The Fifth Fleet in Bahrain
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The Fifth Fleet in Bahrain is the United States naval presence that has been based on the island since 1976, the naval component of Central Command, which is itself headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base outside Tampa.

For John Kiriakou, posted to the embassy from 1994 to 1996, the base was principally a social resource in a country where, as he puts it, there was nothing to do. As a diplomat he could use the officers' club, which had the better salad bar; for football Sundays he went to the enlisted club and drank cheap beer. He also joined the diplomatic corps softball league, playing right field and hitting for average, the power hitters, he notes, were the Marine security guards.

Pound for pound

The relationship the base represents came with its own liturgy. Kiriakou recalls the visit of Admiral William Crowe, who had commanded the naval component in Bahrain and whose 1976 line the Bahrainis repeated every year: "pound for pound, Bahrain is the best friend the United States has in the world." Kiriakou spent the first day escorting Crowe's wife to buy carpets and negotiating for her.

The substance was thinner than the ceremony. Taking notes at a meeting between the ambassador, Crowe, the defence attaché and the Bahraini foreign minister, Kiriakou describes an exchange consisting almost entirely of mutual declarations of affection, "the meeting was not substantive. It was just a love fest."

The ambassador's own summary of what the alliance actually was, Kiriakou says, was four words long: "oil flows out, weapons flow in. That's the relationship."

See also

- Bahrain Posting (1994,1996)
- Admiral William Crowe
- Khobar Towers bombing
