. Their actions 

reflected a parallel to the ongoing Revolution in Strategic Affairs 

(RSA) that reaffirmed the importance of that area as a potential 

theater of strategic operations (a term taken originally from Soviet 

military thought).

 However, we must understand that the importance of Central 

Asia and the Caucasus to the United States lies not only in the presence 

of abundant energy resources, but also in these zones’ geographic 

proximity to key theaters in Europe, the Middle East, and across 

Asia. Military power can be projected back and forth from any one 

of these theaters; the Transcaspian area that embraces the Caucasus 

and Central Asia is pivotal to any such exercise. Access to these 

zones has become an issue of great strategic and policy importance, 

in view of America’s global responsibilities and vital interests (not to 

mention less critical interests around the world).

 However, these zones are epicenters of domestic instability and 

great power rivalry. Moreover, the U.S. concept of foreign access 

is changing dramatically due to the new Global Posture Review. 

Therefore, our future access to these areas will not resemble that 

of the past with sprawling bases, but will remain relatively austere 

pending future contingencies. To secure and maintain that access, 

it is not enough to have a purely contractual military relationship 

with these states when a crisis arises. Instead, we need a holistic and 

strategically conceived program of interaction with them to help them 
vi

ward off challenges to domestic security and threats from nearby 

great powers who would like to subordinate these new and fragile 

states to their own quasi-imperial designs. Thus the United States 

has to help strengthen our partners not only against terrorism, but 

also against threats that could lead to it if state order breaks down. In 

other words, our presence must become one that is regarded by local 

governments as not being a purely contractual or one-shot deal, but 

rather as having a legitimacy acquired by an overall improvement of 

domestic and foreign security.

 The central lesson of the RSA is that there are no intrinsically 

nonstrategic regions from which U.S. vital interests cannot 

be threatened. If we wish to avoid being either surprised or 

overextended, we need extensive peacetime engagement with likeminded foreign militaries and governments in the Transcaspian and 

elsewhere, so that in wartime we can fight with them and gain access 

to those theaters. This effort must be seen as a critical factor of our 

strategy. The purpose of this monograph is to analyze the trends 

that have gone into making that RSA, particularly as it affects the 

Transcaspian and surrounding regions, and what the United States 

must do to retain the advantages that have accrued to us by virtue of 

the capabilities that we have built and assembled.
1

AFTER TWO WARS:

REFLECTIONS ON THE AMERICAN STRATEGIC 

REVOLUTION IN CENTRAL ASIA

INTRODUCTION

 Today, Central Asia and the Caucasus are epicenters of 

international rivalry. The visible rivalries among Moscow, 

Washington, Beijing, and even Brussels (home of the European 

Union [EU] and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]) 

for influence in either or both of these areas are the stuff of headlines. 

But the competition for great power influence in these areas is hardly 

new. Even before September 11, 2001, American interests in Central 

Asia and the Transcaucasus were growing. But the subsequent 

wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have triggered a commensurate and 

enormous growth of U.S. interests in those two adjoining regions. 

Today, those interests loom so large that some elements of the U.S. 

military reportedly were or are seeking permanent facilities or socalled operating sites there. Local and Russian newspapers openly 

state that U.S. forces are building such bases or advocating their 

presence.1 These articles are often fabrications since U.S. officials 

continue to deny the intention to establish permanent bases there; 

have not announced the final results of the Global Posture Review; 

and must work out legal arrangements concerning overflight rights, 

transit rights, and status of forces with all the host countries involved. 

However, America’s expanding strategic presence and interests in 

the Transcaspian region are taken for granted and are closely tied 

to the lessons of its two recent wars.2

 Another reason why these 

articles carry an inflammatory edge that distorts their meaning is 

that they tend to leave the reader with the notion that old-fashioned 

imperialist bases are at issue when an altogether different concept is 

being discussed. In fact, the concept under discussion in Washington 

did not agitate the Russian government once it was presented to the 

leadership in Moscow.3

 As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently testified, 

it is important that U.S. forces be located in places where they are 

“wanted, welcomed, and needed.” Building new relationships with 
2

states that are vital to the war against terrorists, e.g., Uzbekistan, 

Kyrgyzstan, and behind them, Georgia and Azerbaijan as logistical 

staging areas, is a critical part of our evolving defense strategy. 

Similarly, leaders of U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), like 

former Commander General Tommy Franks (USA Ret.), openly 

recognized the importance of access to the Caucasus and Central 

Asia as possible bases and staging areas in both the war against AlQaeda and in the war against Iraq.4

 As a result, the United States 

is interested in acquiring a permanent access to what Secretary 

Rumsfeld calls operating sites, not permanent bases as they are 

traditionally understood.5

 The geostrategic lessons and consequences of these wars point 

strongly to the strategic importance of permanent access to these 

areas in future contingencies. Therefore, an equally important need 

is to establish agreements with local governments for a mutually 

acceptable form of permanent U.S. military access, as needed 

or requested. That need, in turn, presupposes a comprehensive 

engagement with those states so that agreements facilitating access can 

be negotiated on the basis of common understandings of the threats 

to both parties and the specific circumstances where and when access 

will be granted. Indeed, agreements allowing transit, overflight, and 

access rights and defining the status of forces can be essential support 

instruments in case of threats to these governments’ security, which 

is not unlikely. As Secretary Rumsfeld and many others have often 

stated, we must be able to move troops rapidly and on short notice to 

unforeseeable contingencies against extremists or other enemies. At 

the same time, those troops must be flexibly configured, able to gain 

access to a wide variety of areas, enjoy a welcoming or hospitable 

attitude from the host country/ies involved, and be able to operate 

under whatever circumstances may arise.

 Insofar as these desiderata apply to the deployment of troops in 

and around the Caspian basin, which is a landlocked area, we also 

must update the legal bases for these troops’ deployment there―i.e., 

transit, overflight, and status of forces agreements―should they have 

to deploy abroad rapidly. These legal arrangements should also 

encourage interoperability and burdensharing among our partners 

and ourselves, while giving troops the necessary legal protections. 

As part of this new strategy, Secretary Rumsfeld observed that we 
3

are transforming our global posture so that in Asia, as elsewhere, 

“our ideas build upon our current ground, naval, and air access to 

overcome vast distances, while bringing additional naval and air 

capabilities forward into the region.”6

 Accordingly, the purpose of this monograph is to examine the 

strategic justification of this need for access by examining what the 

advent of globally capable U.S. forces into these regions has meant, 

and to recommend programs and/or principles that might help obtain 

both permanent access to the Transcaspian region (Transcaucasus 

and Central Asia) and reliable strategic partners, if not allies, from 

among local governments who can work with the United States.

 The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq signify the fundamentally altered 

strategic importance of the Transcaspian region. U.S. operations in 

these wars conjoined two simultaneous revolutions: the revolution 

in military affairs (RMA)―the application of information technology 

to military operations―and a concurrent revolution in strategic 

affairs (RSA) discussed below, as well as their lessons. The ensuing 

geostrategic consequences resonate particularly forcefully insofar 

as the Transcaspian region―hitherto a relatively inconsequential 

strategic theater―is concerned.

 Four linked strategic lessons have emerged from these wars. 

First, by projecting and sustaining long-term naval, air, and land 

power to the Transcaspian area, U.S. forces achieved a strategic 

revolution there. For the first time in history, externally based naval 

and air military power has been successfully projected and sustained 

against Central Asian forces and targets. As Graham Chapman wrote 

recently, invoking Sir Halford Mackinder, “The Americans have also 

now built bases in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and so 

the maritime powers have penetrated the heartland for the first time 

ever.”7 Indeed, Norman Friedman calls the war in Afghanistan a 

littoral war, highlighting the sustained strategic projection of offshore 

or externally based power into this theater.8

 Second, these capabilities can also be projected from there to all of 

Asia or Europe (including the Middle East) and vice versa, making the 

Transcaspian literally a pivotal Eurasian theater. Precisely because 

we have shown that we can both project and sustain such forces in 

and around the Caspian, a feat that was hitherto deemed impossible, 

we can and must think seriously about the future projection of 
4

naval, land, and air power into or from the Transcaspian theater to 

or from adjacent theaters in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South 

Asia, and/or East Asia. But this capability obligates the United 

States to engage this entire area with more strategic purposefulness 

to maintain permanent access to it and to help ensure its security 

and stability.9 Following Rumsfeld’s injunctions, we must build 

enduring strategic relations with local governments to obtain that 

access and the legal basis for it, while also upgrading their ability to 

defend themselves and work with us. These relations must include 

not only the aforementioned legal agreements permitting transit, 

overflight, and long-term deployments if necessary, they must also 

include purposive U.S. actions to help these countries surmount the 

numerous challenges to their own security that they face daily.

 However, an equally critical third consideration or lesson arises 

from these two preceding lessons of war. America has successfully 

projected and sustained forces into this area, but it has yet to complete 

the task of giving those capabilities the legitimacy that alone can 

make this sustainment successful.10 A political order based to some 

degree upon the continuing use of force in Afghanistan and Iraq, not 

to mention local governments’ use of repression, e.g., Uzbekistan, 

still awaits its transformation into a legitimate political order 

based on freely given consent. Since “power projection activities 

are an input into the world order,” Russian, European, Chinese, 

and American force deployments into the Transcaspian represent 

potentially competitive and profound attempts at effecting a longterm restructuring of the regional strategic order.11 Therefore to build 

the relationships we desire after having projected force into the area, 

we must understand the strategic stakes inherent in its achievement 

and then find a way to resolve one of the oldest questions of political 

theory, i.e., how to create a legitimate political order based on consent 

out of that force’s deployment.

 In other words, the acquisition of access must reflect a prior 

harmony of interests and threat assessments on the part of all the 

partners rather than being merely a bribe against expected future 

political payoffs or something coerced out of a reluctant host 

government.12 Without the conversion of an order based upon 

the deployment of forces to the Transcaspian into one based on 

legitimacy, Central Asia and the Caucasus, notoriously unstable 
5

areas with numerous pathologies and potentials for instability, 

could descend into that instability, at least in selected places, if not 

collectively. Then neither we nor local governments will be able to 

exploit the opportunities provided by our strategic revolution to 

achieve America’s paramount interests of enhancing their security, 

independence, and sovereignty.

 This necessity of transforming force into consent and legitimacy 

is another reason for a robust American engagement with host 

governments and their militaries, since their territories’ importance 

to the United States has grown, and their stability and security is 

vital in the war on terrorism. The third lesson, then, is that it does 

not suffice to be able to deploy and sustain long-range strike forces 

in the theater; the theater itself must be cooperatively reordered by 

the United States, its other partners, and host governments. They 

must work together to stabilize it and legitimize U.S. presence and 

a political order that has a genuine chance to evolve in a liberal, 

democratic direction enjoying popular support. Otherwise, the 

United States will have merely paved the way for the opening of 

another front in the global war on terrorism (GWOT).

 Creating that legitimacy becomes all the more urgent a task 

because our success has already alarmed those with whom we 

must work in the GWOT, but who regard our presence as deeply 

threatening to their vital interests: Iran, Russia, and China. Their 

earlier concern, and that of local governments, that local U.S. facilities 

and assets might be used against Iraq, a war from which they mostly 

recoiled, indicates the great scope of the strategic revolution and 

transformation of regional military capabilities that we effected in 

2001-04 and their consciousness of its implications for them. Similarly, 

their public opposition to U.S. military presence in the area, and in 

Russia’s case to any foreign presence there, has become louder and 

more insistent, even though Russia sees no threat in the projected 

global restructuring of U.S. bases, as noted above.13

 At the same time, conditions for building that legitimacy or 

legitimate order have become more auspicious because European 

and Asian security,―i.e., Eurasian security―including much more 

than energy security, are now understood clearly to be greatly 

influenced by conditions of security in the Transcaucasus and Central 

Asia. In no small measure, this is because the meaning of security 
6

has undergone a transformation that not only analysts, but also 

military officers, acknowledge. Therefore, the EU and NATO accept 

that their own interests mandate greater activity to help stabilize the 

Transcaspian.14 The success of the elections in Afghanistan and of 

the development of a political order based on something more than 

warlordism also should have a positive and reverberating effect 

across Central Asia. This consideration partly explains Europe’s 

growing presence in Afghanistan. That presence has gone beyond 

safeguarding the elections of 2004 to engaging in peace support 

operations in a unified command structure with the U.S. forces there. 

Both the earlier mission of safeguarding those elections’ occurrence 

and legitimacy and conducting post-election peace support and 

counterdrug operations also are acknowledged as key strategic tasks 

for the United States and its NATO partners in Afghanistan.15

 The coincidence of these strategic trends already influences state 

policies throughout the Transcaspian. This revamped and expanded 

definition of security feeds into the fourth lesson of this strategic 

revolution. To maximize the value of this RSA for the advancement of 

American interests, we must also develop an appropriate long-term 

and multidimensional strategy for retaining permanent access to the 

area. Military engagement must be part of this multidimensional 

and interagency strategy. Such access need not entail a permanent 

forward presence, or permanent bases in the traditional sense of 

such facilities, as in Germany. But it does require a comprehensive 

engagement with governments and armed forces on both sides of 

the Caspian Sea and permanent access to military bases in times 

of crisis and of actual contingencies or so-called forward operating 

locations (FOL) or operating sites. Essentially, this means that U.S. 

forces and other agencies of the U.S. Government must devise a 

comprehensive strategy of security cooperation and regional statebuilding activities that fosters this permanent engagement with local 

governments. Likewise, the armed forces cannot evade the tasks 

of nation-building in these states, if this engagement strategy is to 

succeed. Instead, those tasks are increasingly an intrinsic part of the 

U.S. power projection mission in peacetime to shape the potential 

military theater for future contingencies. In other words, U.S. military 

strategy and policy here must be part of a larger macrostrategy that 
7

embraces the use of all of America’s and its partners’ instruments of 

power: economic, political, military, and informational.

 The concept of an FOL denotes an austere or skeletal base or facility 

with few U.S. or host country troops, but could quickly be readied for 

use in case of an emergency.16 This concept of a base corresponds to 

emerging U.S. thinking about foreign military bases and access, and 

coincides with the need for comprehensive engagement with local 

militaries so that they can operate in our place but at a compatible 

standard or with us, as the situation requires. U.S. military leaders 

explicitly and generally invoke the strategic importance of continuing 

security cooperation that represents a form of that engagement as 

a vital strategic tool, and not just in this region.17 Because of their 

austere, skeletal nature, these projected FOLs are quite distinct from 

bases as traditionally understood, e.g., Ramstein and Rhein-Main Air 

Force Bases. Since the Pentagon and State Department have ruled out 

a permanent base in the Transcaspian in conjunction with the new 

Global Posture Review announced by President George W. Bush in 

August 2004, the quest for permanent access as needed, rather than 

a permanent base, fully comports with stated U.S. policy.18

GEOSTRATEGIC REVOLUTION IN THE TRANSCASPIAN 

AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF REGIONAL SECURITY

 America’s Afghan and Iraqi victories in major combat operations 

invalidated the current strategic argument among some defense 

intellectuals that geography and geographical considerations no 

longer matter much to strategy.19 Allegedly globalization and the 

RMA have so compressed or shrunk the world that holding ground 

and other geographical or geostrategic concerns no longer matter 

much in an age where information is trump. But America’s victories 

also show that strategic victory is inconceivable without holding and 

controlling ground and without effecting a lasting transformation of 

the local political orders from which war has sprung.20 In order to 

achieve those goals, we must find ways to overcome the “tyranny 

of distance” and sustain short and/or long-term deployments in 

the Transcaspian when needed. Those conclusions confirm the 

increased importance of every form of power projection capability, 
8

and the increased ability of air and naval assets to project and sustain 

meaningful military power onto the land. Not surprisingly, a whole 

school of thinking now sees naval warfare as entailing not so much 

combat at sea, as littoral warfare and pushing beyond the littoral 

area well into the interior.21 Such transformations are encouraging 

armies, especially the U.S. Army, into an ever more joint posture 

because other forces can plausibly claim to take over responsibilities 

hitherto organic to the Army or the Marines, such as the provision 

of fire support.22 They can relieve burdens that used to be placed on 

the Army and Marines and allow them to concentrate on fighting for 

and holding ground further inland. Thus technological changes in 

weaponry affect force structures, packages, and missions.

