The North Coast times-eagle., August 01, 2002, Page 2, Image 2

PAGE 2
THE BASES OF WAR
JOHN OVERMYER
BY ZOLTÁN GROSSMAN
Since the end of the Cold War a decade ago, the U.S.
has gone to war in Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
The interventions have been promoted as “humanitarian"
deployments to stop aggression, to topple dictatorships, or to
halt terrorism. After each U.S. intervention, the attention of
supporters and critics alike has turned to speculate on which
countries would be next. But largely ignored has been what
the U.S. interventions left behind.
As the Cold War ended, the U.S. was confronted with
competition from two emerging economic blocs in Europe and
East Asia. Though it was considered the world’s last military
superpower, the United States was facing a decline of its
economic strength relative to the European Union and the East
Asian economic bloc of Japan, China and the Asian “Four
Tigers." The U.S. faced the prospect of being economically left
out in much of the Eurasian landmass. The major U.S. interven­
tions since 1990 should be viewed as not only reactions to
“ethnic cleansing" or against Islamist militancy, but to this new
geopolitical picture.
Since 1990, each large-scale U.S. intervention has left
behind a string on new U.S. military bases in a region where the
U.S. had never before had a foothold. The U.S. military is insert­
ing itself into strategic areas of the world and anchoring U.S.
geopolitical influence in these areas at a very critical time in
history. With the rise of the “euro bloc" and “yen bloc,” U.S.
economic power is perhaps on the wane. But in military affairs,
the U.S. is still the unquestioned superpower. It has been
projecting that military dominance into new strategic regions as
a future counterweight to its economic competitors, to create a
military-backed “dollar bloc" as a wedge geographically situated
between its major competitors.
As each intervention was being planned, war planners
focused on building new U.S. military installations, or securing
basing rights at foreign facilities, in order to support the ooming
war. But after the war ended the U.S. forces did not withdraw,
but stayed behind, often creating suspicion and resentment
among local populations much as the Soviet forces faced after
liberating Eastern Europe in World War 2. The new U.S. military
bases were not merely built to aid the interventions, but the
interventions also conveniently afforded an opportunity to station
the bases.
Indeed, the establishment of new bases may in the
long run be more critical to U.S. war planners than the wars
themselves, as well as to enemies of the U.S. The massacre
of September 11 was not directly tied to the Persian Gulf War;
Osama bin Laden had backed the Saudi fundamentalist dictator­
ship against the Iraqi secular dictatorship in the war. The attacks
had their roots in the U.S decision to leave behind bases in
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The permanent stationing
of new U.S. forces in and around the Balkans and Afghanistan
could easily generate a similar terrorist "blowback" years from
now.
This is not to say that all U.S. wars of the past decade
have been the result of some coordinated conspiracy to make
Americans the overlords of the belt between Bosnia and
Pakistan But it is to recast the interventions as opportunistic
responses to events, which have enabled Washington to gain
a foothold in the “middle ground" between Europe to the west.
Russia to the north and China to the east, and turn this region
increasingly into an American "sphere of influence." The series
of interventions have also virtually secured U.S. corporate
control over the oil supplies for both Europe and East Asia
It's not a conspiracy; it’s just business as usual.
Contrary to original U.S. promises to its Arab allies, the
1991 Gulf War left behind large military bases in Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait, and basing rights in the other Gulf states of Bahrain,
Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates The war also
heightened the profile of existing U.S. air bases in Turkey
The war completed the American inheritance of the oil region
from which the British had withdrawn in the early 1970s. Yet
i
the U.S. itself only imports about 5% of its oil from the Gulf;
the rest of the oil is exported mainly to Europe and Japan.
French President Jacques Chirac correctly viewed the U.S. role
in the Persian Gulf as securing control over oil sources for the
European and East Asian economic powers.The U.S. decided
to permanently station bases around the Gulf after 1991 not only
to counter Saddam Hussein and support the continuing bombing.»
against Iraq, but to quell potential internal dissent in the oil-rich
monarchies.
