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U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed in 133 countries


Douglas Caddy

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From the article: During the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2014, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed to 133 countries -- roughly 70% of the nations on the planet -- according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt, a public affairs officer with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). This capped a three-year span in which the country’s most elite forces were active in more than 150 different countries around the world, conducting missions ranging from kill/capture night raids to training exercises. And this year could be a record-breaker. Only a day before the failed raid that ended Luke Somers life -- just 66 days into fiscal 2015 -- America’s most elite troops had already set foot in 105 nations, approximately 80% of 2014’s total.


Since September 11, 2001, U.S. Special Operations forces have grown in every conceivable way, including their numbers, their budget, their clout in Washington, and their place in the country’s popular imagination. The command has, for example, more than doubled its personnel from about 33,000 in 2001 to nearly 70,000 today, including a jump of roughly 8,000 during the three-year tenure of recently retired SOCOM chief Admiral William McRaven.


http://www.alternet.org/world/us-dark-empire-has-secret-operations-over-100-countries#.VMV1Lhs42r8.facebook


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Oct 24, 2013 ... The US is an imperialist monster with a voracious appetite for ... United States imperialism is destroying the world, one nation at time.


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U.S. Soldiers Sexually Abused 54 Children in Colombia - Then Filmed And Sold It As Pornography (link)

A new report commissioned by the Colombian government and FARC rebels has concluded U.S. soldiers and military contractors sexually abused at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007. The investigator cites one case where 53 girls in the town of Melgar were targeted by contractors who filmed the abuse and sold the films as pornography. In another case, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly drugged and raped by a U.S. Army sergeant and a contractor. Under immunity agreements, none of the alleged abusers were ever punished. The media group FAIR notes the story has received no coverage in the U.S. corporate media. A number of U.S. outlets have reported on a new Justice Department probe which concludes U.S. drug enforcement agents in Colombia participated in "sex parties" with prostitutes hired by Colombian drug cartels.

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Washington’s “Human Rights” Imperialism Exposed

Global Research, April 02, 2015
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The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it is resuming arms shipments to the military dictatorship in Egypt, beginning with the transfer of 12 F-16 fighter jets, missiles and the components required to build 125 tanks. In a personal call to Egypt’s ruler, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Obama also pledged to resume the annual transfer of $1.3 billion in military aid.

The White House made no effort to claim that Egypt had made “credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government”—the statutory condition for ending the suspension of military aid imposed in October 2013. Instead, it invoked an exemption passed by Congress late last year to override this requirement.

Resuming military aid to Egypt, the second largest recipient of such assistance from the US, after Israel, is “in the interest of US national security,” a White House statement declared. Obama told al-Sisi it was necessary for Egypt and the US to “refine our military assistance relationship so that it is better positioned to address the shared challenges to US and Egyptian interests…”

The administration could not even make a pretense that Egypt had made a turn toward democracy. The blood-soaked al-Sisi regime has not slackened its murderous repression one iota. Since coming to power, it has brutally repressed protests. Political opponents have been beaten, killed and arrested en masse. According to one count, more than 41,000 people have been locked up since the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi in 2013. More than 1,000 political opponents have been sentenced to death.

The decision to resume arms shipments to Egypt came only two days after the announcement by Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, that US military forces will begin direct training of right-wing National Guard militias organized by the Kiev regime, including the fascist Azov Battalion. This outfit, founded and led by neo-Nazis, has been on the front lines of the war in eastern Ukraine against pro-Russian separatists.

These are only two of the most damning exposures of the “human rights” pretenses of American foreign policy. With increasing brazenness, the United States functions as the spearhead of militarism and reaction all over the world. It is driven to support the most brutal regimes in pursuit of its program of global domination through military force.

The immediate spur for the resumption of arms shipments to Egypt is the air war against Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the Obama administration. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced plans for a possible ground invasion alongside the escalating bombing campaign, with the goal of ousting Houthi forces backed by Iran. The additional military equipment Washington is sending to Egypt would undoubtedly be deployed in such a ground assault.

The two US allies leading this campaign sum up the character of the enterprise. The brutality of the Egyptian regime is matched by that of the Saudi monarchy, which rules with an iron fist, carries out beheadings with gruesome regularity, and has funneled money to Al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups as part of the US regime-change operation in Syria.

As for Ukraine, support for openly fascistic forces has been a hallmark of the US-led operation that began last February with the ousting of the elected pro-Russian president. That putsch was spearheaded by the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and Right Sector. Throughout Eastern Europe, the US is relying on right-wing, nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic movements and governments as part of its military-economic-diplomatic drive to isolate, undermine and, ultimately, dismember Russia.

On the other side of the world is Honduras, where death squads linked to the US-backed government of Juan Orlando Hernández have been carrying out a reign of terror against students protesting against education cuts, including the abduction, torture and murder of at least four young people. Hernández is the successor to President Porfirio Lobo, who came to power following a US-backed coup in 2009.

The US provides tens of millions of dollars annually to the Honduran police and military, headed by a regime that Foreign Policy recently described as “a cesspool of corruption and organized crime in which the topmost levels of government are enmeshed.” Hernández and Lobo have overseen the establishment of police militias with close ties to drug gangs and pushed for the direct involvement of the military in domestic repression.