 But technology is not the only driver of transformation, nor does 

technological change occur in a vacuum. The geostrategic revolutions 

revealed by these campaigns also are among the drivers of the current 

transformation of U.S. armed forces and the overall global strategic 

environment. They confirm Paul Bracken’s observations that one 

of the most important results of the application of Western military 

technology to Asia was that it reorganized geopolitical space. That 

is happening again.23 Today the application of military (and civilian) 

technology throughout Asia, whether through military campaigns, 

arms sales, or the normal pattern by which military technology 

diffuses, is radically transforming Asia’s strategic geography and 

our understanding of it. Our response to this technological and 

geostrategic transformation must also undergo an appropriate 

transformation. To understand this technological transfer with all its 

strategic ramifications, we must contextualize it.

 As Randall Collins’ study of Max Weber’s sociology concluded 

with regard to military innovation in world history,

But the crucial aspect of the development, its being made “socially real” by 

becoming part of a form of organization, generally seems to happen in areas 

of greater geopolitical importance. In general, then, although elements of 

innovations may occur because of geographical particularities of where 

certain natural resources are most easily available, it appears that the 

geopolitical centers are where they become organized into effective 

military technologies.24 (italics in the original)
9

 From this perspective, it becomes clear that U.S. power projection 

capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan revealed unprecedented strategic 

possibilities by illustrating the enhanced strategic importance 

of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Using those forms of power 

projection, which can project ground forces into the theater and 

sustain them for a long time, it is now possible to leverage military 

power in and throughout Central Asia, and from there throughout 

Eurasia in hitherto unforeseen ways. Not surprisingly, both halves of 

the Transcaspian, Central Asia and Transcaucasia, enjoy heightened 

analytical and policy interest. Ever more security professionals here 

and abroad realize the importance of addressing the Black Sea and 

Transcaucasia, as well as Central Asia, to complete the stabilization 

of Europe or to help stabilize the “Broader (or greater) Middle East” 

or a reconceptualized Eurasia.25 Many writers here and abroad 

emphasize the strategic importance of Central Asia and/or the 

Caucasus to the current geopolitical order.26 Frequently they see new 

geographical and even strategic unities between the two halves of 

the Transcaspian and areas like South Asia or Europe. For example, 

even before the war in Iraq, Sir John Thomson, a former British High 

Commissioner to India, wrote that,

The geographical definition of South Asia has expanded. If we had any 

doubt before, September 11 has made it clear that we have to take into 

account Afghanistan and its neighbors: Iran to the west, all the former 

Soviet republics to the north, and China to the east. The geographical 

context for South Asia may be even wider. We in the West say―sincerely, 

I believe―that we are not against Islam, but many Muslims do not believe 

it. So, to a greater or lesser extent, our relations with Arab countries can 

be connected with our South Asian policies. And this potential extension 

of our area of concern is being reinforced, unfortunately, by the spiraling 

disaster in Israel-Palestine.27

Brahma Chellaney of India sees those linked regions as constituting 

an integral arc of threat that should bring together governments in 

a common threat perception and hence shared strategic interest.28 In 

2003 Indian Foreign Secretary Kinwal Sebal similarly told an U.S. 

audience that,

Asia traditionally has been seen in terms of its sub-regions, each with its 

own dynamics and its own problems. Traditionally, we deal with them 
10

as unconnected compartments. However, lines that insulate one region 

from the other are increasingly getting blurred by proliferation deals that 

link the east to the west; by the chain of terror network(s) across West, 

South, and Southeast Asia; by the concerns about the safety of commerce 

from the Straits of Hormuz to the Straits of Malacca; by the challenge of 

connecting major consumers of energy to its sources in West and Central 

Asia.29

Most tellingly, Bracken writes that,

The arc of terror cuts across the military and political theaters into 

which the West conveniently divided Asia, essentially for the purpose of 

fighting the Cold War: the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and 

Northeast Asia. The ballistic missile, once launched, does not turn back 

at the line that separates the territory of one State Department desk from 

another. Thus the Gulf War (of 1991) brought the troubles of the Persian 

Gulf to Israel, linking theaters that had once been considered separate. 

Israel, for its part, sends up spy satellites to spy on Pakistan, 2,000 miles 

away, spooking Islamabad into seeing an Indian-Israel squeeze play 

against it. Chinese and Indian military establishments plot against each 

other, making East and South Asia one military space.30

 Note that both Bracken and Chellaney relate technological 

changes in weaponry―the increasingly easy or ready availability 

of ballistic missiles (and other new technologies or weapons)―

to changes in strategic geography, or more precisely, to a new 

understanding of it. Given the Transcaspian region’s proximity to 

the centers of contemporary terrorism, it is hardly surprising that 

both U.S. policymakers and foreign analysts see enhanced U.S. 

attention to Central Asia and the Transcaucasus as essential.31

But while technological change in armaments drives much of this 

revolution; technology cannot substitute for strategy or geography. 

Its contribution to warfare is mediated through geography and 

geostrategic factors, which are then themselves transformed but 

not negated by technological change. Technological change occurs 

within discrete strategic territories, even if it transforms the definition 

of geostrategic space and leads to new geostrategies by the major 

powers. In this way, technological change is contextualized.

 Collins’ conclusion leads us to consider two points that are critical 

to a future discussion. First, given the Transcaspian’s enhanced 

strategic importance, to project effective and lasting military power 
11

into it, innovative technologies, organizational forms of military 

power, and state policies become necessary. U.S. security cooperation 

policies, broadly conceived, embody these innovative organizational 

changes insofar as the armed forces in former communist lands are 

concerned, and NATO’s enlargement to date proves this point.32

Those innovations could serve as a precedent or at least as a point of 

departure for future changes throughout the Transcaspian region. But 

the strategic revolution does not end here. Many observers contend 

that East Asia’s dynamism is propelling it into ever greater strategic 

prominence, and the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) openly 

embraced that view.33 And we have already postulated the essential 

fungibility of military force between Central and East Asia.

 Second, based on Collins’ argument, innovative American 

military operations over the last generation largely have succeeded, 

not least because they created appropriate forms of social and 

military organization to maximize their potential (at least relative 

to all other competitors). The RSA accompanied and was more 

fully realized by our ability to move from technological innovation 

to appropriate operational concepts and organizational forms of 

military power. The current program to transform U.S. military 

forces explicitly seeks to leverage technological change to induce 

organizational change and altered behavior, i.e., a change in military 

organizations’ culture.34 America has hitherto followed the path 

of successful adaptation because transformations in its militarytechnological capability drive both the renovation of its concepts of 

operations and innovative experiments in force structure. Studies 

of other nations’ force structures and operational concepts suggest 

they are being forced to adopt at least some of the innovations made 

in the United States.35 Thus continuing U.S. military success closely 

correlates with the transformation of its partners’ and allies’ military 

forces so that they, too, can maximize their defense potential in 

contemporary conditions. This consideration justifies a priority effort 

to engage partners and allies, and through them their armed forces, 

including those in the Transcaspian, in such combined undertakings. 

Again, the course of NATO enlargement in which applicants had to 

restructure their entire militaries to enter NATO represents a highly 

useful precedent.
12

 Accordingly, the organizational changes that emerged from the 

RMA and RSA affect all the branches of the U.S. military, particularly 

as they increasingly must fight in distant, often inaccessible theaters 

which previously seemed to have little or no strategic significance for 

the United States. Indeed, the continuous reorganization of the forces 

toward greater jointness is closely tied to the need for responsive 

expeditionary forces with a real and fast-moving global strike 

capability across the entire spectrum of conflict.36 Since the United 

States cannot count on direct unmediated access to battlefields, 

even in less distant and remote regions than Afghanistan, it must 

pioneer in creating new joint, expeditionary fighting organizations 

that can project power to distant theaters and gain access to them 

in peacetime and wartime.37 And, if possible, it must urgently find 

a basis for operating in new areas as well, e.g., the Transcaspian. 

As the Lexington Institute recognized in early 2001, i.e., before the 

attacks of September 11, 2001, the issue of access is critical, and yet 

putting large-scale bases in distant lands is increasingly infeasible. It 

observed that,

The Air Force is heavily dependent on overseas bases for its wartime 

effectiveness. But the number of foreign bases to which that service has 

access has declined over 80 percent since the height of the Cold War, and 

all of the 30 or so bases that remain are subject to political constraints 

on their use. In many areas of the world, such as Southeast Asia, the 

Indian subcontinent, and southern Africa, the Air Force does not have 

assured access to a single nearby base. The base-access issue is likely to 

grow worse in the future as the interests of the United States and its allies 

diverge. Indeed, experience suggests the prepackaged presence of U.S. 

forces at foreign bases can contribute to such a divergence by becoming a 

political embarrassment for the host government.38

 Our war in Iraq forcefully confirmed these and earlier warnings 

about the very limited reliability of America’s preexisting base and 

access structure for military operations in Southwest Asia. As Robert 

Harkavy has written,

Planners can no longer count on anything close to such access. A large 

portion of the troops and aircraft once in Europe have since returned 

to the continental United States. Access to, and transit rights over, such 

states as Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, and even Saudi Arabia are problematic, 
13

depending much more than before on the nature of the crisis, despite a 

much larger “permanent” presence in several of the Gulf Cooperation 

Council states. Even Europe could be in question if the political divide 

between the United States and the European Union over Middle Eastern 

policies should widen. Hence, worst-case scenarios have envisioned the 

United States in a tough situation, attempting to intervene in the Gulf 

area mostly from bases in the continental United States and from carrier 

battle groups and amphibious formations.39

Thus the importance of theaters like Central Asia, U.S. strategic access 

to them, and the need for joint warfighting and power projection 

entities are linked and increasingly important, if not vital issues. 

But that linkage also mandates working with partners and allies to 

create enduring coalitions enabling us and them to achieve common 

strategic goals.

 These conclusions tally with those of Owen Cote in his 2000 study 

of access issues and the Navy and with a recent Rand study. Cote 

observes that,

The need to avoid or reduce dependence on assured access to (fixed) 

bases ashore is the one common link between the near and distant 

security environment that can be seen clearly today, and it is therefore the 

dominant measure of effectiveness that U.S. political and military leaders 

should use in fashioning their military forces to meet the demands of the 

new security environment. In responding to this imperative, they will 

need to find ways of making land-based force less dependent on fixed 

bases, and of assuring that naval forces can simultaneously maintain 

access to the sea and project more power from it.40

 Although much of the Transcaspian is landlocked, these 

observations pertain equally to the need for resolving the problem 

of air access so that land-based forces can be inserted into the area. 

Similarly the Rand study concluded that in peacetime our aims are 

threefold: enhancing regional security and stability by reassuring 

partners, deterring adversaries, and developing new options. One 

such option is to expand the “portfolio” of available bases and 

infrastructure needed for military operations through a series of 

both formal and informal understandings. This means we must 

work with as many countries as possible to devise ways of reducing 

our vulnerability to anti-access threats that would bar us from this 
14

or other critical theaters. This means exploring ways to reduce the 

need for large fixed bases and enhancing capabilities for the forcible 

seizure of ports, airbases, and other infrastructure.

 In wartime we and our partners will strive to defend those ports, 

bases, and critical infrastructural nodes to facilitate a buildup of forces 

as needed and simultaneously protect our own and coalition forces. 

We should also protect leadership and population targets that might 

be attacked to drive a wedge between us and our partners or allies, 

or that would coerce them into reducing or curtailing access.41

THE RSA AND THE TRANSCASPIAN

 The Transcaspian increasingly is important to the pursuit and 

attainment of those objectives mentioned above because that region 

lies at the heart of the instability that plagues the world and threatens 

U.S. and allied interests. As such, its importance is rising, and not 

only for us.42 The attacks of September 11 showed that threats to 

vital U.S. (or other states’) interests could come from anywhere on 

the globe and achieve total surprise against their intended targets. 

Thus those attacks confirmed earlier trends in the Central Asian 

and larger Asian contexts that had already heightened those areas’ 

strategic importance before September 11. Consequently, today, as 

Robert Cooper, assistant to EU Secretary for Foreign and Defense 

Policy Javier Solana, observes, “homeland defense now begins with 

Afghanistan and Iraq.”43 Eurasia’s strategic destiny is inseparable 

from that of the Transcaspian area, and this consideration, too, 

should guide NATO and the EU to take a larger role throughout the 

former Soviet Union. NATO and EU leaders have said they would 

do so but that, too often, is not the reality.44

 At the same time, a countertrend is manifesting itself. U.S. 

success in projecting power into the Transcaspian and overcoming 

the tyranny of distance and the threat of so-called Anti-Access and 

Area Denial strategies, including terrorism, against it or its allies, has 

also galvanized that countertrend intended to revitalize those threats 

and deny America or other powers access to Central Asia and other 

adjoining theaters. Even if our forces can now gain access with relative

ease, there is good reason to believe that the capability of potential 

enemies to employ more successful Anti-Access and Area Denial 
15

strategies will rise in the coming decade.45 These countertrends or 

strategies comprise not only an A2 strategy, but also possibly could 

become part of hostile states’ or movements’ broader AD strategy 

and could combine both conventional and unconventional warfare, 

to include the simultaneous use of both insurgency and terrorism, 

coupled with nuclear threats or deterrence, coupled with classical 

conventional threats.

46 If two or more states having vital interests 

in this region and/or nonstate entities like al-Qaeda perceive U.S. 

presence as a threat to their interests, they could form an overt or 

concealed alliance or at least a community of interests excluding 

us from the Transcaspian and other adjacent areas. After all, such 

exclusion is al-Qaeda’s overriding strategic priority. Certainly there 

were signs of this desire for an anti-American bloc, and presumably 

there were discussions about it in Chinese, Russian, and Iranian policy 

before September 11, e.g., the creation of the Shanghai Cooperative 

Organization (SCO) or the Russian-sponsored Collective Security 

Treaty Organization (CSTO).47

 These alternative strategies that would resist or try to curtail 

U.S. access to Central Asia represent what Thomas Christensen 

calls a “counter-revolution” in military affairs. It would threaten 

our presence throughout Asia as rivals increasingly come to possess 

long-range precision strike capabilities using either conventional or 

nuclear weapons and cruise and/or ballistic missiles.48 In geostrategic 

terms, that particular response to U.S. military power aspires to 

imitate our success in projecting power into or from Central Asia to 

or from the rest of Asia, or to prevent the United States from doing 

so again. A similar process is happening in the Middle East where 

proliferation could threaten more and more of Europe with direct 

military strikes, including ballistic and cruise missiles and even 

potential nuclear strikes. This development would mark the first time 

in many centuries that a direct threat to Europe could come from the 

Middle East.49 Here, too, technologically driven transformations are 

revising the existing strategic geography, or our conception of it, and 

the nature of war and of threats to security throughout the area.

 Meanwhile the increasingly visible strategic linkage of the Middle 

East and Eurasia with the Transcaspian allows the United States 

or others to conceive of this expanse of territory as a single theater 

of strategic military operations (this term is taken from the Soviet 
16

term Teatr’ Voyennykh Deistvii―Theater of Military [or strategic] 

Operations [TVD]).50 This perception of an overarching strategic 

unity would constitute one aspect of this RSA. Indeed, other writers 

now assert that,

Military globalization in the international system can be regarded as a 

military relation [that is an] interactive outcome of political institutions 

and a procession of increasing extension. After a long development, 

military globalization has changed the world to a single geographical 

strategic space. Thus, the first aspect of this strategic revolution is the 

transformation of the geostrategic space or battlespace of Central Asia.51

 Thus it is now possible to achieve strategic effects in theaters 

that are quite distant, e.g., from assets based in Central Asia or to 

achieve them in Central Asia from distantly based assets. This 

ability to achieve distant effects through local means is becoming a 

distinguishing hallmark of contemporary warfare.52 The traditional 

idea that war occurs solely between mutually exclusive spatial 

entities, either states or blocs, no longer holds. Permeable boundaries 

and shifting alliances mark the struggles of local militias and the local 

political economies of warfare in specific places. Enemies can no 

longer so obviously control territories; violence often is constrained 

to particular places, but its connections spill over the territorial 

boundaries of conventional geopolitical categories.53

 In this light, the attacks of September 11 might also be understood 

as an internal Arab or Muslim civil war that is centered upon or in 

Saudi Arabia over the future trajectory and destiny of that country 

or world. Osama Bin Laden can then be seen as one of many Saudi or 

Arab diaspora political figures fighting to impose a specific definition 

of that future trajectory upon the Muslim world by attacking the 

United States.

