It\u2019s pop-quiz time when it comes to the American way of war: three questions, torn from the latest news, just for you.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the first of them, and good luck!<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, 200 U.S. Marines began armed operations in\u2026?<\/em>:<\/p>\n a) <\/strong>Afghanistan<\/em> If you opted for any answer, \u201ca\u201d through \u201ch,\u201d you took a reasonable shot at it.\u00a0 After all, there\u2019s an ongoing American war<\/a> in Afghanistan and somewhere in the southern part of that country, 200 armed U.S. Marines could well have been involved in an operation.\u00a0 In Pakistan, an undeclared, CIA-run air war has long been underway, and in the past there have been armed border crossings<\/a> by U.S. special operations forces as well as U.S. piloted cross-border air strikes<\/a>, but no Marines.<\/p>\n When it comes to Iran, Washington\u2019s regional preparations for war are staggering.\u00a0 The continual build-up of U.S. naval power<\/a> in the Persian Gulf, of land forces on bases<\/a> around that country, of air power<\/a> (and anti-missile defense<\/a>s) in the region should leave any observer breathless.\u00a0 There are U.S. special operations forces near<\/a> the Iranian border and CIA drones<\/a> regularly over that country.\u00a0 In conjunction with the Israelis, Washington has launched a cyberwar<\/a> against Iran\u2019s nuclear program and computer systems.\u00a0 It has also established fierce oil and banking sanctions<\/a>, and there seem to have been at least some U.S. cross-border operations<\/a> into Iran going back to at least 2007.\u00a0 In addition, a recent front-page New York Times<\/em> story on Obama administration attempts to mollify Israel over its Iran policy included this ominous line<\/a>: \u201cThe administration is also considering… covert activities that have been previously considered and rejected.\u201d\u00a0 So 200 armed Marines in action in Iran — not yet, but don\u2019t get down on yourself, it was a good guess.<\/p>\n In Somalia, according to<\/a> Wired <\/em>magazine’s Danger Room blog, there have been far more U.S. drone flights and strikes against the Islamic extremist al-Shabaab movement and al-Qaeda elements than anyone previously knew.\u00a0 In addition, the U.S. has at least partially funded, supported, equipped, advised, and promoted proxy wars there, involving Ethiopian troops<\/a> back in 2007 and more recently Ugandan and Burundi troops<\/a> (as well as an invading Kenyan army).\u00a0 In addition, CIA operatives and possibly other irregulars and hired guns are well established<\/a> in Mogadishu, the capital.<\/p>\n In Yemen, as in Somalia, the combination has been proxy war and strikes by drones (as well as piloted planes), with some U.S. special forces advisors on the ground<\/a>, and civilian casualties<\/a> (and anger at the U.S.) rising in the southern part of the country — but also, as in Somalia, no Marines. Central Africa?\u00a0 Now, there\u2019s a thought.\u00a0 After all, at least 100 Green Berets were sent in<\/a> there this year as part of a campaign against Joseph Kony\u2019s Ugandan-based Lord\u2019s Resistance Army.\u00a0 As for Northern Mali, taken over by Islamic extremists (including an al-Qaeda-affiliated group), it certainly presents a target for future U.S. intervention — and we still don\u2019t know what those three U.S. Army commandos<\/a> who skidded off a bridge to their deaths in their Toyota Land Rover with three \u201cMoroccan prostitutes\u201d were doing in a country with which the U.S. military had officially cut its ties after a democratically elected government was overthrown.\u00a0 But 200 Marines operating in war-torn areas of Africa?\u00a0 Not yet.\u00a0 When it comes to the Philippines, again no Marines, even though U.S. special forces<\/a> and drones<\/a> have been aiding the government in a low-level conflict with Islamic militants in Mindanao.<\/p>\n As it happens, the correct, if surprising, answer is \u201ci.\u201d\u00a0 And if you chose it, congratulations!<\/p>\n On August 29th, the Associated Press reported<\/a> that a \u201cteam of 200 U.S. Marines began patrolling Guatemala\u2019s western coast this week in an unprecedented operation to beat drug traffickers in the Central America region, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.\u201d\u00a0 This could have been big news.\u00a0 It\u2019s a sizeable enough intervention: 200 Marines sent into action in a country where we last had a military presence in 1978.\u00a0 If this wasn\u2019t the beginning of something bigger and wider, it would be surprising, given that commando-style operatives from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have been firing weapons and killing locals<\/a> in a similar effort in Honduras, and that, along with U.S. drones<\/a>, the CIA<\/a> is evidently moving ever deeper<\/a> into the drug war in Mexico.<\/p>\n In addition, there\u2019s a history here.\u00a0 After all, in the early part of the previous century, sending in the Marines<\/a> — in Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Repubic, and elsewhere — was the way Washington demonstrated its power in its own \u201cbackyard.