The following is a speech given at the Japan Peace Conference in Sasebo,
Japan Nov. 19, 2004.
“I see dark moon rising on the right” – John Fogerty
I want to thank the Japan Peace Committee for your generous invitation
return to the Japan Peace Conference, for the opportunity to continuing
learning and taking strength from your movement, and to make what
contributions I can to our collaborative work for peace, justice and true
security. I also want to appreciate the important contributions that
Uehara-san and Hirayama-san made to the Boston Social Forum in July on the
eve of the Democratic National Convention. Their speeches, media work, and
interactions with Social Forum participants helped awaken U.S. activists to
the suffering caused by U.S. military bases and by the U.S. Japan alliance.
They educated U.S. activists about the assault on the Japanese Constitution
and growing militarism here in Japan. And their reports about the Japanese
peace movement encouraged people in much the same way that my visits here
have done for me.
It is a humbling experience to come to Sasebo. In addition to the suffering
caused by the U.S. base here, I remember seeing photographs of this city
after the U.S. fire bombings during the Second World War. At first glance, I
was almost unable to distinguish between the devastation of this city and
that of Hiroshima. The city was burned to the ground, with countless
innocent people killed and maimed for life – physically and emotionally. On
behalf of people of conscience in my country, I want to apologize and ask
forgiveness for this war crime committed by my parents’ generation which
helped to open the way for the indiscriminate slaughters of our era.
I have been asked to talk about roles of U.S. bases in war fighting and
maintaining U.S. global hegemony, global resistance to U.S. bases, a little
about the continuing disastrous U.S. war in Iraq and what we can expect in
the aftermath of the U.S. election.
Let me begin with some thoughts about the U.S. election. Despite more people
voting for a Democratic presidential candidate than ever before in U.S.
history, the U.S. people and much of the world have suffered an historically
important defeat that will have devastating reverberations for decades to
come. Many of my compatriots are in states of shock and depression that our
fellow and sister countrymen could have voted such an inarticulate,
uneducated, and brutal figure.
Kerry had many many flaws which were on display during the Democratic
convention when he presented himself as a Vietnam-era war hero “reporting
for duty” and provided no real alternatives for a far more dangerous time.
He seriously miscalculated in “April 2002 when he voted to authorize the use
of force against Iraq and with his insistence throughout the campaign that
if he was elected, the U.S. would prevail in Iraq. This undermined his
criticisms of Bush’s wars, opened him to charges of muddled thinking, and
limited the support the peace movement could give him. Equally damning,
Democrats’ dependence on corporate contributions meant that Kerry could not
campaign convincingly on economic issues: better wages, restoration of
public services, provision of health care, and redistribution of the
national wealth in ways that provide real security.
That said, a Kerry victory would have served notice that we will not
tolerate a “war president” and provided us openings to limit some of the
damage that the U.S. is wreaking on the world. We saw a Kerry victory as a
way to slow the post – 9-11 drive toward fascism. While not offering what we
need in terms of nuclear abolition, he had denounced the production of new
nuclear weapons, opposed resumption of nuclear weapons testing, and would
have been more flexible in the period leading up to and during the NPT
Review Conference. The Iraq war was not his, and our hope was that this
would make U.S. withdrawal more likely under U.S. peace movement and
international pressure.
Bush now boasts that, having won finally won an electoral majority that he
“earned political capital” and “intends to spend it.” Internationally, he
pledges continuity: unilateralist and first strike imperialism. This will
likely lead to a deepening catastrophe in Iraq, where more than 100,000
Iraqi civilians and more than a thousand U.S. troops have died since the
U.S. invasion began. It will further alienate the Arab and Islamic worlds,
resulting in still more terrorism. And, it will add to U.S. isolation as
Washington continues down the path of becoming a pariah nation. Bush’s
commitments to building a new generation of “usable” nuclear weapons, to
resuming nuclear weapons testing, and to derailing the NPT can only result
in accelerated nuclear weapons proliferation and increased dangers of
nuclear war.
Interestingly, we may find ourselves with some unexpected allies as
“conservatives” and “neo-conservatives” contend for positions and advantage
in the third Bush Administration. While Bush loyalists boast that “Bush’s
foreign policy decisions seem to have been exactly why he won this huge
victory,” the Paleolithic Grover Norquist, who is leading the charge on
regressive revision of the tax code, the privatization of everything under
the sun, and ending what remains of government regulation of industry,
complains that “the war in Iraq was a drag on votes, and it is threatening
to the Bush coalition.” And, Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage
Foundation, has called for a “serious debate” on foreign policy, echoing
Kerry when he said that “The consequences of the neocons’ adventure in Iraq
are now all too clear. America is stuck in a guerilla war with no end in
sight. Our military is stretched too thin to respond to other threats. And
our real enemies, nonstate organizations such as Al Qaeda, are benefiting
from the Arab and Islamic backlash against our occupation of an Islamic
country. some in Bush’s camp begin to confront reality.”