The intervention in Somalia in 1992-93 ended in defeat
for the U.S., but it is important to understand why the so-called
“humanitarian” intervention took place. In the 1970s-80s, the
U.S. backed Somali dictator Siad Barre in his war against Soviet
backed Ethiopia. In return, Barre had granted the U.S. Navy the
rights to use Somali naval ports which were strategically situated
at the southern end of the Red Sea, linking the Suez Canal to
the Indian Ocean. After Barre was overthrown, the U.S. used
the ensuing chaos and famine as its excuse to move back in,
but made the mistake of siding with one group of warlords
against the Mogadishu warlord Mohamed Aidid. In the battle
of Mogadishu, romanticized in the movie “Black Hawk Down,"
18 U.S. troops and many hundreds of Somalis were killed. The
U.S. withdrew and eventually gained naval basing rights in the
port of Aden, just across the Red Sea in Yemen, where Osama
bin Laden launched his attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
The U.S. interventions in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in
1999 were ostensibly reactions to Serbian “ethnic cleansing," yet
the U.S. had not intervened to prevent similar ethnic cleansing
by its Croatian or Albanian allies in the Balkans. The U.S.
military interventions in former Yugoslavia resulted in new
U.S. military bases in five countries: Hungary, Albania, Bosnia,
Macedonia, and the sprawling Camp Bondsteel complex in
southern Kosovo. NATO allies have also participated in the
interventions, though not always with the same political
priorities. As in the Gulf and Afghan conflicts, European Union
allies may be joining the U.S. wars not simply out of solidarity,
but out of fear of being completely excluded from carving out
the postwar order in the region. The Kosovo intervention in
particular was followed by stepped-up European efforts to form
an independent military force outside the U.S.-commanded
NATO. The U.S. stationing of huge bases along the eastern
edge of the E.U., which can be used to project forces into the
Middle East, was carried out partly in anticipation of European
militaries one day going their own way.
The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was ostensibly
a reaction to September 11, and to some extent was aimed at
toppling the Taliban. But Afghanistan has historically been in an
extremely strategic location straddling South Asia, Central Asia
and the Middle East. The country also conveniently lies along
a proposed Unocal oil pipeline route from the Caspian Sea oil
fields to the Indian Ocean. The U.S. had already been situating
forces in the neighboring ex-Soviet republic of Uzbekistan
before September 11. During the war it has used new bases and
basing rights in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and to a
lesser extent Tajikistan. It is using the continuing instability in
Afghanistan (like in Somalia, largely a result of setting warlords
against warlords) as an excuse to station a permanent military
presence throughout the region, and it even plans to institute
the dollar as the new Afghan currency. This new string of U.S.
military bases are becoming permanent outposts guarding a new
Caspian Sea oil infrastructure.
Geopolitical priorities may help explain why Washington
went to war in all these countries, even as paths to peace
remained ppen. President George Bush launched the February
1991 ground war against Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein
was already withdrawing from Kuwait under a Soviet disengage­
ment plan He also sent forces into Somalia in 1992 even though
the famine he used as a justification had already lessened.
President Clinton launched a war on Serbia in 1999 to force a
withdrawal from Kosovo even though Yugoslavia had already
met many of his withdrawal terms. President George W. Bush
attacked Afghanistan in 2001 without having put much diplomat­
ic pressure on the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden or letting anti­
Taliban forces (such as Pashtun commander Abdul Haq) win
over Taliban forces on their own. Washington went to war not as
a last resort, but because it saw war as a convenient opportunity
to further larger goals.
Geopolitical priorities may also help explain the
reluctance of the U.S. to declare victory in these wars. If the
U.S. had ousted Saddam Hussein from power in 1991 its Gulf
allies would have demanded the withdrawal of U.S. bases, but
his continued hold onto power justifies intensive U.S. bombing
of Iraq and a continued hold over the Gulf oil region. The fact
that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar have not been captured
in nearly a year of war also provides convenient justification for
the permanent stationing of U.S. bases in Central and South
Asia. All three men are more useful to U.S. plans if they are
alive and free, at least for the time being.
Iraq is certainly the primary target for a new war by the
U.S. for President Bush Jr. to “finish the job’ that his father left
unfinished. Now that the American sphere of influence is taking
hold in the “middle ground" between Europe and East Asia, the
attention may be turned on both Iraq and its former enemy Iran
as the only remaining regional powers to stand in the way. Bush
may be under the illusion that Iraqi opposition forces can be
refashioned into a pro-U.S. force like the Northern Alliance or
Kosovo Liberation Army. He may also be under the illusion that
his threats against Iran will help Iranian “moderate” reformers,
even though it is already dangerously strengthening the hand
of Islamist hard-liners. A U.S. war against either Iran or Iraq will
destroy any bridges recently built to Islamic states, especially
as Bush also abandons even the pretense of even-handedness
between Israelis and Palestinians.
U.S. war planners are also openly targeting Somalia and
Yemen and are patrolling their shores with Navy ships, though
they may decide to intervene indirectly to avoid the disasters
of Mogadishu in 1993 and Aden in 2000. Bin Laden had backed
warlord Aidid to prevent U.S. bases in Somalia, and his father is
from the historically rebellious Hadhramaut region of southeast
Yemen. Yet Washington’s priority would not be to eliminate Bin
Laden’s influence, leaving that role to local forces. Rather the
priority would be to regain naval access to strategic Somali and
Yemeni ports.
