In preparing for an invasion of Iraq, the Bush White House has been shifting tens of thousands of US troops into the Persian Gulf. The troops are arriving at US bases from Djibouti to Kuwait, bases where hundreds of support staff and billions of dollars in military hardware await them.

Many of those bases have been built or acquired in the decade since the Gulf War. But they are the product of a US strategy dating back nearly three decades. To see how that strategy has evolved, one need only look at the map.

Together, five Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates -- have oil reserves totalling more than 650 billion barrels. Controlling these states means controlling the world's supply of oil. In 1975, at the end of the energy crisis, the US had virtually no military presence, and very few military connections, in those states. In the years since, Washington has forged close military ties with three of those states. Following the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2001/2002 war in Afghanistan, those ties have been dramatically strengthened.