The coming together of the police and military with right-wing death squads and drug gangs—funded with US money—is repeated in other countries in Latin America, most notably Mexico. The entire Mexican state is complicit in the massacre of 43 students last year, and the UN special envoy on torture declared earlier this month that the use of torture had become “generalized” in the country. None of this has had any impact on the full support the Obama administration accords the government of Mexican President Peña Nieto, which is pushing through economic “reforms” aimed at opening up the energy sector to foreign capital.

One could cite dozens of examples along these lines. The American financial aristocracy exports the blood, filth and criminality embedded in its social being wherever it seeks to dominate and control—and there is no part of the world that is exempt from this drive.

From the beginning of the rise of American imperialism, the ruling class has sought to couch its predatory ambitions in the language of “freedom,” “human rights” and “American values.” As Trotsky noted in 1924, “America is always liberating somebody. That is her profession.” At no other time, however, have the ideological justifications for aggression been so threadbare.

One final point. The ever more naked exposure of the criminality of American imperialism coincides with the further shift to the right of the organizations of the privileged middle class—the liberal and pseudo-left backers of the Obama administration.

Those who once presented themselves as “anti-war” have taken the opportunity of Obama’s election to line up directly behind US imperialism, backing US-led operations in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine and Iraq, among others. They have jumped onto the bandwagon of “human rights imperialism” precisely at the point where it is being decisively exposed before the people of the United States and the entire world.

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Africa’s “Second Liberation” against Today’s Neo-Colonialism

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/africas-second-liberation-against-todays-neo-colonialism/5451647

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On Monday March 25, many African Government offices, businesses and banks grind to a halt in order to commemorate Africa Day. In schools up and down the continent, little children are taught that heroic Africans liberated the continent from racist white colonial regimes and various events and parades are held to celebrate the occasion.

Colonialism in Africa is remembered as one of the worst crimes against humanity of the modern era. The exploitative economic system that underpinned colonialism remains alive and well today.

Africa’s liberation was from racist, colonial government. If this was to be the first stage of liberation, than the second stage must involve freeing Africa from the current white minority, who controls the majority of African land and resources.

True African liberation involves three stages: first, the redistribution of land and natural resources from the white minority to the black majority; second, the rejection of the IMF and World Bank’s counter-developmental neoliberal policies; and third, development of mineral refinement capacity.

Under Gaddafi, Libya was a shining example of how Africans can liberate themselves from Western exploitation and enrich its own people.

In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had used the three stages of true African liberation to turn Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.

Gaddafi practiced the redistribution stage of liberation by nationalizing oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Prior to Colonel Gaddafi, King Idris let Standard Oil essentially write Libya ‘s petroleum laws. Mr. Gaddafi put an end to all of that. Money from oil proceeds was deposited directly into every Libyan citizen’s bank account. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free healthcare and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans.

Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital by adhering to the second stage of liberation and rejecting IMF and World Bank neoliberal policies. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.

Gaddafi was assassinated by the West at a time when he was embarking on a continental mineral refinement program that would have dramatically shifted the economic balance between Africa and the West.

Gaddafi was willing to financially support any African governments that desired to undergo the redistribution stage of liberation.

The World Bank estimates that a staggering 65 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s best arable land is still controlled by white settlers or multinational corporations. The World Bank also estimates that as much as 70 percent of the net wealth in Sub-Saharan Africa is owned by non-indigenous Africans or foreigners.

Nowhere is this racial disparity more acute than in Africa’s richest nation. South Africa is the continent’s most powerful nation, however, it is also the continent’s most economically colonized nation.

The American investment bank, Citigroup, recently ranked South Africa as the world’s richest country, in terms of its mineral reserves, worth an estimated $2.5 trillion. South African Whites and Western foreigners own a staggering 80 percent of this wealth.

Zimbabwe is a prime example of how redistributing African wealth and land is not only desirable in theory but also possible in practice.

At Independence, a staggering 42 percent of Zimbabwe’s land area was owned by just 4,000 white farmers. Today, that land has been divided and redistributed amongst 413,000 Black households. This economic and political shift benefits over 1,000,000 people.

Land redistribution is now possible in all African countries after Zimbabwe’s successful example.

African ownership of African resources is important but exposing and dismantling the financial imperialism, which prevents African economies from thriving is the crucial second stage of African liberation.

Financial imperialism involves Western capitals using the IMF and World Bank to overburden African economies with debt and force their governments to enact neoliberal, counter-developmental policies, such as privatization, austerity and structural adjustment that put the interests of foreign capital over local labour.

Through debt and neoliberalism, the IMF and World Bank exert de-facto control over the economies of many African States. The World Bank and IMF control most African currencies, determine macro-economic policy, and national budgets. The indebted African State is thus left with just its judicial functions and above all, the maintenance of internal public order. This is one crucial State function the Western creditors want nothing to do with.

As Ghana’s founding father Kwame Nkrumah, pointed out, the essence of financial imperialism is that, “the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.”

According to a recent UN Africa Progress Report, Africa loses 63 billion dollars, each year, through foreign multinational corporations’ illegal tax evasion and exploitative practices. This figure surpasses all the money coming into the continent through Western aid and investment.