Domestically, as Bush and his lieutenants tell us, “Now comes the
revolution.” They ran a campaign based on “guns and God.” Exit polls tell us
that “moral values” were more important to Bush’s supporters than were the
calamitous war in Iraq or the sagging U.S. economy. 75% of Bush voters
believe that Saddam Hussein had some responsibility for the September 11
attacks, and 72% believe that there were strong ties between Saddam and Al
Qaeda.
How can this be? Bush, Cheney and Rove rule by fear and lies, exploiting the
legacies of the white, Christian, racist, colonial settler mentalities that
are essential – but hardly exclusive - components of U.S. culture. As one
senior Bush adviser put it, liberals and the left are “in what we call the
reality-based community…That’s not the way the world really works anymore.
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
During the campaign, the Bush Cabal again exploited the 9-11 trauma to
frighten people into rallying around the great leader. Consigning the legacy
of lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Osama Bin Laden, Abu
Ghraib, and the growing number of terrorists created by U.S. wars to
Orwellian memory holes, Bush sought to scare the U.S. public by again
insisting that “The biggest threat we face today is having nuclear weapons
fall into the hands of terrorists.” As Hannah Arendt, the German political
philosopher and refugee from Nazi Germany taught us half a century ago, fear
is essential to the creation of a totalitarian system. It is used to
fragment and to atomize community and to isolate individuals, creating more
easily manipulated “masses.”
Since the overthrow of legally sanctioned racial segregation in the
mid-1960s, radical right wing forces in the U.S. have sought to expand and
mobilize their base by waging a culture war. Not unlike the Tsars of Russia
and Eastern European nobility of the 18th and 19th centuries, they point to
liberal, modernizing elites as the source of people’s unhappiness and to
distract popular attention from growing structural inequalities and
injustice. Thus, as part of the effort to paint Democrats as “pessimistic,
weak, indecisive, and effeminate,” certainly not the resolute figures needed
for the global “war on terrorism,” the Republican Convention brought us
former actor and now governor Arnold Schwartzenegger who derided Kerry’s
advisors as “girlie men.” Blacks, other people of color, women and sexual
minorities were scapegoated – often in code – in a political war being waged
to “shower riches upon the already wealthy and degrade the lives of the very
people who are rising up. It is a reaction against mass culture that refuses
to call into question the basic institutions of corporate America …It is a
revolution that plans to overthrow the aristocrats by cutting their taxes.”
So-called “moral” and “family” values: opposition to abortion, to stem cell
research and to the rights of gays and lesbians are the political wedges
being used by the right wing in the U.S. to destroy the legacies of the
Enlightenment, science, and liberal democracy. Fully one third of all U.S.
voters describe themselves as “evangelical Christians.” 96% of these
fundamentalists voted for Bush. He was also able to add conservative
Catholics to this base, the vast majority of whom oppose women’s rights to
abortions, the legality of stem-cell research, and people’s right to love
who they will.
The historian Garry Wills got it right when he asked “Can a people that
believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth [of Jesus] than in evolution
still be called an Enlightened nation?...Where else” Wills asks, “do we find
fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear and
hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy…We find
it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein’s Sunni loyalists.”
The U.S. is now ruled by an alliance of the “cowboy” sector of U.S.
financial and industrial capital and of the U.S. Christian version of the
Taliban.
Fortunately for me, but not for Jimmy and Jackie Massey, these forces are
concentrated in the South. Those of us in the Northeast U.S. and on the
Pacific coast are, for the moment, somewhat insulated from the most
dangerous of these forces, and it is our responsibility to make the most of
the opportunities that this provides.
Needless to say, this is a dangerous period. The domestic side of the
Bush-Cheney-Norquist agenda is to engineer a massive transfer of wealth from
the poor and middle classes to the rich. Their assault on essential public
services and the constitution’s guarantee of separation of church and state
will be compounded by funds being diverted to agencies controlled by
religious fundamentalists. And, we do not know yet how many more of our
democratic rights and civil liberties will be repressed or disappear. In the
1980s, the Israeli peace movement taught us that what the empire does abroad
cannot long be kept outside the empire’s walls. What is practiced abroad,
will be practiced – with devastating consequences – at home. Malcom X put it
a little differently decades ago: “The chickens have come home to roost.”
The silver lining to these dark clouds is that the U.S. is more divided now
than at any time since our civil war 140 years ago. More people voted for
Kerry than have ever voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in U.S.
history. An unprecedented and largely informal coalition of national and
community based organizations managed to turn out 48% of U.S. voters to
oppose Bush. That opposition will not melt away, but one of our biggest
challenges is to consolidate the coalition for the longer term. We are
regrouping, learning the lessons of the past four years and of this
election, and we are sorting out how to better engage the best in U.S.
culture and values to challenge our militarized and increasingly fascist
state.
