6 Bases during the Cold War

Aden, Bahrain, Malta, Mauritius, Singapore and on Oman’s Masirah Island).There was a COMINT and HF/DF facility at Gibraltar. Two other SIGINT144 Bases during the Cold Warİ 2007 Robert E. Harkavystations were located at Hong Kong, a major one at Diepholz in West Germany,along with other signals units at Teufelsberg, Jever, Celle, Dornenberg and Gorleben.A former U.S.-run nuclear-detection site at Pearce, Australia was operatedby the British Atomic Energy Authority. Earlier, there was acommunications relay facility on Mauritius.Britain also contributed to the overall Western intelligence effort via somejointly operated facilities. In conjunction with Australia, it operated an oceansurveillanceradar at Hong Kong, once directed against the People’s Republic ofChina, used to monitor Soviet fleet movements in the SLOCs between Siberiaand Vietnam. (Australia and New Zealand jointly operated a similar facility atSingapore.) The U.S. and U.K. jointly operated such a facility at Diego Garcia.These and other such facilities – an Australian installation at Darwin, U.S.-operated bases at Edzell, Scotland and Brawdy, Wales, constituted a globalsystem codenamed Bullseye for direction-finding interception of ships at sea.These and related activities were discussed by Richelson and Ball in the contextof the multilateral U.K./U.S. arrangement entered into by the U.S., U.K.,Canada, Australia and New Zealand in 1947 in the aftermath of World War II.Summary – Cold War basing patternsThe 45-year long Cold War presented in some cases patterns that were reminiscentof previous periods, but others that were entirely new, pertaining both topolitics and technologies.Reminiscent of the past was the geopolitical heartland/rimland structure of abipolar struggle. The U.S. rimland basing structure, increasingly leapfrogged asthe period progressed, was similar by degree with the earlier Portuguese, Dutchand British basing networks, calling to mind Thompson’s thesis about systemleader lineage patterns.But, the ideological nature of the bipolar conflict (earlier, only the religiousdivide between Islam and Christianity provides a partial analog) resulted infairly stable alliance and alignment/clientship patterns over several decades.That translated also into stable, long-term basing relationships between sovereignstates that had no discernible historical precedent.The basis for basing in this period was also historically unique, increasingly soas the period progressed. As previous imperial control over much of the world bythe European powers collapsed, so too collapsed basing access networks based onthat imperial control. In its place, both the U.S. and USSR, largely previouslybereft of overseas empires, acquired and maintained access to bases largely via acombination of the provision of security to regional states against the rival superpowerand its regional clients and with that, the provision of security assistance inthe form of arms transfers, training, economic assistance etc.During the Cold War period, the proliferation of new types of basing accesswas driven by rapid and profound technological change. Up to the interwarperiod, the story for bases had mostly to do with surface naval bases and related“forts” or ground force deployments utilized mostly for colonial control. By theBases during the Cold War 145İ 2007 Robert E. Harkavy1930s, air bases and those for submarines had become important, so too someinitial “technical facilities,” such as those for communications and communicationsintercepts, early-on radars, terminals for underwater communicationscables etc. But later in the Cold War, particularly paced by developments insatellites, there was developed a whole range of new basing requirements:various form of communications, satellite downlinks and control stations, satellitesurveillance, sonar submarine tracking networks, early warning for ballisticmissile attacks, elaborate networks of radars, nuclear detection facilities andmany more. Technologically speaking, military operations and the bases thatsupport them had moved into several dimensions and the relations betweenthem, i.e., naval and land surfaces, the underseas, the airspace and outer space.That is, there were many, many new types of bases in addition to traditionalnaval bases and army installations.Page 52Page 53