In Africa, poverty and underdevelopment are the symptoms; debt and neoliberalism are the cancer. The cure is a long-sustained dose of industrialization through mineral refinement.

Mineral refinement is the final stage of true liberation and the much-needed bridge between poverty and industrialization, and therefore, it has the capacity to transform Africa into a developed continent.

Africa is being systematically underdeveloped and overexploited by the West. From oil to gold and diamonds to tobacco, the Western scramble for Africa’s resources has always caused problems rather than created prosperity. Minerals taken from African soil by Western-owned corporations are shipped to Europe or America, where they are turned into manufactured goods, which are then resold to African consumers at value-added prices.

Nigeria imports almost all of its fuel needs; however, it sells its crude oil to “developed” nations, only earning $9 per barrel on their mere royalty fees. Then, Nigeria imports refined gasoline, diesel and kerosene made from its own oil resources for hundreds of dollars per barrel.

Nigeria is the African continent’s largest oil producer. At least $400 billion of oil revenue has been stolen or misspent by Western multinationals, since Independence in 1960, according to estimates by the former World Bank vice president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili. That is 12 times the country’s national budget for 2014. Nigeria should be wealthy, and its people the envy of Africa; if not the envy of the entire developing world. Instead, 90 percent of Nigerian people live on less than $2 per day.

Zimbabwe is known for producing the best quality tobacco in the world and last year it earned $650 million from the sale of raw tobacco. Industry experts illustrate how Zimbabwe could have earned $6,5 billion instead of $650 million if they had processed the crop into cigarettes, rather than exporting tobacco as a raw good.

The nation earned on average $3,50 per kilogram of raw tobacco but could have achieved $7,30 per kilogram had the tobacco leaf been threshed or processed into cut rag.

If Zimbabwe had further processed the tobacco into cigarettes, it would have earned between $30-60 per kilogram.

Another example of neocolonial resource exploitation of Africa is that of the diamond industry.

Africa produces the bulk of the world market for rough diamonds, which is currently valued at $19 billion annually; while the retail diamond jewelery industry, based in Europe, is estimated to be worth $90 billion.

A rough diamond mined in Africa costs about $40 per carat, and a diamond cut and polished in Europe increases to $400 per carat. The same stone fetches around $900 per carat when it reaches the consumer.

The global value chain of the diamond industry includes exploration, mining, sorting, polishing, dealing, jewelery manufacturing, and ultimately retail. Africa is able to conduct the first three stages but Western multinationals do their upmost to systematically prohibit African nations from mastering the other four value addition stages.

Clearly, Africa is not under-developed; she is over-exploited. From slavery to colonialism to present day neo-colonialism, Western policies have always been that of aggression and exploitation towards Africa. The African continent needs a second liberation to economically empower its indigenous majority who have been marginalized by Western capitals and corporations for centuries.

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Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Washington’s “Two Track Policy” to Latin America: Marines to Central America and Diplomats to Cuba

http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-two-track-policy-to-latin-america-marines-to-central-america-and-diplomats-to-cuba/5452255

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Everyone, from political pundits in Washington to the Pope in Rome, including most journalists in the mass media and in the alternative press, have focused on the US moves toward ending the economic blockade of Cuba and gradually opening diplomatic relations. Talk is rife of a ‘major shift’ in US policy toward Latin America with the emphasis on diplomacyand reconciliation. Even most progressive writers and journals have ceased writing about US imperialism.

However, there is mounting evidence that Washington’s negotiations with Cuba are merely one part of a two-track policy. There is clearly a major US build-up in Latin America, with increasing reliance on ‘military platforms’, designed to launch direct military interventions in strategic countries.

Moreover, US policymakers are actively involved in promoting ‘client’ opposition parties, movements and personalities to destabilize independent governments and are intent on re-imposing US domination.

In this essay we will start our discussion with the origins and unfolding of this ‘two track’ policy, its current manifestations, and projections into the future. We will conclude by evaluating the possibilities of re-establishing US imperial domination in the region.

Origins of the Two Track Policy

Washington’s pursuit of a ‘two-track policy’, based on combining ‘reformist policies’ toward some political formations, while working to overthrow other regimes and movements by force and military intervention, was practiced by the early Kennedy Administration following the Cuban revolution. Kennedy announced a vast new economic program of aid, loans and investments – dubbed the ‘Alliance for Progress’ – to promote development and social reform in Latin American countries willing to align with the US. At the same time the Kennedy regime escalated US military aid and joint exercises in the region. Kennedy sponsored a large contingent of Special Forces – ‘Green Berets’ – to engage in counter-insurgency warfare. The ‘Alliance for Progress’ was designed to counter the mass appeal of the social-revolutionary changes underway in Cuba with its own program of ‘social reform’. While Kennedy promoted watered-down reforms in Latin America, he launched the ‘secret’ CIA (‘Bay of Pigs’) invasion of Cuba in 1961and naval blockade in 1962 (the so-called ‘missile crises’). The two-track policy ended up sacrificing social reforms and strengthening military repression. By the mid-1970’s the ‘two-tracks’ became one – force. The US invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965. It backed a series of military coups throughout the region, effectively isolating Cuba. As a result, Latin America’s labor force experienced nearly a quarter century of declining living standards.

