The new defence policy of the US, and UNASUR
27/03/2012
- Opinión
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States replaced their strategy of containment, which stemmed from the period of bipolarity, related to a communist adversary, with a Strategy of Preventive War, that consisted in unilaterally anticipating any possible attack on the security of the United States, without any limits of geographical space, but also without any specification of the nature of the enemy or the scope of the ambiguous notion of "terrorism."
This has led the world to a situation of greater insecurity, since the largest global power in history, and the last, according to Brzezinski, took as the nucleus of their National Strategy not an enemy, but a tactic of violence, since terrorism, in the end, beyond its many nuances and forms, is a tactic of violence for political ends.
The geopolitical scenario became a stage for the confrontation between the United States and so-called "mega global terrorism", within the ideological and strategic dimension; but on a military level, the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq has been transformed into a swamp for the biggest military power in history. It has gone from the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs or Fourth Generation Wars -- in essence the application of information technology to war interoperability -- of the first Gulf war in 1991, to Asymetric Wars of Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan -- 2001-- and the second Gulf war in 2003.
This has reached the point where a five-star General, David Petraus, has reworked the strategy of counterinsurgency and is author of the new Counterinsurgency Manual (2006) -- the US had not edited a counterinsurgency manual since Vietnam. In spite of the prestige in the US won by the leadership of General Petraus over the US forces in the Gulf and then in Afghanistan, and the strategic reorientation following the apparent stunning "victory" at the beginning, it is hard to affirm that the US is in a state of post-war, on the contrary, the so-called "post-war" is a path or a labyrinth with no exit.
On January 5, 2012, President Barack Obama and the Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, presented a Document in the Pentagon titled "Maintaining US leadership."
The prestigious geopolitical North American scholar Michael Klare maintains that this document "although it foresees a smaller Army and Marine Corps, places greater emphasis on naval and air forces, especially those oriented towards the protection and control of energy and commercial networks. Even if the Document is lukewarm towards US ties with Europe and the Middle East, it gives major importance to reinforce US power in an arc that extends from the Western Pacific and East Asia to the Indian Ocean and South Asia" (Michael Klare, Recursos Naturales, Revista de Cultura Ñ. Buenos Aires March 25, 2012, p. 34 – free translation from the Spanish version).
To quickly sum up, this change in direction or strategic rethinking appears to be an agile response to a geopolitical context in the process of transformation.
Nevertheless, if we look at the question in depth, the change in emphasis, in the opinion of Klare, consists in the intention of the United States to perpetuate their world supremacy, maintaining their superiority in decisive conflicts and in key zones of the planet, that is to say, in the maritime periphery of Asia, following an arc from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, on to the China sea and the Pacific Northeast. To this end, the Pentagon will dedicate itself to preserving its superiority, not only in the air and at sea, but also in the field of cyberwar and space technology.
The presence in the Asian Pacific region will be projected and strengthened, and with it, their power of dissuasion. It is clear that the naval component will be favoured -- in particular aircraft carriers and flotillas -- and above all the latest generation of aircraft and missiles. In fact, while the total force of the US army will be reduced, in ten years, from 570 thousand to 490 thousand troops, Obama has rejected the notion of any reduction in sea power.
China, Iran and North Korea appear as potential adversaries in the new Defence Policy, and the US "does not discount the possibility that adversaries such as China may employ symmetric means -- submarines, anti-ship missiles, cyberwarfare --, according to the document, to overcome or immobilize US troops" (Michael Klare. idem)
Tokatlian affirms that as of September 11, there were three phases in the Defence Policy of the US.
1. The War on Terror (Bush jr)
2. The Counterinsurgency War (end of Bush jr, beginning of Obama presidency)
3. Readaptation of the Counterinsurgency War, but with novel operative applications.
There are two operative elements that appear with Obama in the third phase:
a) The engagement of Special Operation Forces (SOF) created in 1987 and responsible for selective assassinations, extraterritorial kidnappings and surprise attacks.
b) The use of drones in Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The drones are unmanned aircraft, capable of high precision.
"From the aforementioned sequence -- counterterrorism (Bush), counterinsurgency (Bush-Obama) and counterterrorism II (Obama), one can only conclude that we are dealing with perpetual wars, on the one hand, and reaction of those affected and the implementation of treacherous methods on the part of all parties in the context of persistent asymmetric conflicts, on the other hand" (Juan Gabriel Tokatlian. A Nobel Price of warlike Peace. Revista de Cultura de Clarín Ñ. Bs.As, Pág 22, March 24, 2012).
