Diego Garcia

Diego Garcia is identified as the most secure base in the United States’ pre-Afghanistan network of positions directed toward the Persian Gulf. Its significance lies in the contrast Chomsky draws between this existing foothold and the expanded military access created by the war in Afghanistan: the base network, in his analysis, served both strategic reach and the projection of power around major energy resources.

Strategic Setting

Chomsky places Diego Garcia within a system of United States bases extending from the Pacific to the Azores and oriented toward the Persian Gulf, which he describes as containing the world’s most important energy resources. Before the war in Afghanistan, Diego Garcia was the network’s most secure base. The description makes the island a point in a wider geography of military access rather than an isolated location: its importance is tied to the reach of the entire system.

The Afghanistan War and Expanded Reach

The comparison turns on a change in the network. Chomsky says that after the war in Afghanistan the United States had, for the first time, established major military bases in Central Asia. In his account, these new positions improved the strategic situation around the Gulf and made forceful intervention easier if the United States considered it appropriate. Diego Garcia thus functions as the prewar benchmark against which the enlarged reach of the postwar network is measured.

Resources, Power, and Interpretation

Chomsky connects the bases to control over substantial regional resources, including Central Asian resources and the energy reserves around the Gulf. He presents the military network as supporting the position of United States-dominated multinationals and as helping to surround major energy supplies. He further interprets the Afghanistan campaign as an opportunity for the Bush administration to consolidate an already overwhelming military advantage and reinforce global dominance. These are Chomsky’s strategic interpretations of the network’s purpose and consequences, not details about Diego Garcia’s local history or operations.

A Demonstration of Military Capability

Chomsky also suggests that the Afghanistan bombings may have been intended to show what the United States could do when others failed to follow its rules. He compares this proposed demonstration with NATO’s bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had explained in terms of preserving NATO’s credibility—understood by Chomsky as, above all, the credibility of the United States and its principal arms client. In this argument, Diego Garcia’s importance is ultimately relational: it anchors the earlier, more secure stage of a wider military structure whose later expansion increased the ease and force of possible intervention.