By the 1980’s US client-dictators had lost their usefulness and Washington once again took up a dual strategy: On one track, the White House wholeheartedly backed their military-client rulers’ neo-liberal agenda and sponsored them as junior partners in Washington’s regional hegemony. On the other track, they promoted a shift to highly controlled electoral politics, which they described as a ‘democratic transition’, in order to ‘decompress’ mass social pressures against its military clients. Washington secured the introduction of elections and promoted client politicians willing to continue the neo-liberal socio-economic framework established by the military regimes.

By the turn of the new century, the cumulative grievances of thirty years of repressive rule, regressive neo-liberal socio-economic policies and the denationalization and privatization of the national patrimony had caused an explosion of mass social discontent. This led to the overthrow and electoral defeat of Washington’s neo-liberal client regimes.

Throughout most of Latin America, mass movements were demanding a break with US-centered ‘integration’ programs. Overt anti-imperialism grew and intensified. The period saw the emergence of numerous center-left governments in Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Honduras and Nicaragua. Beyond the regime changes , world economic forces had altered: growing Asian markets, their demand for Latin American raw materials and the global rise of commodity prices helped to stimulate the development of Latin American-centered regional organizations – outside of Washington’s control.

Washington was still embedded in its 25 year ‘single-track’ policy of backing civil-military authoritarian and imposing neo-liberal policies and was unable to respond and present a reform alternative to the anti-imperialist, center-left challenge to its dominance. Instead, Washington worked to reverse the new party- power configuration. Its overseas agencies, the Agency for International Development (AID), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and embassies worked to destabilize the new governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Paraguay and Honduras. The US ‘single-track’ of intervention and destabilization failed throughout the first decade of the new century (with the exception of Honduras and Paraguay.

In the end Washington remained politically isolated. Its integration schemes were rejected. Its market shares in Latin America declined. Washington not only lost its automatic majority in the Organization of American States (OAS), but it became a distinct minority.

Washington’s ‘single track’ policy of relying on the ‘stick’ and holding back on the ‘carrot’ was based on several considerations: The Bush and Obama regimes were deeply influenced by the US’s twenty-five year domination of the region (1975-2000) and the notion that the uprisings and political changes in Latin America in the subsequent decade were ephemeral, vulnerable and easily reversed. Moreover, Washington, accustomed to over a century of economic domination of markets, resources and labor, took for granted that its hegemony was unalterable. The White House failed to recognize the power of China’s growing share of the Latin American market. The State Department ignored the capacity of Latin American governments to integrate their markets and exclude the US.

US State Department officials never moved beyond the discredited neo-liberal doctrine that they had successfully promoted in the 1990’s. The White House failed to adopt a ‘reformist’ turn to counter the appeal of radical reformers like Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President. This was most evident in the Caribbean and the Andean countries where President Chavez launched his two ‘alliances for progress’: ‘Petro-Caribe’ (Venezuela’s program of supplying cheap, heavily subsidized, fuel to poor Central American and Caribbean countries and heating oil to poor neighborhoods in the US) and ‘ALBA’ (Chavez’ political-economic union of Andean states, plus Cuba and Nicaragua, designed to promote regional political solidarity and economic ties.) Both programs were heavily financed by Caracas. Washington failed to come up with a successful alternative plan.

Unable to win diplomatically or in the ‘battle of ideas’, Washington resorted to the ‘big stick’ and sought to disrupt Venezuela’s regional economic program rather than compete with Chavez’ generous and beneficial aid packages. The US’ ‘spoiler tactics’ backfired: In 2009, the Obama regime backed a military coup in Honduras, ousting the elected liberal reformist President Zelaya and installed a bloody tyrant, a throwback to the 1970s when the US backed Chilean coup brought General Pinochet to power. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, in an act of pure political buffoonery, refused to call Zelaya’s violent ouster a coup and moved swiftly to recognize the dictatorship. No other government backed the US in its Honduras policy. There was universal condemnation of the coup, highlighting Washington’s isolation.

Repeatedly, Washington tried to use its ‘hegemonic card’ but it was roundly outvoted at regional meetings. At the Summit of the Americas in 2010, Latin American countries overrode US objections and voted to invite Cuba to its next meeting, defying a 50-year old US veto. The US was left alone in its opposition.

The position of Washington was further weakened by the decade-long commodity boom (spurred by China’s voracious demand for agro-mineral products). The ‘mega-cycle’ undermined US Treasury and State Department’s anticipation of a price collapse. In previous cycles, commodity ‘busts’ had forced center-left governments to run to the US controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF) for highly conditioned balance of payment loans, which the White House used to impose its neo-liberal policies and political dominance. The ‘mega-cycle’ generated rising revenues and incomes. This gave the center-left governments enormous leverage to avoid the ‘debt traps’ and to marginalize the IMF. This virtually eliminated US-imposed conditionality and allowed Latin governments to pursue populist-nationalist policies. These policies decreased poverty and unemployment. Washington played the ‘crisis card’ and lost. Nevertheless Washington continued working with extreme rightwing opposition groups to destabilize the progressive governments, in the hope that ‘come the crash’, Washington’s proxies would ‘waltz right in’ and take over.