Understood in these terms, the attack on America can be read as a 

strategy to involve the Americans in the struggle in the Middle East more 

directly in a classic strategic move of horizontal conflict escalation where 

an impasse triggers a strategy of broadening the conflict.54

 By widening the front and projecting an “inter-Arab or intraSaudi” war into the United States, thereby globalizing the Islamic 
17

or Arab civil war to erode the alliance to Saudi Arabia and thus the 

stability of the Saudi regime, Bin Laden forced a broader appreciation 

of the Transcaspian’s strategic significance and validated Cooper’s 

insight. Cooper’s telling observation also accords with the insight that 

throughout the former Soviet Union it is now increasingly difficult, 

if not analytically misguided, to separate internal instability within a 

state from a broader regional or even global instability. Accordingly, 

the Transcaspian now comprises an enlarged but flexibly definable 

battlespace or TVD for current and future strategic level operations. 

It is, or can be, a front or several fronts in its own right or in a global 

strategic war. The term strategic battlespace is defined by Dr. Steven 

Metz and Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Millen (USA) of the Strategic 

Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, as follows:

A strategic battlespace is a mode of war in which the operational and 

technological aspects of armed conflict are placed within their broader 

political, economic, social, ecological, legal, normative, diplomatic, and 

technological contexts.55

 Asia’s strategic space normally transcends any single battlespace 

or number of them. However, because strategic capabilities are 

deployable across its breadth, we can view Asia simultaneously as 

either a single enormous theater or as multiple theaters, depending 

on the contingency/ies being considered. Threats, as well as the 

means to counter them, can increasingly exploit the fact that our lead 

in military technology enhances the porosity of borders to our forces. 

Therefore, forces based in any one Asian or even adjacent theater can 

easily move to or strike at threats in other Asian theaters, even over 

great distances. Thus the presence of capable forces in and around 

Central Asia and the Caucasus makes the Transcaspian region a 

pivotal theater or zone from where those capabilities can strike at 

belligerents from Eastern Europe to the Pacific.

 Neither are these strategic realities confined to Central Asia or 

the Transcaspian. Indeed, they apply throughout Asia. A study 

of the West Pacific Islands chain argues that the region’s political 

geography with its open maritime borders that facilitate easy 

movement across them allows separatist movements in one state to 

move freely back and forth to neighboring Southeast Asian or West 
18

Pacific Island states and draw them into the network of destabilized 

areas. The means for doing so include not only arms shipments, but 

also increased attacks on commercial shipping and outright piracy 

in these waters that already were discernible before September 11.56

Assets located or based in one part of Asia can now easily project 

power to at least one or two other formerly discrete strategic theaters 

of Asia (and even beyond them to America or Europe, e.g., North 

Korean missiles) either for offensive or defensive purposes, if not to 

Asia as a whole. 

 American force packages designed for purposes of power 

projection and for national security strategies as a whole are becoming 

ever more modular, with regard to the theaters in which they can be 

located and/or used. Thus, for America, the rising importance of 

the Transcaspian is self-evident. Georgia’s and Azerbaijan’s security 

have become important U.S. interests, for reasons far beyond access 

to energy. They are vital logistic bases where America has access 

and overflight rights that enable the U.S. military to support its 

forward bases in Central Asia and Afghanistan in the war against 

terrorism―a cause that hardly exhausts the reasons for their strategic 

importance.57 But beyond the heightened importance of these two 

former Soviet zones lie the areas adjacent to them: Southeastern 

Europe and the Black Sea area, the Middle East, and South and even 

East Asia. As contemporary wars even before September 11 showed, 

U.S. and other foreign forces are either being projected or optimized 

for purposes of future projection into these zones because of the 

long-term crises that are taking place throughout them. In fact, as the 

author has noted elsewhere, the Transcaspian is already undergoing 

a process of increasing external and internal militarization because 

of the proliferation of threats and a resulting sense of insecurity.58

Therefore, permanent access, if not forward presence, to, from, and 

within these areas, will and should remain fundamental precepts 

and goals of U.S. defense strategy for a long time.

THE TRANSCASPIAN AND THE CONTINUUM 

OF MILITARY OPERATIONS

 But beyond having the requisite capabilities to project forces 

into the Transcaspian or adjoining theaters, our military-political 
19

leadership must also embrace the strategic, i.e., military and 

political, requirements attached to those missions. Militarily, these 

expeditionary and power projection forces must, as required in 

numerous U.S. official documents, dominate throughout the entire

continuum of military operations and the entire battlespace, including 

both terrestrial space and cyber-space.59 And, as the Pentagon has 

belatedly had to acknowledge, that continuum of military operations 

can no longer omit the various types of stability and reconstruction or 

peace operations that follow the termination or alleged termination 

of force upon force operations. Indeed, we now see the Pentagon 

trying to restructure U.S. expeditionary forces to develop and deploy 

a “social intelligence” capability to better perform the tasks of statebuilding (a better term than nation-building) and reconstruction.60

And Rumsfeld has instructed the Pentagon to reconsider the entire 

nature of the range of threats that may be directed against U.S. forces 

to include irregular, disruptive, conventional, and catastrophic 

threats.61

 Despite substantial political-bureaucratic resistance to the idea 

that U.S. forces must help reconstruct states as an essential part of 

strategic operations, the U.S. Government has had to accept that 

“full spectrum dominance” or, more precisely, full domination of 

the aforementioned continuum of military operations means just 

that. Failure to provide for that requirement in U.S. strategy dooms 

our military efforts to enormous prolongation and a high risk of 

failure as occurred in Iraq.62 U.S. armed forces, both in wartime and 

in peacetime, must help assure security in areas like Central Asia. 

Any concept of U.S. victory in America’s current wars that does 

not also insist that those forces dominate not only the combat, but 

also post-combat phases of operations to achieve strategic victory, is 

intrinsically wrong.

 For example, if future contingencies necessitate the presence 

of U.S. combat forces in former Soviet republics, their peacetime 

and wartime missions could include engagement in protracted 

peace and support operations due to the strategic nature of the 

mission and the theater’s socio-political configuration. Or, if these 

governments do not succumb to insurgencies, U.S. forces there can 

perform missions to help them modernize their armed forces and 

render them increasingly interoperable with those of NATO. In any 
20

case, using all the instruments of power, America, either alone or as 

a part of a coalition, will help these states expand their governing 

capacities and make them more capable of defending themselves 

against threats, as well as fostering an end to their isolation from 

the West. These tasks and goals include military missions to help 

achieve this interoperability and to conduct priority operations such 

as anti-terrorist operations, peace support operations, counterdrug, 

counterproliferation operations, and border security. Security 

professionals active in these areas already embrace this expanded 

mission. They know that security includes the entire range of 

activities necessary to reconstruct viable states and societies.63 As R. 

Craig Nation of the U.S. Army War College wrote in 2002,

Disappointments notwithstanding, the capacity to project forces into 

combat zones to enforce peace when diplomatic mechanisms fail, 

maintain peace in the wake of negotiated ceasefires, and ensure a safe 

and secure environment within which a process of post-conflict peacebuilding can go forward remain vital attributes of any effort to contain 

and reverse a proliferation of low and medium intensity conflicts in the 

Adriatic-Caspian corridor. What the poor track record of the past decade 

makes clear is that the means to carry out these tasks effectively are not 

yet in place.64

 However, as suggested above, the advent of U.S. and NATO forces 

into these areas and Afghanistan has triggered a process that could 

reverse Nation’s pessimistic conclusion and offer the capabilities for 

achieving success in this security and state-building process. Given 

the foreseeable consequences of failures in these theaters, the United 

States, as the main strategic actor today and the only one with a global 

projection capability and responsibility, cannot walk away from the 

strategic revolution of our times. America’s global interests and the 

obligations stemming from the GWOT and the war in Iraq compel 

its military and government to devise an enduring and stable way 

to project its power and influence into these crisis zones, and stay 

there until the mission is truly completed. But completion means 

leaving behind a legitimate and secure order, not a country or region 

racked by new threats and wars. Ideally, as well, U.S. forces should 

be able to replicate or extend the pre-2001 achievement of U.S. forces 

in places like Central Asia and engage in security cooperation with 
21

those states and armies to help ensure that, when necessary, we can 

obtain the requisite access.65 Therefore U.S. forces must gain reliable 

access to these theaters during peacetime and wartime. It may become 

necessary for them to conduct, with host nation support, a series of 

missions that embrace the expanded concept of security including 

what we now call Stability and Support Operations (SASO) that are 

openly embraced by the Pentagon and such commands as the U.S. 

European Command (USEUCOM) and USCENTCOM.66

 Gaining wartime access to these or other theaters, therefore, is 

not merely an issue of overcoming the Anti-Access or Area-Denial 

wartime threats, including terrorism, to our forces which many 

commentators and military leaders have discerned in the past.67

It is not enough to argue, as did General John Jumper, the current 

Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, when he commanded U.S. Air 

Forces in Europe (USAFE) that, “Access is an issue until you begin 

to involve the vital interests of the nation that you want and need 

as a host. Then access is rarely an issue.”68 It is also not enough to 

think we need do this only in time of crisis or actual conflict. The 

Clinton administration’s shaping strategy, though derided by its 

successors, was essential to facilitating U.S. entry into Central Asia 

and Afghanistan within a month of September 11.69 It was a wise 

and productive strategic investment and should be continued, if not 

expanded.

 Local governments value this long-term engagement to secure 

reliable access when necessary, because throughout Central Asia 

and the Transcaucasus they correctly perceive the internal integrity, 

security, independence, sovereignty, and external security of their 

states to be permanently at risk either from internal or external threats, 

if not a combination of them.70 They also benefit materially from our 

presence, as in Kyrgyzstan.71 Local governments will also invoke the 

new strategic situation to enhance their own importance and attract 

favorable foreign involvement. U.S. involvement probably will grow, 

not just because the war on terrorism will be protracted or because 

bases, once established, generate their own constituencies and 

arguments in favor of preserving them. The Transcaspian region’s 

importance to Washington also will grow because of the plethora of 

domestic pathologies and misrule that offer ideal breeding grounds 

for terrorism, variants of radical anti-western Islam, and failed states, 
22

and because of the area’s proximity to major Asiatic strategic actors―

Russia, China, Iran, India, and Pakistan, and beyond that, the broader 

Middle East and Europe. This would be the case even if they were 

energy poor. The presence of large energy deposits only enhances an 

already transformed strategic interest. Given those considerations, 

local governments have every reason to draw the United States 

into a deeper involvement with them to ensure, or so they believe, 

their own domestic and external security against the many threats 

confronting them. And that involvement certainly includes a deeper 

bilateral military relationship with the United States, as seen from 

their capitals.

 Under the circumstances, engaging them comprehensively 

as potential host states and partners in both peace and war duly 

necessitates a profound and permanent involvement in their affairs 

by all organs of the U.S. Government, including the military. 

While local governments ultimately may resent our emphasis on 

democratization; this engagement is necessary lest their own policies 

undermine the stability upon which both they and us depend. If 

we seek to optimize the RSA in the Transcaspian and adjoining 

theaters and obtain the necessary access to them, we cannot avoid 

that permanent civil and military involvement in their affairs and 

security.

 Indeed, geopolitical changes since September 11 indicate that 

the capacity whose absence Nation lamented now exists in place, 

even if policy (not only in America) has not yet totally caught up to 

strategic reality. Apart from the activities of combatant commands 

like USEUCOM or USCENTCOM, NATO now plays an active 

role in Afghanistan and many, including its Secretary-General 

Jaap Hoop De Scheffer, think it should play a broader long-term 

role throughout the entire Middle East.72 As pressure upon NATO 

and EU for greater involvement in the Caucasus and Central Asia 

grows, those organizations should and hopefully will also respond 

positively to that pressure and also deploy increased capabilities for 

providing security.73 These considerations alone justify a profound 

Western involvement and investment in all aspects of Afghanistan’s 

reconstruction.
23

THE NEED FOR MILITARY ADAPTATION

 We and our enemies have both been forced into cycles of 

permanent transformation and adaptation. Since we cannot preplan 

enough capability to ensure global and multidimensional readiness 

against every conceivable threat, and because we visibly failed to 

plan sufficiently for a post-conflict scenario in either Afghanistan 

or Iraq, the evolving nature of the threat environment has driven 

the Pentagon to develop new concepts that relate to the need for 

forces tailored to SASO and to irregular or unconventional war.74

These concepts relate to the size and composition of our forces, their 

training, logistics, materiel systems, and operations to provide the 

capabilities we need across multiple dimensions of contemporary 

war.

 Contemporary war’s multidimensionality requires not only 

traditional reactive strategies but a shift in emphasis to proactive 

and preventive activities to thwart terrorism or weapons of mass 

destruction (WMD) usage, or, as Australia has shown in its intervention into Papua New Guinea, even humanitarian intervention 

to prevent a situation from deteriorating into one conducive to 

terrorism.75 While all U.S. forces would have to possess a power 

projection rapid deployment capability, the Army would bear the 

greatest burden of this broad range of missions. That burden is 

great because so much of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 

i.e., SASO, must be fought on land. But beyond that, and bearing 

the Australian example in mind, a RAND study observes that one 

broad strand of Army activities will have to encompass SASO.76

This conclusion accords with that of other military thinkers, e.g., 

General Anthony Zinni (USMC Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief 

of USCENTCOM.77 Traditional military assistance or security 

cooperation will expand to other states and include programs for 

training indigenous forces in new states, e.g., large numbers of 

special forces operations through Foreign Internal Defense (FID) 

missions. This has already fostered a heavy reliance on Army Special 

Operations Forces (ARSOF) for such purposes in host countries, given 

their special role in counterterror operations.78 All these operations 

are costly in money, time, and manpower, and are often protracted. 

But they also are inevitable and essential, not least and not only in 
24

the Transcaspian. They are among our most productive investments 

in regional security and not just because they upgrade local forces’ 

professionalism and ability to work with us as needed.

 Yet at the same time, neither the Army nor the other services can 

ignore conventional theater battles or operations, for those are no 

less likely to occur as Operation ANACONDA and Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM suggested.79 In Asia, numerous efforts are underway to 

achieve both the requisite power projection capabilities discerned 

by other governments besides the United States and also more 

traditional, albeit high-tech, capabilities for major warfare. Let us 

remember that the QDR of 2001 clearly warned against trouble 

throughout Asia and with China, and that some of this trouble would 

look very much like a classic naval and air war over Taiwan or a 

similar high-end conventional contingency.80 A Korean war would 

probably be another example of a theater-level conventional war. 

Therefore we also must constantly consider the possibilities for highend conflict in Asia and the military trends that are plainly discernible 

there. A U.S. military configured to dominate as much of the spectrum 

of conflict as is humanly possible (how does one dominate an actual 

nuclear war?) must be ready to deal with incredibly diverse threats 

and forms of conflict.

 Failure to master any one or more forms of operations will mean 

more than that we cannot claim dominance over the entire spectrum 

of conflict. In turn, that outcome places the attainment of strategic 

victory in jeopardy. Failure to be so prepared means that we shall 

almost certainly find ourselves trapped in an open-ended, protracted, 

and potentially inconclusive conflict. Then failure to achieve a 

durable and legitimate peace after victory magnifies the difficulties 

we will face, and lengthens the duration of our engagement. Failure 

here ultimately substitutes strategic defeat for operational victory 

and displays an inability to adjust means to ends or to adopt a policy 

that can be carried out by military means.

