The Fifth Fleet's area of responsibility encompasses 2.5 million square miles of water, including the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean as far south as Kenya. [4] Aircraft carriers, destroyers and other warships are assigned to it on a rotational basis and the fleet is the naval component of U.S. Central Command, sharing a commander and headquarters in Bahrain with U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. Central Command's purview stretches from Egypt in the west to Kazakhstan, bordering Russia and China, in the east.
The Fifth Fleet has approximately 30,000 personnel stationed across the region.
The geopolitical importance of Bahrain was demonstrated when the U.S.'s top military officer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, visited several nations in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa last month: Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Djibouti and Kuwait, with a last-minute stop in Bahrain not listed on his itinerary.
Mullen inspected the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the first major American military base on the African continent, now assigned to U.S. Africa Command.
While in Saudi Arabia, he characterized Iran as "a country that continues to foment instability in the region and take advantage of every opportunity."
"There are always concerns in this region with Iran. Certainly the United States has them, as well as all the regional players. Certainly that was part of the discussion today [February 21] with the Saudis." [5] A discussion that was held with Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, Deputy Interior Minister; Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, commander of the National Guard; Prince Khalid bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, Assistant Minister for Defense and Aviation; and Lieutenant General Husein Abdullah al-Qubail, Deputy Chief of the General Staff.
Mullen was cited as saying the talks "focused largely on the tumult in Bahrain," with him stating:
"Obviously the Saudis, in particular - but everybody in the region - is watching what's happening in Bahrain very closely." [6]
In Bahrain on February 25 he "reaffirmed our strong commitment to our military relationship with the Bahraini defense forces," according to his spokesman. He also commended the Bahraini royal family "for the very measured way they have been handling the popular crisis here," although several hundred protesters have now been killed and wounded, and praised the government for the "giant leaps" it has taken in recent years. [7]
Mullen visited the Marine Corps Forces Central Command [MARFORCENT] Forward element at the Naval Support Activity Bahrain base, home to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The new Marine headquarters "stood up in November to bring Marine Corps Forces Central Command what its other sister services already have: a forward element within the 20-nation Centcom area of operations."
"Exactly how many Marines ultimately will join the element is classified, but...developments underway" are seen "as a sign of MARFORCENT's long-term commitment to strengthening partnerships and protecting U.S. interests in the region." [8]
Ten days earlier North Atlantic Treaty Organization Deputy Secretary General Claudio Bisogniero addressed a conference in Qatar (immediately southeast of Bahrain), the fourth Ambassadorial Conference of NATO's Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, also attended by Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Concerns expressed in Bisogniero's keynote address were capsulized by a local newspaper as follows:
"Gulf nations are crucial to world energy supplies and their security supplies are also important....Since 50 percent of world energy supplies transit through the Gulf region, it is Nato's main concern to ensure these supplies." [9]
The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative was created at the NATO summit in Turkey in 2004 to complement the upgrading of the Mediterranean Dialogue partnership with Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Mauritania and Morocco to the level of the Partnership for Peace program that graduated twelve Eastern European candidates to full NATO membership from 1999-2009, an unprecedented seven at the Istanbul summit seven years ago, with new bilateral partnerships with Gulf Cooperation Council members Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In NATO's words at the time: "NATO leaders decided to elevate the Alliance's Mediterranean Dialogue to a genuine partnership and to launch the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative with selected countries in the broader region of the Middle East." [10]
Last month NATO's second top civilian leader "welcomed Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) partners Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, showing his interest in deepening energy security and cooperation in the Gulf region also with Oman and Saudi Arabia." [11]
In 2008 a NATO-Bahrain Public Diplomacy Conference was held in Manama. "The Conference brought together the Secretary General of NATO, the North Atlantic Council, the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee and NATO officials, with government representatives, academics and senior scholars from countries in the Gulf region invited in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative." [12]
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