AMERICAN BASES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 239, 6 September 1940, Page 6

AMERICAN BASES

USE IN BERMUDA TJ.S.A. LOOKS OUTWARDS. Tt says much for the way in which hard aiid strategical facts are coming to dominate the world-situation that a site for an aerial and naval base m a British colony should have been so easily handed over to the United. States. Still more remarkable is the changed American attitude behind, the acceptance of such a base (says the military correspondent of tho Sydney Morning Herald writing 011 August 27). Our natural preoccupation with the renewed aerial attack on Great 811tain leads us to accept such a lease without perhaps realising its tremendous significance, both politically and strategically. Never belore in our history has a foreign Power been allowed to erect bases on British soil. Such a proposal has never even been considered: and it was most unlikely, even a few short months ago, that we would have deemed such a plan practicable, any more than we should have imagined that the United States would incur such liabilities in alien territory and so much nearer the European cockpit. The transfer is indeed striking verification of the old maxim that the dictates of strategy transcend considerations of politics and precedent, and the historian of the future ma y '"’ell find herein one of the most significant phenomena of this restless age. Tollowmg go closely on the Joint Defence Committee set up between the United States and Canada, it is a marked Recognition of the essential homogeneity of the defence strategy of Britain and America.

AMERICA REACHING OUT. There could be no more conclusive testimony to the completeness with wmch we accept the doccrilie that, any form of military rivalry between Britain and the United States is impossible. in effect, we have handed over an essential part of what would bo our tront-iine in an' Anglo-American conflict; and Bermuda is only a beginning. If we turn to an analysis or the matter from the American standpoint, we come to no less far-reaching conclusions. Bases at Bermuda involve a marked reaching- out of America s defences towards the European continent. Bermuda is over 700 miles east of the coastline of South Carolina, and a base there changes the entire strategic conception ot America’s eastern defences. Heretofore American defences resembled a great sector on the circumference of a circle, stretching round from Portland in tho north, along the eastern seaboard, to the outlier of Porto Rico in the West Indies. 1 But now the outer defences come to be in a direct line, from Porto Rico through Bermuda to Maine; and this transformation of strategical emphasis will be completed if the United States goes on to obtain bases in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. The Newfoundland-Bermuda-Porto Rico combination would lie one of the most significant strategical lines in the world. It would lav forever the old bogey that American defence was based on the eastern coastline. It would replace a purely political concept ot defence by a natural strategy winch is no longer trammelled by territorial boundaries. It would mark the beginning of a system of strategical' zones which might, in. the long run, transform the outlook of the great nations to defence problems. It looks out on the world, not in.upon the object to be defended.

• NEW DEFENCE CONCEPTS. The horizons of American defence on the eastern side now stretch towards Europe. It is only 3000 miles from New iork to Liverpool or to Gibraltar, and Bermuda is an advance of 700 miles in that ever-eastward direction. The intervening distance is still further reduced by the fact that the Azores are 700 miles out from Europe in the Atlantic, Finally, such a line as that which centres on Bermuda cannot be a static one. To be effective in attaining its objective of security for the Americas, it must prevent the possibility of outflanking at either end. A continuation, of the Bermuda Liue northwards strikes Greenland, the jiosition of which has been most uncertain since the fall of Denmark, and which is the great intermediate station on the northern airway from Europe to America. Similarly, a continuation southward strikes Brazil, the terminal point of the easiest transAtlantic air crossing, that from Dakar to South America. Americans are disturbed by the possibility of bpmbers which can fly to the United States from Western Europe and back, with a heavy cargo of bombs. Indeed, such machines are already said to be in course of construction. ISOLATIONIST STRATEGY DEAD.

In that event, the geographical isolation of America will be a thing of the past. Just as improvements in communications took away the element of safety conferred on England by the Channel, so now the defensive effectiveness of the Atlantic for America is rapidly being dissipated. It is plati-* tudinous to write of the progressive shrinking of the world as a result of the couquest of space; but the changes in aerial warfare since last September are now bringing home to the United States what this conquest of distance means in terms of American defence. Isolationists of the older school may find refuge in the belief that, after all, Bermuda is only an outer rampart of the existing American defence system. but this is far from the truth. While the immediate purpose of “the Bermuda Line” may be to defend America against European aggression here and now, the fact cannot be gainsaid that its primary result must be to involve America more closely in European strategy. Willy nilly, the United States must now consider defence in relation to the whole of the Atlantic Ocean and the whole of -the European continent. There could be no more striking manifestation of the nature of a major war in modern Europe. What was previously recognised in the economic sphere is now being forced, even on America,.in the strategical field. There is no conjectural end to the implications of the establishment of American bases on the Great Sound in British Bermuda.