An article last week described how the proposals in the current QDR build on what the Department of Defense dubbed the transformation of the U.S. military in 2001. (See “Pentagon: Washington faces ‘long war,’” in March 13 Militant.)

The 2006 review explicitly extends the U.S. military’s “key geographic operational area” from its 2001 focus on Europe, the Middle East, and Northeast Asia to include Africa and Latin America. It singles out the government of Venezuela as a particular threat to Washington.

“China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States,” the defense review also warns. It says Washington will attempt to dissuade Beijing or any other “hostile power” from pursuing that course, but it must also face “the possibility that cooperative approaches by themselves may fail to preclude future conflict.”  
 
Africa and Latin America
The U.S. military has strengthened its presence in Africa in relation to Paris and London, Washington’s main competitors for markets and resources on the continent. The Pentagon has established a Combined Joint Task Force at the Horn of Africa in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. The U.S. European Command heads a “counterterrorism” initiative involving troops from nine African countries in the Trans-Sahara region—Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia. U.S. combat pilots are training pilots in Niger. And the U.S. military is building on its collaboration with governments in West Africa after the 2003 military intervention in Liberia, says the QDR.

U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited the north African countries of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco in February. This first visit to Algeria by a U.S. defense secretary was aimed at deepening cooperation by Algiers in Washington’s “war on terrorism.” While there, Rumsfeld discussed possible arms sales to Algeria.

The defense review emphasizes the need for more U.S. military attention to Latin America. It asserts that slow economic growth and stark economic inequality have led to a resurgence of “populist authoritarian movements,” such as that in Venezuela.

Washington is leading a course of confrontation against Caracas. On February 2, Rumsfeld likened Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez to Hitler. Rumsfeld said he is “concerned” not only about Venezuela, but about the recent election of Evo Morales as the president of Bolivia. A leader of the Movement toward Socialism, Morales has pledged a close alliance with Caracas and Havana.  
 
India vs. China
In a section on “emerging powers,” the QDR says Beijing continues to build up its military capabilities in order to improve its ability to “project power beyond its borders.” It adds that U.S. government policy remains to encourage China to play a constructive role on common security issues—including “terrorism, proliferation, narcotics, and piracy.”

The review notes that China has accelerated modernization of its military to develop new options in a potential conflict with Taiwan—a reference to the capitalist enclave on the Chinese island across the straits from the mainland, which is backed by Washington and Tokyo.

The QDR indicates that another emerging power in the region, India, is different from China and should be treated by Washington as a “key strategic partner.” The White House soon implemented this course with its nuclear accord with New Delhi (see article in this issue).

“Bush’s push to transform the relationship between the world’s most powerful and most populous democracies into a strategic alliance locked in by intense military, nuclear, scientific, and agricultural cooperation amount to an overarching response to the expansion of Chinese influence in Asia,” said an article in the March 3-4 International Herald Tribune, titled “Nuclear deal with India a sign of new U.S. focus.” It added that Beijing responded with “grumpiness.”  
 
‘Coalitions of the willing’
A related Conference on Security Policy, held in Munich February 4, registered further steps by Washington in expanding NATO into a worldwide imperialist military alliance under U.S. command. It also showed that more and more governments in Europe—including those that have clashed with Washington over foreign policy, such as Paris and Berlin—are being drawn into U.S.-led “coalitions of the willing” on a case-by-case basis.

“We have begun an historic transformation of NATO,” Rumsfeld said at that meeting, and established other military coalitions that have drawn into action a wide range of governments under U.S. leadership. He pointed to the increased combat role European governments have assumed in military operations in Afghanistan under NATO’s command, and Washington’s Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Under the PSI, Washington and its allies have conducted piracy on the high seas—boarding ships, and sometimes confiscating their cargo, after alleging the vessels may be transporting material that could be used in building “weapons of mass destruction.”

When Rumsfeld was asked whether Japan and Australia could be included in NATO, he replied, “It is clear that the old NATO…defending the NATO treaty area, is a NATO of the past.” He added that “linkage of some kind” between NATO and the Japanese and Australian militaries would make sense.

Rumsfeld also pressed NATO member states to increase military spending. “Today 3.7 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States goes toward our national defense,” he said. “Only six of our 25 NATO allies spend even 2 percent or more of their GDP on defense, and 19 Allies—I repeat, 19 NATO allies—do not even spend 2 percent.”
 
 
Related articles:
Australia to send more troops to Afghanistan
U.S. gov’t uses nuclear deal to bring India into its fold  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home