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In the first US combat operation of the war in Iraq, navy commandos stormed an offshore oil-loading platform. "Swooping silently out of the Persian Gulf night," an overexcited reporter for the New York Times wrote on March 22, 2003, "Navy Seals seized two Iraqi oil terminals in bold raids that ended early this morning, overwhelming lightly armed Iraqi guards and claiming a bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq's vast oil empire."
Indeed, Iraq has developed into a two-front war: the battles for control over Iraq's cities and the constant struggle to protect its far-flung petroleum infrastructure against sabotage and attack. The first contest has been widely reported in the US press; the second has received far less attention. Yet the fate of Iraq's oil infrastructure could prove no less significant than that of its embattled cities. A failure to prevail in this contest would eliminate the economic basis upon which a stable Iraqi government could someday emerge. "In the grand scheme of things," a senior officer told the New York Times, "there may be no other place where our armed forces are deployed that has a greater strategic importance." In recognition of this, significant numbers of US soldiers have been assigned to oil-security functions.
US firms are now building a major pipeline through this volatile area. Stretching a perilous 1,600 kilometers from Baku in Azerbaijan through Tbilisi in Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey, it is eventually slated to carry a million barrels of oil a day to the West, but will face the constant threat of sabotage by Islamic militants and ethnic separatists along its entire length. The United States has already assumed significant responsibility for its protection, providing millions of dollars in arms and equipment to the Georgian military and deploying military specialists in Tbilisi to train and advise the Georgian troops assigned to protect this vital conduit. This US presence is only likely to expand in 2005 or 2006 when the pipeline begins to transport oil and fighting in the area intensifies.
An increasing share of US naval forces is also being committed to the protection of foreign oil shipments. The navy's 5th Fleet, based at the island state of Bahrain, now spends much of its time patrolling the vital tanker lanes of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz - the narrow waterway connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the larger oceans beyond. The navy has also beefed up its ability to protect vital sea lanes in the South China Sea - the site of promising oilfields claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia - and in the Strait of Malacca, the critical sea-link between the Persian Gulf and America's allies in East Asia. Even Africa has come in for increased attention from the navy. To increase the US naval presence in waters adjoining Nigeria and other key producers, carrier battle groups assigned to the European Command (which controls the South Atlantic) will shorten their future visits to the Mediterranean "and spend half the time going down the west coast of Africa", the command's top officer, General James Jones, announced in May 2003.
This, then, is the future of US military involvement abroad. While anti-terrorism and traditional national-security rhetoric will be employed to explain risky deployments abroad, a growing number of American soldiers and sailors will be committed to the protection of overseas oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker routes
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