Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

Afghanistan: North Atlantic Military Bloc’s Ten-Year War In South Asia

Center for Research on Globalization
By Rick Rozoff
September 1, 2010

In slightly over a month, on October 7, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan will enter its tenth year.

The conflict represents the longest continuous combat operations in the history of the United States and Afghanistan alike. With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for the only time in its existence activating its Article 5 mutual military assistance clause in September 2001 and thus entering the Afghan fray, European nations that had not been at war since the Second World War are now engaged in an endless combat mission.

There are 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 120,000 of them under the command of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Military personnel from over a quarter of the 192 members of the United Nations.

They include soldiers from almost every European country, several Asia-Pacific states, and nations in the Americas and the Middle East.

NATO has grown from 19 to 28 members since it took control of ISAF in 2003 and has expanded military partnerships with several nations that have deployed troops to Afghanistan, from Australia to Georgia, Montenegro to South Korea, Armenia to the United Arab Emirates.

In the same interim the North Atlantic military bloc has assumed the role of an international, expeditionary, increasingly more multifaceted and politicized armed intervention force, a status that will be formalized this November at its summit in Portugal when its first 21st century Strategic Concept is adopted.

In the middle of August the death count for U.S. and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan passed the 2,000 mark and has grown almost every day since – 2051 by August 31 – with American fatalities accounting for some 60 percent of the total. The U.S. suffered 19 combat deaths in the four days beginning on August 28.

Troops from at least 26 nations serving under NATO’s ISAF have been killed in Afghanistan, a record number of countries to sacrifice soldiers in one nation. 521 foreign troops lost their lives in the Afghan war theater last year, a dramatic increase from the preceding year when 295 were killed. So far this year the number is 478, with 2010 poised to be the deadliest year in the nine-year war for U.S. and NATO forces.

The amount of foreign soldiers killed is matched if not exceeded by the number of Afghan civilians slain by NATO. …

NATO’s war in Afghanistan is being used not only to integrate the armed forces of over 50 nations into a U.S.-controlled globally deployable military force, but also to expand the Pentagon’s reach into Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, ever closer to the borders of Russia, Iran and China.

Since 2005 the U.S. has acquired seven new military bases in Romania and Bulgaria, including strategic air bases, and launched the world’s first multinational strategic airlift operation at the Papa Air Base in Hungary. …

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20857

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The Pentagon’s Double Envelopment of President Barack Obama

Truthout
By Melvin A. Goodman
September 1, 2010

The “double envelopment” or pincer movement is a classic military maneuver that finds the flanks of the opponent under simultaneous attack from the opposing forces. …

Now, President Barack Obama finds himself the victim of a political double envelopment in which the Pentagon, having ostensibly agreed to a strategy calling for discussion of withdrawal from Afghanistan, is already campaigning and planning for an extended stay. On one flank, the Pentagon is undertaking a huge base expansion program that will support a regional military strategy against Russia, China and Iran. On the other flank, the senior military leadership is walking away from any notion of even gradual withdrawal beginning in 2011. …

Read on: www.truth-out.org/the-pentagons-double-envelopment-president-barack-obama62876

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Heritage v. Hartung on New START

Huffington Post (blog)
William Hartung
August 13, 2010

I have had the distinct honor and privilege of waging a debate on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with James Carafano and Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation. The pieces, which ran on the conservative web site the Daily Caller, can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here. …

As with all debates of this sort, the first question to ask is “Why does it matter?” In addition to the marginal entertainment value it provides, this debate matters because New START matters, and the arguments Heritage is making against the treaty are a good representation of what the treaty’s opponents have been saying. …

And why does New START matter? Because it is a modest but essential first step towards bringing the nuclear threat under control. By reducing each side’s deployed strategic warheads to 1,550, it reinforces a basic position of parity while reducing force levels by about one-third. It puts in place a sophisticated verification system that includes satellite monitoring, information exchanges, and 18 annual on-site inspections. It will set the stage for further talks with Russia on eliminating short-range, tactical nuclear weapons. And it will give the U.S. greater leverage in persuading other nations to reduce their own nuclear arsenals. ..

Read on: www.huffingtonpost.com/william-hartung/heritage-v-hartung-on-new_b_681518.html

New START at a Glance: http://legacy.armscontrol.org/factsheets/NewSTART

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Defense spending cuts decried as severe, but they’re meant to stave off worse

Fort Worth Star Telegram
By Bob Cox
August 13, 2010

Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes that the U.S. government is hurtling toward a financial train wreck, and he’s trying to minimize the damage to the Pentagon and the armed forces by taking steps to trim military spending.

