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February
2, 2002
Francis
Schor
Carlucci's
Strange Career
February
1, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
The
Great Ashcroft Cover Up
Jeremy
Voas
Why
We're Suing Ashcroft
David
Vest
10
Things I Know About Him
January
31, 2002
Rahul
Mahajan
The
State of the Union:
A New Cold War
Dave Marsh
Miles
Copeland, War
and the Future of Music
John Pilger
The
Colder War
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Killer Dog, Weird Couple
Dr. Susan
Block
Blowback
and Daniel Pearl
January
30, 2002
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Linda
Lay, Hill and Knowlton and the Tears of a Clown
Jack McCarthy
Free
Noelle Bush!
Michael
Ratner
Memo
to Bush: Adhere to
the Geneva Convention
Jay Moore
Proud
to be an American?
Susan
Block
The
Great Pretzel Swallower
and Guantanamo Porn
January
29, 2002
Gary Leupp
Why
This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Birds of Kandahar
Patrick
Cockburn
Afghan
Opium Trade
Back in Business
January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
January
27, 2002
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Enron's
Drip, Drip, Drip
Tom Turnipseed
MLK
Jr.'s Dream Perverted
January
26, 2002
Norman
Madarsz
Adieu,
Bourdieu
January
25, 2002
National
Lawyers Guild
Know
Your Rights
Alexander
Cockburn
You
Call This Terrorism?
CounterPunch
Wire
Cal
Energy Crisis Hoax:
It Wasn't A Shortage,
It Was a Shakedown
Tariq
Ali
Kashmir,
Klinghoffer,
the Kurds and Chomsky
Nadine
Strossen
Protecting
MLK Jr.'s Legacy:
Justice and Liberty After 9/11
January
24, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Turkey
Targets Chomsky
Dean Baker
Lying
on Top:
Ken Lay One of Many
David
Vest
Idiot
Wind
January
23, 2002
Terry
Waite
Guantanamo
Prisoners:
Justice or Revenge?
Molly
Secours
The
Case of Abu-Ali:
Racism and the Death Penalty
Robert
Jensen
Speak
Out, Get Slimed
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Five
Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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The
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Al Gore:
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February 2,
2002
New US Military Bases:
Side Effects or
Causes of War?
By Zoltan 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 land mass. The major U.S. interventions
since 1990 should be viewed not only reactions to "ethnic
cleansing" or Islamist militancy, but to this new geopolitical
picture.
Since 1990, each large-scale U.S. intervention
has left behind a string of new U.S. military bases in a region
where the U.S. had never before had a foothold. The U.S. military
is inserting 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.
Wars for Bases.
As each intervention was being planned,
planners focused on building new U.S. military installations,
or securing basing rights at foreign facilities, in order to
support the coming 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 II. 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 were not directly tied to the Gulf
War; Osama bin Laden had backed the Saudi fundamentalist dictatorship
against the Iraqi secular dictatorship in the war. The attacks
mainly 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.
Gulf War.
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 the U.S. itself only imports about 5 percent of
its oil from the Gulf; the rest 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 to support the
continued bombing against Iraq, but to quell potential internal
dissent in the oil-rich monarchies.
Somalia War.
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. had backed Somali dictator
Siad Barre in his wars 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 Bin Laden launched his attack on
the USS Cole in 2000.
Balkan Wars.
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 southeastern 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 of 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.
Afghan War.
The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan
was ostensibly a reaction to the September 11 attacks, 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 its new bases and basing rights in Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and to a lesser extent Tajikistan.
It is using the continued 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. The new string of U.S. military bases
are becoming permanent outposts guarding a new Caspian Sea oil
infrastructure.
Why War?
Geopolitical priorities may help explain
why Washington went to war in all these countries, even as paths
to peace remained open. President George Bush launched the February
1991 ground war against Iraq, even though Saddam was already
withdrawing from Kuwait under Soviet disengagement 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 withdraw from Kosovo,
even though Yugoslavia had already met many of his withdrawal
terms at the Rambouillet conference. President George W. Bush
attacked Afghanistan in 2001 without having put much diplomatic
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 from power in 1991, his
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
four months 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.
Wars in the
Making.
Iraq is certainly the primary target
for a new U.S. war, for President Bush to "finish the job"
that his daddy 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 Iraq or Iran 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 Aidid to prevent new U.S. bases in Somalia, and his
father is from the historically rebellious Hadhramaut region
of southeastern Yemen. Yet Washington's priority would not
be to eliminate Bin Laden's influence, leaving that role mainly
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 Afghan 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"
are carrying 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 Bin Laden. But once in place, the
counterinsurgency campaign could easily be redirected against
other Moro or even Communist 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 Naval Base, after the Cold War ended and
a volcanic eruption damaged both bases. Such a move back into
the country would be strongly resisted, however, 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.
Common themes.
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, or Colombia/Venezuela,
or even at Bush's new "axis of evil" of Iraq, Iran,
and North Korea, the same common themes arise. The U.S. military
interventions 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 "democracy," 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 the 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.
Zoltan Grossman
is a doctoral candidate in geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
and a member of the South-West Asia Information Group. He can
be reached at: zoltan@geography.wisc.edu
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