 Any protracted conflict where we fail to achieve our postulated 

strategic outcome will soon be perceived here and abroad first as a 

quagmire and then as an American strategic defeat with unpalatable 

global consequences. Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama 

bin Laden, and Chinese generals and elites, as well as other Arab 

terrorists, all have publicly stated that the United States is intrinsically 
25

weak because it cannot stand casualties or protracted warfare based 

on what they saw in Lebanon and Somalia. Our potential enemies 

evidently still think that they can defeat us by bleeding us despite 

what Iraq now shows and despite the defeats administered to Iraq, 

Serbia, and the Taliban during the 1990s and in 2001-03. Thus, as 

Christensen wrote in 2001,

It is difficult to assess Chinese perceptions on this score, especially 

from open sources, but it is clear that at least one important strand of 

thinking in Beijing elite circles suggests that the United States cannot 

withstand many casualties. In fact, several of my interlocutors and the 

colleagues to whom they refer in my interviews seem to differ not on 

whether the United States can be compelled to back down over Taiwan, 

but how quickly and at what cost to China. A minority seem to believe 

that the United States can be deterred from entering such a conflict at all; 

others believe that a small number of American casualties would lead 

the Americans to withdraw; still others believe that it would require 

hundreds and perhaps as many as 10,000 American casualties to drive 

the United States out.81

 While it might seem callous to say so, 10,000 casualties is not a lot. 

But to foreign elites who cannot understand the United States and are 

imbued with an authoritarian, extreme nationalist, and even quasiFascist point of view, episodes like Lebanon and Somalia outweigh 

other military realities. Indeed, their perception of what happened 

in those places often differs radically from the perceptions of those 

who were in official positions in Washington then.82 Certainly our 

failure to secure a rapid peace and victory in Iraq quickly generated 

pressures to withdraw at once, lest it become a quagmire akin to 

Vietnam. Moreover, the perception of an intrinsic U.S. weakness 

of fiber clearly seems to be a “professional deformation” of these 

adversarial elites and movements insofar as democracies are 

concerned.

 Therefore we must master all the forms of SASO however they 

are called―small wars, or small scale, or low-intensity, or protracted 

conflicts, as well as peace support operations―or suffer repeated 

exposure to them. This mastery is essential because the conflicts that 

could break out in the theaters in question here will largely showcase 

those kinds of warfare and threaten our forces or interests even as 

they involve more classically conceived engagements. Such conflicts 
26

must engage our attention because protracted asymmetric conflicts 

are increasingly our enemies’ chosen form of war. Bitter experience 

also shows that no region or failing state can simply be written off 

as being too far away or too obscure a conflict to merit our attention. 

While we always need a discriminating approach to policy; there 

are no longer any intrinsically nonstrategic regions from which our 

vital interests cannot be threatened. If we wish to avoid being either 

surprised or overextended, extensive peacetime engagement with 

like-minded foreign militaries in the Transcaspian and elsewhere, 

so that in wartime we can fight with them and gain access to those 

theaters, must be seen as critical factors of U.S. strategy.

 Alternatively, robust military-political engagement with those 

states helps reduce the likelihood of insurgencies breaking out or 

of succeeding. This is particularly true if our overall engagement 

strategy, including, but going beyond military relations with these 

states, fosters reform and evolution over time towards more liberal, 

democratic socio-political, and economic forms of governance 

in them. Working with local armed forces, not only to enhance 

interoperability, but to bring them as well to a western standard in 

civil-military relations is an essential component of this strategy. It 

has been indispensable in expanding Europe to include the former 

Soviet bloc and in finally bringing visible signs of pacification to 

the Balkans.83 Even as we take account of individual conditions in 

these states, there is no a priori reason why this strategy should not 

be employed. After all, many post-Soviet states in the Caucasus and 

Central Asia already have indicated their desire to work with NATO, 

or even join it, among them Ukraine, Kazakstan, Azerbaijan, and 

Georgia.84 And even those states that have not expressed a desire to 

work with NATO regard the Western and U.S. military presence as 

an indispensable part of their overall security strategies.

U.S. FORCES IN ASIA, THE RSA, 

AND THE GLOBAL POSTURE REVIEW

 The recurring Chechen attacks on domestic Russian targets, the 

prolongation of that war, and the flood of articles that stated that 

Georgia and Russia were at the brink of war in August 2004 due to 

Tbilisi’s efforts to pressure Moscow to abandon support for its South 
27

Ossetia and Russia’s resistance to that pressure only underscore how 

perilously close many situations in these areas are to conflict and 

how little it might take to start off a real war among local states.

These and other examples of great power involvement here highlight 

the rising importance of the Transcaspian as an area where the local 

states, major Asian and European powers, including NATO, EU, 

Russia, and China, will invest serious security resources and with 

good reason.

 Equally importantly, advanced weapons and information 

technologies, if not other innovative systems, are increasingly 

available to local and external states, not to mention nonstate actors 

like criminals and/or terrorists. This rising availability of modern 

military capabilities virtually ensures that any conflict could cross 

state and regional borders and engage many governments or 

nonstate actors. The ensuing conflicts could easily require new 

kinds of missions and strategic goals, given the protean nature 

of contemporary war. Thus the RMA both abets and parallels a 

commensurate and corresponding RSA. As Lawrence Freedman 

wrote in 1998,

The link between the military and political spheres is the realm of 

strategy. If there is a revolution, it is one in strategic affairs and is the 

result of significant change in both the objectives in pursuit of which 

governments might want to use armed forces, and in the means that they 

might employ. Its most striking feature is its lack of a fixed form. The new 

circumstances and capabilities do not prescribe one strategy, but extend 

the range of strategies that might be followed. In this context, the issue 

behind the RMA is the ability of Western countries, and in particular the 

U.S., to follow a line geared to their own interests and capabilities.85

 Hence the heightened importance to the United States of secure 

bases in and around the Indian Ocean and of India’s strategic role 

there as the United States considers the idea of an Asian NATO with 

India, Australia, Singapore, and Japan.86 As the availability of bases 

for power projection into Asia decline, the possibility of new ones 

becomes all that more critical a factor. This trend predated the current 

war against Iraq, but that crisis highlighted just how unreliable and 

harmful the process of securing base access and overflight is to the 

effective prosecution of the war effort. This consideration also helps 
28

drive the Pentagon’s parallel development of a new concept for U.S. 

bases abroad, and enhances America’s natural interest in obtaining 

permanent access through one or more “operating sites” in the 

Transcaspian.87

 Our military presence in these areas has triggered immense 

speculation here and abroad as to its nature, purposes, and duration. 

Even if we do not intend to retain those bases or sites permanently 

under agreement with the host states as now seems to be the case, 

we evidently want to be able to return and use them if necessary.

Meanwhile, as Robert Legvold observed, by committing troops to 

Central Asia, U.S. intervention into Central Asia has transformed 

dramatically the regional security equation in three ways.

 First, U.S. new dramatic, but incidental, military involvement 

in Central Asia added a Central Asian dimension to the U.S.-China 

relationship. Whether Washington fully appreciated it or not, the two 

countries were no longer engaged only in East Asia; the new American 

role and the old Chinese concern created an Inner Asian front in the 

relationship. Second, Central Asia became a far more salient factor 

in the evolution of U.S.-Russian relations. The interaction of the two 

within the region would have a good deal to do with whether the 

post-September 11 détente deepened or ran aground. And, in turn, 

this outcome would decisively affect international politics within the 

region.88

 Thus the intervention has accelerated Legvold’s first and second 

consequences by which Central Asia increasingly can be seen as 

a venue for local and international strategic rivalry beyond our 

relations with Moscow and Beijing. 

 The third way in which U.S. presence transformed the regional 

security structure is that it altered the region’s political makeup. 

Uzbekistan’s strategic significance and regional standing as 

America’s ally was greatly enhanced as are U.S. obligations with 

regard to these states’ security. Likewise, our enhanced presence 

accelerated a tendency that was discerned already in 2000 for 

competitive projects of regional integration where a pro-Russian set 

of structures competed with a pro-Western or pro-American series 

of structures in economics and security.89 Temur Basilia, Special 

Assistant to former Georgian President Edvard Shevarnadze for 

economic issues, has rightly written that in many Commonwealth 
29

of Independent States (CIS) countries, e.g., Georgia and Ukraine, 

“the acute issue of choosing between alignment with Russia and 

the West is associated with the choice between two models of social 

development.”90 The aptness of this observation transcends Georgia 

and Ukraine to embrace the entire post-Soviet region, since it is clear 

that Moscow opposes exporting democracy to it. Indeed, it regards 

the idea with contempt. Moreover, both it and Beijing would be 

happy to perpetuate undemocratic, authoritarian regimes and elite 

networks to enhance their local influence.91

 But beyond Legvold’s and others’ insights, a fourth consequence 

must also be considered. U.S. victories have blazed a path that others 

are now following of preparing forces to be ready for all forms of war 

in the GWOT or other conflicts, including those in Central Asia. We 

may also expect that in keeping with these states’ broader military 

strategies and doctrines, they will also strive for dominance of as 

much of the spectrum of conflict as they can to gain the ability to 

interfere with U.S. or our partners’ interests militarily, or by the threat 

of force, when and if they deem it necessary. Iran’s nuclearization 

and support for international terrorism, the Chinese and Russian 

efforts to upgrade their military influence throughout these regions, 

Pakistan’s support for terrorism against India, and al-Qaeda’s global 

campaign originating in Afghanistan and its environs embody this 

trend in one way or another.

 We should resist leaving the Transcaspian, and indeed the entire 

former Soviet area, because others are trying to oust us to ensure their 

own monopoly. That is precisely why we should stay and increase 

our overall presence as appropriate. Withdrawal at the behest of 

Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, or under pressure from terrorists will be 

seen correctly abroad as a sign of weakness and will trigger a series of 

unending and long-term, probably intractable crises with profound, 

if unforeseeable consequences. Instead, the United States already is 

being drawn into a deeper involvement with the larger Transcaspian 

region, as is already the case with USEUCOM.92 Since September 11, 

the ample evidence of an intensified U.S. concern for gaining access to 

distant theaters, and therefore a parallel quest for lodgments, access, 

basing, port rights, overflight rights, and the like, throughout Asia and 

surrounding areas also entails a growing search for allies or at least 
30

robust strategic partnerships with like-minded states.93 Hence the 

interest in an as yet undefined “Asian NATO,” including allies and/

or partners throughout Asia.94 In this context, U.S. officials clearly 

want to retain access to Pakistani, Indian, and Indian Ocean bases 

and ports given to us after September 11, from which to refuel or to 

gain overflight rights, if not necessarily permanent facilities, as well 

as greater access to all of Asia to fulfill the requirements outlined in 

the QDR and subsequent foundation documents of U.S. strategy and 

policy. This quest, as specified in the QDR and elsewhere, comports 

with the requirements for effectively retaining access to Central Asia 

and the Caucasus in all contingencies. In fact, even before September 

11, the United States was seeking broader access to bases throughout 

Asia.95

 Administration officials openly spell out the rationales for 

obtaining new bases throughout Asia. Basing himself upon the 

QDR, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Brookes told 

Congress in 2002 that,

Distances in the Asian theater (note the singular-author) are vast, and the 

density of U.S. basing and en route infrastructure is lower than in other 

critical regions. Moreover, the U.S. has less assurance of access to facilities 

in the Asia-Pacific region than in other regions. The QDR, therefore 

identifies the necessity of securing additional access and infrastructure 

agreements and developing military systems capable of sustained 

operations at great distances with minimal theater-based support. The 

QDR also calls for a reorientation of the U.S. military posture in Asia. The 

U.S. will continue to meet its defense and security commitments around 

the world by maintaining the ability to defeat aggression in two critical 

areas in overlapping time frames. As this strategy and force planning 

approach is implemented, the U.S. will strengthen its forward deterrent 

posture. Over time, U.S. forces will be tailored to maintain favorable 

regional balances in concert with U.S. allies and friends with the aim of 

swiftly defeating attacks with only modest reinforcement.96

 Subsequent testimony to the House by Assistant Secretary of 

Defense for International Affairs Peter Rodman fully explicated 

the administration’s thinking regarding overseas basing in Asia. 

Rodman stated that the administration’s goals entail tailoring 

our forces abroad to the particular conditions of those regions, 

and strengthening U.S. capabilities for prompt global response 
31

anywhere. He observed that, since threats are not confined to a 

single area and because we cannot anticipate where the next one 

will be, even though an immediate response is often warranted, we 

need a capabilities-based strategy, not one based on force levels. 

Forces are not expected to fight where they are based; mobility and 

speed of deployment are the critical factors.97 Rodman then laid out 

the working assumptions behind the transformation of our basing 

structure. A consideration of administration objectives, taken in 

conjunction with these assumptions immediately tells the reader 

why an Asian NATO with India is now a priority. India as an ally or 

area where bases may be located meets virtually every criterion laid 

out in Rodman’s testimony. But the implications for the rest of Asia 

are no less evident. These working assumptions are as follows:

 • U.S. regional defense postures must be based on global 

considerations, not regional ones.

 • Existing and new overseas bases will be evaluated as combined 

and/or joint facilities as befits the new emphasis on combined 

and joint operations.

 • Overseas stationed forces should be located on reliable, wellprotected territory.

 • Forces without inherent mobility must be stationed along 

major transportation routes, especially sea routes.

 • Long-range attack capabilities require forward infrastructure 

to sustain operations.

 • Forward presence need not be equally divided among all the 

U.S. regional commands to reduce the “seams” that separate 

them from each other.

 • Expeditionary forces and operations require a network of 

forward facilities with munitions, command and control, and 

logistics in dispersed locations.

 All these requirements are ways to increase U.S. forward 

forces’ capabilities for deterrence and operations, and allow for 

reinforcement of other missions by reallocating forces. Rodman 

observed that we intend to accomplish this by increasing precision 

intelligence and strike capabilities on a global basis and exploiting 
32

our forces’ capability for superior strategic mobility.98 Therefore, 

changes in U.S. basing policies aim to strengthen defense relations 

with key allies and partners and allow more effective response to 

unforeseen contingencies. These changes entail:

 • Diversifying the means of U.S. access to overseas bases and 

facilities to obtain military presence closer to combat regions 

and offering our forces a broader array of options;

 • Posturing the most flexible forces possible for overseas 

missions so that they will be capable of conducting a wide 

range of expeditionary operations; and,

 • Promoting greater allied contributions and establishing 

more durable defense relationships with those allies and 

partners.99

ISSUES OF ACCESS AND A GLOBAL BASING SYSTEM

 The demand for such bases obviously aims to meet a perception 

of greatly expanded and diversified threats to U.S. interests. Equally, 

if not more, importantly, the states throughout Asia confront 

increasing and diversified threats, or believe that they do. This 

heightened insecurity is not only because perceived threats may 

possess a greater order of magnitude than was previously the case. 

The interaction of technology and geography also has transformed 

the predictability, quantity, and range of threats, as well as their point 

of origin. Accordingly, U.S. strategists cite an American geopolitical 

imperative “to retain control―the ability to use and to deny use of 

the sea line of communications between the Middle East and East 

Asia.”100 They also cite the vastly expanded mission and capabilities 

of the U.S. Navy in this connection, specifically,

The U.S. Navy can be considered a globalized, as well as a global navy―

delivering the security of access function across the entire world system. 

It is this security function that requires the primary contribution of naval 

power (as an element of sea power) to peacetime globalization. During 

periods of conflict, this access function allows the United States (and 

the globalized world) to project power into contested and otherwise 

inaccessible regions.101
33

 Given this transformation in international security, especially in 

Asia, many Asian military figures increasingly view naval power 

and power projection as the way to defend national security before 

threats reach the mainland. Thus energy security can be assured, 

territorial waters can be defended against rival claimants, and power 

can be projected. This line of reasoning applies to both U.S. allies 

and potential adversaries.102 In other words, America’s interest in 

projecting military power into or from the Transcaspian also must 

be seen as an interest in enhancing the joint capabilities of all arms 

of our military, as well as in extending the possibility for combined 

operations with allies and partners from within the area or from 

outside of it. These considerations also extend to the real possibility 

that we may have to act preemptively in the Transcaspian or in other 

Asian theaters with allies and partners if they are available.

 As a result, American planners fully understand their need for 

a global presence and rapidity of access to threatened theaters. 

General Gregory Martin, the former Commander of U.S. Air Forces 

Europe (USAFE), advocates a comprehensive global peacetime and 

wartime military presence that he calls geopresence.103 He defines 

the achievement of this geopresence as entailing a comprehensive 

series of policies with key states in peacetime to include the full 

range of bilateral military-to-military relationships, exercises, and 

training missions. As all this occurs in tandem with the Pentagon’s 

mandated transformation policy, the result should be conditions 

“that will enable us to define the battle space on our terms anywhere 

in the world.” What counts here is not just the capability to define 

the battle space, but equally, if not more importantly, to do so on our 

terms.104 Martin’s concept of geopresence, fostered by the conscious 

deployment of every instrument of power available, is clearly a 

response to the perception of the transformation of both strategic 

space and weapons’ capabilities, particularly those owned by the 

U.S. Air Force.