But the heated reaction to the modest cuts Gates proposed last week shows that making significant, carefully reasoned changes in defense spending will be difficult at best.

Gates’ plan to close the Joint Forces Command based in Norfolk, Va., one of 10 U.S. military commands, is an initial step in a plan to save $100 billion over the next five years. He’s also proposed reducing the number of generals and admirals and cutting spending on outside contractors.

Savings from the cuts would be used to pay for weapons and personnel benefits, reduce Pentagon funding requests and hopefully stave off draconian cuts to weapons programs such as the F-35 joint strike fighter. …

The article also lists examples of where the Defense budget could be trimmed e.g. …

… Reduce U.S. nuclear arsenal to 1,000 warheads deployed on 160 Minuteman missiles and seven nuclear submarines. Saving: $113.5 billion over 10 years

Cap peacetime U.S. military presence in Europe at 35,000 troops and in Asia at 65,000. Reduce size of Marines and Army to 2001 levels. Saving $227 billion over 10 years …

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/08/13/2403486/defense-spending-cuts-decried.html

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America’s Global Empire of Military Bases

The Freedom to get Paid for Lying
July 23, 2010

In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide.

These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide …

Even if politicians and media pundits seem oblivious to these bases, treating the stationing of U.S. troops all over the world as a natural fact, the U.S. empire of bases is attracting increasing attention from academics and activists–as evidenced by a conference on U.S. foreign bases at American University in late February. NYU Press just published Catherine Lutz’s Bases of Empire, a book that brings together academics who study U.S. military bases and activists against the bases. Rutgers University Press has published Kate McCaffrey’s Military Power and Popular Protest, a study of the U.S. base at Vieques, Puerto Rico, which was closed in the face of massive protests from the local population. And Princeton University Press is about to publish David Vine’s Island of Shame–a book that tells the story of how the United States and Britain secretly agreed to deport the Chagossian inhabitants of Diego Garcia to Mauritius and the Seychelles so their island could be turned into a military base. The Americans were so thorough that they even gassed all the Chagossian dogs. The Chagossians have been denied their day in court in the United States but won their case against the British government in three trials, only to have the judgment overturned by the highest court in the land, the House of Lords. They are now appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.

American leaders speak of foreign bases as cementing alliances with foreign nations, largely through the trade and aid agreements that often accompany base leases. Yet, U.S. soldiers live in a sort of cocooned simulacrum of America in their bases, watching American TV, listening to American rap and heavy metal, and eating American fast food, so that the transplanted farm boys and street kids have little exposure to another way of life. Meanwhile, on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, local residents and businesses often become economically dependent on the soldiers and have a stake in their staying. …

http://a1b5jj.blogspot.com/

On Greg Mortensen’s Influence on the U.S. Military and our COIN doctrine

National Security Forum / New York Times
July 17, 2010

Colleagues: In a recent post I noted how much the U.S. Army and top military leaders had been influenced by Greg Mortensen, the author or the highly acclaimed, “Three Cups of Tea”. However, that has been a reciprocal relationship, as Mortensen himself acknowledges in his second book, “Stones into Schools”.

Mortensen’s books have become required reading for the American military, as they have inspired much of the “population-centric”, nation-building aspects of our current counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine. The Chairman of the JCS, Admiral Mike Mullen, GEN Dave Petraeus, and GEN Stan McChrystal have all become close friends and admirers of Mortensen. In turn, Greg has become a passionate advocate for the military and its COIN doctrine, shifting away from his criticism of our earlier approach, which he believed relied too much on indiscriminate bombing, night raids, and Predator strikes. This NYT article … has more detail.

In the frantic last hours of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s command in Afghanistan, when the world wondered what was racing through the general’s mind, he reached out to an unlikely corner of his life: the author of the book “Three Cups of Tea,” Greg Mortenson.

“Will move through this and if I’m not involved in the years ahead, will take tremendous comfort in knowing people like you are helping Afghans build a future,” General McChrystal wrote to Mr. Mortenson in an e-mail message, as he traveled from Kabul to Washington. The note landed in Mr. Mortenson’s inbox shortly after 1 a.m. Eastern time on June 23. Nine hours later, the general walked into the Oval Office to be fired by President Obama.

The e-mail message was in response to a note of support from Mr. Mortenson. It reflected his broad and deepening relationship with the United States military, whose leaders have increasingly turned to Mr. Mortenson, once a shaggy mountaineer, to help translate the theory of counterinsurgency into tribal realities on the ground.