The other relatively “good” news – as awful as it may be in terms of lives
lost and maimed - is that the U.S. is bogged down in Iraq. This certainly
limits (but will not prevent) the Bush-Cheney government’s ability to wreak
destruction and havoc elsewhere. Despite its brave talk and rhetoric, the
social physics of people’s power and Realpolitik will place very real limits
on the Bush-Cheney Mafia-style practice of Empire.
The biggest challenge they face is objective reality. As the economist Paul
Krugman reminded us, things that look like they can’t last, do not. While
many will suffer, the U.S. will lose the war in Iraq. Its aggressions and
robber baron economy will ultimately limit and undermine U.S. power. Our
responsibility is to do what we can to stop the killing, to end the
suffering, and to prepare for the future.
Iraq and the Campaign to Expand and Consolidate Empire
The Bush Administration may be the most imperially ambitious and dangerous
government in U.S. history. Its agenda preceded the September 11 attacks,
but the Administration has callously exploited the losses of that day in
order to provide political cover for wars that the U.S. people would not
otherwise tolerate. As we experience with the repeated (non-Chilean)
references to 9-11, with the near-constant terrorist alerts, and with the
lies about Iraq, the Administration is steadfastly working to impose what
Vice-President Cheney described in the spring of 2001 – before 9-11 - as
“the arrangement for the 21st century” to guarantee that the U.S. remains
the world’s dominant economic, political and military power for generations
to come. As my friend Zia Main explains, the Bush Administration seeks to
colonize not only space (most of the world,) but time (the 21st century.)
Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, planners in Washington and at
the elite Council on Foreign Relations expected that the U.S. would emerge
from World War II as the world’s unchallenged military and economic power,
dominating a global “Grand Area” with a single global market system.
Unexpectedly, the Soviet Union emerged as a rival power, and for forty-five
years the fulfillment of the U.S. imperial project was stymied by the Cold
War. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, first Clinton and now the
neocons have been making the most of the opportunity to finally create that
“Grand Area.”
The invasion of Iraq and the threats of unilateral attacks against Iran and
North Korea are only incidentally about these nations. They are not,
ultimately, about terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. Instead they are
the continuation of Bush the Elder’s campaign to create a "New World Order"
in which “What we (the U.S.) say goes!” In Afghanistan and Iraq, shock, awe,
devastation, conquest, “regime change,” and occupations were designed not
only to remove ostensible enemies, but to send a message to the world.
Assistant Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz put it succinctly when he said the
war in Afghanistan had succeeded because other nations now "fear us." The
Pentagon’s spending to develop and deploy new first-strike nuclear weapons
and so-called “missile defenses”, the host of new high-tech weapons systems,
and the expansion of the global infrastructure of bases are all designed to
convey the warning “Don’t even think about challenging us.” The audiences
are Beijing and Berlin, Pyongyang and Paris, Moscow, Riyadh, and Teheran.
In addition to disregarding treaties and international law as so many scraps
of paper, the Bush Administration is militarizing not only U.S. foreign
policy but the U.S. political system and society itself. In the past three
years, the already gargantuan U.S. military budget has grown by more than
30% to the incomprehensible sum of nearly $500 billion – roughly equal to
the rest of the world’s military spending - combined!
In Iraq, Humpty Dumpty has been broken and will not easily be put back
together. The recent US National Intelligence Estimate predicts that 2005
Iraq will be defined by one of three possibilities: 1) the chaos of a failed
state in which forces like Al Qaeda will find sanctuaries and have relative
freedom of action, 2) civil war, or 3) tenuous stability in a militarized
and increasingly fundamentalist Shia society. As the U.N. is now warning,
the promised Iraqi elections in January will be yet another corrupted
exercise in the creation of Bush’s deadly fantasy world.
One of the tragic aspects of the U.S. election was that both Bush and Kerry
insisted the U.S. will persevere and prevail in Iraq. Their goal was not
only to preserve as much control over the world’s third largest proven oil
reserves as possible, but to prevent a humiliating U.S. defeat in Iraq from
undermining U.S. hegemony and influence across the oil-rich Middle East – a
loss that would have devastating impacts on U.S. global hegemony, as well as
on the U.S. economy and the lives of millions of U.S. people. Now, the
Democratic party will have to choose whether to continue with the Kerry line
of supporting the war but criticizing how the war is fought, or becoming a
true opposition party that presses U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, for real
alternatives to dependence on Middle East oil monarchies and dictatorships,
and for a foreign policy based on common security instead of Empire .
We all know that the Iraq war is about oil. Paul Wolfowitz, put it bluntly
when he said that, “we had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of
oil….for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy
we settled on the issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass
destruction.”
