An invitation to the U.S. military to establish a base is not all that common, but nothing is quite as it seems in Azerbaijan, which did the inviting. In a report that he is uniquely qualified to provide, PNS commentator Thomas Goltz traces the convoluted history of this invitation. Goltz is the author of "Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-rich, War-torn, Post-Soviet Republic" (M.E. Sharpe, 1998)

BAKU -- A senior Azerbaijani official invited the United States to establish military bases in his country recently, setting off waves of reaction from Washington to Moscow -- and most certainly in Tehran.

But the only thing surprising about the offer was that anyone thought it was new.

Indeed, the very same official made virtually the same proposal over five years ago. The date was April 1993, and the official was Vafa Gulizade, then and now Senior Advisor on Foreign Policy to the President of Azerbaijan.

Desperately seeking any outside interest in the survival of Azerbaijan, its president in 1993 instructed Gulizade to offer his country as a listening post for U.S. spy agencies interested in developments in Iran.

But no one in Washington would listen. I know, because after several failed attempts Gulizade threw caution to the wind. He sought a man who could cut through the red tape (or at least had a working telephone with an international line). His choice demonstrates just how desperate and friendless Azerbaijan was at the time, because the conduit he chose was me.

We met in his 11th floor office in the presidential apparatus building in downtown Baku.

"It's on," whispered Vafa after turning up the television and radio to create maximum static.

"What's on?" I asked.

"The John Doe plan -- we agree to all the terms!"

"What the hell is the John Doe plan?"

"Don't play dumb. The John Doe plan -- we want to go ahead with it."

"I do not known John Doe and I have no idea what plan you are talking about, Vafa."

The senior advisor to the president was silent a moment. Then he put his head in hands.

I sympathized with him. If his oil-rich, war-torn little country were relying on ME, it was truly and absolutely alone.

Help did not arrive and then-president Elchibey was overthrown by a Moscow-backed rebellion in June of 1993, to be replaced in convoluted circumstances by the current president, Heydar Aliyev -- a former KGB general, Communist Party boss and Politburo member.

It seemed almost certain that Azerbaijan would slide back into Moscow's orbit, but Aliyev actually increased Elchibey's independent line. In a wily move designed to create vested outside interests in the continued existence of his country, Aliyev began signing every oil contract he could get his hands on -- more than $50 billion worth between 1994 and 1998, with an alphabet soup of international oil companies.

Suddenly, the friendless state pinched between Russia, Armenia and Iran was on the international energy map, with a crush of foreigners arriving to get a piece of the action. My old friend Vafa, who now prefers to forget about our 1993 tete-a-tete, began entertaining such luminaries as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger in that 11th floor office.

These conversations have focused on the question of how and why Azerbaijan, unique among the 15 republics to emerge from the ashes of the Soviet Union, managed to remove the Soviet/Russian military from its territory -- and to keep the Russians out.

This is a credit to Aliyev's skillful game of smoke and mirrors with Russia (and Turkey and Iran), but the price has been steep. Russia tried to maintain its "traditional sphere of influence" in the Caucasus by backing Armenia in the war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Nearly one million Azerbaijanis have been displaced from their homes in and around the disputed region, and Armenia continues to occupy almost 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including Karabakh.

Armenia is forging an ever deeper military alliance with Russia (and, tacitly, Iran) that continues to threaten Azerbaijan. Indeed, Gulizade's invitation to the United States is directly related to Moscow's shipment to Armenia of missile systems and advanced MIG-29 fighters.

This is allegedly to augment Russian security against regional threats, but the only possible reason can be to threaten Azerbaijan, specifically, the territory over which the country's "early oil" export pipeline runs toward Georgia and the Black Sea.

When oil was $15 a barrel and Baku's was filled with western businessmen, the authorities thought the country's new friends would keep the Armenia/Russian/Iranian threat at bay. But with the collapse of oil prices, Azerbaijan experienced a sharp drop on the geopolitical barometer, and apparently decided dramatic measures were required. Thus my old friend Vafa Gulizade's invitation to the U.S. military.

How real is the recycled proposal? Congress is unlikely to approve sending a squadron of F-16 fighters to defend Baku. But Vafa's words have had the desired impact among those paid to consider such things as global security in the next century. Little Azerbaijan is back on the geopolitical map.