In the past year, Mr. Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute, responsible for the construction of more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, mostly for girls, have set up some three dozen meetings between General McChrystal or his senior staff members and village elders across Afghanistan.

The collaboration, which grew in part out of the popularity of “Three Cups of Tea” among military wives who told their husbands to read it, extends to the office of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last summer, Admiral Mullen attended the opening of one of Mr. Mortenson’s schools in Pushghar, a remote village in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains.

Mr. Mortenson — who for a time lived out of his car in Berkeley, Calif. — has also spoken at dozens of military bases, seen his book go on required reading lists for senior American military commanders and had lunch with Gen. David H. Petraeus, General McChrystal’s replacement. On Friday he was in Tampa to meet with Adm. Eric T. Olson, the officer in charge of the United States Special Operations Command.

Mr. Mortenson, 52, thinks there is no military solution in Afghanistan — he says the education of girls is the real long-term fix — so he has been startled by the Defense Department’s embrace.

“I never, ever expected it,” Mr. Mortenson, a former Army medic, said in a telephone interview last week from Florida, where he had paused between military briefings, book talks for a sequel, “Stones into Schools,” and fund-raising appearances for his institute.

Mr. Mortenson, who said he had accepted no money from the military and had no contractual relationship with the Defense Department, was initially critical of the armed forces in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as “laptop warriors” who appeared, he said, indifferent to the civilian casualties inflicted by the American bombardment of Afghanistan. …

Read on: http://nationalsecurityforum.net/military/nsf-on-greg-mortensens-influence-on-the-u-s-military-and-our-coin-doc/

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Japan-U.S. Relations Could Get Bumpy

Newsweek: by Tobias Harris, July 16, 2010

Washington’s interest in a more active security partnership—in which Japan would spend more on its armed forces, participate more in overseas operations, and perhaps even revise or reinterpret its Constitution to permit self-defense within the alliance—will continue to face serious obstacles because of Tokyo’s unsettled domestic politics.

… As the government’s fiscal situation worsens, it becomes less and less likely that Tokyo will take up an ambitious security policy agenda. Fixing the government’s finances is a key step to addressing the other pocketbook issues with which voters are concerned. It is unlikely that a government implementing controversial budget cuts and tax increases would also take up the contentious question of how it should contribute to the defense of Japan and security in East and Central Asia. Its fear would be that the public would punish leaders perceived as focused on problems far from Japanese shores as it implements policies that hurt Japanese households. Moreover, for a cash-strapped government, the status quo, in which Japan limits its defense spending while subsidizing U.S. bases in Japan, continues to suit Japan’s interests. The logic of the Yoshida doctrine—which was formulated during the early postwar period, and which called for low defense spending combined with an alliance founded on U.S. bases in Japan—remains relevant today: Japanese leaders once saw the doctrine as the key to postwar economic development, and now the same policies provide resources for shoring up Japan’s social safety net and halting economic decline. …

www.newsweek.com/2010/07/16/a-fragile-alliance.html

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America divided: the politics of inequality

openDemocracy: by Godfrey Hodgson, 16 July 2010

The entrenchment of inequality in the United States damages the economy, degrades politics and corrodes the American dream …

The economic crisis in the United States has had a profound impact on the lives of millions of its citizens. Among the most damaging is the experience of unemployment. In a country where notions of work, self-reliance, and self-improvement are fundamental to its identity, the insecurities and hardships associated with forced idleness are hard indeed to cope with.

The persistence of large-scale unemployment is a standing affront to another of America’s core ideas: that, as the country’s founding document says, all men are created equal. True, the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were here pledging fidelity to a natural-rights principle than thinking of absolute or even relative economic equality.

Still, an important element in the American public philosophy has always been the idea that the United States does offer, certainly has offered, greater economic equality, and in particular greater and more equal economic opportunity. This was the American dream.

Now, that proposition has become dubious. Many Americans question whether life will be as good for their children as it was for their parents. There is much statistical evidence to suggest that the United States is neither exceptionally equal nor exceptional in its modern record of upward social mobility.

On the basis of such evidence I myself have written that “by all statistical measures . . . the United States, in terms of income and wealth, is the most unequal country in the world. While the average income in the United States is still almost the highest in the world . . . the gap between wealth and poverty is higher than anywhere else, and is growing steadily greater” …

www.opendemocracy.net/godfrey-hodgson/america-divided-broken-social-contract

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