The most direct U.S. intervention since the Afghanistan
invasion has been in the southern Philippines against the Moro
(Muslim) guerrilla militia Abu Sayyaf. The U.S. sees the tiny Abu
Sayyaf group as inspired by Bin Laden rather than a thuggish
outgrowth of decades of Moro insurgency in Mindanao and the
Sulu Archipelago. U.S. special forces “trainers” carry out joint
“exercises” with Philippine troops in the active combat zone.
Their goal may be to achieve an easy Grenada-style victory
over the 200 rebels for the global propaganda effect against
Ben Laden. But once in place, the counterinsurgency campaign
could easily be redirected against other Moro or even commun­
ist rebel groups in Mindanao. It could also help achieve the
other major U.S. goal in the Philippines: to fully reestablish U.S.
military basing rights, which ended when the Philippine Senate
terminated U.S. control of Clark Air Base and Subic Navy Base
after the Cold War ended and a volcanic eruption damaged both
bases. Such a move back into the country would be Strongly
resisted by both leftist and rightist Filipino nationalists.
The U.S. return to the Philippines, like Bush's newest
threats against North Korea, may also be an effort to assert
U.S. influence in East Asia as China rises as a global power
and other Asian economies recover from financial crises. A
growing U.S. military role throughout Asia could counteract
increasing criticism of U.S. bases in Japan. The moves could
also raise fears in China of a U.S. sphere of influence intruding
on its borders. The new U.S. air base in the ex-Soviet republic
of Kyrgyzstan is too close to China for comfort. (Russian fears
of U.S. encirclement may also be rekindled, though Russia
may instead join the U.S. in using its oil to lessen the power
of OPEC.)
Meanwhile other regions of the world are also being
targeted in the U.S. “War on Terror," notably South America.
Just as Cold War propaganda recast leftist rebels in South
Vietnam and El Salvador as puppets of North Vietnam or Cuba,
U.S. war on terror propaganda is casting Colombian rebels as
the allies of neighboring oil-rich Venezuela. The beret-clad
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is described loosely as
sympathetic to Bin Laden and Fidel Castro, and as possibly
turning OPEC against the U.S. Chavez could serve as an
ideal new enemy if Bin Laden is eliminated.The crisis in South
America, though it cannot be tied to Islamic militancy, may be
the most dangerous new war in the making.
Whether we look at the U.S. wars of the past decade in
the Persian Gulf, Somalia, the Balkans or Afghanistan, or at the
possible new wars in Yemen, the Philippines, Colombia/Venez-
uela or even at Bush’s new “Axis of Evil" of Iraq, Iran and North
Korea, the same common themes arise. The U.S. military inter­
ventions cannot all be tied to the insatiable U.S. thirst for oil (or
rather for oil profits), even though many of the recent wars do
have their roots in oil politics. They can nearly all be tied to the
U.S. desire to build or rebuild military bases. The new U.S.
military bases and increasing control over oil supplies can in
turn be tied to the historical shift taking place since the 1980s:
the rise of European and East Asian blocs that have the
potential to replace the United States and Soviet Union as
the world’s economic superpowers.
Much as the Roman Empire tried to use its military
power to buttress its weakening economic and political hold over
its colonies, the United States is aggressively inserting itself into
new regions of the world to prevent its competitors from doing
the same. The goal is not to end “terror" or encourage "demo­
cracy," and Bush will not accomplish either of these claimed
goals. The short-term goal is to station U.S. military forces in
regions where local nationalists had evicted them. The long-term
goal is to increase U.S. corporate control over the oil needed by
Europe and East Asia, whether the oil is in around the Caspian
or Caribbean Seas. The ultimate goal is to establish new
American spheres of influence and eliminate any obstacles
— religious militants, secular nationalists, enemy governments,
or even allies — who stand in the way.
U.S. citizens may welcome the interventions to defend
the “homeland" from attack or even to build new bases or oil
pipelines to preserve U.S. economic power. But as the dangers
of this strategy become more apparent, Americans may begin to
realize that they are being led down a risky path that will turn
even more of the world against them, and lead inevitably to
future September 11s.
Zoltán Grossman is a doctoral candidate at the Univer­
sity of Wisconsin/Madison, and a member of the Southwest Asia
Information Group. This article is locally imprinted on internet by
Cowlitz County Public Citizens.