Luis Alberto Moniz Bandeira supports this argumentative line. "From mid-1910 the journalists Karen De Young and Gerg Jaffe, of the Washington Post, revealed that the Special Operations Forces (SOF) of the United States were operative in 75 countries, sixty more than at the end of the George W. Bush administration, and Colonel Tim Nye, spokesperson of the US Special Operations Command, declared that the number would reach 120. These figures suggest that President Barack Obama has intensified the shadow wars in some 60% of the nations of the world and globally expanded the war against Al Qaeda, beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, through clandestine activities of the SOF in Yemen and in much of the Middle East and Africa. He even requested an increase of 5.7% in the SOF budget for 2011, raising it to 6.3 billion, plus an additional contingency fund of $3.5 billion for 2010. Their contingents in 2010 were some 13,000 personnel, operating in different countries and eventually 9,000, divided between Iraq and Pakistan.
Moniz Bandeira continues: "With this way of war, the United States have employed high-tech killing machines such as the drones (UAV), unmanned aircraft controlled at a distance by the CIA, which launch air-earth missiles such as the AGM-14 Hellfire or teams of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) such as the Navy SEALS/.3 to summarily kill and/or capture leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and the whole Arabian Peninsula. The number of civilians killed by drones since 2004 amounts to between 2347 and 2956 in Pakistan alone, among whom 175 were children rather than soldiers. At least 253 attacks were ordered by President Barack Obama. And at the beginning of 2012, the US had at their disposal more than 7000 Unmanned Vehicle Systems, the so-called drones, more than 12,000 on land and up to hundreds of covert and open attacks in at least six countries". (Luis Alberto Moniz Bandeira. Israel versus Iran Apocalypse now! La Onda Digital. Montevideo, March 2012.
Given this, the question arises as to how this new Defence Policy of the United States will play out in Latin America and in particular in South America. We can see that it involves two strategic constants: the notion of perpetual war as a principal variable and directly tied to this, the war for resources.
There is more. As of January 27 2012 a new Head of the Southern Command was confirmed, General John Kelly, whose main experience was in Iraq.
Only by revitalizing a Geopolitical strategy of Reintegration, in the process of consolidating UNASUR through the South American Defence Council, can we encounter adequate strategies, in order to avoid unpleasant surprises in a future scenario.
This has led the world to a situation of greater insecurity, since the largest global power in history, and the last, according to Brzezinski, took as the nucleus of their National Strategy not an enemy, but a tactic of violence, since terrorism, in the end, beyond its many nuances and forms, is a tactic of violence for political ends.
The geopolitical scenario became a stage for the confrontation between the United States and so-called "mega global terrorism", within the ideological and strategic dimension; but on a military level, the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq has been transformed into a swamp for the biggest military power in history. It has gone from the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs or Fourth Generation Wars -- in essence the application of information technology to war interoperability -- of the first Gulf war in 1991, to Asymetric Wars of Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan -- 2001-- and the second Gulf war in 2003.
This has reached the point where a five-star General, David Petraus, has reworked the strategy of counterinsurgency and is author of the new Counterinsurgency Manual (2006) -- the US had not edited a counterinsurgency manual since Vietnam. In spite of the prestige in the US won by the leadership of General Petraus over the US forces in the Gulf and then in Afghanistan, and the strategic reorientation following the apparent stunning "victory" at the beginning, it is hard to affirm that the US is in a state of post-war, on the contrary, the so-called "post-war" is a path or a labyrinth with no exit.
On January 5, 2012, President Barack Obama and the Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, presented a Document in the Pentagon titled "Maintaining US leadership."
The prestigious geopolitical North American scholar Michael Klare maintains that this document "although it foresees a smaller Army and Marine Corps, places greater emphasis on naval and air forces, especially those oriented towards the protection and control of energy and commercial networks. Even if the Document is lukewarm towards US ties with Europe and the Middle East, it gives major importance to reinforce US power in an arc that extends from the Western Pacific and East Asia to the Indian Ocean and South Asia" (Michael Klare, Recursos Naturales, Revista de Cultura Ñ. Buenos Aires March 25, 2012, p. 34 – free translation from the Spanish version).
To quickly sum up, this change in direction or strategic rethinking appears to be an agile response to a geopolitical context in the process of transformation.
Nevertheless, if we look at the question in depth, the change in emphasis, in the opinion of Klare, consists in the intention of the United States to perpetuate their world supremacy, maintaining their superiority in decisive conflicts and in key zones of the planet, that is to say, in the maritime periphery of Asia, following an arc from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, on to the China sea and the Pacific Northeast. To this end, the Pentagon will dedicate itself to preserving its superiority, not only in the air and at sea, but also in the field of cyberwar and space technology.
