The United States will revoke or deny visas to International Criminal Court personnel seeking to investigate alleged war crimes and other abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere, and may do the same with those who seek action against Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday (Matthew Lee, “US Bars Entry to International Investigators,” Associated Press, March 16, 2019).
Harry Targ
Historian, Michael Stanley, in an essay entitled “‘We
are Not Denmark’: Hillary Clinton and Liberal American Exceptionalism,” (Common
Dreams, February 26, 2016) points to the ideological glue that is used by
foreign policy elites, liberal and conservative, to justify the pursuit of
neoliberal globalization and militarism; that is the reintroduction of the old
idea of American Exceptionalism, which in various forms has been used by elites
since the foundation of the Republic.
The modern version, borne in the context of
continental and global expansion, serves to justify an imperial US role in the
world. Along with posturing that the United States is somehow special and has
much to offer the world, American Exceptionalism presumes the world has little
to offer the United States. The only difference between Democrats and
Republicans on foreign policy is whether the exceptionalism still exists and
must be maintained or has dissipated requiring the need to “make America great
again.” Leaders of both parties, however, support the national security state,
high military expenditures, and a global presence—military, economic,
political, and cultural.
Techniques
of Empire Today
Although the imperial agenda, and the ideological
precepts justifying it, has remained the same for two hundred years the
techniques of empire have changed as growing resistance at home and abroad and
new technologies dictate. Changes in warfare, other violence, and imperial
expansion include the following:
-Wars are internal much more than international and
casualties are overwhelmingly civilian rather than military.-The global presence of some form of the United States military is ubiquitous-between 700-and 1,000 military bases, in anywhere from 40 to 120 countries
- US military operations have been privatized. A 2010 Washington Post report found 1,911 intelligence contracting firms doing top secret work for 1,271 government organizations at over 10,000 sites. Ninety percent of such work is being done by 110 contractors.
-More “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” have been used to
kill alleged enemies over the last eight years as the entire prior period of US
military operations. Drones have come home as their use by the Dallas police
recently showed.
-US agencies, such as the CIA, have been engaged in
the increased use of assassinations and efforts to undermine governments. One
report indicated that there are 13,000 assassination commandoes operating
around the world.
-So-called “humanitarian assistance” is used to
support United States policies in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
For example, a New York Times story
reported that at least 40 American groups received $200 million in
tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
over the last decade.
Some generalizations we can draw from the new
techniques of war are the following:
-Imperial rule has become global.
-The Military/industrial complex has expanded beyond
President Eisenhower’s wildest nightmares. Large sectors of military operations—from
cooking and cleaning to killing—have been privatized.
-Military operations continue and expand without
“boots on the ground.” Empires can kill with impunity.
Recently, Nick Turse and colleagues reported on data
indicating that the United States has been engaged in secret military training
of personnel in many countries, what they called ‘a shadowy network of U.S.
programs that every year provides instruction and assistance to approximately
200,000 foreign soldiers, police, and other personnel.” (Douglas Gillison, Nick Turse, Moiz Syed, “How the U.S. Trains Killers
Worldwide,” Portside, July 13, 2016). Their report is worth further quoting:
“The data show training at no fewer than 471 locations
in 120 countries...involving on the U.S. side, 150 defense agencies, civilian
agencies, armed forces colleges, defense training centers, military units,
private companies, and NGOs, as well as the National Guard forces of five
states.” Perhaps most important for the peace movement is the following: Despite
the fact that the Department of Defense alone has poured some $122 billion into
such programs since 9/11, the breadth and content of this training network
remain virtually unknown to most Americans.”
Impacts
of 21st Century Imperialism
By any measure the pain and suffering brought by 21st
century imperialism is staggering. US Labor Against the War recently reported
that sources estimate 1.3 million people, mostly in the Middle East and South
Asia, have died due to the war on terrorism initiated in 2001. They quote a
research report that estimates that one million Iraqis have died since 2003 and
an additional 220,000 citizens of Afghanistan and 80,000 from Pakistan. Other
sources claim these figures are too conservative and remind us of the untold
thousands upon thousands who have died directly from war and violence in Libya,
Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere in the Middle East, South Asia, and North
Africa.
These figures, of course, address deaths directly
attributed to war and terrorism but do not include economic sanctions, massive
flight of peoples from war zones, persecution by authoritarian regimes,
environmental devastation and drone strikes and assassinations. Large areas of
the globe, centered in the Middle East and North Africa, are ungovernable with
foreign intervention and anomic domestic violence on the rise. In a troubling
essay by Patrick Cockburn the author asserts that:
“We live in an age of disintegration. Nowhere is this
more evident than in the Greater Middle East and Africa. Across the vast swath
of territory between Pakistan and Nigeria, there are at least seven ongoing
wars-in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and South Sudan. These
conflicts are extraordinarily destructive. They are tearing apart the countries
in which they are taking place in ways that make it doubtful they will ever
recover.” (Patrick Cockburn, “The Age of Disintegration: Neoliberalism,
Interventionism, the Resource Curse, and a Fragmenting World,” The Unz Review: Mobile, June 28, 2016).
