"US Plans to Add Drone Base in Africa" by Craig Whitlock published in the The Washington Post 1/28/2013: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-plans-to-add-drone-base-in-west-africa/2013/01/28/ce312c24-6994-11e2-aba3-d72352683b69_story.html
[excerpted] The US and Niger 'finalized a new “status of forces” agreement that would permit the expanded presence of U.S. troops in the country....Two Obama administration officials said military planners are eyeing the West African country of Niger as a base for unarmed Predator drones, which would greatly boost U.S. spy missions in the region.
Majia here: So, it appears that the US is expanding its existing military forces in Africa by establishing a drone base.
The US is an Empire of Disorder. Unlike the Romans who at least established some semblance of order, the US is a chaotic empire that leaves wreck and ruin in its wake.
How did the US come to head the new global empire composed of a complex of military-industrial, financial, and chemical-agricultural companies?
Here is some background, excerpted and paraphrased from my book Governmetality, Biopower and Everyday Life: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aeCOwo8iD7kC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=governmentality+biopower+and+everyday+life&ots=K5nDe46Ju5&sig=QknCY_pZenWOZg3EhVW3352SGJg
Over the last 70
years, U.S. military engagements in the Middle East, South East Asia, and
Central America were explained in relation to the securitization and
dissemination of liberal, democratic capitalist ways of life rationalized in
the 1947 Containment Doctrine, 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, 1960s Domino Theory,
and 1980s Reagan Doctrine, among others (Waldman, 2004). When acknowledged,
brute authoritarian force used against dissenting peasants, workers, and rebels
in distant lands found legitimacy in the necessities of life. “Enemies” not
effectively dehumanized or othered were represented as misguided, naïve, or
childlike. Human “collateral costs” were, and continue to be, represented as
regrettable necessities in order to preserve the American national way of life:
liberal democratic capitalism.
In response to resistance against the effects
of neoliberal market strategies and technologies, a wide range of private and
public “philanthropic” apparatuses emerged (or became more visible), and
promised to foster liberal, democratic values and markets abroad. American
philanthropic institutions often display their missionary zeal in their
statements of “democracy promotion” (House, 2006, p. A26). Among others, these
organizations include: The National
Endowment for Democracy: (http://www.ned.org/);
The International Republican Institute
(http://www.iri.org/); The Center for International and Private
Enterprise (http://www.cipe.org/); Freedom House: (http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=1)
Together, international lending, trade, and “democracy promotion”
organizations aim to promote liberal democratic capitalism facilitating western
corporate market penetration while “educating” overseas populations in the
principles and practices of marketized, democratic personhood. For example, President
Bush’s “Millennium Challenge Corporation,” created in 2002, sought to ensure
“good governance” by making foreign assistance contingent upon compliance with
social, market, and governmental policy (Phillips, M., 2006). These discourses
of democracy promotion reflect the missionary zeal of Manifest Destiny but are
couched in secular frameworks of American-style good governance.
However, not all
imperial undertakings have been cloaked in NGO wrappings. The Project for the
New American Century, composed of neoconservatives, gained power under George
Bush II. Neoconservatives prefer direct state action to enforce dispersion of
American liberal-democratic capitalism, as illustrated by this introduction
(which is no longer available on the webpage):
The Project for the New American Century
is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental
propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that
such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to
moral principle.
The Project for the New American Century
intends, through issue briefs, research papers, advocacy journalism,
conferences, and seminars, to explain what American world leadership entails.
It will also strive to rally support for a vigorous and principled policy of
American international involvement and to stimulate useful public debate on
foreign and defense policy and America’s
role in the world. (“The Project,”
n.d.)
Supplementing
this introduction is the organization’s statement of principles by leading
members, which articulates commitments including an explicit need to “accept
responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an
international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our
principles” (“Statement,” n.d.).
