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Europe
Bulgaria finds itself in the frontline of US military build-up
2003-03-04
On a beach by the grey waters of the Black sea, scores of young American airmen are racing against the clock to get ready for war. Surrounded by Kalashnikov-toting Bulgarian military police, fenced in by red corrugated iron, and shrouded by a pine grove, the men of the US air force's 409th air expeditionary group are pioneers in a mission that is reconfiguring decades of the US military presence in Europe and redrawing Europe's military map. "We're in a rush," said Sergeant Jason Smith, just arrived from Charleston in North South Carolina. "Our main role is to support the global war on terror. And we're preparing for future operations."

Since last Tuesday night when two US Hercules transport aircraft landed dropped out of the sky from Ramstein base in Germany on to Bulgaria's Burgas airport, the airmen, many barely out of their teens, have been working frantically to get Burgas fit for the US war machine.
Everyone in their 20s is barely out of their teens. What's that have to do with it? At that age, they're strong and limber and full of enthusiasm...
The transports — huge C-5 Galaxies, C-141s and the C-130 Hercules — have been landing almost every day over the past week, disgorging hot dogs and Coke, computers and secure phone systems, huge tarpaulins for a "tent city", showers and tanks of water, and more troops and pilots. Yesterday afternoon a brace of KC-10A Extender jets, the biggest air tankers in the USAF, landed at Burgas to play a key role in the campaign against Saddam Hussein. The two tanker jets, capable of carrying more than 160,000kg of fuel, are to be followed by at least 14 others. "No one asks us whether we like it or not," said Mincho Minchev, the Bulgarian airport's technical director. "We're just under orders to service the US aircraft. We're not told what's going on, just on a daily basis what will be arriving." The Americans on the beach at what has been dubbed Camp Sarafovo are the first foreign military to commandeer Burgas airport since the Luftwaffe seized it in 1943.
"Commandeer"? I think I see the writer's bias in action.The correct word is "use", courtesy of the Bulgarian government.
Al-Guardian seems to think we "seized" it, too...
But they are the thin end of a wedge of a US military project that is appropriating strategic assets in a vital area that Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, terms the "new Europe".
"Appropriating"? Yup, no bias here.
"If things go on as they are right now, there will be a lot more of this," said Sgt Smith, at 27 a nine-year veteran of the USAF.
Closer to the scene of the action than Germany, and we don't have to watch our backs as closely...
Just up the Black sea coast in neighbouring Romania, hundreds of US troops as well as planes and helicopters have been pouring into an air base beside the port of Constanta over the past 10 days. Last November Washington invited Bulgaria and Romania to join Nato. With war looming, it is, perhaps earlier than expected, payback time for the impoverished, corrupt Balkan states whose proximity to the Middle East have boosted their value to Pentagon planners. Suddenly the talk of eastern Europe is of the Americans snubbing pacifist Germany and of redeploying their vast military presence there to the cheaper, more welcoming, and more passive "new European" countries of Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.
"Passive"? I'd wager the writer wouldn't use that word in the presence of any military officer of any of these countries.
With not a single vote cast against the decision in parliament in Sofia, the Bulgarian government last month offered the US the Burgas base, the Sarafovo camp (a holiday complex for Bulgarian army officers), and more in the pipeline. "We're ready to negotiate over locating American bases in Bulgaria," said Lubomir Todorov, the foreign ministry spokesman. "Our territory could be a very good place for new bases because it is close to the Middle East."
And the people understand how to defend freedom.
A senior western diplomat in Sofia said: "There's going to be a lot of activity here. It's a convenient location."

Just back from Washington last Thursday, the Bulgarian defence minister, Nikolai Svinarov, announced: "There's a possibility of providing four or five bases to the United States." The Romanians have already offered Constanta, the centre of the national oil industry, as well as the country's air bases. In Poland, derelict Warsaw pact garrisons are being dusted down by enthusiastic locals who think the GIs are coming their way after spending a couple of generations in Germany. In Stuttgart yesterday, the top US commander in Europe, General James Jones, confirmed that Washington was looking at bases in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland for mobile and more flexible deployments of US forces in about a year's time. He denied that the move was a "kneejerk reaction" aimed at punishing Germany for its anti-war stance, but was part of a reordering of US strategic planning. "This is not about building up eastern Europe in the same way we built up western Europe after world war two," he said
Of course, our people have to go somewhere besides Germany when this is all over.
And if you've got to spend dollars, might as well spend them on people who don't make faces at us and call us names...
Public support for the Americans is soaring in Poland and Romania. In Bulgaria, which was so cravenly loyal to the Kremlin in the Soviet era that it was nicknamed the Soviet Union's 16th republic, opinion is more ambivalent. There was a small anti-American demonstration in Burgas a couple of weeks ago and locals fear that the US airmen will wreck the Black sea tourist business that is its lifeblood. "Everyone's afraid. Who wants this?" said Mr Minchev.
Most of your countrymen.
But the opposition is passive. The government is committed to backing the Americans. Burgas is only an hour's drive from the Turkish border, a couple of hours' flying time from Baghdad, and home to the country's largest oil refinery with big money to be made from supplying the fuel that the Stratotankers will use. The base is also to be used for secret operations. "It will be mostly refuelling operations. But I expect a more intense exploitation of this base," Mr Todorov said.
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Bulgaria is additionally valuable to the US. It is the only one of the 13 east European countries that have signed declarations of support for Washington to be currently sitting on the UN security council. The declarations infuriated France and Germany — old Europe in Mr Rumsfeld's description.
Gads, but Rummy played that well.
Washington can count on Bulgaria, as well as Britain and Spain, to support it on the new UN resolution on Iraq which aims to unleash a war. If Germany and France deride the east Europeans as the "new vassals", take the view that once a (Soviet) satellite, always a satellite, and Paris warns Bulgaria that it is imperilling its chances of joining the EU, the east Europeans are sulking but unrepentant.
Again, they know the cost of freedom.
Posted by:Steve White