 But this redefinition of strategic space and the other consequences 

that flow from the two interactive revolutions cited above, the RMA 

and RSA, does not only include the new capabilities of the U.S. or 

other navies. As defined by Edward Luttwak, Benjamin Lambeth, 

and by British observers, air power, which must be understood not 

as a single service or arm of the military but rather generically, is 
34

the driving factor in the current transformation of strategic space. 

It should be understood not as a service capability, but as a generic 

form of military power that amalgamates both the hardware and the 

less tangible but other vital ingredients of airpower’s effectiveness: 

doctrine, concepts of operations, training, and tactics.105 Second, in 

this understanding, “Air power is functionally inseparable from 

battlespace information.”106 Third, airpower is not any one service’s 

attribute, but rather an activity in which all the services play a critical 

role.107 Accordingly, Martin’s concept of global presence is not a 

service presence but a joint one, especially as ground forces may 

be needed to protect forward deployed air bases or operating sites, 

while the need for long-range sea-based strike power also grows.

 Thus airpower, as understood here, becomes a flexible asset 

in strategic, operational, and tactical terms that allow for power 

projection by all the services. This clearly is a lesson of the 1990-91 

Gulf War, but its full significance has only made itself felt since the 

wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. This technological-strategic trend 

also allows all military forces, be they land, sea, air, informational, 

or space-based, to use airpower thus defined to strike directly at 

enemy centers of gravity and critical targets on a globalized basis, 

as suggested above, or to move forces into position from where 

they can perform that mission. This also suggests that any future 

facilities in the Transcaspian most likely will be air bases, but they 

will provide the capability to expand for the insertion of ground 

forces, as needed.

THE NEED FOR COMPREHENSIVE ENGAGEMENT

 The transformation of the Central Asian and overall Asian 

battlespaces forces us to address the domestic pathologies of local 

governments that make the Transcaspian a breeding ground for 

perennial instability. These domestic pathologies are well known in 

the policy and analytical literature, but it is worth citing a capsule list 

of them so that they are kept in mind. Throughout the area that Nation 

called the Adriatic-Caspian corridor, we encounter the following 

signs of state fragility and weakness. To use Nation’s terminology, 

we encounter here,
35

Fragility of institutions and politico-administrative apparatus; 

democratic deficit, absence of civil society and legal mechanism for 

orderly transfer of power; crisis of identity owing to religious or ethnic 

rivalry; interstate, ethnic, tribal, and clan tensions; ethnic separatism; 

competitive involvement of major power mechanisms for organizing and 

controlling aid; incomplete modernization; relative underdevelopment; 

social disparities; corruption; crime; founding of psuedo-states; [and] 

weakness of the State.108

 Worse yet, these factors that cause a security deficit and challenge 

to local states often interact with and affect each other in circular 

fashion, thereby creating a vicious circle.109 Some analysts liken 

Central Asian regimes to those of Africa, and argue that they combine 

the pathologies of “big man” rule visible in Africa, with a hangover of 

Soviet structures. Therefore, failure in one or more states is virtually a 

certainty, even if we cannot predict how or when this will happen.110

Such possibilities place a great responsibility and burden upon 

policymakers. As countless observers and scholars have warned, to 

ensure any kind of security throughout this region and throughout 

the so-called arc of crisis, policymaking must be holistic, utilizing 

all the instruments of power to the greatest possible extent. Equally 

importantly, security management, to be successful, must leverage 

the capabilities of all those allies and international organizations 

that have a growing stake in security there.111 Therefore, failure to 

develop cooperation among all those working for Transcaspian 

stability and security raises the likelihood of persistent local crises 

and the possibility of U.S. unilateral intervention into them. In that 

case, absent structural reform, U.S. involvement will ultimately serve 

to secure some other government’s interests, not Washington’s. 

 America’s overall objectives for this region remain unchanged. 

They include defense of the independence, sovereignty, security, 

and integrity of the new post-Soviet states; their freedom from 

reintegration into a new imperial scheme whether by Russia, China, 

Iran, or terrorists; open markets guaranteeing equal access to foreign 

interests, especially oil and gas, and support for evolutionary moves 

towards democracy that ensure these states’ gradual political and 

economic integration into the Western world.112 In the context of the 

GWOT, certain missions become priorities insofar as work with their 

armed forces are concerned. Those include, first, counterterrorism as 
36

a vital objective or interest. After that come the important interests 

of counterproliferation, counterdrug, or border security (these also 

are conceivable as subsets of a more broadly conceived mission of 

counter-contraband operations, including WMD capabilities, drugs, 

or illicit trafficking in people for sexual, terrorist, or other purposes), 

and energy security (defense of pipelines). These turn into specific 

missions of counterterrorism, counterproliferation, counterdrug, 

and littoral security.113

 Such priorities translate into specific operational objectives, the 

most important of which is permanent access in both peacetime and 

wartime. The point is to work with local regimes and their militaries 

to shape the local environment; establish relations of mutual trust, 

confidence and interoperability; and to raise local capabilities. All 

of these aspects become operational objectives of modernizing local 

forces’ capabilities to meet threats to security and to work with us 

and our allies and partners. In so doing, we pave the way for a third 

set of objectives, namely facilitation of these countries’ ultimate 

integration into the Euro-Atlantic political and military current, a 

process that also can provide leverage to help foster more democratic 

internal military structures and civilian democratic controls of the 

armed forces. Thus the hierarchy of operational goals starts with 

access and descends through modernization and its components to 

Westernization or integration and its components.114

 To attain this access and realize our other objectives entail 

continuing cooperation with the new states’ entire security sector. 

We must work with regular armed forces, border forces, intelligence, 

and police (often in the Ministry of the Interior). To gain trust, 

mutual confidence, and to raise the capacity of these forces to carry 

out these missions requires a broader engagement than in the past 

with all these different members of the security sector. This broader 

engagement grows from, and is fully compatible with, our efforts to 

integrate these states with the Euro-Atlantic security community.

 For instance, the most visible or recent example of a policy whose 

roots began in the Clinton administration’s doctrine of shaping the 

environment and are now continuing forward is our continuing 

concern to stabilize Georgia. This includes making it more compatible 

with NATO, and defending it from coercive threats from Russia or 

from its own internal pathologies in the wake of its recent revolution. 
37

Thus we are increasing military assistance to Georgia.115 Since 

September 11, the wisdom of this perception reasserted itself so that 

now we are engaged in state-building on a massive scale in Iraq, 

Afghanistan, and putatively in the West Bank. All these are missions 

that have been embraced enthusiastically by the administration as 

essential aspects of its security profile.

 Therefore, U.S. forces are already operating and will do so even 

more in a new and larger perimeter than was the case previously. 

This term does not necessarily refer to a location where U.S. forces 

confront an adversary and a military threat or single out a likely site 

for war. Instead, it refers to the locations where U.S. forces will be 

conducting operations regularly in peace, crisis, and war. But it could 

also mean expanded cooperation with host nations’ security sectors. 

Most of these operations will be conducted in peacetime for purposes 

of promoting engagement, integration, and stability. The key point 

is that the U.S. operating perimeter may be enlarging even when 

no immediate threat exists or is expected. It may be enlarging for 

broader purposes that transcend planning for wars, i.e., for purposes 

of facilitating the broader integration of hitherto isolated areas into a 

broader Euro-Atlantic stream.

 Thus in the Transcaspian, as in the adjacent theaters of Europe, 

the Persian Gulf, and Asia, our forces must continue to pursue 

operations and objectives beyond theater conflicts in any one of 

those three theaters. But if conflict should ensue, “Defense planners 

will therefore need to contemplate how to modify today’s U.S. 

overseas presence by developing an altered posture, an outlying 

infrastructure, and better-prepared allies and partners.”116 Indeed, 

U.S. exercises and activities with the Transcaspian governments’ 

armed forces represent both a basis for future combat operations as 

in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan or Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM (OEF and OIF respectively), or for deterrence 

against future threats to those states’ vital interests. At the same 

time, they also deter threats in regions from which American power, 

located in Central Asia or the Transcaucasus with host government 

consent, can be projected to the threatened area.

 Roger Barnett, writing even before September 11 and focusing 

upon the Navy, clearly demonstrated the importance of such 

relationships for both deterrence and the transition to combat. His 
38

words apply with equal force to all the services, not just the Navy. 

Barnett’s remarks comport with the fact that U.S. military analysts 

even then were quite frank in how they saw the kinds of activities 

contained under the rubric of engagement and Partnership for Peace 

(PfP), not only in Europe or Central Asia, as essential aspects of the 

U.S. strategy of “extraordinary power projection.” Our engagement 

programs took, and still take, the form of joint exercises, staff visits, 

training, and increasing interoperability.117 These activities also 

facilitate transition to war and, if necessary, participation in its initial 

stages. For example, as Barnett wrote,

It is often the action and activities of these forces that provide the 

dominant battlespace knowledge necessary to shape regional security 

environments. Multinational exercises, port visits, staff-to-staff 

coordination―all designed to increase force interoperability and access 

to regional military facilities―along with intelligence and surveillance 

operations, are but a few examples of how naval forces [and the same 

undoubtedly applies to other services―author] engage actively in an 

effort to set terms of engagement favorable to the United States and its 

allies. These activities are conducted at low political and economic costs, 

considering the tangible evidence they provide of U.S. commitment to a 

region. And they are designed to contribute to deterrence.

Deterrence is the product of both capability and will to deter a nuclear 

attack against the United States, its allies, or others to whom it has 

provided security assurances, . . . deterrence of other undesirable actions 

by adversaries or potential adversaries is part and parcel of everything 

naval forces do in the course of their operations―before, during, and after 

the actual application of combat force. . . .

That the United States has invested in keeping these ready forces forward 

and engaged delivers a signal, one that cannot be transmitted as clearly 

and unequivocally in any other way. Forward-deployed forces are backed 

by those which can surge for rapid reinforcement and can be in place in 7 

to 30 days. These, in turn, are backed by formidable, but slower deployed, 

forces which can respond to a conflict over a period of months.118

 Thus the United States and/or NATO use these operations to 

prepare for peace, or for short or protracted military operations 

in crucial security zones, and point to the Transcaspian’s rising 

profile as one of these zones. Undoubtedly Central Asia and the 

Transcaucasus will look increasingly appealing to Pentagon planners 
39

confronted with the daunting strategic requirements of ensuring 

sufficient U.S. presence in and around Asia to deter and prosecute 

any contingencies that may threaten important or vital U.S. interests 

there or in contiguous theaters in the future.119 But this obliges us 

to grasp clearly the nature of contemporary war and contemporary 

threats to stability, peace and U.S. interests throughout these regions 

(and those are not all the same three things).

 Based on the foregoing analysis, we now turn to the task 

of recommending programs of engagement with Transcaspian 

militaries to secure our objectives of encouraging democracy―in this 

case, most prominently in civil-military relations. This engagement 

should aim at increasing security, reassuring allies and partners, 

and upgrading local capabilities so that those forces can become 

more interoperable with American forces. Ultimately, based on this 

engagement, relationships of trust are built which would allow for 

access pending future contingencies and host country agreement.

 It is also clear that America needs local partners, if not allies, 

and that it must seek either to reinvigorate old alliances like NATO 

to support it in the former Soviet areas, or to find ways to forge 

enduring connections with new partners who share our interests 

and goals. On the one hand, we need to invigorate and make our 

security cooperation with former Soviet states more comprehensively 

strategic. And on the other, we need to forge productive relations with 

major alliance or interested major powers insofar as these areas are 

concerned. Regarding security cooperation with local governments, 

we need to investigate what the goals of these programs are (and 

we confine ourselves here to military programs). Regarding major 

alliances or governments; we need to define common interests and 

build upon them.

RECOMMENDATIONS

 The first set of recommendations pertains to the search for partners 

from outside the Transcaspian in descending order of desirability 

of working with the governments listed here. The second set of 

recommendations pertains to working with local governments.
40

Set 1.

 Despite the undoubted inter-allied tensions, NATO is becoming 

a venue of choice for an expanding commitment in Afghanistan. 

France commands the International Security Assistance Force 

(ISAF) there as of December 2004, and NATO has also accepted 

that securing Afghanistan is its priority mission.120 Moreover, it is 

also a priority security organization of choice for most post-Soviet 

states. Even Armenia is significantly upgrading its military ties 

to the West and NATO.121 The new states seek to be identified as 

Western, and recognize that adherence to the PfP program provides 

meaningful enhancement of their security through affiliation, if not 

membership, in a nonpredatory multilateral and cooperative security 

arrangement.122 Furthermore, it is the only effective organization 

that provides a standard of measurable activity and security against 

contemporary threats of terrorism, proliferation, etc.123 Third, it has 

now demonstrated its ability to provide security for Afghanistan’s 

elections and to work on behalf of a broader security stabilization then 

simply a conventional peace support operation. These trends were 

already visible in the PfP exercises that occurred in Eurasia before 

September 2001, but those attacks only reinforced that trend and the 

Afghan experience should add considerably to NATO’s reputation 

in Central Asia and the Caucasus. So despite the numerous security 

deficits that plague the post-Soviet expanse, PfP signifies a positive 

way to foster multilateral security cooperation of a nonpredatory 

type.124 Thus the programs that function under its rubric enhance 

local military capabilities, foster cooperation among local militaries 

and governments, and also provide a lasting foothold for Western 

military presence and influence.125 Since the PfP is NATO’s main 

instrument for providing all these security benefits and gaining local 

visibility, it is essential for Washington to support it financially. 

Washington should also use all available diplomatic instruments to 

galvanize NATO, to upgrade both bilateral and multilateral forms of 

cooperation with Central Asian and Caucasian governments, to work 

with local militaries, and use these programs as a basis for reaching 

a new strategic consensus with its allies about current and future 

threats and responses to them. Because no one power can overcome 
41

the enormous security deficits unilaterally throughout the Caucasus 

and Central Asia, it is also essential that these discussions help 

narrow the gaps between American and European perceptions of 

threats emerging from the Transcaspian and thus approach common 

solutions to those threats.

 NATO’s Istanbul Initiative of 2004 clearly articulates such 

a commitment, but ways must be found to actualize it.126 Local 

Transcaspian governments must be able to utilize the experience 

of new members, e.g., of the Baltic and Balkan countries and their 

armed forces, as they moved into NATO and that experience can 

and should be made available to them by those countries and 

NATO.127 One way to do so is to change how NATO funds missions 

like Afghanistan. Essentially, each state sending troops today must 

fund its participation through its own exchequer, a process that 

obviously magnifies the domestic political costs of participation. If 

NATO’s guidelines were revised so that it pays for operations like 

Afghanistan through a common fund, that could spur more funding 

and more programs, hence more opportunities for programs bringing 

together local and Western militaries.128 The same procedure can be 

employed subsequently for operations like PfP and other activities 

with local governments. 

 Another possibility is expanded expert conferences among NATO 

and EU members since the two organizations are largely coterminous. 

There are also numerous signs of an enhanced EU interest in this area, 

especially the Transcaucasus.129 These conferences would deal with 

the modalities of using the EU’s and or NATO’s military instrument, 

the Common European Security and Defense Program (CESDP), in 

the Transcaspian or of suggesting ways to internationalize the peace 

support operations currently taking place in the Caucasus. The EU 

would be able to go about its economic and political business in these 

areas either as part of this common strategy or on its own accord, but 

at least there would be a real possibility for cooperation among these 

organizations. Doing this would not only signify a genuine step 

even beyond the expanded interests of European security agencies 

in the Transcaspian. It could relieve the pressure on Russia and the 

tension between it and its neighbors, especially but not only Georgia. 

