Month: December 2012

The US is going to “substantially increase its military presence in the Philippines, increasing the number of troops, aircraft and ships which routinely rotate through the country,” according to The Diplomat.

For what purpose? Well, the transparent excuse US officials gave was almost laughable: to “serve The Philippines when struggling against natural disasters.”

Of course, nobody actually believes that. Long before this decision to substantially increase US military presence in the Philippines was finalized, the US had been building up the Philippines’s military and security forces, offering funding and weapons in exchange for greater American presence in the country. The Philippines is just one of the many countries the Obama administration has been courting to greater client state status as part of their ‘strategic pivot’ to the Asia-Pacific region, which is aimed at containing China’s rising military and economic sway. Essentially, to maintain U.S. hegemony.

Washington has been building new military bases and refurbishing old ones in the region in order to lay the ground-work for an “air-sea battle” with China. The idea is to have enough US bases peppered throughout the region so that China would be too surrounded to safely attack.

The nationalistic, Great Game geo-politicking has its own grim consequences for the US relationship with China, but very separate consequences for the Philippines. Unfortunately, it follows a very similar pattern of Washington enabling human rights abuses in exchange for using the country as geo-political leverage.

In July, Human Rights Watch is again called on President Aquino of the Philippines to prosecute and put a stop to the rampant torture, extra-judicial killings, and disappearances of “leftist activists, journalists, and clergy.” Just since Obama took office, taxpayers have sent almost $700 million to the Filipino government, making it one of the biggest recipients of US military aid in all of Asia, at a time when numerous embassy cables released by WikiLeaks acknowledge systematic extrajudicial killings, abduction, and false arrests perpetrated by the US-supported security forces. That aid is likely to increase now that this new deal has been secured.

It also looks like the US is lumping in the Philippines in the war on terror. Apparently there is a small cadre of Islamic militants there, but they don’t appear to present any threat to the US. In February, Washington launched a drone strike in the southern Philippines that reportedly killed 15 people associated with these groups. It looks very much like how the US launched drone strikes at the behest of the Saleh regime in Yemen when it was clear Saleh was using the US drone war to eliminate his own domestic political enemies.

The airstrike prompted angry reactions from some in the Philippines weary of US breach of their sovereignty. One Philippine representative, Luz Ilagan, called for an end to US military intervention in their national affairs.

Ilagan also called for a probe into what she referred to as the “extensive and intensive intrusion of the US military in Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) operations.” She added, “If these reports are true, then US troops are participating in and conducting operations beyond what is allowed in the Visiting Forces Agreement and directly transgressing our sovereignty. More importantly, their participation in these operations is a potential magnet for the Philippines’ participation in a brewing US-instigated regional conflict.”

The US is once again using its military muscle to occupy a foreign country for the sake of its own hegemony, to the detriment of the Philippines and the security of the entire region.

Since the election, President Obama has again embarked on the Washington establishment’s version of diplomatic coercion on Iran. It’s sometimes referred to as “dual-track.” Negotiations and a supposed grand bargain are in the works, but the administration continues to impose harsh economic sanctions and continues to issue well-publicized threats of the military option. You know, just in case Iran thinks we’re foolin’.

But the Obama approach to Iran has also been characterized by a change in policy towards the overall Persian Gulf. Obama’s ‘leading from behind’ strategy has essentially come to mean that Washington presses its allies to do more of it’s fighting. And that’s what Obama intends: with unprecedented amounts of weapons technology flowing to the Middle East, Washington is arming Arab dictators in the Persian Gulf with assurances that they will take part in any potential war against Iran.

The Washington Times:

Noting U.S. sales of air defense-penetrating F-16s and F-15s, satellite-guided bombs and a pending order for ordnance that can burrow deep and then explode, analysts say Gulf nations could participate in a U.S. air campaign to strike Iran’s nuclear sites.

These American-armed nations could either be part of an overall war plan or be forced to enter the battle once Iran counterattacks, as expected, with missile launches.

“It’s perfectly possible the UAE could be asked to try to bomb aircraft shelters, hardened aircraft hangars’ stockpiles, coastal missile sites that are hardened,” Mr. [Kenneth] Katzman [a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service] said. “There are a range of targets that coalition partners like UAE could be asked to take out as part of strike package, if it comes to that.”

Embedded in the “dual-track” approach is the recognition that credible threats of military attack will force Iran to submission when presented with face-saving diplomatic alternatives. If you ask an Obama official, I’m sure they’d tell you that arming Arab autocrats to the teeth is meant only to demonstrate “credibility.”

“Our presence in Kuwait and throughout the Gulf helps advance the capabilities of partnering nations, deters aggression and helps ensure we’re better able to respond to crisis in the region,” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told reporters when visiting Kuwait last week.

