The US is planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project US influence into the heart of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say.
US officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future: one at the international airport just outside Baghdad; another at Tallil, near Nasiriyah in the south; the third at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert, along the old oil pipeline that runs to Jordan; and the last at the Bashur air field in the Kurdish north.
The military is already using these bases to support continuing operations against the remnants of the old government, to deliver supplies and relief aid, and for reconnaissance patrols. But as the invasion force withdraws in the months ahead, turning over control to a new Iraqi government, Pentagon officials expect to gain access to the bases in the event of some future crisis.
Whether that can be arranged depends on relations between Washington and whoever takes control in Baghdad. If the ties are close enough, the military relationship could become one of the most striking developments in a strategic revolution now playing out across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.
A military foothold in Iraq would be felt across the border in Syria, and, in combination with the continuing US presence in Afghanistan, it would virtually surround Iran with a new web of US influence.
"There will be some kind of a long-term defense relationship with a new Iraq, similar to Afghanistan," said one senior administration official. "The scope of that has yet to be defined."
These goals do not contradict the administration's official policy of rapid withdrawal from Iraq, and the US is acutely aware that its growing presence in the Middle East and Southwest Asia invites charges of empire-building and might create new targets for terrorists.
In a particularly important development, officials said the US was likely to reduce its forces in Saudi Arabia, as well. The main reason for that presence, after all, was to protect the Saudi government from the threat Iraq has posed since its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Already, in Turkey, where a newly elected government bowed to domestic pressure and denied the Pentagon access to bases and supply lines for the war with Iraq, the US has withdrawn nearly all of its 50 attack and support airplanes at the Incirlik air base.
Turkish officials say a new postwar security arrangement with Washington will emerge.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, there has been a concerted diplomatic and military effort to win permission for US forces to operate from the formerly communist nations of Eastern Europe, across the Mediterranean, throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and across Central Asia.
It is a swath of Western influence not seen for generations.
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