Reposted
as part of a discussion of the role of the United States in the world
Harry Targ
Political upheaval in the Middle
East, Africa, and South Asia is reshaping migration trends in Europe. The
number of illegal border-crossing detections in the EU started to surge in
2011, as thousands of Tunisians started to arrive at the Italian island of
Lampedusa following the onset of the Arab Spring. Sub-Saharan Africans who had
previously migrated to Libya followed in 2011–2012, fleeing unrest in the
post-Qaddafi era. The most recent surge in detections along the EU's maritime
borders has been attributed to the growing numbers of Syrian, Afghan, and
Eritrean migrants and refugees. Jeanne
Park, “Europe’s Migration Crisis,” CFR
Backgrounder, September 23, 2015, www.cfr.org/migration/eurpes-migration-crisis)
The
Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder recognizes the massive crisis of
migration brought on by upheavals all across the Global South. It identifies
the massive migrations from Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the Horn of
Africa. But, interestingly enough the title suggests that the focus of concern
is not as much about the pain and suffering of the people forced to migrate as
the problem migration presents to the countries of the European Union.
A
dispassionate analysis of the causes of this twenty-first century wave of
migration should inevitably lead to what may be referred to as “horrific
moments in United States foreign policy.” These horrific moments, since the
late 1940s, are central to understanding the pain and suffering of millions of
people around the world. Horrific
refers to human tragedies of such magnitude that they leave millions killed,
injured, displaced, or unable to sustain life because of forces external to
their ideas and actions. Moments
refers to key policy decisions that reasonable persons can view as instrumental
to the development of these human tragedies. United States foreign policy suggests that the United States has
made policy decisions that have been inextricably connected to the human
tragedies of the last sixty years.
Five
such horrific moments in United States foreign policy need to be recognized for
their consequences for humankind. First, in 1950 the United States embarked on
global military operations in response to conflicts on the Korean peninsula.
Korean political life was in disarray after World War II and the United States
and the former Soviet Union stepped into the fray to “temporarily” occupy the
North and South. But the growing conflict between Koreans was not started by
the two powers but was the result of internal political struggle among the
Korean people. The point here is that after North Korean troops invaded South
Korea, the United States, officially supported by the then pro-US United
Nations, launched a large-scale military response. And, in violation of the UN
resolution, the United States took the war to the North.
The end
result of the expanded Korean War was that it set the precedent for United
States sending troops anywhere in the world. The war justified dramatic
increases in military spending. And it made military spending a permanent
fixture of US economic and political life. Most importantly, it destroyed the
Korean peninsula, particularly the economic infrastructure in the North; led to
millions of Koreans killed, wounded, and displaced; and 37,000 US soldiers
killed. The Korean War was the first instance of many in which the United
States and the Soviet Union would be fighting the Cold War in the Global South.
Second,
the Korean War established the principle that the US would engage in major wars
elsewhere as circumstances were seen as necessary. The next war was in Vietnam.
The war began in 1950 and the “moment” continued until 1975. The long agonizing experience involved repeating
decisions escalating war: from funding the French colonial overseers of Vietnam;
to creating and training a new government in South Vietnam; to sending
thousands of specially trained counter-insurgency fighters; to transferring
over 500,000 US soldiers to Vietnam; to massive bombing; the dropping of napalm;
the killing of 3-4 million Vietnamese people; and unleashing genocidal violence
in neighboring Cambodia.
Third,
following multiple military and covert operations, the Reagan Administration
embarked on a war against Central American peoples leading to about 200,000
deaths, injuries, and thousands set afoot seeking economic and military
survival through desperate migrations to the north. Nicaragua was targeted for
attack because the President’s neoconservative policy advisors regarded that
country as a surrogate of the dreaded Soviet Union. US money and military advisors
were allotted to help a dictatorship try to defeat a peasant guerrilla movement
in El Salvador. The United States funded Guatemalan militarists who were engaging
in a genocidal policy against the indigenous people of that country. Honduras
was armed and became the military base for the wars of Central America.
In the
twenty-first century the Bush administration waged war against Afghanistan and
Iraq. The Taliban, who came to power in
the 1990s after a long civil war in Afghanistan which began in 1979, created
relative stability but were alleged to be partners to the crimes of 9/11.
President Bush ordered the Afghanistan government to release Osama Bin Laden to
US authorities or face war. When they refused the US attacked that country and
thus created permanent instability. The war on Afghanistan is now America’s
longest war. And Afghanistan is poorer, more devastated, and less stable than
in October, 2001, when the war started.
The lies
about why the United States had to make war on Iraq are common knowledge. Even
if morality and international law are not brought to the analysis, everything
the United States did and is still doing in Iraq has been wrong. After nearly a
decade of war, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) emerged with
powerful military force and some popular support and is challenging the Iraqi
government, the Kurds, the Turkish government, the Syrian government, and any
other outside forces.If the
regional instability brought on by the Afghan and Iraq wars were not enough,
the Obama administration, with NATO collaboration, led a massive bombing
assault that destroyed the relatively stable Libyan regime setting in motion,
internal violence, instability, and emigration.
Several
lessons can be drawn from these “horrific moments in United States foreign
policy.” The pursuit of United States hegemony has generated violence all
across the globe. This violence has destabilized stable political regimes, led
to mass slaughter of the peoples of these countries, created opposition forces
which now are targeting American citizens and institutions in the affected
areas. In addition, the United States and other arms merchants have increased
the flow of armaments to Asia, the Persian Gulf the Middle East, and Latin
America. The overwhelming casualties of war since the end of World War II have
been citizens of the Global South, people of color. In addition, these horrific
moments have cost Americans billions of dollars and probably almost one million
deaths and injuries sustained by United States soldiers.
Finally,
referring to the migration problem that the Council of Foreign Relations
Backgrounder referred to above, much of it is due to the horrific moments in
United States foreign policy. The Korean and Vietnam Wars legitimized war
strategies and military interventionism to achieve US global goals. These
strategies continued in Central America, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya creating a worldwide and desperate
population of people fleeing war, ethnic hatreds, and poverty.
These
are some of the historic foreign policy realities that must be addressed during
the 2016 election season.
