A Carrier Goes to Crete

On 23 March, after a fire in its laundry spaces and nine months at sea, the USS Gerald R. Ford did not sail home. It put in at Souda Bay on Crete for repairs and resupply, then went back to war. Six weeks later, when Washington tried to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia, a formally designated major non-NATO ally, refused the use of its bases and airspace.

One host said yes and moved its own air defences to protect American ships. The other host, whose security relationship with Washington is the more famous one, said no. MD argued last month that Washington is rebuilding its eastern Mediterranean around Athens. The Greek case is not a one-off. It is the clearest example of how US power now works: through platforms rather than pacts.

Access Agreements, Not Alliances

A “platform state” offers the physical things a navy and an air force need in a long war: dry docks, fuel and gas terminals, airfields, air defence and cable landings. The legal instruments are unglamorous. Greece’s Mutual Defence Cooperation Agreement, made open-ended in 2021, covers Souda Bay, Larissa and Alexandroupolis. The Philippines’ 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement now covers nine sites. Master Ship Repair Agreements certify foreign commercial yards to work on US Navy vessels. These deals do the real work, and a defence ministry can widen them without a parliament or senate ratifying a new treaty.

Necessity is driving all of this. The US Navy has few repair facilities west of the International Date Line, and its home yards are overloaded. The Iran war that began in late February added a second lesson. On the first day of Iranian retaliation, missiles were aimed at US facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. Hosting American assets now means being a target.

What the War Actually Used

Most alliance coverage still keeps score in treaties and fighter jets. The war kept score in something else. Souda is one of the very few Mediterranean ports that can take a carrier, and the Ford used it mid-campaign. In March a Greek-operated Patriot battery in Saudi Arabia shot down two Iranian ballistic missiles aimed at refineries. Athens later moved a battery to Crete to cover Souda itself. Greece is spending its own scarce air defence to protect American forces, which is the clearest sign that an ally has become a platform.

Energy runs the same way. The floating terminal at Alexandroupolis can regasify 5.5 billion cubic metres a year, largely American LNG, and the “Vertical Corridor” carries it north to Ukraine through Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova. Prime Minister Mitsotakis has called Greece Europe’s new gateway for US gas. Even the October Strategic Dialogue, with its $4 billion in arms sales and a Florida National Guard partnership, is mostly about wiring Greek forces into American training and logistics systems. Each of these flows ties American commercial interests to Greek maritime claims that Ankara disputes.

The Pacific is following the same pattern, with less fanfare. South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean became the first Korean yard to overhaul a US Navy supply ship, working through about 300 repair items, and Indian yards have been certified for similar work since 2023. In March the Navy rehearsed wartime battle-damage repair at Cebu, in the central Philippines. In September Washington funded a study to lengthen the pier at Subic Bay’s ship-repair yard so it can take larger vessels. None of this requires a new treaty. All of it determines whether a damaged destroyer is back in the fight in weeks or in a year.

The Gulf supplies the test that separates a platform from a parking lot. Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet and Qatar hosts Al Udeid, yet several Gulf governments had said publicly before the war that their territory would not be a launch pad against Iran. Iran struck them anyway. In May, Riyadh denied the escort operation its bases, and after a 7 May exchange of fire Saudi Arabia and Kuwait briefly restricted US access altogether. The lesson is that a platform is worth its assets multiplied by its host’s consent. Without consent, it is a liability sitting within missile range.

That is why Greece says yes when Gulf hosts hesitate. Hosting American infrastructure makes Athens safer against its main rival, Turkey, because every US gas contract, cable and dock raises the cost of Turkish naval pressure in Greek waters. For Gulf monarchies the arithmetic runs the other way, since hosting American forces invites fire from Iran. The Philippines sits in between. After the Gulf strikes, the Senate’s foreign relations chair floated a review of EDCA, and President Marcos has said the country will not be a launch pad for attacks on others.

The strongest objection is that treaties remain the real glue. Greece is a NATO ally, and the Philippines has a 75-year-old mutual defence treaty. But the treaty did not decide anything in 2026. Turkey is a treaty ally whose usefulness Washington renegotiates deal by deal, and Saudi Arabia’s new US defence agreement did not open its airfields when they were needed. Treaties set the floor, but infrastructure and consent decide what can be used. The price for Washington is entanglement. A platform state gains an American stakeholder in its own disputes, and America inherits them.

Three Paths for the Platform Model

Base case (roughly 55%): quiet accumulation. Washington keeps adding docks, fuel and repair contracts without new treaties. Greece becomes the default logistics hub between Italy and the Gulf, Subic and Cebu join a growing Pacific repair network, and Gulf bases stay but are used mainly for defence. The key assumption is that no host is forced to choose between American use of its territory and its own safety. For defence firms, the money is in maintenance, fuel and port contracts rather than headline arms sales.

Downside case (roughly 25%): a platform’s dispute arrives. Greece issues the navigation notice needed to resume seabed surveys for the Crete-Cyprus power cable south of Kasos, and Turkish warships turn up as they did in July 2024. Washington answers with a neutral call for dialogue. Athens learns that hosting American infrastructure buys investment but not backing, and its consent becomes conditional. A second test sits in Manila, where the Senate’s EDCA review could return if China threatens the northern sites. Investors in the cable, in which France’s Meridiam has agreed to take a 66% stake, should price that risk.

Upside / alternative case (roughly 20%): consent gets written down. After the war, Gulf hosts and the Philippines negotiate explicit use-rights in exchange for air defence, repair work and investment, as Greece has in practice. Platforms become formal contracts with clear terms for wartime use. That would make US power more predictable and, for the first time, openly priced. Washington would give up some flexibility in exchange for reliability, which the Hormuz episode suggests it now needs.

Where the Docks Are

In an era of great-power competition, the most valuable American partners are not the ones with the loudest guarantees. They are the ones that host the docks, the gas terminals and the cables, and that say yes when the war starts. Treaties still matter, but consent to use the infrastructure now decides more.

Watch for: Greece’s navigation notice for the Kasos cable surveys, and what Washington says when it is issued. If the US says more than “dialogue”, platforms are buying real backing. If it stays silent, the model has a ceiling, and other hosts will notice.

Treaties tell you whom a country has promised to defend. Dry docks tell you where it actually plans to fight.