[News] The United States has US special forces deployed in more countries than it does ambassadors

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/america-quarter-wars-middle-east-africa> A
quarter of America's 400 wars have been in the Middle East and Africa,
study finds
By Elis Gjevori - August 12, 2022

A major new study has concluded that US
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> military interventions
"increasingly" target the Middle East and Africa, making up more than a
quarter of the country's campaigns throughout its history.

>From its founding in 1776 to 2019, the US has undertaken almost 400
military interventions, with more than a quarter occurring in the post-Cold
War period, the report also found.

The first major study of its kind, titled *Introducing the Military
Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions, 1776–2019*
<https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/NSBIKPXYGT4U3VRBTPMM/full#.YvJWbY9PcOE.twitter>,
also
found the post-9/11
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/september-11-attacks> era resulted in
"higher hostility levels", with US military adventures becoming
"overwhelmingly commonplace".

"The cumulative impact of what we discovered from our data collection
effort was indeed surprising," said Sidita Kushi, an assistant professor
at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, and one of the study's
authors. "We hadn't expected both the quantity and quality of US military
interventions to be as large as revealed in the data," Kushi told Middle
East Eye.

'Currently, the United States has US special forces deployed in more
countries than it does ambassadors'

*- Professor Monica Duffy Toft, the Fletcher School of Tufts University*

Following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US emerged as the
dominant military power globally. However, this did not translate into a
decrease in military interventions.

"The post-Cold War era has produced fewer great power conflicts and
instances in which to defend vital US interests, yet US military
interventions continue at high rates and higher hostilities," the report
concluded. "This militaristic pattern persists during a time of relative
peace, one of arguably fewer direct threats to the US homeland and
security."
'Global War on Terror'

Following the end of the Cold War, US humanitarian military interventions
were increasingly justified under the banner of human rights.

During the post-9/11 US "Global War on Terror" (GWOT), it should not be
surprising that Washington chose to use military force to "solve its
problems", said Monica Duffy Toft, professor of international politics at
the Fletcher School of Tufts University, also in Massachusetts.

"The GWOT is, in fact, emblematic of the way in which the US came to solve
problems in this period: war," Toft, co-author of the study, told MEE.

The study found that the end of the Cold War unchained US military global
ambitions. Even as US rivals reduced their military intervention,
Washington "began to escalate its hostilities", resulting in a "widening
gap between US actions relative to its opponents".

Today, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute puts the cost
of the US military at more than $800bn annually
<https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2022/world-military-expenditure-passes-2-trillion-first-time>,
accounting for almost 40 percent of global military spending.

"The US continues to dramatically prioritise funding of its Department of
Defense while limiting funding and roles for its Department of State," said
Toft, adding that "currently, the United States has US special forces
deployed in more countries than it does ambassadors".

US military interventions have also become more obscure. Gone are the days
when Washington threw the full might of its army into a conflict, as it did
in Iraq <https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/inside-iraq> and Afghanistan
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/afghanistan>. Today, remote military
bases, such as the $110m Agadez airfield in Niger, conduct drone strikes
away from the public eye across much of the Sahel.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration expanded the US military
footprint in Africa by reversing a decision by former US President Donald
Trump to pull troops out of Somalia, thereby establishing a permanent
military base in the country.
'Violence tends to beget violence'

America's global military footprints "might be surprising to Americans.
Unfortunately, they are hardly surprising to the rest of the world," Kushi
told MEE, adding that "US legitimacy has seriously suffered, largely as a
result of its now decades-long hyper-interventionist stance".

While for much of its history, the US looked at its use of military force
as a last resort, recent decades have upended that tradition, warns Kushi,
and with it, a "lot of respect for the United States, even among our
allies".

The authors are quick to note that in some instances, American power has
been a force for good, such as the US-led intervention in Kosovo, which
prevented a potential genocide. More broadly, however, the study "serves as
a warning" that continued US military interventions are having a less than
positive impact on America's national security and the world

A swift course correction by America's elite, who have become conditioned
to seeing a military solution to so much of the country's perceived global
problems, is unlikely in the near term at least, said Toft.

"Violence tends to beget violence, and even a smart return toward a
multi-factor foreign policy - a foreign policy which relies on allies'
wisdom, which engages diplomacy, trade and aid first, and force last - can
take years to bear fruit," added Toft.

Given that America's adversaries have also become inured to US military
interventions, they can be "forgiven for their scepticism" and for not
believing that the country's foreign policy elite could have a change of
heart. On foreign policy, at least, the Democratic and Republican parties
have mainly held a consistent line, which more or less advanced US military
interventions abroad.

"Given the current landscape of interventions, and inertia, we expect to
see a continuing upward trend on US interventions in both MENA and
Sub-Saharan Africa," warned Toft.
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