The presence in the Asian Pacific region will be projected and strengthened, and with it, their power of dissuasion. It is clear that the naval component will be favoured -- in particular aircraft carriers and flotillas -- and above all the latest generation of aircraft and missiles. In fact, while the total force of the US army will be reduced, in ten years, from 570 thousand to 490 thousand troops, Obama has rejected the notion of any reduction in sea power.
China, Iran and North Korea appear as potential adversaries in the new Defence Policy, and the US "does not discount the possibility that adversaries such as China may employ symmetric means -- submarines, anti-ship missiles, cyberwarfare --, according to the document, to overcome or immobilize US troops" (Michael Klare. idem)
Tokatlian affirms that as of September 11, there were three phases in the Defence Policy of the US.
1. The War on Terror (Bush jr)
2. The Counterinsurgency War (end of Bush jr, beginning of Obama presidency)
3. Readaptation of the Counterinsurgency War, but with novel operative applications.
There are two operative elements that appear with Obama in the third phase:
a) The engagement of Special Operation Forces (SOF) created in 1987 and responsible for selective assassinations, extraterritorial kidnappings and surprise attacks.
b) The use of drones in Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The drones are unmanned aircraft, capable of high precision.
"From the aforementioned sequence -- counterterrorism (Bush), counterinsurgency (Bush-Obama) and counterterrorism II (Obama), one can only conclude that we are dealing with perpetual wars, on the one hand, and reaction of those affected and the implementation of treacherous methods on the part of all parties in the context of persistent asymmetric conflicts, on the other hand" (Juan Gabriel Tokatlian. A Nobel Price of warlike Peace. Revista de Cultura de Clarín Ñ. Bs.As, Pág 22, March 24, 2012).
Luis Alberto Moniz Bandeira supports this argumentative line. "From mid-1910 the journalists Karen De Young and Gerg Jaffe, of the Washington Post, revealed that the Special Operations Forces (SOF) of the United States were operative in 75 countries, sixty more than at the end of the George W. Bush administration, and Colonel Tim Nye, spokesperson of the US Special Operations Command, declared that the number would reach 120. These figures suggest that President Barack Obama has intensified the shadow wars in some 60% of the nations of the world and globally expanded the war against Al Qaeda, beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, through clandestine activities of the SOF in Yemen and in much of the Middle East and Africa. He even requested an increase of 5.7% in the SOF budget for 2011, raising it to 6.3 billion, plus an additional contingency fund of $3.5 billion for 2010. Their contingents in 2010 were some 13,000 personnel, operating in different countries and eventually 9,000, divided between Iraq and Pakistan.
Moniz Bandeira continues: "With this way of war, the United States have employed high-tech killing machines such as the drones (UAV), unmanned aircraft controlled at a distance by the CIA, which launch air-earth missiles such as the AGM-14 Hellfire or teams of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) such as the Navy SEALS/.3 to summarily kill and/or capture leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and the whole Arabian Peninsula. The number of civilians killed by drones since 2004 amounts to between 2347 and 2956 in Pakistan alone, among whom 175 were children rather than soldiers. At least 253 attacks were ordered by President Barack Obama. And at the beginning of 2012, the US had at their disposal more than 7000 Unmanned Vehicle Systems, the so-called drones, more than 12,000 on land and up to hundreds of covert and open attacks in at least six countries". (Luis Alberto Moniz Bandeira. Israel versus Iran Apocalypse now! La Onda Digital. Montevideo, March 2012.
Given this, the question arises as to how this new Defence Policy of the United States will play out in Latin America and in particular in South America. We can see that it involves two strategic constants: the notion of perpetual war as a principal variable and directly tied to this, the war for resources.
There is more. As of January 27 2012 a new Head of the Southern Command was confirmed, General John Kelly, whose main experience was in Iraq.
Only by revitalizing a Geopolitical strategy of Reintegration, in the process of consolidating UNASUR through the South American Defence Council, can we encounter adequate strategies, in order to avoid unpleasant surprises in a future scenario.
(Translation: Jordan Bishop).
-- Miguel Angel Barrios (Argentina) is a doctor in education and political science, and author of various works, among them the Diccionario Latinoamerican de Seguridad y Geopolítica and Consejo Suramericano de Defensa. Desafios Geopolíticas and Continental Perspectives (Latin American Dictionary of Security and Geopolitics and the South American Council of Defence. Geopolitical Challenges and Continental perspectives).
-- Miguel Angel Barrios (Argentina) is a doctor in education and political science, and author of various works, among them the Diccionario Latinoamerican de Seguridad y Geopolítica and Consejo Suramericano de Defensa. Desafios Geopolíticas and Continental Perspectives (Latin American Dictionary of Security and Geopolitics and the South American Council of Defence. Geopolitical Challenges and Continental perspectives).
https://www.alainet.org/es/node/156815
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