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06/03/2005:

"Bases, Bases Everywhere: It’s a Pentagon World and Welcome to It"

by Tom Engelhardt
...Begin with those prospective bases in Romania and Bulgaria (and while you're at it, toss in the ones already in existence in the former Yugoslavia); make your way southeastwards past "Pipelineistan," keeping your eye out for our Turkish bases and those possible future ones in Azerbaijan; take in the 4 or 5 bases we'd like to hang onto in the embattled Iraqi heartland of the Middle East (not to speak of the ones we already control in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and elsewhere in the region); take a quick glance at "oil-rich" North Africa for a second, imagining what might someday be nailed down there; then hop over base-less Axis of Evil power Iran and land at Bagram Air Base (don't worry, you have "access") or any of the other unnamed ones in Afghanistan where we now have a long-term foothold; don't forget the nearby Pakistani air bases that Gen. Pervez Musharraf has given us access to (or Diego Garcia, that British "aircraft carrier" island in the Indian Ocean that's all ours); add in our new Central Asian facilities; plot it all out on a map and what you have is a great infertile crescent of American military garrisons extending from the old Soviet-controlled lands of Eastern Europe to the old Soviet SSRs of Central Asia, reaching from Russia's eastern border right up to the border of China. This is, of course, a map that more or less coincides with the Middle Eastern and Caspian oil heartlands of the planet.
Full: commondreams.org

And Russia and China are going to sit for this? I think it's time to focus on how close we are to full-scale nuclear confrontation.