Cockburn suggests that this fragmentation has core
features: no winners and losers, deconstruction of states, massive population
upheavals and migrations, religious fundamentalism replacing socialist and/or nationalist
politics, and outside interventions. The Global South project Vijay Prashad
described so well in The Darker Nations
has been superseded by competing fundamentalist projects.
Recent
Specific Cases
NATO/Ukraine/New Cold War
Leaders of the 28 NATO countries met in summit in
Poland in 2016 to reaffirm their commitment to the military alliance that was
established in 1949 for the sole purpose of protecting the European continent
from any possible Soviet military intervention. With the collapse of the former
Soviet Union, rather than dissolving, NATO took on the task of policing the
world for neoliberal globalization and the states ‘victorious” in the Cold War.
NATO was the official operational arm of military operations in the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the military force that would destroy the Gaddafi
regime in Libya.
After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, NATO
incorporated the states in Eastern Europe that had been affiliated with it. Now
Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic States, many with neo-Fascist governments, are
the frontline in the ongoing hostilities with Russia. They and western
financiers from Ukraine, with substantial assistance from the United States,
engineered the coup that ousted a corrupt but elected President in Ukraine.
This set off an ongoing civil war between those in the population who wanted to
continue ties to Russia and others who wanted Ukraine to join the European
Union and NATO. The instability in Kiev was orchestrated by high US state
department officials who advocate a New Cold War with Russia.
At the NATO summit it was agreed to establish four
battalion-sized “battle groups” in Poland and the Baltic states. To use the
language of the Cold War, this small force could serve as a “trip wire” that
could precipitate an “incident” and a major war with Russia. NATO agreed to
bolster the Ukraine military. The alliance would commit to establishing a
controversial missile defense system in Eastern Europe. And NATO countries promised to spend two
percent of their budgets on the military. The continued commitment of the
United States was affirmed by then President Obama.
The Asian Pivot
In 2011, US spokespersons announced that the country
would shift resources and attention to Asia from the Middle East, an area with
demanding security and economic interests. Although US/Chinese dialogue
continues the United States has criticized China’s repositioning of what it
regards as its possessions in the South China Sea. The United States has
expanded military relations with Vietnam, reestablished military bases in the
Philippines, and has generally avoided criticizing efforts by ruling Japanese
politicians to revise their constitution to allow for a full-scale
remilitarization. Despite recent attempts at negotiations between North and
South Korea and the United States tensions on the peninsula remain. And most
mainstream U.S. politicians and pundits have resisted Trump’s outreach to the
North Koreans. On the economic front the United States was instrumental in
building support for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) to challenge Chinese
economic hegemony in the region. Although President Trump rebuffed the TPP, with
a continued US presence in the region, the possibility of a New Cold War in
Asia remains.
The Middle East
Most American politicians express their belief that
the US must maintain a special relationship with the state of Israel. One of
the few active mobilizations for peace today is the worldwide campaign to
demand governments, corporations, and other institutions boycott, and divest
holdings in what is regarded as an apartheid state, Israel, which oppresses its
Arab population and those living in the Occupied Territories. The campaign is
so effective that along with national politicians, governors and state
legislatures have taken stands against the BDS campaign.
Next to the historic US ties to Israel, most analysts
see the deconstruction of the Middle East that Cockburn wrote about as a direct
result of the Iraq war initiated in 2003. Over the next decade, Syria, Libya,
Yemen and other countries have been torn apart by civil war fueled by western,
primarily US, intervention, continuing US support of Saudi Arabian militarism,
and the fractionalization of states in the region, most recently Turkey.
This ten-year war on the Middle East has created a
growing terrorist response directed at western targets and an ideological
campaign, including calls to violence, against all the traditional imperial
powers who dominated the region for one hundred years. As Cockburn suggested,
with the successful United States and European war on radical nationalism in
the region since the onset of the Cold War, secularism has been replaced by
religious fundamentalism as the dominant ideological force in the region.
With this as a backdrop, the United States response to violence is stepped up high-tech killing
justified by a public campaign that demonizes Muslim people in the United
States and everywhere in the world.
AFRICOM
Nick Turse reported on the growing US military
presence on the African continent. A special command structure, AFRICOM, was
established in 2008 to oversee US security interests on the continent.
Initially, the Pentagon claimed that it had one larger base, Camp Lemonnier in
Djibouti. But enterprising researchers discovered that the US military has a
dense network of “cooperative security outposts,” bases and other sites of
military presence, at least 60 across the continent, in 34 countries. The US
has defense attaches in 38 countries.
