Central America: In addition to the U.S. retaining the use of the Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras for its 550-troop Joint Task Force-Bravo after the military coup d'etat of last June 28, a report surfaced in September of 2009 that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had reached an agreement with new Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli for the opening of two new American naval bases, one each on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts.
Indian Ocean: U.S. Africa Command deployed lethal Reaper "hunter-killer" drones, spy planes and over a hundred service members to Seychelles late last year.
South Pacific: A secretive military satellite base in Western Australia was approved in 2007. The massive expansion of the Andersen Air Force Base and construction of barracks for 8,000 Marines on Guam is underway.
New bases on every inhabited continent outside the Pentagon's own.
Mongolia, however remote it is and previously inaccessible it may have been, is no exception to the wave of worldwide U.S. military expansion.
On March 29 NATO announced that the nation had become the 45th country to contribute troops for the North Atlantic military bloc's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The 44th nation to be formally dragooned into NATO's first ground and first Asian war was Montenegro, the world's newest (universally recognized) state.
There are in fact more than 45 countries with troops subordinated to NATO in the Afghan war zone in addition to those from all but six European nations, two South Pacific ones (Australia and New Zealand), a Persian Gulf state (the United Arab Emirates), all three South Caucasus nations (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia), Asia's Singapore and South Korea and the U.S. and Canada.
Last November the Financial Times confirmed that Colombia was deploying infantry forces to Afghanistan under NATO command, in December the ISAF website divulged that Egyptian military personnel are operating in the east of the country [1], and this January the U.S. armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes revealed that troops from Bahrain and Jordan were already in the war zone.
The inclusion of Colombia and Egypt is particularly significant as now troops from all six populated continents are among those of fifty-some-odd nations serving under NATO - soon to number 150,000, with almost all U.S. forces placed under NATO command - in not only a single war theater but in one country. The world has never before witnessed such a widespread military network concentrated on and in one small land.
Mongolia's Defense Minister Luvsanvandan Bold was at NATO headquarters in Brussels on March 29 to formalize his nation's deployment of an estimated 250 more troops for the Afghan war. He was accompanied by his country's chief of the general staff and secretary of the National Security Council.
The delegation met with NATO's Deputy Secretary General Claudio Bisogniero and the "meeting marked the formal recognition of the Mongolian contribution to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)."
NATO's number two civilian leader said on the occasion that "These are important agreements, not just from a legal perspective, but chiefly to mark Mongolia's full recognition as a member of ISAF and a key contributor to the international mission." [2]
The military bloc announced that as Mongolia is now an official Troop Contributing Nation, it will be invited to the 56-nation NATO foreign ministers meeting to begin on April 23 in Estonia.
The Mongolian entourage also visited Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, NATO's main military command, outside Mons, Belgium, where it was accorded an honor guard reception and met with the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Sir John McColl.
NATO now has a military partner squeezed between Russia and China.
A report from last year placed matters in historical perspective. Deployment to Afghanistan will assist "The Mongolian army, which has not seen major combat since assisting the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945," to "acquire vital, on-the-ground experience." The mission "will mark its largest military presence in Afghanistan since the age of Genghis Khan." [3]
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