The Re-Introduction of the ‘Two Track’ Policy

After a decade and a half of hard knocks, repeated failures of its ‘big stick’ policies, rejection of US-centered integration schemes and multiple resounding defeats of its client-politicians at the ballot box, Washington finally began to ‘rethink’ its ‘one track’ policy and tentatively explore a limited ‘two track’ approach.

The ‘two-tracks’, however, encompass polarities clearly marked by the recent past. While the Obama regime opened negotiations and moved toward establishing relations with Cuba, it escalated the military threats toward Venezuela by absurdly labeling Caracas as a ‘national security threat to the US.’

Washington had woken up to the fact that its bellicose policy toward Cuba had been universally rejected and had left the US isolated from Latin America. The Obama regime decided to claim some ‘reformist credentials’ by showcasing its opening to Cuba. The ‘opening to Cuba’ is really part of a wider policy of a more active political intervention in Latin America. Washington will take full advantage of the increased vulnerability of the center-left governments as the commodity mega-cycle comes to an end and prices collapse. Washington applauds the fiscal austerity program pursued by Dilma Rousseff’s regime in Brazil. It wholeheartedly backs newly elected Tabaré Vázquez’s “Broad Front” regime in Uruguay with its free market policies and structural adjustment. It publicly supports Chilean President Bachelet’s recent appointment of center-right, Christian Democrats to Cabinet posts to accommodate big business.

These changes within Latin America provide an ‘opening’ for Washington to pursue a ‘dual track’ policy: On the one hand Washington is increasing political and economic pressure and intensifying its propaganda campaign against ‘state interventionist’ policies and regimes in the immediate period. On the other hand, the Pentagon is intensifying and escalating its presence in Central America and its immediate vicinity. The goal is ultimately to regain leverage over the military command in the rest of the South American continent.

The Miami Herald (5/10/15) reported that the Obama Administration had sent 280 US marines to Central America without any specific mission or pretext. Coming so soon after the Summit of the Americas in Panama (April 10 -11, 2015), this action has great symbolic importance. While the presence of Cuba at the Summit may have been hailed as a diplomatic victory for reconciliation within the Americas, the dispatch of hundreds of US marines to Central America suggests another scenario in the making.

Ironically, at the Summit meeting, the Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), former Colombian president (1994-98) Ernesto Samper, called for the US to remove all its military bases from Latin America, including Guantanamo: “A good point in the new agenda of relations in Latin America would be the elimination of the US military bases”.

The point of the US ‘opening’ to Cuba is precisely to signal its greater involvement in Latin America, one that includes a return to more robust US military intervention. The strategic intent is to restore neo-liberal client regimes, by ballots or bullets.

Conclusion

Washington’s current adoption of a two-track policy is a ‘cheap version’ of the John F. Kennedy policy of combining the ‘Alliance for Progress’ with the ‘Green Berets’. However, Obama offers little in the way of financial support for modernization and reform to complement his drive to restore neo-liberal dominance.

After a decade and a half of political retreat, diplomatic isolation and relative loss of military leverage, the Obama regime has taken over six years to recognize the depth of its isolation. When Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roberta Jacobson, claimed she was ‘surprised and disappointed’ when every Latin American country opposed Obama’s claim that Venezuela represented a ‘national security threat to the United States’, she exposed just how ignorant and out-of-touch the State Department has become with regard to Washington’s capacity to influence Latin America in support of its imperial agenda of intervention.

With the decline and retreat of the center-left, the Obama regime has been eager to exploit the two-track strategy. As long as the FARC-President Santos peace talks in Colombia advance, Washington is likely to recalibrate its military presence in Colombia to emphasize its destabilization campaign against Venezuela. The State Department will increase diplomatic overtures to Bolivia. The National Endowment for Democracy will intensify its intervention in this year’s Argentine elections.

Varied and changing circumstances dictate flexible tactics. Hovering over Washington’s tactical shifts is an ominous strategic outlook directed toward increasing military leverage. As the peace negotiations between the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas advance toward an accord, the pretext for maintaining seven US military bases and several thousand US military and Special Forces troops diminishes. However, Colombian President Santos has given no indication that a ‘peace agreement’ would be conditioned on the withdrawal of US troops or closing of its bases. In other words, the US Southern Command would retain a vital military platform and infrastructure capable of launching attacks against Venezuela, Ecuador, Central America and the Caribbean. With military bases throughout the region, in Colombia, Cuba (Guantanamo), Honduras (Soto Cano in Palmerola), Curacao, Aruba and Peru, Washington can quickly mobilize interventionary forces. Military ties with the armed forces of Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile ensure continued joint exercises and close co-ordination of so-called ‘security’ policies in the ‘Southern Cone’ of Latin America. This strategy is specifically designed to prepare for internal repression against popular movements, whenever and wherever class struggle intensifies in Latin America. The two-track policy, in force today, plays out through political-diplomatic and military strategies.

In the immediate period throughout most of the region, Washington pursues a policy of political, diplomatic and economic intervention and pressure. The White House is counting on the ‘rightwing swing’ of former center-left governments to facilitate the return to power of unabashedly neo-liberal client-regimes in future elections. This is especially true with regard to Brazil and Argentina.