An Oxford researcher was quoted by Turse on the new
oversite of the African continent.
“AFRICOM, as a new command, is basically a laboratory
for a different kind of warfare and a different way of posturing forces...Apart
from Djibouti, there’s no significant stockpiling of troops, equipment, or even
aircraft. There are a myriad of ‘lily pads’ or small forward operating bases…so
you can spread out even a small number of forces over a very large area and
concentrate those forces quite quickly when necessary” (Nick Turse, “America’s
Empire of African Bases,” TomDispatch.com. November 17, 2015).
Latin America
United States foreign policy toward Latin America has
taken a variety of forms since the onset of the 21st century. The
United States, in the older mold, encouraged and assisted in the failed
military coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002 and gave at least quiescent support
to the military overthrow of Honduran President Zelaya in 2009. At the same
time the United States has curried the favor of upper-class opponents of the
regimes transformed by the Bolivarian Revolution: Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador,
Paraguay, and Uruguay. Two larger countries Argentina and Brazil have
experienced domestic political turmoil in recent years, to some extent driven
by internecine politics and corruption. The United States, in all these cases
has networked with opposition political forces, sometimes encouraging countries
like Brazil and Venezuela to launch votes of no confidence or impeachment
proceedings against governments that have stood against the US neoliberal
economic agenda. Some have referred to the new US strategy in the region as one
of creating “silent coups.”
For a time the influence of the United States weakened
as a result of the onset of the Bolivarian Revolution and the distain Latin
Americans hold toward the United States because of its long-standing efforts to
isolate Cuba. President Obama in collaboration with President Castro announced
a new opening of relations between the two countries in December, 2014 and US
economic constraints on travel, trade, and investment were reduced (although
the blockade continued). What remained similar to past US policy toward Cuba,
however, was the stated aims of the new relationship: the promotion of
democracy and markets. It was no mere coincidence that President Obama visited
Cuba in March, 2016 and then flew to Argentina to negotiate with the newly
elected neoliberal President Macri of Argentina. However, since Trump came in office, and
particularly now with his diplomatic team of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo,
improving United States/Cuban relations have been reversed.
So
Where Does the Peace Movement Go From Here?Analyses of what is wrong are easier to develop than thinking through ways to respond. Today’s peace movement is just beginning to revitalize itself. As suggested above, the foreign policy elites have a hegemonic vision of the role of the United States in the world today and tomorrow. And they have at their disposal 21st century military technologies to maintain their power in the world. The consequences of force and intervention have been horrific for billions of people.
Approaches to rebuilding the peace movement in 2019 should
include the following:
1.Develop a theory, a conceptual scheme about the
multiplicity of connected issues that affect people’s lives linking economics,
politics, militarism, and culture. Think about a diamond shaped figure. At the
base is an economic system, at this point in time, finance capitalism. Above
the base at the two side points are militarism on one side and racism and
sexism on the other. At the top add destruction of nature. Conceptualizing the
war problem in this way we begin to see the connections between the 21st
century state of capitalism as a global system and war, racism, sexism, and
environmental destruction.
2.Use the theory or schema to develop an educational
program that begins with efforts to understand the fundamentals of the war
system (direct and structural violence as peace researchers put it). Use the
schema as programs on specific issues are prepared. Always relate the specific
issue at hand: Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, undermining regimes in Latin America
for example, to the diamond.
3.Participate in grassroots organizing in solidarity
with others, always linking issues to the war/peace paradigm. One error
participants in the various Moral Mondays campaigns of 2014 made was to accede
to the idea that Moral Mondays should only be about state legislative issues,
not national or international ones. However, the New Poor Peoples Campaign,
launched in 2018, has drawn on Dr. King’s conceptualization of the inextricable
connection between three evils: poverty, racism, and militarism.
4.Engage in global solidarity. The analysis above has
emphasized the forces of global hegemony, or imperialism. It is critical to be
aware of and support the grassroots ferment that is occurring all across the
globe; from Arab Spring; to the Bolivarian Revolution; to anti-austerity
campaigns in Greece, Spain, Quebec, and elsewhere, and the broadening climate
change movement that encompasses the globe.
The tasks of a 21st century peace movement
are not different from those of the past. They involve education, organization,
and agitation. With the growth of worldwide resistance to neoliberal
globalization, austerity, racism, sexism, and destruction of nature, it seems
natural to incorporate concerns for peace and the right to national and
personal self-determination to the budding radical movements of our day. And with the even more brutal extension of 21st century imperialism today, including starving the Venezuelan people, supporting neo-Fascist governments such as Saudi Arabia as it slaughters citizens of Yemen, and rejecting the most vital of international institutions such as the International Criminal Court, the peace movement must move from protest, to politics, to resistance.