\u201d\u00a0 And yet other than a few straightforward news reports on the Guatemalan intervention, there has been no significant media discussion, no storm of criticism or commentary, no mention at either political convention, and no debate or discussion about the wisdom of such a step in this country.\u00a0 Odds are that you didn\u2019t even notice that it had happened.<\/p>\n Think of it another way: in the post-2001 era, along with two disastrous wars on the Eurasian mainland, we\u2019ve been regularly sending in the Marines or special operations forces, as well as naval, air, and robotic power.\u00a0 Such acts are, by now, so ordinary that they are seldom considered worthy of much discussion here, even though no other country acts (or even has the capacity to act) this way.\u00a0 This is simply what Washington\u2019s National Security Complex does for a living.<\/p>\n At the moment, it seems, a historical circle is being closed with the Marines once again heading back into Latin America as the \u201cdrug war\u201d Washington proclaimed years ago becomes an actual drug war<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a demonstration that, these days, when Washington sees a problem anywhere on the planet, its version of a \u201cforeign policy\u201d is most likely to call on the U.S. military.\u00a0 Force is increasingly not our option of last resort, but our first choice.<\/p>\n Now, consider question two in our little snap quiz of recent war news:<\/p>\n In 2011, what percentage of the global arms market did the U.S. control?<\/em><\/p>\n (Keep in mind that, as everyone knows, the world is an arms bazaar filled with haggling merchants.\u00a0 Though the Cold War and the superpower arms rivalry is long over, there are obviously plenty of countries eager to peddle their weaponry, no matter what conflicts may be stoked as a result.)<\/p>\n a) <\/strong>37% ($12.1 billion), followed closely by Russia ($10.7 billion), France, China, and the United Kingdom.<\/em> Naturally, you naturally eliminated \u201cd\u201d first.\u00a0 Who wouldn\u2019t?\u00a0 After all, cornering close to 80% of the arms market would mean that the global weapons bazaar had essentially been converted into a monopoly operation.\u00a0 Of course, it’s common knowledge that the U.S. arms giants<\/a>, given a massive helping hand<\/a> in their marketing by the Pentagon, remain the collective 800-pound gorilla in any room.\u00a0 But 37%<\/a> of that market is nothing to sniff at.\u00a0 (At least, it wasn\u2019t in 1990, the final days of the Cold War when the Russians were still a major competitor worldwide.)\u00a0 As for 52.7%<\/a>, what national industry wouldn\u2019t bask in the glory of such a figure — a majority share of arms sold worldwide?\u00a0 (And, in fact, that was<\/em> an impressive percentage back in the dismal sales year of 2010, when arms budgets worldwide were still feeling the pain of the lingering global economic recession.)\u00a0 Okay, so what about that hefty 68%<\/a>?\u00a0 It couldn\u2019t have been a more striking achievement for U.S. arms makers back in 2008 in what was otherwise distinctly a lagging market.<\/p>\n The correct answer for 2011, however, is the singularly unbelievable one: the U.S. actually tripled its arms sales last year, hitting a record high, and cornering almost 78% of the global arms trade.\u00a0 This was reported<\/a> in late August<\/a> but, like those 200 Marines in Guatemala, never made onto front pages or into the top TV news stories.\u00a0 And yet, if arms were drugs (and it\u2019s possible that, in some sense, they are, and that we humans can indeed get addicted to them), then the U.S. has become something close enough to the world’s sole dealer.\u00a0 That should be front-page news, shouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n Okay, so here\u2019s the third question in today\u2019s quiz:<\/p>\n From a local base in which country did U.S. Global Hawk drones fly long-range surveillance missions between late 2001 and at least 2006?<\/em><\/p>\n a) <\/strong>The Seychelles Islands<\/em> Actually, the drone base the U.S. has indeed operated in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean was first used<\/a> only in 2009 and the drone base Washington has developed in Ethiopia by upgrading a civilian airport only became operational<\/a> in 2011.\u00a0 As for that \u201cunnamed Middle Eastern country<\/a>,\u201d perhaps Saudi Arabia<\/a>, the new airstrip being built there, assumedly for the CIA\u2019s drones, may now be operational. Once again, the right answer turns out to be the unlikely one.\u00a0 Recently, the Australian media reported that the U.S. had flown early, secretive Global Hawk missions out of a Royal Australian Base at Edinburg.\u00a0 These were detected<\/a> by a \u201cgroup of Adelaide aviation historians.\u201d\u00a0 The Global Hawk, an enormous drone, can stay in the air a long time.\u00a0 What those flights were surveilling back then is unknown, though North Korea might be one guess.\u00a0 Whether they continued beyond 2006 is also unknown.<\/p>\n Unlike the previous two stories, this one never made it into the U.S. media and if it had, would have gone unnoticed anyway.