Months afterward it was revealed that Rumsfeld had promised impoverished Mongolia (with a population roughly equal to that of Chicago) $11 million worth of U.S. military equipment. [15]
In January of 2006 Mongolia announced that, despite a transition in the nation's cabinet underway at the time, it would keep its U.S.-trained troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the middle of the year the U.S. State Department disclosed that "Rumsfeld said the United States plans to join Mongolia in an upcoming multinational exercise that is intended to strengthen regional cooperation in peacekeeping.
"The exercise, called 'Conquest,' is scheduled for late summer." [16] Once again the alleged peacekeeping nature of America's military role in Mongolia was belied by the name of the operation.
During the summer the Pentagon conducted the Khaan Quest 2006 exercises in which "300 American military personnel [trained] 600 Mongolian troops, as
well as 200 others from Bangladesh, Fiji, South Korea, Thailand and Tonga," at what by that time was a permanent training base at Tavan Tolgoi (Five Hills).
It was announced before the August war games that "The training is part of the millions of dollars that President Bush promised during his visit to Mongolia last year." [17]
During Khaan Quest 2006 "Admiral William J. Fallon, head of the U.S.
Pacific Command, greeted media and soldiers, praising the peacekeeping exercises and stressing the importance of Tavan Tolgoi as an international
training site." [18] The next year Fallon took over Central Command whose area of responsibility includes both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The two-week military exercises were held "on the windswept steppe of Mongolia, a key American ally strategically placed between Russia and China."
To demonstrate its appreciation of the role that Mongolia plays in U.S. geostrategic plans for Eurasia, three months earlier "The U.S. Congress passed a resolution...commending Mongolia on marking 800 years since Genghis Khan forged a nation out of the vast territory inhabited by disparate tribes, and praising its 'commitment to democracy, freedom and economic reform.'"[19]
In late July and early August Mongolian air force officials were invited to Operation Cooperative Cope Thunder in Alaska, "the largest multilateral air combat exercise in the northern Pacific, with about 1,300 personnel participating" from the United States, NATO, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. [20]
In October the seventh rotation of Mongolian troops "left for Iraq on board a special flight" to "join U.S. soldiers on patrol missions and maintaining order in the Iraqi capital [of] Baghdad." [21]
By 2007 the Pentagon's military integration of Mongolia had progressed beyond the point of the latter merely sending observers to U.S. war games and in July Mongolian airmen joined colleagues from the U.S., Spain, Thailand and Turkey for the two-week Red Flag-Alaska exercises in which "80 aircraft and 1,500 service members from the six countries [flew] together in this multinational exercise that provides realistic combat training...." [22]
The same month, at a time when almost 1,000 of its troops had served in the Iraq war zone, The Times of London in a feature called "War earns Mongolia rich peace dividend" summed up the results of four years of direct U.S.-Mongolian military cooperation:
"[Mongolian] soldiers are fed, given new uniforms, battle armour and night-vision equipment when they arrive in Iraq and President Bush has promised
Mongolia $14.5 million to renovate its Armed Forces.
"The country's readiness to fight in Iraq was also key to winning it a highly sought-after first-round place in Washington's $5 billion Millennium Challenge Account." [23]
Khaan Quest 2007 expanded to include over 1,000 troops from the U.S., Mongolia and seven other Asian and Asia-Pacific nations - Bangladesh, Tonga, South Korea, Brunei, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Cambodia - to "improve their interoperability" and the "multinational speed of response, mission effectiveness...and unity of effort. [24]
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