And seriously, how could this go wrong?

The Arab monarchies have deep-seated hatred for Iran, for both religious and geo-political reasons. Arming them to a degree unequaled in any previous time, with the explicit purpose of challenging Iran militarily provides what Washington likes to call “stability.” Yes, that’s what they call it when the state employs the military industrial complex to weaponize ruthless Arab dictators, making Iran more guarded and conflict more likely. Stability.

Apparently there is controversy, even among like-minded non-interventionists, over Chuck Hagel’s rumored nomination to be Obama’s next Secretary of Defense. On the one hand, non-interventionists are excited by Hagel’s potential nomination to one of the highest offices in the country. Hagel has opposed the Iraq war, opposed the potential war against Iran while criticizing the economic sanctions, and perhaps most importantly he has admirably challenged the widespread reluctance (dare I say refusal) on the part of Congress to say anything critical of Israel, ever.

On the other hand, we’re talking about Hagel joining the Obama administration – the same coterie of brutes non-interventionists have been hammering these past four years on everything from expansive Great Game military policy in Asia, military surges in the Middle East, lawless drone wars, belligerence toward Iran, and unprecedented support for Israel. The vaunted second-term turn towards dovish foreign policies is largely a myth, and so Hagel’s seemingly impending nomination should be viewed with caution. It’s simply not likely that the Obama administration is getting ready to retreat from the distinct foreign policy it has developed in its first term.

Hagel, as I’ve noted a couple times in the past few days, has been repeatedly compared to Dwight Eisenhower. “Hagel is essentially an Eisenhower Republican,” writes Scott McConnell at The American Conservative, “a fiscal conservative, with combat experience in war, roots in the American heartland, and an awareness that it is far easier to get into wars than get out of them.” Sure, and while Eisenhower’s warning of the military industrial complex is a favorite of anti-war commentators, he still was the architect of post-WWII US foreign policy, which laid the groundwork for the imperial path we’ve been following ever since, and he did nasty things like overthrow democratically-elected governments and replace them with brutal dictators more subservient to US interests.

It is a sign of improving times that Hagel may soon be in the same seat Rumsfeld and Panetta previously occupied. But my guess is that the Obama administration is looking at Hagel not as an introduction to a significantly less interventionist foreign policy, but rather as a shrewd political choice to neuter Republican opposition on impending cuts in defense spending. Since Obama’s reelection, the focus has all been on the looming fiscal cliff, and Hagel’s potential nomination might be best understood in that context. According to The New York Times, “in internal discussions, White House officials have said that the challenge of the next few years will be working with Congress to shrink the defense budget and kill some major cold war-era weapons systems. For that, Mr. Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, is seen as better able to win votes from his former colleagues.”

The other mitigating factor in the Hagel-mania should be John Kerry’s seemingly imminent nomination to Secretary of State. Yes, Kerry decided, after-the fact, to oppose the Iraq war and run against the uber-imperialist neo-conservative George W. Bush in 2004. But anyone doubting Kerry’s own imperialist credentials need only look at my blog post from back in June after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Kerry is the chairman, released a report on what I called “Imperial Balancing.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee just released a report [PDF] on US policy in the Middle East. Much of the study describes how Washington will maintain key military bases and troop presence throughout the entire region and how to overcome challenges to maintaining such dominance, which is vital because the region is “home to more than half of the world’s oil reserves and over a third of its natural gas.”

One excerpt stuck out in which the Committee admits that US military presence in the region as well as US support for brutal dictatorships has generated widespread hatred and blowback. According to the report, the challenge is to maintain the imperial dominance over the region, but avoid the messy “backlash” and embarrassing support for “human rights abuses.”

Here are some choice excerpts from that report:

The United States must carefully shape its military presence so as not to create a popular backlash, while retaining the capability to protect the free flow of critical natural resources and to provide a counterbalance to Iran. Earlier American deployments in Saudi Arabia and Iraq generated violent local opposition. What the West views as a deterrent against aggression could also be misconstrued or portrayed as an occupying presence.

…The United States should preserve the model of ‘‘lily pad’’ bases throughout the Gulf, which permits the rapid escalation of military force in case of emergency. The Obama administration has adopted this architecture by retaining only essential personnel in the region while ensuring access to critical hubs such as Camp Arifjan [in Kuwait], Al Udeid [Qatar], Al Dhafra [in the UAE], Jebel Ali [in the UAE], and Naval Support Activity Bahrain. An agile footprint enables the United States to quickly deploy its superior conventional force should conflict arise, without maintaining a costly and unsustainable presence. Sustaining physical infrastructure and enabling functions such as intelligence, surveillance, and logistics, while keeping certain war reserve materiel forward positioned, is more important than deploying large numbers of U.S. forces.

and I added:

Preserving the model of “lily pad” bases peppered throughout the Gulf, which are afforded to Washington because it bribes undemocratic regimes with money and weapons, is how Washington maintains overweening power over the most geo-politically vital region in the world. This has been US policy since WWII, as a Top Secret National Security Council briefing put it in 1954, “the Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,” as it “contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world” as well as “essential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.” After Obama administration failed in its efforts to maintain a large contingent of US forces in Iraq, following their predecessors launching of a criminal war there, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said he envisions about 40,000 troops will be stationed in the Middle East going forward.