\u00a0 After all, who in Washington or among U.S. reporters and pundits would have found it odd that, long before its recent, much-ballyhooed \u201cpivot<\/a>\u201d to Asia, the U.S. was flying some of its earliest drone missions over vast areas of the Pacific?\u00a0 Who even finds it strange that, in the years since 2001, the U.S. has been putting together an ever more elaborate network of its own drone bases<\/a> on foreign soil, or that the U.S. has an estimated 1,000-1,200<\/a> military bases scattered across the planet, some the size of small American towns (not to speak of scads of bases<\/a> in the United States)?<\/p>\n Like those Marines in Guatemala, like the near-monopoly on the arms trade, this sort of thing is hardly considered significant news in the U.S., though in its size and scope it is surely historically unprecedented.\u00a0 Nor does it seem strange to us that no other country on the planet has more than a tiny number of bases outside its own territory: the Russians have a scattered few in the former SSRs of the Soviet Union and a single old naval base<\/a> in Syria that has been in the news<\/a> of late; the French still have some in Francophone Africa<\/a>; the British have a few leftovers from their own imperial era, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has essentially been transformed into an American base; and the Chinese may be in the process of setting up<\/a> a couple of modest bases as well.\u00a0 Add up every non-American base on foreign soil, however, and the total is probably less than 2% of the American empire of bases.<\/p>\n Investing in War<\/strong><\/p>\n It would, by the way, be a snap to construct a little quiz like this every couple of weeks from U.S. military news that\u2019s reported but not attended to here, and each quiz would make the same essential point: from Washington\u2019s perspective, the world is primarily a landscape for arming for, garrisoning for, training for, planning for, and making war.\u00a0 War is what we invest our time, energy, and treasure in on a scale that is, in its own way, remarkable, even if it seldom registers in this country.<\/p>\n In a sense (leaving aside the obvious inability<\/a> of the U.S. military to actually win wars), it may, at this point, be what we do best.\u00a0 After all, whatever the results, it\u2019s an accomplishment to send 200 Marines to Guatemala for a month of drug interdiction work, to get those Global Hawks secretly to Australia to monitor the Pacific, and to corner the market on things that go boom in the night.<\/p>\n Think of it this way: the United States is alone on the planet, not just in its ability, but in its willingness to use military force in drug wars, religious wars, political wars, conflicts of almost any sort, constantly and on a global scale.\u00a0 No other group of powers collectively even comes close. It also stands alone as a purveyor of major weapons systems and so as a generator of war.\u00a0 It is, in a sense, a massive machine for the promotion of war on a global scale.<\/p>\n We have, in other words, what increasingly looks like a monopoly on war.\u00a0 There have, of course, been warrior societies in the past that committed themselves to a mobilized life of war-making above all else.\u00a0 What\u2019s unique about the United States is that it isn\u2019t a warrior society.\u00a0 Quite the opposite.<\/p>\n Washington may be mobilized for permanent war.\u00a0 Special operations forces may be operating in up to 120 countries<\/a>.\u00a0 Drone bases may be proliferating across the planet.\u00a0 We may be building up forces in the Persian Gulf and \u201cpivoting\u201d to Asia.\u00a0 Warrior corporations<\/a> and rent-a-gun mercenary outfits have mobilized on the country\u2019s disparate battlefronts to profit from the increasingly privatized twenty-first-century American version of war.\u00a0 The American people, however, are demobilized and detached<\/a> from the wars, interventions, operations, and other military activities done in their name.\u00a0 As a result, 200 Marines in Guatemala, almost 78% of global weapons sales, drones flying surveillance from Australia — no one here notices; no one here cares.<\/p>\n War: it\u2019s what we do the most and attend to the least.\u00a0 It\u2019s a nasty combination.<\/p>\n _________________________<\/p>\n Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of <\/em>The United States of Fear<\/a> as well as <\/em>The End of Victory Culture<\/a>, runs the Nation Institute’s <\/em>TomDispatch.com<\/a>. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is <\/em>Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nb) <\/strong>Pakistan<\/em>
\nc) <\/strong>Iran<\/em>
\nd) <\/strong>Somalia<\/em>
\ne) <\/strong>Yemen<\/em>
\nf) <\/strong>Central Africa<\/em>
\ng)<\/strong> Northern Mali<\/em>
\nh)\u00a0<\/strong>The Philippines<\/em>
\ni) <\/strong>Guatemala<\/em><\/p>\n
\nb) <\/strong>52.7% ($21.3 billion), followed by Russia at 19.3% ($12.8 billion), France, Britain, China, Germany, and Italy.<\/em>
\nc) <\/strong>68% ($37.8 billion), followed by Italy at 9% ($3.7 billion) and Russia at 8% ($3.5 billion).<\/em>
\nd) <\/strong>78% ($66.3 billion), followed by Russia at 5.6% ($4.8 billion).<\/em><\/p>\n
\nb) <\/strong>Ethiopia<\/em>
\nc) <\/strong>An unnamed Middle Eastern country<\/em>
\nd) <\/strong>Australia<\/em><\/p>\n