Global Military Dominance

If US policy is respectful of other peoples’ sovereignty and needs, then we might wonder why US leaders find it necessary to engage in a relentless push for global military domination. Since the 1990s they have been guided by various versions of a policy plan put together by Dick Cheney (soon to become U.S. vice-president) with Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell, who respectively became secretaries of Defense and State. The agenda was for the United States to exercise unilateral rule over the world. As one writer put it:

The United States presides over an armed planetary force of a magnitude never before seen in human history. As listed by the Department of Defense, this force includes over a half-million troops stationed at over 700 military bases around the planet and many more within the fifty states, including numerous secret ones that go uncounted along with unusually large bases recently constructed in Central Asia, Iraq, Colombia, and Kosovo.¹⁰ In 2009 a democratically elected progressive government in Ecuador closed down the last US military base on its soil, claiming it was a violation of that country’s sovereignty. Both Ecuador and Bolivia now have a ban on foreign bases written into their constitutions.

The US global war machine boasts an arsenal of over 5,000 strategic nuclear warheads¹¹ and 22,000 tactical ones, along with a naval strike force greater in total tonnage and firepower than all the other navies of the world combined, sailing every ocean and making port at every continent. Bomber squadrons and long-range missiles can deliver enough explosive force to cripple the infrastructures of entire countries anywhere on the globe. US rapid deployment forces have a firepower in conventional weaponry vastly superior to any other nation’s force. Satellites and US spy planes conduct a surveillance that blankets the entire planet. Recent years brought a skyrocketing increase in military spending for the “war on terrorism.”¹²

By 2011 the Obama administration was planning to deploy, on US soil, a new class of weapon capable of reaching any corner of the planet in less than an hour. The weapon will deliver a conventional warhead of enormous explosive force at pinpoint accuracy and phenomenally high speed, mimicking the destructive impact of a nuclear warhead and greatly diminishing America’s reliance on its nuclear arsenal.¹³

The Pentagon has also developed an arsenal of space weaponry that runs the risk of sparking an arms race in outer space, including the unmanned X-37 space plane now circling Earth. The goal is to develop space vehicles that can hit terrestrial and outer space targets (including satellites) and send reconnaissance and attack drones back into the atmosphere.¹⁴ By 2010 the Obama administration had stated its commitment to “equitable” arms control measures and “openness and transparency” among nations in conducting operations in outer space, while continuing a claim “to use space for national security activities.”¹⁵

Despite the development of new weaponry, Washington showed no readiness to diminish its aging stockpile of tactical nuclear missiles in Europe. Requests by several NATO allies to cut back were rejected by the White House. As one reporter noted, “Many analysts consider these weapons a dangerous relic of the cold war, expensive to safeguard and deadly if they fell into the wrong hands.”¹⁶

In the realm of conventional arms also, the United States has exercised an unmatched global reach, accounting for almost 70 percent of the world’s conventional arms sales. Since World War II, Washington has given hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to train and equip the troops and internal security forces of more than eighty countries, the purpose being not to defend these nations from outside invasion but to protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic insurgency.

How do we know this? By observing that:

• With few exceptions there is no evidence suggesting that these various régimes have ever been threatened by neighboring countries.
• There is a great deal of evidence that the US-supported military and security forces and death squads in many of these countries have been repeatedly used to destroy popular reformist movements and insurgencies within the countries themselves, ones that advocate egalitarian redistributive (“leftist”) politics.
• Most “friendly” recipient régimes have supported the integration of their economies into a global system of corporate domination, opening themselves to foreign penetration on “free trade” terms singularly favorable to transnational investors.¹⁷

Note also the Pentagon’s wide-ranging incursions into everyday life in America. The military exercises a censorial role in the making of Hollywood war films and cultivates connections with the World Wrestling Entertainment, NASCAR, Starbucks, and companies that deal with everything from iPods to Oakley sunglasses. The military is contractually involved in hundreds of scientific research projects, including such exotic and frightful undertakings as creating “cyborg insects” that can be remotely controlled and armed with bio-weapons. The Pentagon also is devising ways to socialize youngsters into having a receptive “culture of cool” response to the military by making friends on MySpace and other cyberspace connections and promotions.¹⁸