Not only does this lead to US support for all kinds of repression and state terror, but it is detrimental to US security in the long term. The “backlash” the Committee is so worried about cannot be avoided and the veritable garrisoning of Iran’s surroundingsmakes the Islamic Republic more guarded, which amplifies tensions and increases the likelihood of unnecessary conflict. The alternative, minding our own business, is incomprehensible.

So while Hagel could potentially bring a stronger realist, willing-to-criticize-Israel voice to the higher echelons of the Obama administration, I predict he will not bring appreciable change. The Obama administration, in some ways, has already exhibited more foreign policy restraint than their predecessors in some important ways. There is much to criticize Obama for on, say, Iran or Syria policy – but both cases have been colored by his apparent reluctance to get bogged down in another massive ground war and occupation in the Middle East. That is already a departure from the war-mongers in the Bush administration, many of whom now are calling for bombing Iran and intervening directly in Syria. Hagel, himself no anti-interventionist, won’t change that one way or the other.

The Obama administration’s central foreign policy goal of maintaining global hegemony through unaccountable aggression and imperial policies the world over will proceed in the second term. Hagel or no Hagel.

Last week President Obama issued a letter to Congress informing them of ongoing US troop deployments for combat operations around the world.

“Since October 7, 2001, the United States has conducted combat operations in Afghanistan against al-Qa’ida terrorists, their Taliban supporters, and associated forces,” it reads. “In support of these and other overseas operations, the United States has deployed combat-equipped forces to a number of locations in the U.S. Central, Pacific, European, Southern, and Africa Command areas of operation.” In other words, all across the globe.

It goes on to talk about combat deployments in Somalia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Uganda, Kosovo, and all over the high seas in maritime operations “aimed at stopping the movement, arming, and financing of certain international terrorist groups.” As a reminder, the President explained “on September 12 a security force deployed to Libya to support the security of U.S. personnel in Libya” and  “on September 13, an additional security force arrived in Yemen in response to security threats there.”

“These forces will remain in place until the security situation no longer requires them,” it said. And here we are led to the crux of the ‘war on terror’:

“It is not possible to know at this time the precise scope or the duration of the deployments of U.S. Armed Forces necessary to counter this terrorist threat to the United States.”

In a straight line, the President here explained how a combat deployment less than a month after the 9/11 attacks is now – more than ten years later – justifying military action in several continents without any “precise scope” limiting their conduct and without any defined end point.

Update: A piece today by Daniel Klaidman at the Daily Beast argues the opposite of what I’ve implied in my above blog post. The article is titled “Will Obama End the War on Terror?”

Yet behind the scenes Obama has led a persistent internal conversation about whether America should remain engaged in a permanent, ever-expanding state of war, one that has pushed the limits of the law, stretched dwindling budgets, and at times strained relations with our allies. “This has always been a concern of the president’s,” says a former military adviser to Obama. “He’s uncomfortable with the idea of war without end.”

…This month Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson, with the full backing of the White House, became the first senior member of the administration to openly broach the delicate question of when the war on terror would be over. “Now that the efforts by the U.S. military against al Qaeda are in their 12th year,” he said in a speech at the University of Oxford in England, “we must also ask ourselves, how will this conflict end?”

…Johnson and others in the administration worried about being further out on the margins of the law. And yet the conflict kept widening.

…Many counterterrorism officials are making the case that the administration needs to be more discerning about which groups are worth going after militarily and how to calibrate our response to the level of threat. “Should we resort to drones and Special Operations raids every time some group raises the black banner of al Qaeda?” asks one senior military planner. “How long can we continue to chase offshoots of offshoots around the world?” In at least acknowledging this type of question, Johnson’s speech arguably represented an inflection point for the Obama administration—and perhaps for the war on terror as a whole.

Whether the Obama administration is genuinely concerned about endless war or whether they’ve used Klaidman to portray that concern in order to placate the increasingly non-interventionist sentiment in America remains to be seen. For now, all that’s clear is that such expressed sentiment has not manifested into policy.

See here, here and here for a sample of my previous writing on Mexico and the drug war.