#10  TGA - I've read your comments and developed a respect for both your realism and patriotism....however, you are not personally responsible for actions your government takes, and I think most of the commenters would acknowledge that while they disagree with the actions (or nonactions) of the German leadership, they basically feel no dislike for the common volk, and you in particular. I strongly dislike the positions and rhetoric Gerhard Shroeder took to win reelection, and if it takes moving out of Germany to remind the people just who was an empire and who wasn't(?) then that's a move I'd celebrate, along with much of the former warsaw pact. We do spend a lot in your economy, along with providing much of your security $ during and after the cold war. That has enabled much of western europe to develop social welfare states without regard for providing for their own defense. NATO is dead, and so will be the UN. Defend yourselves, and start to make the hard budgetary choices others charged with defending you have had to make...not you personally, though, of course..
Posted by: Frank G   2003-03-04 18:46:42  

#9  Anonymous you cleary overestimate the economical impact of U.S. troops in a country that is the third biggest economy in the world. The current economic problems in Germany stem from the fact that East Germany was in a far more rotten state than anyone had imagined at the time of the reunification. And up to now Germans have been unwilling to reform the economy: too much bureaucracy, tough labor laws, aging population etc.
In Bulgaria the stationing of U.S. troops will have a far greater impact on the local economy.
Posted by: True German Ally   2003-03-04 16:19:17  

#8  "We're in the money, we're in the money!" Sofia sideshow says the wine is good in Bulgaria.

And TGA, of course it is just a a coincidence, but didn't Germany's economy start slowing down around the time we started pulling our troops out?

And since Turkey didn't get the $ in 1990, that was one of the problems.
Posted by: Anonymous   2003-03-04 16:03:38  

#7  That's what the U.S. had planned way before feathers got ruffled over Iraq.
It will cost Germany money, yes, but I don't hear a lot of people complain. A lot of Germans are quite happy if Germany is no longer used for more U.S. military adventures.
Good U.S. friend Putin will be so happy if you move your troops closer to him.
Lets see how long you keep your "new allies" happy with dollars. Worked well in Turkey, right?
But you will like Bulgaria. The strip clubs and the beer are a lot cheaper there. The German tourists know that already.
Posted by: True German Ally   2003-03-04 15:13:25  

#6  Location Location Location
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2003-03-04 13:43:36  

#5  With unenployment in Germany so high, and Schroeder's popularity so low, and the awful state of the German economy, and their back-stabbing behavior toward the U.S., let's take our bases to the "new" europe. All of them!
Posted by: Kamil Zogby   2003-03-04 12:59:43  

#4  Pay attention to the hoo-hoo in Turkey. The big issue is the basing and projection of the troops from Turkish soil into Iraq. There's not been a whole lot of noise about overflights, either of tactical or transport aircraft. How to you get to the Mideast from Romania and Bulgaria other than over Turkey? That's what makes these new eastern digs valuable. Without overflight it just bottles the force structure to the Black Sea.
Posted by: Don   2003-03-04 08:19:46  

#3  Just a small bit of fact checking on your A**...Charleston is in SOUTH Carolina. Geeze guys, if you can't get the geography right can we trust the rest of the article?
Posted by: Scott   2003-03-04 08:12:54  

#2  Be interesting to watch the Euorpean stockmarkets if the U.S. millitary moved lock stock and barrel to East.Euorpe.
30-40,000 year-round uniformed tourists spend a lot of money.
Posted by: raptor   2003-03-04 06:31:55  

#1  Pay attention to the hoo-hoo in Turkey. The big issue is the basing and projection of the troops from Turkish soil into Iraq. There's not been a whole lot of noise about overflights, either of tactical or transport aircraft. How to you get to the Mideast from Romania and Bulgaria other than over Turkey? That's what makes these new eastern digs valuable. Without overflight it just bottles the force structure to the Black Sea.
Posted by: Don   3/4/2003 8:19:46 AM  

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