This is another possibility as well toward reducing the likelihood 
42

of a revival of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. European models of 

conflict resolution have long been discussed for these conflicts, but 

in the absence of a real and tangibly expressed European interest 

in conflict resolution the discussion has remained academic. The 

likelihood of some real political and military muscle being brought to 

bear here might galvanize the participants ad external mediators to 

seek real and innovative answers to unblocking those frozen conflicts 

and resolving them, thereby forestalling greater opportunities 

for terrorist penetration into the Caucasus.130 Clearly, enhanced 

cooperation between NATO and the EU or between America and 

Europe in an area increasingly recognized by all parties as a security 

priority would contribute materially to easing intra-alliance and 

EU-American tensions. Common threat perceptions and responses 

to them would have a tonic effect on the sorely tried alliance and 

enhance both its self-confidence and capability for action beyond 

Europe’s traditional borders.

 In this connection, it merits considering whether NATO or the 

United States expand their programs of educational exchanges 

with former Soviet governments. Obviously this includes the 

international military education and training (IMET) program that 

funds attendance at institutions like the Marshall Center or NATO’s 

Defense College in Rome. But it also can lead to the creation of a 

Transcaucasian and/or Central Asian Defense College modeled after 

the Baltic Defense College in Tartu, Estonia, which has been very 

successful in training and educating a new generation of officers.131

 Turkey’s likely entry into the EU also raises the need for intense 

discussions among Washington, Ankara, and Brussels as to how 

Turkey could contribute to the military and broader political 

objectives we have proposed here through NATO, the EU, or in 

bilateral ties to Transcaspian regimes. The demarcation and definition 

of the ways in which this aid can most effectively be channeled 

cannot be postulated from outside or from above or a priori, but the 

need for a trilateral diplomatic initiative is obvious and would be 

highly productive. Since Turkey has already begun such activities 

on its own, finding a satisfactory method of reconciling all these 

partners’ interests in expanding such programs merits sustained 

discussion and investigation. Turkey’s being a Muslim country with 

an Islamic party leading a government that has embraced republican 
43

and democratic policies and values will have profound impact on 

the Transcaspian once Turkey joins the EU. Turkey and the EU 

would be throwing away a golden opportunity if they refrained 

from stimulating this discussion because it could easily have a major 

impact throughout the region. Thus there is an urgent need and 

opportunity for Turkish-American-EU talks on how Turkey could 

contribute materially to the EU’s rising interests in the post-Soviet 

area and how, as a member of NATO, it can do so as well, while 

reconciling its obligations and responsibilities to both the EU and 

NATO.

 India is another potentially valuable partner with whom we could 

work, particularly in Central Asia, to gain access through bilateral, 

trilateral, and multilateral military engagement. India’s interests in 

Central Asia are large, strategic, and growing. It already has an air 

base in Tajikistan and is engaged in buying weapons from and selling 

weapons to Central Asian governments. India’s commercial profile 

in the area is large and growing.132 It also has a very long tradition 

of a highly competent military with much experience in SASO and 

a robust tradition of strict democratic control over the armed forces. 

But perhaps most importantly, India has a millennium or more of 

contact with Central Asia. Although Central Asian rulers like the 

Moguls have conquered India, India has never conquered Central 

Asia or harbored any such interest, a fact well known throughout the 

area.

 Indo-American relations are currently better than ever, with a 

growing and comprehensive program of bilateral military engagement with exercises and exchanges throughout all the services. 

But there is no reason why discussions should not commence 

on upgrading India’s participation in the modernization and 

westernization of Central Asian forces. Those forces could also 

be introduced to the bilateral Indo-American exercises now being 

conducted among all the services so as to build up strong trilateral 

working relationships based on experience and trust. The same 

applies to educational exchanges and expert dialogues. Certainly New 

Delhi and Washington share many critical interests in Central Asia, 

such as prevention of terrorism and the stabilization of Afghanistan. 

These fora would be ways to reinforce activities toward those ends 
44

and toward the larger end of helping to stabilize the Central Asian 

region as a whole.

 Admittedly, any program undertaken with India would likely 

anger Pakistan, especially if it embraced the new Afghan army. 

However, the initial scale of such activities could remain relatively 

small, be confined to the five former Soviet republics, and take place 

under a primarily bilateral Indo-Central Asian umbrella. If the 

program is successful, it could then even expand to bring Pakistan 

in as a confidence-building measure. In time, India’s participation 

could help further integrate its military with Western democratic 

notions of conduct and provide a lasting institutional mechanism 

by which to influence it. Such fora could also stimulate a regional 

dialogue with India and the Central Asian militaries or governments 

that would be mutually beneficial to all parties. 

 It should be pointed out that all these aforementioned possibilities 

for increasing our partners’ participation in these programs in the 

former Soviet Union require both intergovernmental agreements and 

also intense detailed participation in these activities and exercises by 

all the services of those countries and the United States. Thus the 

U.S. Army, Navy (where appropriate), and the Air Force all have 

roles to play in making such programs work.

 China is not considered despite the undoubted importance of its 

rising military and other interests in Central Asia. While China has 

recently begun a dialogue with NATO on Central Asia, its bilateral 

military programs with the United States have not progressed 

to anything like the mutual trust needed for it to be taken into 

Washington’s confidence in such a program. Nor is it likely that 

Central Asian states that are very wary of China would warm to the 

idea. Even though the SCO has upgraded China’s military profile 

considerably through combined exercises, its platform remains an 

avowedly and openly anti-American one, and China’s perception of 

the U.S. military’s presence in Central Asia is openly hostile, seeing 

it as a real threat and opposing its continuation.133 Since our level 

of cooperation with China does not even approach what we have 

in intelligence sharing or as regards to Afghanistan with Russia, 

and bearing in mind all these existing factors that inhibit bilateral 

military cooperation, it would be premature to approach China with 

such a proposal.
45

 Finally, there is Russia. The September 2004 incident at Beslan 

has led the Russian government to appeal for international support 

against international terrorism, even though the Chechen insurgency 

is largely homegrown despite its ties to al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, it has 

stimulated some experts to call for increased bilateral cooperation, 

even to the point of collocating American and Russian Central Asian 

or other bases in the CIS so that American and Russian troops would 

actually be conducting combined missions.134 However, the Russian 

Defense Ministry and government, despite previous calls for NATO 

assistance in reforming the Army back in 2002 and 2003, has shunned 

cooperation programs proposed by the U.S. military and shows 

no sign of being able or willing to change that posture.135 Indeed, 

according to Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, the Russian Army is 

on the verge of collapse because of large-scale draft evasion.136 This 

alone makes cooperation difficult, and it does not begin to include 

the enormous and well-founded regional suspicion of Russian 

policies and objectives throughout the former Soviet Union or the 

Russian elite’s equally profound suspicion of U.S. objectives and 

atavistic attachment to an imperial outlook regarding the former 

Soviet Union. These considerations continue to limit the scope for 

cooperation.

 But they do not close that window. It would be possible to 

propose a bilateral or NATO-Russian program to share intelligence, 

training, and, perhaps after that, missions of an anti-terrorist nature 

to gain a wedge for cooperation with Russian forces. Not only would 

such cooperation be useful in itself, it would also provide a basis, 

if achieved, from which planning for future cooperation could 

ascend and advance. At the same time, this proposal tests Russian 

intentions as to whether calls for Western help are for real. Based 

on the answer and subsequent follow through, it will be possible to 

proceed accordingly, insofar as the Transcaspian is concerned.

Set 2.

 In considering how to approach local regimes, we must take 

care to tailor U.S. programs to the needs of each country. At the 

same time, those programs should reinforce each other as part of 

a coordinated larger regional strategy. For instance, we must avoid 
46

future situations such as has occurred with Uzbekistan where the 

U.S. State Department was legally obligated to suspend aid to the 

military―one of the more Westernizing institutions there―because 

of the government’s antidemocratic policies. But shortly thereafter, 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers (USAF) 

visited Uzbekistan, praised the government as an American ally, 

and transferred weapons to it.137 While one can defend each of these 

actions on its own merits, they create an impression that our policies 

are incoherent, not truly interested in Uzbekistan’s democratization, 

and that the Uzbek regime can disregard calls for democratization 

because of our alliance with it, leading Uzbeks to think that we are 

not serious and can therefore be played.

 Hence, the need for well-conceived interagency and multidimensional strategy of engagement becomes apparent. That 

strategy should assign priorities to our engagement with local 

governments and make them known to avoid such embarrassments. 

Those agencies that are disbursing funds for one or another form of 

assistance and security cooperation to these countries should ensure 

that pledged and allocated funds are quickly allocated and disbursed, 

and their programs are implemented. As one recent article observed, 

“Experience shows that Tajikistan actually receives a fraction of 

what has been pledged.”138 The same kinds of delays have plagued 

our reconstruction efforts in Iraq and have to be accounted as 

contributing to the serious insurgency there. Because we are at war 

into the foreseeable future, it may turn out that military assistance is 

the current priority, to be replaced over time with democratization 

and good governance as the priorities. While undoubtedly that 

position will arouse criticism, it certainly is an eminently defensible 

and readily understandable one in wartime.

 Thus what we are about in these countries with respect to 

security cooperation that originates in the Defense Department and 

other police and intelligence agencies who are assisting these states 

is defense development―otherwise known as defense-sector reform, or 

more broadly security-sector reform (military, police, intelligence, 

and border troops).139 Particularly in wartime, such comprehensive 

defense development is essential to securing our goals of access and 

interoperability, not to mention the goals of more stable and secure 

regimes which confront internal and external threats.
47

 Too often “underdeveloped” defense sectors―incapable, bloated, 

corrupt, opaque―endanger neighboring states, contaminate domestic 

politics and markets, engage in transnational crime, and even fail 

in their assigned mission: to provide adequate national security. 

Countries with militaries that detract from security, squander scarce 

resources, and cannot be trusted by their own leaders or citizens, 

are countries with three strikes against them. Such consequences 

cannot be ignored. With the globalization of economics, interests, 

and threats, damage to development and to security in the South can 

harm the West.140

 Hence the need for comprehensive approaches that encompass all 

the sectors of the government in question who provide security, not 

only the regular military, but the police, intelligence, border troops, 

and even arguably the criminal justice system.141 Admittedly defense 

development is a long term-goal that far transcends the immediate 

ones of security cooperation, access, and influence. Nevertheless, the 

effort to shape partner military establishments who wish to reform to 

the highest standards of military conduct, which are today Western 

standards, must be the long-term objective that we keep firmly in 

mind, even if we make temporary compromises, particularly in 

wartime.142 While our immediate objectives in the military sector 

pertain to the immediate needs of the GWOT, our strategy must 

constantly be informed by the objective of helping to stabilize 

these countries and modernize their military establishments in a 

cooperative manner, according to the highest standards of military 

proficiency and conduct that are available to them. 

 Consequently, with regard to bilateral military engagement 

with each country to achieve access, we need to enter into serious 

discussions with these governments to assure them of our support 

in return and the conditions of threat that will trigger such support. 

As a Rand study on gaining access observes,

To the extent that allies conclude that their overall security interests are 

best served by a direct relationship with the United States, additional 

cooperation of various kinds can be expected, including plans to provide 

access to U.S. forces under various circumstances. To the extent that their 

relationship with the United States is increasingly seen as a liability, 

cooperation might be reduced. Thus the antecedent for increased security 

cooperation―including access―will be some harmonization of threat 
48

perceptions and in calculation of which policies and position will best 

enhance overall security in the face of internal and external threats.143

Thus one essential requirement is an institutionalized strategic 

dialogue with these states between both uniformed officers and 

experts to work out this harmonization.

 Second, the Army, as part of its current transformation 

process, needs to emphasize the rapid availability of those forces 

which could be used to gain access, forcibly, if necessary. This 

entails three requirements: diversifying the “portfolio” of access 

options in the regions considered here and also in adjoining ones, 

improving and enhancing force capabilities that pertain to gaining 

access to contested areas, and diversifying the flexibility of those 

capabilities that enhance aerial and maritime mobility.144 This is 

particularly crucial in the Caucasus and Central Asia since most of 

these countries are landlocked. Therefore, and building upon the 

expanded and broader conception of security mentioned above, it 

would be a shrewd investment for the services as a whole to invest in 

infrastructure; ports, where possible; air bases; road, rail, and airports; 

as well as communications and logistics infrastructure for water and 

petroleum, oils, and lubricants (POL) so that it becomes easier for 

us to gain access, if needed. Such investments would also enhance 

these countries’ economic and political capabilities substantially by 

helping to overcome the lack of transportation assets and egress to the 

sea that have perpetuated their backwardness. Since we are going to 

fight jointly if deployed to these areas, all the services have an equal 

stake in these security-building and investment projects, as they 

are both wealth and force multipliers.145 Such programs would also 

foster increased contacts and communications among neighboring 

states that could help build more mutual confidence and trust. For 

example, demining Uzbekistan’s borders with its various neighbors, 

in particular Tajikistan, might help foster more cooperation, ease their 

mutual security dilemmas, and increase travel and trade between 

them, particularly if good roads could replace the mines.146 These 

actions also characterize the kind of military interoperability and 

bilateral relationships we want to emphasize in our relations with 

these states and the kinds of operations we think will be preeminent 

for them in the foreseeable future.
49

 Recent reports indicate, first, the military priorities we want to 

accomplish in security cooperation, prosecution of counterterrorism, 

counterproliferation, and counterdrug operations.147 Those reports 

also underscore the need, cited by Secretary Rumsfeld and by a 

recent Rand study on this subject, to overcome the many problems 

that currently afflict the Army’s International Activities (AIA), and 

security cooperation in general.148 While some of these reforms 

have been launched, it is still too soon to evaluate their success.149

Nevertheless, the reform of the security cooperation program in 

general, and the AIA in particular, should accompany the idea of 

focusing on a strategy based on priorities and on better interagency 

coordination of policy toward post-Soviet countries. It might be 

useful to review not only the Pentagon’s program, but also those of 

other departments to verify that they contribute to a unified strategy 

based on shared departmental priorities and, if so, to what degree. 

Enhanced coordination would reduce the contradictions that appear 

in the policy, but also impart a clearer strategic focus and set of 

priorities to all aid projects undertaken by the federal government, 

not just the military programs.

 Because we are at war and will be for the foreseeable future, the 

Pentagon’s security cooperation programs should focus on those 

military capabilities that enhance our ability to gain access and to 

work with a responsive infrastructure and local forces to conduct 

combined operations. We need to emphasize those operations that 

are of most interest or priority to us in the GWOT as listed above, 

and also to expand military exchanges and education programs just 

as we did for NATO. This would also include focusing on the IMET 

program, and continuing to use the Marshall Center and NATO 

Defense College as centers for Central Asian and Transcaucasian 

military students, use Central and East European governmental 

and military personnel who are so inclined to mentor these new 

governments, and set up comparable institutions. Just as the Army 

funds the Baltic Defense College in Tartu, it could also fund a 

Caucasus-Central Asian Defense College in a suitable venue to 

train officers in English, interoperability, and in a different form of 

civilian-military interaction than what they have known, as well as 

in contemporary strategy and operations, especially peace support 

operations.
50

 Undoubtedly we could do a great deal more, because the 

integration of these former Soviet republics into the West is the work 

of generations, not of years, and must be accomplished under both 

the current wartime conditions and hopefully once peace returns 

to the area. Moreover, such forms of security cooperation of both 

a military and nonmilitary nature are of increased importance and 

interest to security analysts here and abroad, testimony to the area’s 

strategic significance and that of these territories in the modern 

world.150 Clearly this work will not be finished soon. But due to our 

responsibility for our own security and interest in the security of 

these states and peoples, we are no longer exempted from taking 

that responsibility in hand and working with our allies to pacify the 

area and integrate it into the Euro-Atlantic community. In the final 

analysis and notwithstanding the current severe differences among 

the allies, this security community remains the paramount example 

of successful international security cooperation in our times and a 

shining example for all of the post-Soviet regimes. If we fail to exploit 

the revolutionary trends in regional and world affairs discussed 

above and these countries remain black holes of instability, the price 

that our allies and we pay, notwithstanding our differences, may 

not be as high as that paid by the local regimes. But as shown on 

September 11, 2001, it will still be far too high and traumatic a price 

for past negligence after repeated warnings about contemporary 

threats.