Since the introduction of the internal combustion machine a century ago,
petroleum has been “The Prize” of empire. It was the embargo on oil sales to
Japan after its invasion of Indochina that led Japan’s most reckless
militarists to attack on Pearl Harbor. In the wake of the Second World War,
the State Department advised that having won control over Middle East oil,
the U.S. had won “one of the greatest material prizes in the history of
warfare.” Since then the first priority of U.S. foreign and military policy
has been to ensure that neither Washington’s “enemies nor its allies” gain
independent access to Middle East oil. With control over Europe and Japan’ –
now also China’s and Korea’s – primary sources of fuel, the U.S. has had its
hand on the “jugular vein of [global ]capitalism.” And, with oil traded in
Petrodollars – not Petro Euros or Asian currencies - that are deposited in
U.S. banks, U.S. dominance over the world’s oil supplies has also provided
artificial subsidies for the U.S. economy.
The two Bush wars against Iraq have sought to consolidate these U.S.
advantages as part of the “the arrangement for the 21st century.” The
current war is also about Saudi Arabia. The Saudi monarchy is becoming
increasingly brittle and thus vulnerable. This raises fears in Washington
that the Saudis may go the way of the Shah of Iran and Marcos of the
Philippines, jeopardizing the U.S. grasp on global capitalism’s jugular
vein. U.S. control over Iraqi oil could, if necessary during a period of
instability, serve as a temporary alternative to Saudi oil. And, and with
Iraq’s strategic location, Cheney and Rumsfeld plan to use Iraq as a new
home for fourteen permanent U.S. military bases to dominate the region as a
whole.
Just as Nixon’s “Vietnamization” strategy and the campaign to subjugate
Palestine are were doomed from the beginning, so too is the sham transfer of
sovereignty to an already failing puppet government, led by a former
Baathist thug turned acknowledged CIA asset. What kind of legitimacy could
any nation have while occupied by 160,000 foreign troops? When its laws have
been set by a foreign proconsul? When its economy has been privatized and
transformed to serve the occupier? When the occupier’s ambassador wields the
corrupting power of controlling the allocation of $18 billion for
reconstruction of a devastated society? Or when the Christian commander in
chief of the military occupying a predominantly Islamic nations speaks in
terms of a “crusade?”
>From Discriminate Deterrence to Unilateral Wars
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has adopted a succession of
strategic doctrines to ensure its long-term global dominance. The Reagan
Administration’s 1987 “Discriminate Deterrence” envisioned such dominance
“for the long-term” through U.S. control of three regions of the world: the
Pacific Ocean and thus the Asia-Pacific region, the Mediterranean and thus
Europe, and the Persian Gulf and thus the Middle East and the global
economy.
Under the direction of then Secretary of War Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz was
primarily responsible for drafting Bush the Elder’s strategic doctrine which
established the primary U.S. strategic priority as preventing the emergence
of any regional or global rival. The doctrine was put into practice with the
1991 Desert Storm war. As important as removing a potential Iraqi threat to
U.S. privileged access to and control over Middle East oil, that war was
also designed to discipline U.S. allies from Germany to Japan and Seoul to
Saudi Arabia. It was also a demonstration war. By bombing Baghdad into what
U.N. observers described as “the pre-industrial age,” the US provided a
stark warning to China, Iran, and other potential rivals.
Bill Clinton’s “Full Spectrum Dominance,” took us still closer to what has
become Bush II’s “National Security Statement.” It was and remains a
Pentagon commitment to dominate any nation, at any time, in any dimension of
power. Its corollaries included counterterrorism - including preemptive
attacks, the undermining the U.N. order and international law with the
unauthorized U.S. led NATO war against Serbia, and an icy refusal to abide
by the provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Now, with the most militarist elements of the Reagan and first Bush I
governments in the most senior leadership positions for the past four years,
the Bush cabal has integrated and extended the worst and most dangerous of
its predecessors doctrines. Their doctrine is clear that the U.S. will
unilaterally initiate pre-emptive war – including first strike nuclear war -
to prevent the emergence of regional rivals. This is not “pre-emption” but
“prevention.” As in the case of Iraq, a nation need not threaten the U.S. in
order to be destroyed with a first strike attack. The policy is clear that
nations can be attacked in order to prevent their “emergence” as a rival.
This has been popularly understood to mean Iraq, Iran and North Korea, but
over the longer term it also applies to China and potentially to the
European Union. Remember, we are talking about “the arrangement for the 21st
century.”
And, of course, the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review reiterated
the first strike nuclear war fighting doctrine and called for the
development and deployment of a new generation of usable first strike
nuclear weapons. Resumption of nuclear weapons tests is expected in 2007,
and the Review audaciously named Iraq , Iran , Syria , Libya , North Korea ,
China and Russia as targeted nations. This can only encourage nuclear
weapons proliferation and greatly increase the dangers of nuclear war.
