Confronting the Military Outposts of Empire

Speech for the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb – Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 2004

It is 15 months since the US declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq yet their occupation is mired down in moral and strategic bankruptcy. The abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and the killing of 600 people in the bloody US military siege of Fallujah, fuelling a nascent Iraqi resistance, are only the most prominent symptoms of what is a terminally ill occupation.

Despite the formal handover of sovereignty, the US continues to have a stranglehold over Iraq. 146,000 US troops are still free to “take all necessary measures” in carrying out their military occupation.(1) They continue to look over the shoulder of the latest group of American-appointed Iraqis exercising limited power: to ensure the neo-liberal economic blueprint of reconstruction (or ‘US corporate pillage’) is continued, and that no popular movement, unfriendly to US interests takes power. Freedom in Iraq will only occur when all foreign troops have left, political movements are given the space to develop and free and fair elections have taken place.

How long will the troops stay? “As long as it takes”, reads George W. Bush from his auto- prompter. According to General Jay Garner, the original US ruler of Iraq, this could be for a century. He hopes that the 14 “enduring” bases planned for Iraq can play the same role that US naval bases did in the Philippines - enable the US to project “a great presence in the Pacific” for most of the 20th century.. “To me that’s what Iraq is for the next few decades”, argues Garner. “We ought to have something there… that gives us great presence in the Middle East. I think that’s going to be necessary.”(2)

And here, through the fog of lies about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi links to Al Qaeda, the actual reason for war now stands alone: a US military foothold to gain strategic control of the region and its vital resources.

Greasing the Engines of US Power

This is a pattern the US is currently attempting to repeat throughout what it has dubbed the ‘arc of instability’: a sweep of the world running from Latin America through most of Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and Central and South East Asia. Washington has announced plans for the construction of dozens of military facilities or access agreements throughout these regions, taking advantage of the political space that has opened up in the wake of the Cold War and September 11.

These expansions have imperial overtones as most new bases sites serve to secure vital resources, usually oil, at a time of rising oil prices and a fragile US economy. Adding to the debate on the imperial nature of US actions, David Harvey, the author of the recent book, The New Imperialism, argues, “[the US] might, through firm control of the global oil spigot, hope to keep effective control over the global economy for the next fifty years.”(3) It would offset economic competition from the competing blocks of Europe and Japan as well as East and South East Asia all of which “are heavily dependent on Gulf Oil”. The US is drifting towards a dangerous temptation: propping up its waning economic power with its still dominant military muscle.

This drives what last month’s edition of Le Monde Diplomatique labels the US’ “New Scramble for Africa” The author notes that, “Washington realized that it is dependent on strategic raw materials and is increasing political and military accords with the majority of African countries in an effort to secure supply lines.”(4) As such, the Pentagon and US business have suggested setting up a military command in the oil rich Gulf of Guinea in West Africa,(5) a region that the CIA estimates is likely to provide the US with 25 percent of its oil by 2015.(6) Even in Equatorial Guinea, South Africa mercenaries and the son of Maggie Thatcher are under arrest for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government: perhaps a clumsier technique in the scramble for oil. Oil rich Central Asia and the Gulf States have also recently been peppered with US bases. And the US has established military airports on the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curacao, both a very short bombing run away from the coast of the oil-rich, and Washington-defiant Venezuela.

Laying the Foundations for Many Iraqs

This is a process of laying the foundation for many Iraqs. But it is more like the Iraq of 1984 than the Iraq of 2004: the scenario where the US military props up a repressive regime sympathetic to its interests.

At the International Conference against US bases at this year’s World Social Forum in Mumbai, Tolekan Ismailova an activist from Uzbekistan in Central Asia spoke of how the US established a military airbase in her country in October 2001 to wage war on Afghanistan. The Uzbek parliament took only two days to approve this. ‘It was the fastest decision it ever made.’ she lamented. Consequently, human rights have deteriorated in her country – contrary to US rhetoric – as the US’s new “best friend”, President Islam Karimov, engages in Saddam-esque torture and has over 6,500 political and religious prisoners.(7) The US has recently raised concerns over human rights and the pace of economic reforms albeit just as the Uzbek administration is strategically moving closer to Russia. But the US airbase remains and the troops have increased.

This is not an isolated example. A recent study by the Hoover Institution found that since World War Two, the United States has intervened militarily more than 35 times in developing countries but, as the authors argue, only in the case of Colombia in 1989 could it be said that anything like a stable democracy emerged.(8) The problem, as they describe it, is the incompatibility and subordination of policies to establish democratic processes with those that reflect US interests.(9)

In their seminal work, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky meticulously document this legacy of subordinating Third World democracy, concluding that: “US power has borne heavy responsibility for the spread of a plague of neo-fascism, state terrorism, torture and repression throughout large parts of the underdeveloped world.”(10)

The other reason for expanding US bases is to stop terrorism. Washington has stated that it wants to police a ‘nowhere’ that is littered with ‘failed states, Islamic Radicalism, drug trafficking and other forms of volatility’ according to Foreign Affairs journal.(11) It is a “nowhere” that houses the majority of humanity but importantly, it is a “nowhere” the US has helped create. Regions that have been crushed in the pincher movement of the US brand of globalization: both US military and economic power have been used to strategic effect, to pry open markets on terms that now, currently, fit any dictionary definition of imperialism. When the economic tools of World Bank scripted structural adjustment, or the WTO haven’t sufficed, the US has used the military.