The ‘political-diplomatic track’ is evident in Washington’s moves to re-establish relations with Bolivia and to strengthen allies elsewhere in order to leverage favorable policies in Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba. Washington proposes to offer diplomatic and trade agreements in exchange for a ‘toning down’ of anti-imperialist criticism and weakening the ‘Chavez-era’ programs of regional integration.

The ‘two-track approach’, as applied to Venezuela, has a more overt military component than elsewhere. Washington will continue to subsidize violent paramilitary border crossings from Colombia. It will continue to encourage domestic terrorist sabotage of the power grid and food distribution system. The strategic goal is to erode the electoral base of the Maduro government, in preparation for the legislative elections in the fall of 2015. When it comes to Venezuela, Washington is pursuing a ‘four step’ strategy:

(1) Indirect violent intervention to erode the electoral support of the government

(2) Large-scale financing of the electoral campaign of the legislative opposition to secure a majority in Congress

(3) A massive media campaign in favor of a Congressional vote for a referendum impeaching the President

(4) A large-scale financial, political and media campaign to secure a majority vote for impeachment by referendum.

In the likelihood of a close vote, the Pentagon would prepare a rapid military intervention with its domestic collaborators – seeking a ‘Honduras-style’ overthrow of Maduro.

The strategic and tactical weakness of the two-track policy is the absence of any sustained and comprehensive economic aid, trade and investment program that would attract and hold middle class voters. Washington is counting more on the negative effects of the crisis to restore its neo-liberal clients. The problem with this approach is that the pro-US forces can only promise a return to orthodox austerity programs, reversing social and public welfare programs , while making large-scale economic concessions to major foreign investors and bankers. The implementation of such regressive programs are going to ignite and intensify class, community-based and ethnic conflicts.

The ‘electoral transition’ strategy of the US is a temporary expedient, in light of the highly unpopular economic policies, which it would surely implement. The complete absence of any substantial US socio-economic aid to cushion the adverse effects on working families means that the US client-electoral victories will not last long. That is why and where the US strategic military build-up comes into play: The success of track-one, the pursuit of political-diplomatic tactics, will inevitably polarize Latin American society and heighten prospects for class struggle. Washington hopes that it will have its political-military client-allies ready to respond with violent repression. Direct intervention and heightened domestic repression will come into play to secure US dominance.

The ‘two-track strategy’ will, once again, evolve into a ‘one-track strategy’ designed to return Latin America as a satellite region, ripe for pillage by extractive multi-nationals and financial speculators.

As we have seen over the past decade and a half, ‘one-track policies’ lead to social upheavals. And the next time around the results may go far beyond progressive center-left regimes toward truly social-revolutionary governments!

Epilogue

US empire-builders have clearly demonstrated throughout the world their inability to intervene and produce stable, prosperous and productive client states (Iraq and Libya are prime examples). There is no reason to believe, even if the US ‘two-track policy’ leads to temporary electoral victories, that Washington’s efforts to restore dominance will succeed in Latin America, least of all because its strategy lacks any mechanism for economic aid and social reforms that could maintain a pro-US elite in power. For example, how could the US possibly offset China’s $50 billion aid package to Brazil – except through violence and repression.

It is important to analyze how the rise of China, Russia, strong regional markets and new centers of finance have severely weakened the efforts by client regimes to realign with the US. Military coups and free markets are no longer guaranteed formulas for success in Latin America: Their past failures are too recent to forget.

Finally the ‘financialization’ of the US economy, what even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) describes as the negative impact of ‘too much finance’ (Financial Times 5/13/15, p 4), means that the US cannot allocate capital resources to develop productive activity in Latin America. The imperial state can only serve as a violent debt collector for its banks in the context of large-scale unemployment. Financial and extractive imperialism is a politico-economic cocktail for detonating social revolution on a continent-wide basis – far beyond the capacity of the US marines to prevent or suppress.

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  • 2 months later...
What are foreign military bases for?
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By David Swanson, World Beyond War
OpEdNews
Sunday, Aug 2, 2015
If you're like most people in the United States, you have a vague awareness that the U.S. military keeps lots of troops permanently stationed on foreign bases around the world. But have you ever wondered and really investigated to find out how many, and where exactly, and at what cost, and to what purpose, and in terms of what relationship with the host nations?

A wonderfully researched new book, six years in the works, answers these questions in a manner you'll find engaging whether you've ever asked them or not. It's called Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Harm America and the World, by David Vine.

Some 800 bases with hundreds of thousands of troops in some 70 nations, plus all kinds of other "trainers" and "non-permanent" exercises that last indefinitely, maintain an ongoing U.S. military presence around the world for a price tag of at least $100 billion a year.

Why they do this is a harder question to answer.

Even if you think there is some reason to be able to quickly deploy thousands of U.S. troops to any spot on earth, airplanes now make that as easily done from the United States as from Korea or Japan or Germany or Italy.

It costs dramatically more to keep troops in those other countries, and while some base defenders make a case for economic philanthropy, the evidence is that local economies actually benefit little -- and suffer little when a base leaves. Neither does the U.S. economy benefit, of course. Rather, certain privileged contractors benefit, along with those politicians whose campaigns they fund. And if you think military spending is unaccountable at home, you should check out bases abroad where it's none too rare to have security guards employed purely to guard cooks whose sole job is to feed the security guards. The military has a term for any common SNAFU, and the term for this one is "self-licking ice cream."