An empire of Bases
Let me turn now to our prime concern here, the “abuses and ursurpations” of
U.S. military bases that make what even the New York Times calls an “empire”
possible. Without the global infrastructure of foreign military bases, the
Bush Administration’s calamitous invasion and occupation of Iraq would never
have been possible, nor would the U.S. have provided Osama Bin Laden one of
the primary causes for launching his lesser Jihad – the U.S. military
presence in Arabia which reinforced corrupt Saudi rule and which, from the
perspective of many Moslems, sullied the sanctity of sacred Mecca and
Medina.
Last year, when this conference was held in Okinawa, one of the most
striking images I carried was from a school yard in Kin Town on the day that
baseball practice resumed in schools across the prefecture. Just a nature’s
rhythms continued with the nurturing of sugar cane and animals caring for
their young, little tykes and older ones began taking their turns fielding
balls hit to them by their coach. As they played and developed their skills
and strength, the hillsides around us began to echo with the sound of
gunfire: U.S. Marines practicing and developing their skills of killing
people. What I found most disturbing was the school children and coaches
continued their baseball practice as if nothing unusual or dangerous was
happening. Marine gunfire had become a part of Kin Town’s natural
environment.
Several months earlier in a conversation with Takazato Suzuyo who recently
ran for mayor of Naha, found ourselves talking about the colonial dimensions
of U.S. bases in East Asia more clearly than we had in the past. A century
ago, we remembered, European powers and the U.S. consolidated their power
over the nations of East Asia through series of “unequal treaties” dictated
to Japan, Korea, China and Indochina. How similar this was, we rued, to the
unequal treaties and Status of Forces Agreements that have provided the
“legal” foundations for the U.S. military presence and dominance in many of
these same countries for the past six decades.
We also talked about food, cultural tastes and markets - how the inexpensive
and plentiful food and goods on and around U.S. military bases have
permeated Okinawan culture, changing tastes – especially for the young – and
developing long-term markets for companies like McDonalds, Calvin Klein, and
Mattel Toys. Several months later, the New York Times confirmed our
insights, reporting that Okinawa no longer leads Japan in terms of life
expectancy, which was long attributed to the Okinawan diet. With the western
fast foods that came with the bases, Okinawans increasingly suffer obesity
and other health problems, and they are dying younger.
In August, returning from the World Conference via Hawaii, I was struck by
the continuing military colonialism there in a nation conquered and annexed
by the U.S. more than a century ago for the strategic role it could play in
U.S. domination of the Asia-Pacific. With one quarter of Oahu, the main
island, already occupied with U.S. military bases – much of it on Native
Hawaiian sacred lands -- the army is trying to take more to train its new
Stryker brigades. The site they are lusting after includes slopes of the
sacred mountains that served as the Hawaiian calendar and the sacred plain
below them to which pregnant women journeyed in times past to give birth to
the island’s nobility.
Earlier this fall, in Scandinavia, I was impressed by young activists who
have discovered new illegal intelligence bases in Norway and a spy base in
Sweden that violates Stockholm’s long honored neutrality, and who are
organizing to force their withdrawal. And, of course, the dangers of U.S.
military bases apply as well to those within the U.S. Just two weeks ago, in
the state of New Jersey – not far from New York city, an F-16 “on a
nighttime training mission strafed an elementary school with 25 rounds of
ammunition” Fortunately, no children were in the building, but the community
was reeling from what might have happened.
Others here will describe the range of abuses and usurpations you suffer
with the U.S. bases and their threatened expansion. Every base brings
insecurity: the loss of self-determination, human rights, and sovereignty.
Bases degrade the culture, values, health and environment of host
communities and nations – and of the United States. Let me also use this
occasion to communicate the profound regret and anger that those of us in
the U.S. who are conscious felt when we learned of the crash of the
Futemna-based helicopter on the grounds of a university campus and at the
banning of Okinawan police from the scene of the accident. We feel similar
anger when we read of the crimes committed in Japan and other countries by
U.S. troops, when we think about the campaign to build a new base at Haneko
in Okinawa, and about the terror people experience as they reel from low
altitude and night-landing exercises, live fire exercises, and the
destruction of property. At the moment, our thoughts and solidarity are with
the people of Haneko, as they resist the construction of the new airbase
which will assault their community, the ocean reef on which the base is to
be built, and which will deepen Japan’s integration into the U.S. war
machine.