ENDNOTES

 1. For example, Fariz Ismailzade, “US Troop Redeployment Sparks Speculation 

on Azerbaijani Base,” Eurasia Insight, August 23, 2004, www.eurasianet.org; Nathan 

Hodge, “Pentagon Eyeing an Air Base in Azerbaijan,” Defense Week, November 26, 

2001, p. 1; “Yankees in Baku,” Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, (henceforth 

CDPP), Vol. LVI, No. 13, April 28, 2004, pp. 23-24; Peter Slevin, “U.S. May Set Up 

Bases in Former Soviet Republics,” Washington Post, January 28, 2004, retrieved 

from Lexis-Nexis; “Armenia Unhappy About US Plans to Deploy Military Bases 

in Azerbaijan,” Aravot, Yerevan, BBC Monitoring, September 28, 2004; Alexey 

Lyashchenko, “Military-Political Overview: Toward World Leadership with a 

Reliance on Bases,” Krasnaya Zvezda, Foreign Broadcast Information Service Central 

Eurasia (henceforth FBIS-SOV), April 8, 2003; Anatoly Gordienko, “Georgia Rushes 

Into War: Experts Examine Georgian Airfields,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 28, 

2003, FBIS-SOV, March 28, 2003, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty Newsline, March 
51

27, 2003; “Mobility, Global Strike Will Be Key in Changed Posture Abroad,” Inside 

the Air Force, August 20, 2004, p. 1; Greg Jaffe, “Afghan President Karzai Seeks 

Long-Term Security Pact with U.S.,” Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2005; “U.S. Mulls 

Military Bases on Foreign Soil,” Associated Press, New York Times on the Web, www.

nytimes.com, April 14, 2005; N. C. Aizenman, “Karzai Seeks Extended U.S. Security 

Deal,” Washington Post, April 14, 2005.

 2. Ibid. For other studies of U.S. interests, see Elizabeth Wishnick, Growing U.S. 

Security Interests in Central Asia, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 

U.S. Army War College, 2002; Idem., Strategic Consequences of the Iraq War: U.S. 

Security Interests in Central Asia Reassessed, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies 

Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2004; Jacquelyn K. Davis and Michael Sweeney, 

Central Asia in U.S. Strategy and Operational Planning, Where Do We Go From Here? 

Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC: Institute for Foreign Policy Affairs, 2004; 

Lieutenant Colonel Jon E. Chicky, USA, A Military Strategy for Central Asia, Student 

Research Project, U.S. Army War College, 2004, passim; and the author’s two earlier 

studies, The Future of Transcaspian Security, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies 

Institute U.S. Army War College, August, 2002; and U.S. Military Engagement with 

Transcaucasia and Central Asia, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 

U.S. Army War College, June 2000.

 3. “Bush Troop Redeployment Plan: A Threat to Russia,” CDPP, Vol. LVI, No. 

33, September 15, 2004, pp. 1-5.

 4. Testimony of Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to the Senate Appropriations 

Committee, September 23, 2004, retrieved from Lexis-Nexis; General Tommy 

Franks, USA, Ret., with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier, New York: Regan 

Books, Harper Collins Publishers, 2004, pp. 334, 350-352, 408.

 5. Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, February 26, 2004, report of Rumsfeld’s 

trips to Uzbekistan and Kazakstan; “U.S. Relations with Central Asia: Beth Jones, 

Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Briefing to the Press,” 

Washington, DC, February 11, 2002, www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2002/7946.htm; 

Roger N. McDermott, “Washington Vague on U.S. Basing Plans in Central Asia,” 

Eurasian Daily Monitor, August 6, 2004; “Envoy to Azerbaidzhan Upholds USA’s 

Regional Policy,” Zerkalo, Baku, September 11, 2004, pp. 15-17, BBC Monitoring, 

September 18, 2004, retrieved from Lexis-Nexis.

 6. Rumsfeld, Testimony; Federal News Service, Testimony of Under Secretary 

of Defense for Policy to the House Armed Services Committee, June 23, 2004, retrieved 

from Lexis-Nexis.

 7. Graham Chapman, The Geopolitics of South Asia: From Early Empires to the 

Nuclear Age, Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2003, p. 267.

 8. Norman Friedman, Terrorism, Afghanistan, and America’s New Way of War, 

Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2003, pp. 157-250.

 9. Chicky; Wishnick, ops. cits.; Davis and Sweeney, passim; Michel Hess, 

“Central Asia: Mackinder Revisited?” Connections, Vol. III, No. 1, March, 2004, pp. 

97-99.
52

 10. Jeremy Black, “Force and Legitimacy in World History,” RUSI Journal, 

August 2004, pp. 52-60; Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 

1763-1848, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 576-577.

 11. Henk Houweling and Mehdi Parvizi Amineh, “Introduction,” Mehdi 

Parvizi Amineh and Henk Houweling, eds., Central Eurasia in Global Politics: 

Conflict, Security, and Development, International Studies in Sociology and Social 

Anthropology, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004, p. 15.

 12. Black, pp. 52-60; Schroeder, pp. 576-577.

 13. “Bush Troop Redeployment Plan: A Threat to Russia,” pp. 1-5; “Russia 

Urges U.S. To Remove Bases After Afghan War,” CCTV.com News, December 24, 

2001, www.cctv.com/english/news2001122376870.html.

 14. Istanbul Summit Communiqué: Issued by the Heads of State and 

Government Participating in the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council, Istanbul, 

June 28-29, 2004, www.Nato.int/docu/pr/2004/p04-096e.htm (henceforth Istanbul 

Initiative); “Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia Included in the European 

Neighborhood Policy,” www.welcomeeurope.com/news, July 5, 2004; Ahto Lobjaskas, 

“Azerbaijan: EU Keen to Get Involved in Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process,” 

Eurasia Insight, www.eurasianet.org, May 18, 2004.

 15. Istanbul Initiative.

 16. Statement of Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Before 

the House Armed Services Committee, June 23, 2004; Robert Burns, “Pentagon 

to Close 35 Percent of Overseas Bases, Expand Network of ‘Lily Pad’ Bases,” 

Associated Press, September 23, 2004. Burns lays out the entire three tier concept 

of bases to include main operating bases, forward operating bases, and cooperative 

security locations.

 17. U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review (henceforth QDR), 

September 30, 2001, p. 11; see also Thomas Szayna, Adam Grissom, Jefferson P. 

Marquis, Thomas-Durrell Young, Brian Rosen, and Yuna Huth, U.S. Army Security 

Cooperation: Toward Improved Planning and Management, Santa Monica, CA: Rand 

Corporation, 2004, passim.

 18. Mike Allen and Josh White, “President Outlines Overseas Troop Cut,” 

Washington Post, August 17, 2004, p. 1; Jim Mannion, “US Plans to Shift Troops 

Out of Germany: Rumsfeld,” Agence France Presse, August 15, 2004, retrieved from 

Lexis-Nexis.

 19. Hess, p. 96; Martin Libicki, “The Emerging Primacy of Information,” Orbis, 

Vol. XL, No. 2, Spring, 1996, pp. 261-273; Colin Gray, “The Continued Primacy of 

Geography,” Ibid., pp. 247-260; and “A Rejoinder,” Ibid., pp. 274-276.

 20. Robert D. Blackwill, “An Action Agenda to Strengthen America’s Alliances 

in the Asia-Pacific Region,” Robert D. Blackwill and Paul Dibb, eds., America’s 

Asian Alliances, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, p. 115.

 21. U.S. Navy, Naval Power 21: A Naval Vision, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Department of Defense, 2002; Admiral William J. Fallon, USN, “Fighting to Win in 
53

the Littoral and Beyond,” Armed Forces Journal International, June 2001, pp. 66-68; 

Christopher J. Bowie, Robert P. Haffa Jr., and Robert E. Mullins, “Trends in Future 

Warfare,” Joint Forces Quarterly, No. 35, 2004, pp. 129-133.

 22. F. Stephen Larrabee, John Gordon IV, and Peter A. Wilson, “The Right 

Stuff,” The National Interest, No. 77, Fall 2004, pp. 57-58.

 23. Paul Bracken, Fire in the East: The Rise of Asian Military Power and the Second 

Nuclear Age, New York: Perennial Publishers, 2000, pp. 6-36.

 24. Randall Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 1986, p. 93.

 25. Istanbul Initiative; Muthiah Alagappa, “Introduction: Predictability and 

Stability Despite Challenges,” Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Asian Security Order: 

Instrumental and Normative Features, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, p. 26; 

Radu Tudor, “Black Sea Emerges as Strategic Hub Following NATO Expansion,” 

Jane’s Intelligence Review, August 2004, www4.janes.com/subscribe/jir/doc_view.

jsp?K2Doc; Recep Tayip Erdogan, “A Broad View of the ‘Broader Middle East’,” 

Russia in Global Affairs, Vol. II, No. 3, July-September 2004, pp. 130-133. Erdogan is 

the Prime Minister of Turkey.

 26. Ibid.

 27. Sir John Thomson, “Policy Paths in South Asia: Intersections Between 

Global and Local,” Michael R. Chambers, ed., South Asia in 2020: Future Strategic 

Balances and Alliances, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army 

War College, 2002, pp. 17-18.

 28. Rajan Menon, “The New Great Game in Central Asia,” Survival, Vol. XLV, 

No. 2, Summer, 2003, p. 201.

 29. Kanwal Sibal, “Meeting Emerging Security Challenges,” Indian Foreign 

Secretary Kanwal Sibal’s Address at the Carnegie Endowment, February 4, 2003, www.

ceip.org/files/nonprolif/templates/events.

 30. Bracken, pp. 2-3.

 31. Blackwill, pp. 125-127.

 32. Charles M. Perry and Dmitris Keridis, eds., Defense Reform, Modernization 

and Military Cooperation in Southeastern Europe, Herndon, VA: Brassey’s, 2004, p. 

xxxiii.

 33. QDR, p. 4.

 34. Ibid.; General Richard H. Myers (USAF), Chief of Staff, National Military 

Strategy, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2004.

 35. Vivek Raghuvanshi, “India Initiates Vast Project to Network Army,” 

Defense News, June 21, 2004, p. 26; Megan Scully and Andrew Chuter, “Net-Centric 

Land Warfare, Euro Style,” Defense News, June 14, 2004, pp. 1, 8.

 36. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership,

New York: Basic Books, 2004, p. 20.
54

 37. “Air Force Lacks Basing Options for Airstrikes on Afghanistan,” Inside the 

Air Force, October 12, 2001, p. 1.

 38. Bowie, Haffa, and Mullins, p. 130.

 39. Robert Harkavy, “Strategic Geography and the Greater Middle East,” 

Naval War College Review, Vol. LIV, No. 4, Autumn 2001, p. 45; Bracken, p. 163; 

Chris Donnelly, “Defence, Security, and Intelligence in the 21st Century: New 

Challenges and new Responses,” Acque & Terre, No. 2, 2003, pp. 57-60.

 40. Owen R. Cote Jr., Assuring Access and Projecting Power: The Navy in the New 

Security Environment, Cambridge MA: MIT Security Studies Program, 2000, cited 

in Eric V. Larson, et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions: Towards a LongTerm Strategy, Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2004, p. 116.

 41. Ibid., pp. 115-126.

 42. Celeste A. Wallander, “Silk Road, Great Game, or Soft Underbelly? The 

New US-Russia Relationship and Implications for Eurasia,” Shireen Hunter, ed., 

Strategic Developments in Eurasia After 11 September, London: Frank Cass Publishers, 

2004, p. 98.

 43. Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First 

Century, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003, p. 166.

44. Istanbul Initiative; “Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia Included in the 

European Neighborhood Policy”; Lobjaskas, “Azerbaijan: EU Keen To Get 

Involved In Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process.”

 45. See the Statement and Testimony of Andrew F. Krepinevich, Senate Armed 

Services Committee, April 9, 2002, retrieved from Lexis-Nexis.

 46. Ibid.

 47. “Russia Reportedly Seeking Strategic Axis, Military Production 

Cooperation,” BBC Monitoring, January 2, 2001; “Foreign Minister Discusses 

Bilateral Ties With Chinese Official,” IRNA News Agency, February 20, 2001, 

retrieved from Lexis-Nexis.

 48. Thomas J. Christensen, “Posing Problems Without Catching Up: China’s 

Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy,” International Security, Vol. XXV, No. 

4, Spring, 2001, p. 22.

 49. Ian O. Lesser and Ashley J. Tellis, Strategic Exposure: Proliferation Around the 

Mediterranean, Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1997.

 50. For a discussion of this concept of a TVD, see Stephen Blank, et al., The Soviet 

Space Theater of War (TV), College Station, TX: Center for Strategic Technology, 

Texas Engineering Experiment Station, Texas A&M University, September, 1988.

 51. Damien Cai, “Military Globalization of the U.S. and International Security 

in East Asia Region,” Taiwan Defense Affairs, Vol. II, No. 3, Spring, 2002, p. 58.

 52. Michael Evans, “From Kadesh to Kandahar: Military Theory and the Future 

of War,” Naval War College Review, Vol. LVII, No. 3, Summer 2003, pp. 132-150.
55

 53. Ibid.

54. Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and Henk Houweling, “Caspian Energy: Oil and 

Gas Resources and the Global Market,” in Central Eurasia in Global Politics: Conflict, 

Security, and Development, Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and Henk Houweling, eds., 

Leiden, Boston, and Tokyo: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004, p. 78.

 55. Dr. Steven Metz and Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Millen (USA), Future 

War/Future Battlespace: The Strategic Role of American Landpower, Carlisle Barracks, 

PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2003, p. 2.

 56. Sam Bateman and Chris Rahman, “The Rise of the PLAN and the 

Implications for East Asian Security,” Taiwan Defense Affairs, Vol. II, No. 2, Winter 

2001/2002, p. 47.

 57. “Statement of Stephen Sestanovich, Ambassador-at-Large, Special Adviser 

to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States, Before the House 

International Relations Committee, April 30, 1998,” Turkistan Newsletter, Vol. 98-

2:089-06-May-1998 (henceforth Sestanovich, Testimony); and the statements by 

Ashton Carter and John Deutch in “Caspian Studies Program Experts Conference 

Report: Succession and Long-Term Stability in the Caspian Region,” Strengthening 

Democratic Institutions Project, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard 

University, Cambridge, MA, 1999, pp. 10-12 (henceforth Conference Report); 

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, “US Policy and the Caucasus,” Contemporary 

Caucasus Newsletter, Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, Berkeley, 

CA: University of California, Berkeley, Issue 5, Spring, 1998, pp. 3-4.

 58. For the author’s earlier discussion of this trend, see Stephen Blank, “Central 

Asia’s Strategic Revolution,” Regional Power Plays in the Caucasus and Central Asia, 

NBR Analysis, Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Research, Asia, 2003, pp. 51-76.

 59. General Richard H. Myers (USAF), Chief of Staff, National Military Strategy, 

Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2004 (henceforth NMS); General Peter 

J. Schoomaker, (USA) Chief of Staff of the Army, and Major Anthony W. Vassalo 

(USA), “The Way Ahead,” Military Review, March-April, 2004, pp. 7, 11; Lieutenant 

General John M. Riggs, Director, Objective Force Task Force, The Army in 2020, 

Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2003, p. 10.

 60. Bradley Graham, “Bush Plans Aid to Build Foreign Peace Forces,” 

Washington Post, April 19, 2004, p. 1; James Dobbins, “Nation-Building Returns to 

Favor,” Financial Times, August 11, 2004, p. 11; Jason Sherman, “Rumsfeld Reworks 

Pentagon Goals,” Defense News, May 10, 2004, p. 4; Thomas E. Ricks, “Shift From 

Traditional War Seen At Pentagon,” Washington Post, September 3, 2004, p. 1.

 61. Ibid.; Jason Sherman, “U.S. Goals Sought on Battling the Unconventional,” 

Defense News, September 20, 2004, p. 4.

 62. As Michael O’Hanlon pointed out, in Iraq, this planning failure affected 

both strategic and operational planning and both civilian and military planners. 

Michael E. O’Hanlon, “Iraq Without a Plan,” Policy Review, December, 2004-

January, 2005, pp. 33-45; see also Larry Diamond, “What Went Wrong in Iraq,” 
56

Foreign Affairs, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 5, September-October 2004, pp. 34-56; James 

Fallows, “Blind Into Baghdad,” Atlantic Monthly, January 2004, pp. 52-74.

 63. General Charles F. Wald, Deputy Commander, U.S. European Command 

(USEUCOM), RUE Security Cooperation: Challenges and Opportunities, Briefing 

Presented to the IFPA Symposium on Security Cooperation with Russia, Ukraine, 

and the Caucasus, Washington, DC, July 23, 2004 (henceforth Wald, Briefing).