The bases, in many cases, generate an enormous amount of popular resentment and hatred, serving as motivations for attacks on the bases themselves or elsewhere -- famously including the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Bases around the borders of Russia and China are generating new hostility and arms races, and even proposals by Russia and China to open foreign bases of their own. Currently all non-U.S. foreign bases in the world total no more than 30, with most of those belonging to close U.S. allies, and not a single one of them being in or anywhere near the United States, which would of course be considered an outrage.

Many U.S. bases are hosted by brutal dictatorships. An academic study has identified a strong U.S. tendency to defend dictatorships where the United States has bases. A glance at a newspaper will tell you the same. Crimes in Bahrain are not equal to crimes in Iran. In fact, when brutal and undemocratic governments currently hosting U.S. bases (in, for example, Honduras, Aruba, Curaçao, Mauritania, Liberia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Mozambique, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Yemen, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand, Cambodia, or Singapore) are protested, there is a pattern of increased U.S. support for the government, which makes eviction of the U.S. bases all the more likely should the government fall, which fuels a vicious cycle that increases popular resentment of the U.S. government. The U.S. began building new bases in Honduras shortly after the 2009 coup.

Vine also tells a troubling story of the U.S. military's alliance with the Camorra (the mafia) in Naples, Italy, a relationship that has lasted from World War II to the present, and which fueled the rise of the Camorra -- a group reportedly deemed reliable enough by the U.S. military to protect nuclear weapons.

The smaller bases that don't house tens of thousands of troops, but secretive death squads or drones, have a tendency to make wars more likely. The drone war on Yemen that was labeled a success by President Obama last year has helped fuel a larger war.

In fact, I want to quibble with Vine's account of the birth of Base Nation, because I think the facilitation of the worst war ever was involved. Vine gives the history of the U.S. bases in Native American lands, starting in 1785 and very much alive today in the language of U.S. troops abroad in "Indian territory." But then Vine dates the birth of the modern base empire to September 2, 1940, when President Franklin Roosevelt traded Britain old ships in exchange for various Caribbean, Bermudan, and Canadian bases to be used in or after the war he was supposedly not planning on. But I'd like to back the clock up a little.

When FDR visited Pearl Harbor (not actually part of the United States) on July 28, 1934, the Japanese military expressed apprehension. General Kunishiga Tanaka wrote in the Japan Advertiser, objecting to the build-up of the American fleet and the creation of additional bases in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands (also not part of the United States): "Such insolent behavior makes us most suspicious. It makes us think a major disturbance is purposely being encouraged in the Pacific. This is greatly regretted."

Then, in March 1935, Roosevelt bestowed Wake Island on the U.S. Navy and gave Pan Am Airways a permit to build runways on Wake Island, Midway Island, and Guam. Japanese military commanders announced that they were disturbed and viewed these runways as a threat. So did peace activists in the United States. By the next month, Roosevelt had planned war games and maneuvers near the Aleutian Islands and Midway Island. By the following month, peace activists were marching in New York advocating friendship with Japan. Norman Thomas wrote in 1935: "The Man from Mars who saw how men suffered in the last war and how frantically they are preparing for the next war, which they know will be worse, would come to the conclusion that he was looking at the denizens of a lunatic asylum." The Japanese attacked Wake Island four days after attacking Pearl Harbor.

In any case, Vine points to the uniqueness of World War II as a war that has never been ended, even after the Cold War was said to have ended. Why have the troops never come home? Why have they continued to spread their forts into "Indian Territory," until the U.S. has more foreign bases than any other empire in history, even as the era of conquering territory has ended, even as a significant segment of the population has ceased thinking of "Indians" and other foreigners as subhuman beasts without rights worthy of respecting?

One reason, well-documented by Vine, is the same reason that the huge U.S. base at Guantanamo, Cuba, is used to imprison people without trials. By preparing for wars in foreign locations, the U.S. is often able to evade all kinds of legal restrictions -- including on labor and the environment, not to mention prostitution. GIs occupying Germany referred to rape as "liberating a blonde," and the sexual disaster area surrounding U.S. bases has continued to this day, despite the decision in 1945 to start sending families to live with soldiers -- a policy that now includes shipping each soldier's entire worldly possessions including automobiles around the world with them, not to mention providing single-payer healthcare and twice the spending on schooling as the national average back home. Prostitutes serving U.S. bases in South Korea and elsewhere are often virtually slaves. The Philippines, which has had U.S. "help" as long as anyone, provides the most contractor staff for U.S. bases, cooking , cleaning, and everything else -- as well as likely the most prostitutes imported to other countries, like South Korea.

The most isolated and lawless base sites include locations from which the U.S. military evicted the local population. These include bases in Diego Garcia, Greenland, Alaska, Hawaii, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Marshall Islands, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa, and South Korea -- with people evicted as recently as 2006 in South Korea.

