Pentagon Moving Swiftly to Become 'GloboCop'

Much like its successful military campaign in Iraq, the Pentagon is moving at seemingly breakneck speed to re-deploy U.S. forces and equipment around the world in ways that will permit Washington to play ''GloboCop,' according to a number of statements by top officials and defense planners.

While preparing sharp reductions in forces in Germany, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, military planners are talking about establishing semi-permanent or permanent bases along a giant swathe of global territory--increasingly referred to as 'the arc of instability'--from the Caribbean Basin through Africa to South and Central Asia and across to North Korea.

The latest details, disclosed by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, include plans to increase U.S. forces in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea from Yemen, set up semi-permanent 'forward bases' in Algeria, Morocco and possibly Tunisia, and establish smaller facilities in Senegal, Ghana and Mali that could be used to intervene in oil-rich West African countries, particularly Nigeria.

Similar bases--what some call 'lily pads'--are now being sought or expanded in northern Australia, Thailand (whose prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has found this to figure high on the bilateral agenda in talks here this week), Singapore, the Philippines, Kenya, Georgia, Azerbaijan, throughout Central Asia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Qatar, Vietnam and Iraq.
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