Missions of Bases
The Bush Administration’s “National Security Strategy” tells us that reasons
the U.S. maintains its global network of more than 725 foreign military
bases and installations in more than 40 countries are “To contend with
uncertainty and to meet the many security challenges we face,” The U.S. it
continues “will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe
and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access arrangements for the
long-distance deployment of U.S. forces.” Condoleeza Rice, our Secretary of
State Designate, put it more succinctly a year ago when she said. “The
centerpiece of the President's strategy” she said, “is our strong forward
presence…”
At root, the entire system of U.S. military bases and installations is an
integrated global infrastructure for imperial domination. As we meet,
roughly 400,000 U.S. troops are deployed at or supported by more than 725
bases: 100,000 in Europe, 100,000 in East Asia, 140,000 in Iraq, and the
remainder elsewhere in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Central Asia
and at sea. Not even Genghis Khan or Benjamin Disraeli had such a host of
mighty fortresses. Pentagon spokesmen tell us today, “the purpose of
military units is to fight and win the nation’s wars,” and Rumsfeld has been
clear that “It’s time to adjust those locations from static defense to a
more agile and more capable and more 21st century posture.”
U.S. military bases exist to: to reinforce the status quo, to encircle
strategic rivals like China, to serve and reinforce U.S. warships; to serve
as training centers for U.S. forces and as jumping off points for U.S.
foreign military interventions. They facilitate C3I: command, control,
communications and intelligence including essential roles in nuclear war
fighting. They secure and protect oil and gas pipelines, and they control
the governments and politically dynamics of host nations, with Japan, Korea
Germany, Saudi Arabia, and today's Iraq beginning the list. They serve as a
way to “show the U.S. flag”, demonstrating the U.S. commitment to be taken
seriously as a power in a particular country or region. And, while it is too
soon to call them military bases, U.S. military power is moving to dominate
space. Today “Rover” is on the moon. Tomorrow we may see a base there for
war fighting on earth, to control the “space well” between the moon and
earth, and for the colonization of the solar system.
The Current Context
Rumsfeld's campaign to revitalize U.S. forward military deployments is best
understood within the context of the Administration's megalomaniacal
ambitions which require fighting offensive wars. It is one of the more
ambitious tactics in the fifteen-year campaign to expand and consolidate the
U.S. empire into the power vacuums left in the wake of the collapse of the
Soviet empire.
With the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. established new bases in the heart of the
oil-rich Middle East – especially in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and
Qatar. NATO was turned toward “out of area” operations. And, the U.S.
traumatized and re-disciplined Japanese political culture, the results of
which we have seen with the dispatch of Japanese troops to help fight the
Afghan and Iraq wars. U.S. military bases from Sasebo and Yokuska to Britain
and Belgium, Holland, where U.S. nuclear weapons are stored, and where U.S.
nuclear-capable ships are based or make port calls, and which host nuclear
war fighting C3I functions were again used to back up Washington’s nuclear
threats.
Clinton built on this foundation in the 1990s, consolidating and expanding
the U.S. imperial reach and infrastructure of bases. The centerpiece in East
Asia was the 1996 Clinton-Hashimoto and the SACO accords. In Europe the
focus was re-dividing and containing the continent, as they worked for the
inclusion of Eastern Europe into an enlarged NATO to augment U.S.
interventionary power against the Middle East and the successor states of
the Soviet Union and to counter French and Germany ambitions. In the
aftermath of the illegal “Kosovo” war, the U.S. emerged with a massive new
military base, Camp Bondsteel, the first of what Washington hopes will
become a new system of U.S. military bases extending into and beyond those
bastions of democracy Rumania and Bulgaria.
Bush II and Cheney came to power with the commitment to the so-called
“Revolution in Military Affairs,” the increased application of information
and other high technologies to weapons development and war fighting. It
applies to more than weapons. As Deputy Assistant of Defense Andrew Hoehm
put it, “Transformation is more than just new capabilities, inherent in
transformation is a physical change of the global military posture.”
As we see in the reports that two Army divisions are to be withdrawn from
Germany, and 12,000 troops from South Korea, plans are moving ahead with
plans are moving ahead to achieve “maximum flexibility in sending forces to
the Middle East, Central Asia and other potential battlegrounds.” Some bases
will be closed. Some will be merged. But, all of this will all be done in
ways designed to facilitate war fighting. The goals are to better encircle
China, to reduce the likely number of U.S. casualties in a second Korean
war, to intimidate Iran, to fight the so-called “War on Terrorism,” and to
more completely control the sea lanes over which Persian Gulf oil – the life
of East Asia's economies – must travel.
In the Asia-Pacific, the news is that “all of the Pentagon road maps lead to
Guam,” which is to “become one of two or three major hubs of U.S. activity
in the world.” South Korea will be expected to assume greater “burden
sharing.” Japan, the keystone of U.S. Asia-Pacific power, will also have an
augmented role which is being negotiated as we meet. As you know, some
troops based in Okinawa are to be moved to the main islands, as part of the
last decade’s ongoing pacification project. More planes and command
functions will be transferred from Guam to Tokyo. And, if Washington and
Tokyo can find new ways to define “the Far East” or to shatter the
commitments of your Peace Constitution, they plan to move U.S. Army troops
and naval forces from the U.S. to Japan in order to be closer to North Korea
and China, the South China Sea, and the Persian Gulf.