In hundreds of other sites where the population was not evicted, it might wish it had been. Foreign bases have been environmentally disastrous. Open-air burns, unexploded weaponry, poisons leaked into the ground water -- these are all commonplace. A jet fuel leak at Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., started in 1953 and was discovered in 1999, and was more than twice the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. U.S. bases within the United States have been environmentally devastating, but not on the scale of those in some foreign lands. A plane taking off from Diego Garcia to bomb Afghanistan in 2001 crashed and sank to the bottom of the ocean with some 85 hundred-pound munitions. Even ordinary base life takes a toll; U.S. troops produce over three times the garbage each as local residents in, for example, Okinawa.

Disregard for people and the land and the sea is built into the very idea of foreign bases. The United States would never tolerate another nation's base within its borders, yet imposes them on Okinawans, South Koreans, Italians, Filipinos, Iraqis, and others despite huge protest. Vine took some of his students to meet with an official at the U.S. State Department, Kevin Maher, who explained to them that U.S. bases in Japan were concentrated in Okinawa because it was "the Puerto Rico of Japan" where people have "darker skin," are "shorter," and have an "accent."

Base Nation is a book that should be read -- and its maps seen -- by everyone. I wish Vine did not write "Russia's seizure of Crimea" when referring to a free and open and legal vote, especially in the context of a book about military bases. And I wish he did not only use selfish points of reference in terms of financial tradeoffs. Of course the United States could be transformed for the better with the redirection of military spending, but the United States and the world both could be. It's that much money.

But this book will be an invaluable resource for years to come. It also includes, I should note, an excellent account of some of the resistance struggles that have in some cases shut bases down or scaled them back. It's worth noting that just this week, in the first of two necessary rulings, an Italian court has ruled for the people, against the U.S. Navy's construction of communications equipment in Sicily.

Just this month, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff published "The National Military Strategy of the United States of America -- 2015." It gave as justification for militarism lies about four countries, beginning with Russia, which it accused of "using force to achieve its goals," something the Pentagon would never do! Next it lied that Iran was "pursuing" nuclear weapons, a claim for which there is no evidence. Next it claimed that North Korea's nukes would someday "threaten the U.S. homeland." Finally, it asserted that China was "adding tension to the Asia-Pacific region." This "Strategy" admitted that none of the four nations wanted war with the United States. "Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns," it said.

So, one might add, does each of the U.S. foreign bases. Vine's book ends with some excellent proposals for change, to which I would add only one: Smedley Butler's proposed rule that the U.S. military be forbidden to travel more than 200 miles from the United States.


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US Now Has Over 1,400 Foreign Military Bases Spread Over 120 Countries
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By Robert Barsocchini, DirtyTruths

In an interview about his new book detailing cables published by Wikileaks, Julian Assange makes the following key points:

  • Cables show current US policy on Syria is essentially an extension of the policy of the W. Bush regime, which made plans in 2006, five years before the Syrian revolt, to overthrow the government. The US planned to instigate a revolt, through methods including spreading propaganda to foster sectarianism, as the US did in Iraq. US planned to instill “paranoia” in the Syrian government to “push it to overreact” at any sign of a coup attempt. Hence, the violence that occurred in 2011 was, from the US perspective, an optimal result and big step towards regime change, still being sought, with the result being hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees. (Syria is one of the seven countries the Bush regime planned to “take out“, according to a high-ranking inside source. Readers should further note that the US and UK have been trying to conquer and install a puppet regime in Syria since at least 1948.)
  • The interviewer points out that the book details “genocidal US policy right around the world, from Latin America to Asia” and asks how “all the torture and killing” complements US commercial interests (the propaganda term being “the free market”). Assange says the cables document the US government acting as sales rep and to “secure advantageous deals and structures” for the “largest US companies”, such as Boeing and Monsanto. The “modern empire” used for these tasks consists of “more than 1,400 US military bases in over 120 countries”. The interests being represented are not those of the average US citizen, but companies that can get close enough to the government (accomplished via bribery) to be influential. (Readers will remember this dynamic is documented by meticulous professional study.)
  • Ongoing US policy is to use “unconventional warfare”, meaning the use of “surrogate forces”, proxies, to overthrow governments. The US employs all of its arms and agencies in these pursuits, from military to intelligence to commercial to financial, including agencies such as the IMF and USAID, pushing them in tandem against the target country.
  • US tries to subvert the International Criminal Court by preventing extradition of US nationals for war crimes and other violations, and keeps the court focused on prosecuting Africans (no surprise given US domestic behaviors and histories).
  • Though some integration is occurring to attempt to counter-balance US power, for example along the Silk Road, the US should not be underestimated, as no other country has anything remotely like “1,400 military bases”. (Russia has about 12 and China 0; the US is currently trying to eliminate Russian bases in Syria, and recently tried to eliminate the Russian base in Crimea). While after WW2 the US controlled 50% of the world’s wealth, that is now down to about 40%; US military spending is down from about 50% of global total to about 40%; however, the US “intelligence” budget is up to 60% of the world’s total; (the US is known to spy on essentially the world’s entire population).
  • Obama has prosecuted more whistle-blowers than all previous presidents combined. Chelsea Manning’s 35-year sentence is longer than that of any other person related to the US invasion of Iraq. Edward Snowden is “not safe” in the US or any US ally.
Edited by Steven Gaal
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