Chalmers Johnson - The Sorrows of Empire - Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

A fourth Omani airfield is located on Masirah Island in the Arabian Sea. Oman has allowed the United States to use Masirah Air Base since World War II, and today it is one more site for prepositioned war equipment and home to a navy patrol squadron flying P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft and EP-3E Aries II spy planes, such as the one that was forced to land on China’s Hainan Island on April 1,2001. It is one of only four sites in the world that houses a permanent navy espionage squadron operating P-3 aircraft; the others are located at Manama, Bahrain; Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa; and Diego Garcia. Masirah Island is remote and considered a hardship post.

This compilation of American military bases in the Persian Gulf region is by no means complete. Since December 2002, the United States has been building a new base for its Special Forces in the former French colony of Djibouti, separated by only a twenty-mile strip of water from the port of Aden, at the entrance to the Red Sea. We have long deployed several thousand personnel at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, as well as around fifty F-15 and F-16 fighters and A-10 tank busters, although in the wake of Turkey’s refusal to let the United States use its territory for the 2003 assault on Iraq, the Pentagon quickly withdrew most of them. We have also stationed dozens of aircraft at two bases close to the Iraqi border in Jordan and have often used “Cairo West” air base in Egypt for refueling and airlift operations.

Most of these Middle Eastern military bases were hardened and outfitted specifically for the second war with Iraq and then used during that war. Iraq, however, is but part of a larger picture. Over the past half century the United States has been inexorably acquiring permanent military enclaves whose sole purpose appears to be the domination of one of the most strategically important areas of the world. Of course the United States has an interest in the oil of the region, but the carrier task forces that have already turned the Persian Gulf into an American lake would be sufficient to protect those interests.

The permanent deployment of American soldiers, sailors, and airmen whose culture, lifestyles, wealth, and physical appearance guarantee conflicts with the peoples who live in the Middle East, is irrational in terms of any cost-benefit analysis. In fact, given the widespread political unrest and a strong revival of militant Islam, the United States seems inexplicably intent on providing future enemies with enough grievances to do us considerable damage. One need only recall the arming of Saddam Hussein or the Stinger shoulder-launched missiles that the United States gave so freely to Afghan “freedom fighters” and that were ultimately turned against us. The question is: Have these bases become ends in themselves? Does their existence cause the United States to look for ways to use them? Was the assault against Iraq driven by Iraq’s actions or by military capabilities in American hands? It may be that the ultimate causes of twenty-first-century mayhem in the Middle East are American militarism and imperialism—that is, our empire of bases itself.

9

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBALIZATION?

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe that we are away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.

SUN TZU,

The Art of War (500 BC)

In accordance with the logic of Sun Tzu, Bill Clinton was actually a much more effective imperialist than George W. Bush. During the Clinton administration, the United States employed an indirect approach in imposing its will on other nations. The government of George W. Bush, by contrast, dropped all legitimating principles and adopted the view that might makes right. History tells us that an expansive nation must at least attempt to disguise what it is doing if it wants to consolidate its gains. It must pretend that its exploitation of the weak is in their own best interest, or their own fault, or the result of ineluctable processes beyond human control, or a consequence of the spread of civilization, or in accordance with scientific laws—anything but deliberate aggression by a hyperpower.

Clinton camouflaged his policies by carrying them out under the banner of “globalization.” This proved quite effective in maneuvering rich but gullible nations to do America’s bidding—for example, Argentina—or in destabilizing potential rivals—for example, South Korea and Indonesia in the 1997 economic crisis—or in protecting domestic economic interests—for example, in maintaining the exorbitant prices of American pharmaceutical companies under cover of defending “intellectual property rights.” During the 1990s, the rationales of free trade and capitalist economics were used to disguise America’s hegemonic power and make it seem benign or, at least, natural and unavoidable. The main agents of this imperialism were Clinton’s secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, and his deputy (today, president of Harvard University), Lawrence Summers. The United States ruled the world but did so in a carefully masked way that produced high degrees of acquiescence among the dominated nations.

George W. Bush, by contrast, turned to a frontal assault based on the use of America’s unequaled military power. Even before 9/11, the Bush administration had unveiled its unilateral approach to the world. It withdrew from important international treaties, including those seeking to ban antiballistic missile weapons, control the emission of greenhouse gases, and create a court to try perpetrators of the most heinous war crimes. Bush also proclaimed openly his adherence to a doctrine of preventive war. The United States said it was a New Rome, beyond good and evil and unrestrained by the established conventions of the international community. In its spring 2003 attack on Iraq, it affirmed that it no longer needed (or cared about) international legitimacy, that it had become a power answerable only to itself, and that internal forces of militarism were dictating foreign policy. These policies produced international isolation and a global loss of confidence in the American foreign policy establishment. Two and a half years into the Bush administration, most of our allies had left us, our military was overstretched, and no nation on earth doubted our willingness to employ military power to solve any and all problems.

By the end of the Clinton administration, globalization was under sustained political attack by its victims and their allies. Many of its once prominent supporters, such as the international currency speculator George Soros or the former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph E. Stiglitz, were intellectually undercutting its major tenets. Globalization, however, was not dead. The world—including the Bush administration—still pretended that the World Trade Organization mattered, that free trade would end poverty in the Third World, and that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were functioning as they were supposed to. Bankers, industrialists, and economists still went to their annual conclave in Davos, Switzerland, but protectionism by rich countries and poverty for most of the people of the world were ascendant.

The aftermath of September 11, 2001, more or less spelled the end of globalization. Whereas the Clinton administration strongly espoused economic imperialism, the second Bush government was unequivocally committed to military imperialism. The Bush administration’s adoption of unilateral preventative military action undercut the international rules and norms on which commerce depends. Increasingly, even people who believed in globalist solutions to international economic and environmental problems threw up their hands in despair. At the August 2002 world summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg, the delegates wore badges asking, “What do we do about the United States?”