 64. R. Craig Nation, “Military Contributions to Regional Stability,” Stefano 

Bianchini and Susan L. Woodward, eds., From the Adriatic to the Caucasus: Viable 

Dynamics of Stabilization, Ravenna, Italy: A. Longo Editore, 2003, p. 33.

 65. Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America’s 

Military, New York: W. W. Norton Inc., 2003, pp. 99-118; Sami G. Hajjar, U.S. 

Military Presence in the Gulf: Challenges and Prospects, Carlisle Barracks, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002, pp. 19-29; Thomas E. 

Ricks, “An Unprecedented Coalition,” Washington Post Weekly, October 1-7, 2001, 

p. 19; Thomas E. Ricks, and Susan B. Glasser, “U.S. Operated Covert Alliance With 

Uzbekistan,” Washington Post, October 24, 2001, pp. A1, 24.

 66. Dobbins, “Nation-Building Returns to Favor,” p. 11; Sherman, “Rumsfeld 

Reworks Pentagon Goals,” p. 4; Sherman, “U.S. Goals Sought on Battling the 

Unconventional,” p. 4; Ricks, “Shift From Traditional War Seen at Pentagon,” p. 1.

 67. Lorenzo Cortes, “Surface Warfare Chief Identifies Primary Anti-Access 

Threats,” Defense Daily, July 9, 2004, p. 2; Christopher J. Bowie, The Anti-Access 

Threat and Theater Air Bases, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary 

Assessments, 2002; Andrew Krepinevich, Barry Watts, and Robert Work, Meeting 

the anti-Access and Area-Denial Challenge, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and 

Budgetary Assessments, 2003.

 68. “The Access Issue,” Air Force Magazine, October 1998, p. 44.

 69. Priest, pp. 99-118; Hajjar, pp. 19-29; Ricks, “An Unprecedented Coalition,” 

p. 19; Ricks and Glasser, pp. A1, 24.

 70. This point is axiomatic in any study of Central Asia and the Caucasus’ 

security environments, e.g., Olga Oliker and Thomas S. Szayna, eds., Faultlines 

of Conflict in Central Asia and the Caucasus, Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 

2003, passim.

 71. Davis and Sweeney, pp. 47-52, Wishnick, Strategic Consequences of the Iraq 

War, pp. 4-5.

 72. Istanbul Initiative.

 73. Ibid: “Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia Included in the European 

Neighborhood Policy”; Lobjaskas, “Azerbaijan: EU Keen to Get Involved in 

Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process.”

 74. Diamond, pp. 34-56; Fallows, pp. 52-74; S. Frederick Starr, U.S. Policy 

in Afghanistan: It’s Working, Central Asia Caucasus Institute, Nitze School of 

Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, 
57

2004; Sherman, “Rumsfeld Reworks Pentagon Goals,” p. 4; Sherman, “U.S. Goals 

Sought on Battling the Unconventional,” p. 4; Ricks, “Shift from Traditional War 

Seen at Pentagon,” p. 1.

 75. Ian Bostock, “Australia Pledges to Target Terrorists Offshore,” Jane’s 

Defence Weekly, September 29, 2004, www4janes.com/subscribe/jdw/doc.

 76. James Dobbins, “Nation-Building Returns to Favour,” Financial Times, 

August 11, 2004, cited in http://ebird.afis.osd.mil/efiles/s2004081131121.html.

 77. Tom Clancy, with General Tony Zinni (USMC Ret) and Tony Klotz, Battle 

Ready, New York: G. P. Putnam & sons, 2004, pp. 432-438; Ricks, “Shift from 

Traditional War Seen At Pentagon,” p. 1; Will Dunham “U.S. Weighs Methods 

of Dealing With Rogue States, Terrorists,” San Diego Union Tribune, September 4, 

2004, http://ebird.afis.osd.mil/ebfiles/s20040909318487.html; Andrew Koch, “US Seeks 

Keepers of the Peace,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, May 5, 2004, http://ebird.afis.osd.mil/

ebfiless20040427279499.html.

 78. Major General Kenneth R. Bowra and Colonel William H. Harris, Jr., 

“Regional Engagement: An ARSOF Approach to Future Theater Operations,” 

Special Warfare, Fall 1998, pp. 2-23; William H. Lewis and Edward Marks, Searching 

for Partners: Regional Organizations and Peace Operations, McNair Papers, No. 58, 

Institute for National Security Studies, National Defense University, Washington, 

DC, 1998, pp. 105-107, 123.

 79. Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army 

and Defense Policy, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies institute, U.S. Army 

War College, 2002.

 80. QDR.

 81. Christensen, p. 17.

 82. Jeffrey Record and W. Andrew Terrill, Iraq and Vietnam: Differences,

Similarities, and Insights, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. 

Army War College, 2004.

 83. Remarks by Dr Jeffrey Simon of the National Defense University, delivered 

at the conference, “Changing Security Dynamics in Eurasia,” Fort McNair, 

Washington, DC, September 7-8, 2004 (henceforth Simon, Remarks).

 84. Niklas Swanstrom, “The Prospects for Multilateral Conflict Prevention and 

Regional Cooperation in Central Asia,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 

March 2004, pp. 41-53; Charles Fairbanks, S. Frederick Starr, C. Richard Nelson, 

Kenneth Weisbrode, Strategic Assessment of Central Eurasia, Washington, DC: The 

Atlantic Council of the United States and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of 

the Nitze School of Advanced International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, 

2001, pp. 33-71.

 85. Lawrence Freedman, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Papers, No. 

318, London, Oxford University Press for the International Institute of Strategic 

Studies, 1998, pp. 9-10.
58

 86. “India to Play Prominent Role in US-led ‘Asian NATO’,” Press Trust of 

India, July 18, 2003, retrieved from Lexis-Nexis; Stephen Blank, “Inherent Dangers 

in an ‘Asian NATO’,” Asia Times Online, September 19, 2003, www.atimes.com; 

“Pentagon Keen To Make India A Strategic Partner, “SAPRA India Bulletin, June 

2003, pp. 27-28.

 87. Harkavy, p. 45.

 88. Robert Legvold, “Introduction: Great Power Stakes in Central Asia, Robert 

Legvold, ed., Thinking Strategically: The Major Powers, Kazakstan, and the Central 

Asian Nexus, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, p. 37.

 89. Svante Cornell, “Uzbekistan: A Regional Player in Eurasian Geopolitics,” 

European Security, Vol. IX, No. 2, Summer 2000, p. 122.

 90. Temur Basilia, “Eurasian Commentary,” Jan H, Kalicki and Eugene K. 

Lawson, eds., Russian-Eurasian Renaissance?: U.S. Trade and Investment in Russia 

and Eurasia, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 166.

 91. “Putin Speaks Out Against Exporting Capitalist Democracy,” ITAR-TASS 

News Agency, April 11, 2003, retrieved from Lexis-Nexis; for an example from 

Turkmenistan, see Gennady Sysoev, “Saparmyrat Niyazov Seeks Protection,” 

Moscow, Kommersant, in Russian, April 11, 2003, FBIS SOV, April 11, 2003.

 92. Wald, Briefing.

 93. QDR; Federal Document Clearing House, Testimony by Peter T. R. 

Brookes, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs, 

House Resources Committee, July 17, 2002; Statement to the House Committee 

on International Relations by Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense 

for International Security Affairs, June 26, 2003, www.house.gov/international_

relations/108/rod0626.

 94. “India to Play Prominent Role in US-led ‘Asian NATO’”; Blank, “Inherent 

Dangers in an ‘Asian NATO,’ Pentagon Keen to Make India a Strategic Partner,” 

pp. 27-28.

 95. “India May Allow U.S. Access to Military Bases: Jaswant,” The News, June 

23, 2001, www.jang.com/pk/thenews/jun2001-daily/23-06/2001/main/main1.htm.

 96. Brookes, Testimony.

 97. Rodman, Testimony.

 98. Ibid.

 99. Ibid.

 100. Douglas E. Streusand, “Geopolitics Versus Globalization,” Sam J. 

Tangredi, ed., Globalization and Maritime Power, Washington, DC: Fort Lesley J. 

McNair, Institute for National Security Studies, National Defense University, 2002, 

p. 53.

 101. Sam J. Tangredi, “Globalization and Sea Power: Overview and Context,” 

Ibid., p. 6.
59

 102. John Garver, “The Security Dilemma in Sino-Indian Relations,” India 

Review, Vol. I, No. 4, October, 2002, pp. 9-21, shows this with regard to Sino-Indian 

naval rivalry.

 103. General Gregory S. Martin (USAF), “US National Security Strategy and 

the Imperative of ‘Geopresence’,” Air & Space Power Journal, Vol. XVII, No. 2, 

Summer 2003, pp. 35-48.

 104. Ibid., p. 39.

 105. Edward N. Luttwak, “Air Power in U.S. Military Strategy,” Richard H. 

Shultz, Jr., and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, eds., The Future of Air Power in the Aftermath 

of the Gulf War, Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1992, p. 20, cited in Chung 

Min Lee, “East Asia’s Awakening from Strategic Hibernation and the Role of Air 

Power,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. XV, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 227-228; 

“The British Perception of Air Power,” Military Technology, No. 7, 2003, p. 65.

 106. Ibid.

 107. Lee, pp. 221-234.

 108. Stefano Bianchini, “Conclusions,” Stefano Bianchini ed., From the Adriatic 

to the Caucasus: The Dynamics of (De) Stabilization, Ravenna, Italy: A. Longo Editore, 

2001, p. 239.

 109. Ibid., pp. 239-242.

 110. Richard Giragosian, “Dead-End Politics in the South Caucasus,” Marco 

Polo Magazine, Supplement to Acque et Terre, No. 3, 2004, pp. 18-19.

 111. Max G. Manwaring, “Security Issues in the Western Hemisphere,” Low 

Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, Vol. XI, No. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 55-76.

 112. Apart from terrorism, this was already the Clinton administration’s 

agenda, Sestanovich, Testimony.

 113. Chicky, pp. 3-20; Wishnick, op. cit.

 114. Philipp H. Fluri and M. Eden Cole, “Security Sector Governance and Reform 

in Southeastern Europe―A Brief Study in Norms Transfer,” Polaris: Nato Defense 

College, Vol. I, No. 2, Summer 2004, pp. 15-35; see also the essays in Ambassador 

Istvan Gyarmati and Ambassador Theodor Winkler, eds., Post-Cold War Defense 

Reform: Lessons Learned in Europe and the United States, Foreword by Lord Robertson 

Secretary-General of NATO, Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002; and Larry Watts 

and George Christian Maior, Coordinators, International Conference: Globalization of 

Civil-Military Relations: Democratization, Reform, and Security, Bucharest, Romania: 

Encyclopedica Publishing House, 2002.

 115. “USA to Increase Military Assistance to Georgia,” The Russia Journal, 

September 28, 2004, www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=45662.

 116. William D. O’Malley, “Central Asia and South Caucasus as an Area of 

Operations: Challenges and Constraints,” Oliker and Szayna, eds., pp. 241-306.
60

 117. Roger W. Barnett, Extraordinary Power Projection: An Operational Concept 

for the U.S. Navy, Strategic Research Development Report 5-96, U.S. Naval War 

College, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, Occasional Papers, Newport, RI, 1996, 

pp. 7-8.

 118. Ibid.

 119. O’Malley, pp. 241-306.

 120. Istanbul Initiative.

 121. “Armenian, British Defence Ministries Sign Cooperation Memo,” 

Mediamax News Agency, Erevan, BBC Monitoring, September 24, 2004; “Armenian 

Defence Minister Discusses Military Ties with German Envoy,” Public Television 

of Armenia, BBC Monitoring, September 23, 2004; “Armenia Set to Expand Ties 

with NATO, Foreign Minister Says,” Mediamax News Agency, BBC Monitoring, 

September 22, 2004; Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Newsline, April 27, 2004.

 122. Joshua Spero, “Paths to Peace for NATO’s Partnerships in Eurasia,” 

James Sperling, Sean Kay, and S. Victor Papascoma, eds., Limiting Institutions?: The 

Challenge of Eurasian Security Governance, Manchester and New York, Manchester 

University Press, 2003, pp. 170-180.

 123. Nation, pp. 34-45.

 124. Ibid.; Perry and Keridis, eds., passim; Simon, Remarks.

 125. Ibid.; Istanbul Initiative.

 126. Ibid.

127. Perry and Keridis, eds. passim; Simon, Remarks.

 128. Radek Sikorski, “How It’s Going, Three Years After Invasion/Liberation,

American Enterprise Institute, September 24, 2004, www.aei.org/include/news.

 129. “Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia Included in the European 

Neighborhood Policy”; Lobjaskas, “Azerbaijan: EU Keen to Get Involved in 

Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process.”

 130. Bruno Coppetiers, Michel Huysseune, Michael Emerson, Nathalie Tocci, 

and Marius Vahl, “European Institutional Models as Instruments of Conflict 

Resolution in the Divided States of the European Periphery,” CEPS Working 

Document, No. 195, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, Belgium, July 

2003; Dov Lynch, ed., The South Caucasus: A Challenge for the EU, Chaillot Papers, 

No. 65, 2003; Svante E. Cornell, Roger N. McDermott, William O’Malley, Vladimir 

Socor, and S. Frederick Starr, Regional Security in the South Caucasus: The Role 

of NATO, Washington, DC: Central Asia Caucasus Institute, Nitze School of 

Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 2004.

 131. The Baltic Defense College’s capabilities and its goals may be seen in its 

semi-annual publication, The Baltic Defense Review, and the following articles: Peter 

Foot, “European Military Education Today,” Baltic Defense Review, No. 5, 2001, 

pp. 23-25; Brigadier General Michael H. Clemmesen, “Integration of New Alliance 
61

Members: The Intellectual-Cultural Dimension,” Defense Analysis, Vol. XV, No. 3, 

1999, pp. 261-272. General Clemmesen is the Commandant of the Baltic Defense 

College, Denmark.

 132. I have recently discussed India’s policies in Central Asia in Stephen Blank, 

“India Joins the Great Game: Indian Strategy in Central Asia,” Indranil Bannerjie, 

ed., India and Central Asia, Middlesex, UK: Brunel Academic Publishers Ltd, 2004, 

pp. 261-301.

 133. Jonathan Eyal, “Why China is Making Overtures to NATO,” Straits Times, 

November 25, 2002, retrieved from Lexis-Nexis; Jonathan Marcus, “China Seeks 

Dialogue With NATO,” BBC News, November 18, 2002.

 134. Pavel Zolotarev, “The New Bases of the U.S. Are Tied to the Regions 

of Instability,” Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, August 20, 2004, FBIS SOV, 

August 20, 2004; Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Newsline, July 10, 2003.

 135. Author’s conversations with U.S. military officials involved in trying to 

facilitate such cooperation, Washington, DC, September 28, 2004.

 136. “Russian Defense Minister Voices Concern About Army Draft,” RIA 

Novosti, October 1, 2004, retrieved from Lexis-Nexis.

 137. “U.S. Increases Military Aid to Uzbekistan,” Associated Press, August 12, 

2004, retrieved from Lexis-Nexis.

 138. Svante E. Cornell and Regine A. Spector, “Central Asia: More Than Islamic 

Extremists,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 1, Winter, 2002, p. 203.

 139. David C. Gompert, Olga Oliker, Anga Timilsina, “Clean, Lean, and Able: 

A Strategy for Defense Development,” Occasional Paper Op-101-RC, 2004, Santa 

Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2004, pp. 5-6.

 140. Ibid., p. 2.

 141. Ibid., pp. 5-8.

 142. Ibid., pp. 8-9.

 143. Larson, et al., p. 119.

 144. Ibid., pp. 115-126.

 145. Ibid.

 146. Erica Marat, Said Dilovarov, “Uzbek De-Mining Pledge Strives to Mollify 

Neighbors, Eurasia Insight, July 16, 2004, www.eurasianet.org.

 147. Chicky, pp. 3-20.

 148. Szayna, Grissom, Marquis, Young, Rosen, Huth, passim. 

 149. Sherman, “Rumsfeld Reworks Pentagon Goals,” p. 4.

 150. Wald, Briefing.