The current expansion of US military bases must be understood as a bolder continuation of this pattern but also as a crude, contradictory and ultimately dangerous insurance policy against what Chalmers Johnson labels ‘blowback’ – the “unintended consequences of US policies”.(12)

An obvious consequence of the US trashing of the international rule of law is the promotion of the rule of force and with it, the proliferation of weapons and violence. This is the thinking of the Permanent Representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, who transmitted a letter to the President of the UN Security Council on 6 April 2003, stating that, “Only… [a] tremendous military deterrent force powerful enough to decisively beat back an attack supported by ultra-modern weapons, can avert war and protect the security of the country and the nation. This is a lesson drawn from the Iraqi war”, he concludes.(13) This justification for his nation’s development of nuclear weapons – that they are needed to deter a probable US attack - is logic both sound and terrifying.

The Limits to Sovereignty in East Timor

I have come to this conference from a part of this ‘nowhere’ – the newly independent and tiny half island nation of East Timor. The nation is desperately poor and will remain so. It is locked into a dysfunctional free market model of development, imposed by the international community.

But Timor is unable to deviate from this model. Firstly, donors would never fund an alternative and secondly, the occasional visits of US warships and persistent rumours for the establishment of a US military base serve as a strong disincentive for the fledgling government to not deviate too widely from Washington’s views.

“We bring in an aircraft carrier twice a year and get the top ranking Timorese government officials on board to have a look around’ commented a US Embassy official I interviewed last month. ‘It’s to remind them that the United States is here to assist if need be”, he continued.(14)

But what are the US assisting? They certainly didn’t assist for 25 years when one third of the Timorese population was murdered by US weapons in the hands of the Indonesian Military or starved to death or died of disease in concentration camps. Instead, the US is assisting with imposing a flawed free market and anti-state vision on a war ravaged people. This could have two consequences: either state failure or a regime driven into authoritarianism, desperate to avoid it. Both of these possibilities are nurtured under the shadow of the US military.

Challenges for the Peace Movement

With the expansion and consolidation of US military bases across the globe comes the shrinking of sovereignty and entrenchment of policies that undermine development for communities hosting bases. Below are a few small strategic suggestions for our movement to confront these outposts of Empire.

1. Stronger engagement of the Global Peace Movement in Iraq

Some 15 million people took to the streets of the world on February 15 last year to protest the invasion of Iraq in the largest global protest ever. Yet since then, it has been the Iraqi resistance combined with the brutal and gross incompetence of the US that has undermined the US occupation of Iraq. The Global Peace Movement has been unable to mount the sustained protests needed to bring all foreign troops home and give the Iraqis the opportunity to practice a true act of sovereignty. Yet a strong revival of the Global Peace Movement is needed to finally bury the absurd US doctrine of pre-emptive attack.

2. Understanding and challenging the economic processes that generate conflict.

Sovereignty over food production, over the market, over economic policy and over democratic processes, is essential for people to live in dignity and peace. The denial of this sovereignty through a corporate-driven globalization spear-headed by the WTO, World Bank and IMF results in the economic policy that impoverishes and kills – the silent violence that drops the equivalent of a nuclear weapon on the underdeveloped world each day.

To work towards this, the hazy alliance between the anti-war movement and the anti-corporate globalization movement must be strengthened. The common cause they share and the massive potential in their collaboration is too important and exciting to deny.

3. Practicing ‘enduring solidarity’ with communities hosting bases.

Just as the US administration talks of bringing “enduring freedom” and an “enduring military presence” to Iraq and the world, we, as a global peace movement, must practice “enduring solidarity” with communities hosting bases.

I have had the privilege of being a part of a growing global network against foreign military bases and invite all here to join. Those campaigning against bases from Okinawa to Diego Garcia are the bedrock of this movement. Harnessing their experiences and knowledge will be essential in assisting this movement to step outside its traditional areas and engage with communities now confronted with military bases in the Arab world, in Central Asia and in Africa. And like Iraq, such solidarity must go beyond one or two years of the occasional mass protest, to become a solidarity that “endures” until the political and economic conditions necessary for a lasting peace are realised.

(1) UN Security Council Resolution 1546 (Article 10)
(2) A.S. Klamper “Former Iraq administrator sees decades-long US military presence”. Congress Daily, Feb 6, 2004.
(3) David Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 24-25.
(4) Pierre Abramovici, “Precious Resources in Need of Protection: United States, the new Scramble for Africa” Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2004
(5) The Guardian, February 17th, 2003
(6) Available at http://www.cia.gov/nic/graphics/gt2015.pdf p.73
(7) The Guardian, “US looks away as new ally tortures Islamists” 26 May 2003,.
(8) That claim would no doubt, be contested by the thousands of ghosts of murdered Colombian trade unionists, activists, priests, political leaders and the poor.
(9) George W. Downs and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita , “Gun-Barrel Democracy Has Failed Time And Again”, Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2004
(10) Chomsky and Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (Political Economy of Human Rights Vol. 1) South End Press, 1979, p. 1
(11) Campbell Kurt and Celeste Johnson Ward, ‘New Battle Stations?’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003
(12) Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Cost and Consequences of American Empire, Henry Holt and company, 2000
(13) Letter from H.E. Pak Gil Yon, Permanent Representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (‘DPRK’) to the United Nations, to H.E. Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Permanent Representative to the United Mexican States to the United Nations and President of the Security Council, dated 6 April 2003 and enclosing a statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK.
(14) Interview with staff member from US Diplomatic Mission in Timor-Leste, 14th July, 2004.