U.S. bases in Australia are being augmented. Access agreements with the
Philippines, and Singapore, are being expanded, and the way is being opened
for U.S. forces to return to Thailand. The Philippine press reports, U.S.
military officials are privately exploring the possibility of reestablishing
its bases in the former colony.
The invasion of Afghanistan opened the way in Central Asia, where
dictatorships in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan were
forced to surrender sovereignty and to invite the Pentagon to establish what
are becoming permanent U.S. military bases. Africa is to have an augmented
role with a “family” of military bases across the continent for both
surgical and more “robust” use. And, Washington hasn't forgotten its own
“backyard,” Latin America with new military bases sprouting across Ecuador,
Peru, and Colombia.
In the Middle East, under cover of the Iraq war, Bush and company removed
one of the precipitating causes of the 9-11 attacks by moving most of its
bases in Saudi Arabia to Qatar, Kuwait, Djibouti and Bahrain. And, with
bases like Camp Victory and thirteen other permanent bases the U.S. is
building, Washington looks to Iraq as a bastion of U.S. military power for
decades to come.
This “diversified” infrastructure is being built on several conceptual
pillars.
First is flexibility. The Pentagon wants total freedom of action. If,
Germany, Japan, or another “vassal” state hesitates to permit U.S. military
bases and installations to be used in future U.S. or Anglo-Saxon wars, they
want to use bases in other countries without delay. Similarly, the plan for
South Korea, which is bearing the brunt of the reconfiguration in Asia, is
to make the U.S. military infrastructure to be flexible, able to serve
multiple military functions: to deter Pyongyang while being available for
“regime change” war, to influence Korean foreign and domestic policy, and to
assist U.S. military interventions across East Asia and as far away as the
Persian Gulf.
Second is speed. New “lily pad” bases are to be used as jumping off points
for military interventions, making it possible to strike before the target
of U.S. attack can prepare its defenses or a long term strategy of
resistance.
U.S. forward deployed forces are to be organized along a three-tiered
integrated structure: 1) major hub bases like Britain, Japan, Okinawa, Guam,
and Qatar 2) smaller centers or “Forward Operating bases” like Spain, South
Korea, Diego Garcia, and Kuwait; and 3) “lily pads” in countries ranging
from Tajikistan to Peru.
Ending Abuses, Usurpations, and the U.S. Wars
How do we end the “abuses and usurpations” and imperial wars resulting from
and reinforced by the oppressive infrastructure of U.S. foreign military
bases? There are no easy answers, but I find wisdom in words of the U.S.
abolitionist leader Fredrick Douglas who taught that power yields nothing
without a struggle. And struggle takes place at many levels: politically,
intellectually culturally, economically, and spiritually in addition to what
are usually the pyrrhic victories of armed resistance.
In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. election and on the eve of the
renewed invasion of Falluja, leading U.S. peace and justice activists and
organizations are working to restore a sense of hope and to chart our future
courses. In the first week after the election, we reminded people that 48%
of the U.S. electorate had voted against Bush and Cheney, and that
demoralization is an oppressor’s weapon. Spontaneously, and with
encouragement, people came together in communities and across the internet,
to remind ourselves of the power that is inherent in our humanity and,
moreso, in our collective efforts.
Beginning on November 3, people organized peace vigils, participated in
conferences, and planned protests against the bloodbath in Fallujah. In
retreats and small meetings, we have begun to explore where we see political
openings and opportunities, and what our priorities should be. In Vermont,
activists are pressing their governor to prevent the deployment of National
Guard troops to Iraq. Elsewhere, people are calling for the creation of “the
mother of all coalitions” to stop the killing, to defend what remains of our
democracy, and to prevent the destruction of what remains of the social
safety net.
For the short term, the movement will be organizing massive demonstrations
to protest Bush’s inauguration. Plans are beginning to fall in place for a
major national demonstration, with smaller protests in communities across
the U.S. The World Social Forum in Porto Allegre will provide an important
forum for international discussions and planning, and in late February
United for Peace and Justice – the largest peace coalition in the U.S. –
will hold its national conference.
And, between now and the spring, in addition to working to end the war, many
of us are educating and mobilizing for the NPT Review Conference – primarily
through the Mayors for Peace campaign and organizing the May 1
demonstration.
We also need to remember that we live within historical time, and that power
concedes nothing without a struggle. Roman, Spanish, Japanese, and most
British and French legions returned home with the decline and collapse of
their empires. It is thus remains essential to understand our anti-bases
organizing as part of wider anti-imperialist, anti-militarist, and
pro-democracy struggles. Because our actions take place within a wider
context, we also do well to remember that the U.S. is increasingly an
isolated and pariah nation that depends on European, Asian, and oil-rich
Middle Eastern nations to subsidize its growing national and trade debts. At
some point, as the former head of the Dutch Foreign Ministry told me, and as
we see in the growing unity of Europe, some of you will conclude that you
have had enough and will bring down the U.S. house of cards – and much of
its military infrastructure – by divesting from U.S. bonds and by pulling
out of selected U.S. companies, much as we did to help end apartheid in
South Africa.