As Norton (2004) argued in Leo Strauss and the Politics of American
Empire, the Straussian-influenced neoconservative policy agenda has
directly shaped U.S. intervention in the Middle East, engineering its policy
toward Israel, and its efforts toward regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq
(see also Drury, 1999; Postel, 2003).The American religious right strongly favors U.S.
support for Israel because
of their belief Israel
fulfills Biblical prophecy (Higgins, 2006). The convergence of neoconservative
foreign policy agendas and evangelical support for Israel
shaped U.S.
foreign policy under the George W. Bush administration (2001-present). Manifest
Destiny oddly embraced Zionism.
George W. Bush’s
administration strove to revitalize America by reinvigorating patriotism
domestically while fostering an image of national strength abroad. The collapse
of the Soviet Union had posed an epistemic problem for the U.S. across the
1990s as it had lost its central, defining adversary (Stephanson, 1995). The
global dissemination of (neo)liberal market operations, technologies, and
ideologies provided a kind of (secularized) proof of Manifest Destiny but
lacked the ideational impact necessary to mobilize populations. Moreover, neoliberal
market technologies and ideologies were subject to multiple, populist and
moralistic, discourses of resistance. The events of September 11 reinvigorated
American patriotism while presenting a force against which America’s Manifest
Destiny could be pitted. “Global terrorism” and “despotic regimes” became the
new enemies uniting the nation.
The Obama Administration has pursued the
Neoconservative agenda as vociferously as George Bush the II using both “pro-democracy”
NGOs and the expansion of military policing around the globe. Drone warfare and
support for domestic insurgents against targeted resource-rich regimes (Libya,
Syria, and now the entire continent of Arica) has been the iconic strategy of
Obama style imperialism.
Majia here: I strongly urge readers to watch Adam Curtis' series The Power of Nightmares to understand how the "war on terror" has been constructed and waged here
In 2011 Reuters warned that "Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list' http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005
NDAA Indefinite Detention Provision Back in Effect By Josh Gerstein, Politico 03 October 12
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/13779-ndaa-indefinite-detention-provision-back-in-effect
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/13779-ndaa-indefinite-detention-provision-back-in-effect
Oct 23, 2012
...
CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency's ability to
sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable
it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in
North Africa or other ...
Nov 05, 2012
Op-Ed
Contributor: The Permanent Militarization of America By AARON B.
O'CONNELL Published: November 4, 2012. Aaron B. O'Connell, an assistant
professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and a Marine ...
Jan 21, 2012
Transformation
of American society into a “garrison state” (
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/us-as-garrison-state-educating-for.html)
is ongoing and serves the interests of private corporations over the
general interest of ...
Oct 19, 2012
Transformation
of American society into a “garrison state” (
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/us-as-garrison-state-educating-for.html)
is ongoing and serves the interests of private corporations over the
general interest of ...
Oct 16, 2011
The
ubiquitous presence of the the state's repressive apparatuses
demonstrates our degradation into a "garrison state" The garrison state
is a result of government by and for the military - industrial complex.
While much has ...
Aug 11, 2011
MOGADISHU,
Somalia — Richard Rouget, a gun for hire over two decades of bloody
African conflict, is the unlikely face of the American campaign against
militants in Somalia...Now Mr. Rouget works for Bancroft Global
Development, an American private security company that the ...
Fukushima's Spent Fuel Pools · Potrblog North Anna Nuclear Facility
Evacuation Di... A Perilous World for US Children · US Corn Crop Likely
to Fail to Meet Global Demand · Potrblog: ...
Jun 29, 2012
...
has unexpectedly announced that it will sign a treaty with Japan on
Friday to increase the sharing of classified military data on what
analysts cite as two major common concerns: North Korea's nuclear and
missile threats and China's growing military might.... . ... It
is a shadow war being fought by proxy in developing countries,
particularly in Africa, and being waged using new cyberweapons and
drones. http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/06/21/shadow-wars/#disqus_thread ...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.