To say that we have been pre-occupied with organizing to end the Iraq war
and to affect regime change at home would be an understatement. I feel badly
that those of us in the anti-bases movement have not been able to do more in
recent months, but we are doing what we can do. Three weeks ago a new and
still informal network of U.S. and international network anti-bases scholars
and activists from across the U.S., Asia and Latin America met at Brown
University in Rhode Island to exchange information and to explore what have
been the most successful strategies for social movements resisting U.S.
bases. (Roots in nationalism, anti-imperialism, and with strong
international ties and the ability to be economically pragmatic were high on
the list.) Because the foundation of any political movement is knowledge
that touches our moral imaginations, contributes to our analyses, and
supports or leads to action, I am hopeful that what we did there and will do
in the future will help to lay the foundations for U.S. Americans to better
fulfill our responsibilities in working to bring our troops, bases, and war
machines home. Among the small steps that we took was the adoption of a
statement opposing the construction of a new base at Haneko and pledging our
support and solidarity to the resistance movement there.
As Herbert Docena can describe at least as well as I can, the past two years
have witnessed a growing wave of anti-bases organizing around the world.
Most impressive is the global anti-bases network that began in East Asia
under the tutelage of Focus on Global South. Meeting in Seoul five years
ago, anti-bases activists from the Asia-Pacific and the U.S. began sharing
information and exploring possible collaborations. Subsequent meetings were
held in Jakarta and Seoul, and the “No Bases” network was launched at the
anti-bases conference held within the World Social Forum in Mumbai last
January.
The network’s e-mail network now serves hundreds of people and organizations
across the world. A web page with detailed information about bases and
resistance campaigns is about to go on line, and we are slowly exploring a
number of ways that we collaborate in actions and solidarity.
Resistance to bases in the Asia-Pacific – the occupation at Haneko, the
candle light vigils in Korea, the resistance of Filipinos to the return of
U.S. troops and bases, and the courageous ways that Native Hawaiians are
turning to their traditional religion and culture to prevent base expansions
and to win back their sacred lands, and further west, the determination of
the disposed people of Diego to return to their homes and culture are
inspiring models for all of us in the anti-bases movement.
In Latin America, communities are resisting the construction of a new
network of bases in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia which are being built to
support the growing U.S. war in Colombia. And in Europe, activists are
committing civil disobedience at U.S. and NATO nuclear weapons bases. In
addition to the British Campaign Against Bases, OFOG - a lively group of
young Scandinavians, is doing important work in scouting out and protesting
at secret bases in Norway and Sweden. These and other groups are meeting,
sharing information, and coordinating their activities within the European
Network for Peace and Human Rights and more recently within the European
Social Forum.
Reality is dynamic. Catastrophes and the routine operations of militarized
systems will continue to provide significant openings to us as they have in
the past. Hegel’s moment of history will make itself felt when we are least
expecting it. Recall the global outrage that followed the 1995 kidnapping
and rape of the twelve year old school girl in Okinawa. “Life” John Lennon
told us “is what happens when you are planning to do other things.” The
unexpected synthesis of competition for the growing Latino vote in the
United States reinforced decades of courageous Puerto Rican organizing and
made closure of the base at “Vieques” a mainstream issue in the U.S.. And it
was Marcos’ murder of Aquino that sparked the EDSA revolution and fueled the
resistance that led to the withdrawal of the U.S. bases from the
Philippines.
In closing, I want to quote from Speak Truth to Power, a Quaker statement
developed early in the Cold War. It speaks as eloquently today as it did
then: “Military power in today’s world is incompatible with freedom. It is
incompatible with providing security, and ineffective in dealing with evil.”
With persistence and imagination, we in the U.S. will act in solidarity with
movements to achieve the withdrawal of U.S. bases.
Arigato.
*Dr. Joseph Gerson is the Director of Programs of the American Friends
Service Committee in New England. He is deeply involved in the U.S. peace
and anti-war movement and participated in the founding conferences of United
for Peace and Justice, The Asia Peace Assembly, and the European Network for
Peace and Human Rights. His books include: The Sun Never Sets: Confronting
the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases , With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic
War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination , and The Deadly Connection:
Nuclear War and U.S. Intervention . For more information, write
JGerson@afsc.org, see
www.afsc.org/pes.htm, or phone 617-661-6130.
CLOSE DIEGO GARCIA, BRING BACK THE CHAGOSSIANS
Martini Gotjé
5 Nikau Road
Blackpool
Waiheke Island 1240
New Zealand
Phone 64-9-3722539
E-mail
m.gotje@xtra.co.nz
