New Cold War? U.S. Shifts Geographical Focus

To start, I want to make it clear that the true geographical focus of the U.S., as a world imperial power, is nothing less than the entire world. In this post I am referring specifically to its more overt military operations, as opposed to CIA actions and other things more “under the radar.” For the past decade or more, U.S. military focus has concentrated overwhelmingly on the Middle East, particularly at the sites of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not that I see a complete abandonment of these regions anytime soon, but it appears that the center of gravity of military strategy is spreading in two different directions.

First, there is Africa. The ‘Arab Spring’ in its historic import is coming to symbolize not so much some real transformative movement, but more the moment when the U.S. military started bringing in “the big guns” to Africa. Obviously the U.S. has diligently been helping to overthrow governments and support brutal dictators and ethnic conflict in Africa for the duration of the decolonization/post-WW2 era. Yet, they never thought The Dark Continent deserved the best of its military resources. Not until they finally got their opportunity to overthrow Gaddafi.

Side note. Although I am restricting my discussion to the U.S., clearly, as always, the interests and actions of other Western powers are intertwined with those of the U.S. In that vein, the shift toward Africa has coincided with the re-emergence of French imperialism. The French, of course, were at the forefront of the decision to invade Libya, and are pretty much going solo right now in Mali.

Back to the U.S. Now that the U.S. has been getting weapons into the hands of militant groups, and Islamist movements are re-branding themselves as Al Qaeda syndicates, it is possible for the U.S. to argue that Africa is an important front in the War on Terror. As such, the military is very visibly upgrading its African operations, including more advanced surveillance and killing technology – complete with a brand new drone base in Niger! Some analysts are even predicting that Mali will become the next Afghanistan.

But that’s not all. The U.S. is also stepping up its military presence in the Pacific. The move was never designed to be secret and has been trumpeted by the Obama administration as a means of countering Chinese regional hegemony. Less well-known is the way in which the U.S. has been covertly trying to provoke conflict among various Asian states and China. For example, goading the Philippines (an important U.S. ally) into disputing the Chinese occupation of the Spratly Islands.

In fact, China may be a common denominator in both of these geographical shifts. True, Africa is rich with resources, including gold, oil, and uranium – all coveted by Western powers (and this may largely explain France’s interests). But the U.S. (and its Western allies) is concerned about the Chinese encroaching on its African investment opportunities. Many Africans are optimistic about the possible benefits of Chinese investment for “rising Africa,” and China, seeing limitless potential for exploitation, is pouring in the capital. The thing about capitalism, though, is that it is characterized by a centrifugal inertia which demands ever larger markets, resource-rich peripheries, and more opportunities for investment. Western economic hegemony cannot abide a competitor. Witness what happened to the Soviet Union! In this way, the characterization of relations between the U.S. and China as “the new Cold War” is quite apt. The differences in Cold War Part 2 are that 1) the ideological divisions have somewhat lost their significance, such that the Chinese can barely manage to still call themselves “Communist” and are in no way pursuing systematic support of socialist or communist regimes (although China is perceived by many in the Third World as more “anti-colonial” and friendly);  2) "Terrorism" has superseded "Communism" as The Great Evil;  3) far from having entered a period of great economic expansion, the world is languishing in the midst of the latest manifestation of a decades-long economic contraction, which has the power to create enormous global instability; and 4) U.S. hegemony may be teetering on the brink.

It’s hard to know how all of this will play out. At the very least, I am expecting to see Africa play a more significant role in U.S. foreign policy.

What is Important about the Benghazi Attack?

I previously asserted that structured opposition (organizing and condensing a limitless variety of viewpoints into two ostensibly antagonistic factions) serves to create an illusion of free speech and a "free marketplace of ideas," when, in fact, anything outside of that dichotomous scheme is actively suppressed. Obviously, as a Marxist, my first example is the way in which Marxist arguments are routinely stigmatized and undermined. They are not legitimate in the public sphere.

But this phenomenon has even deeper significance, particularly for the way in which information is transmitted. Each side of the opposition has their own ideological framework, commitments, and a set of talking points, all of which completely determines the treatment of any new information. It reminds me of Mad Libs. The narrative is already set, but new adjectives and nouns can fill in the blanks as the circumstances require.

So, let's look at the Benghazi attack (obviously my ultimate goal with this post). From the beginning, the military intervention in Libya was framed as a humanitarian undertaking, designed to aid an independently thriving grassroots opposition movement. When Gaddafi was captured, the Obama Administration quickly proclaimed that the operation was done - quick and clean. So easy.

Then there's this attack on an embassy in Benghazi, which we are initially told was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim film. When information gets out that it was actually a planned attack and there is a large CIA base nearby, there is now the potential for probing questions. What is the CIA doing there? What kind of presence have they had in Libya? Why was the embassy attacked? There is, of course, plenty of evidence that the CIA was quite involved, from the beginning, in the Libyan civil war. There is also plenty of evidence that it is currently using this base to transfer weapons to militant groups (particularly to Syrian rebels) and that the embassy was just providing a cover for the operation. The group that coordinated the attack was upset that the CIA merely used them to serve broader geopolitical goals.

All of this information had the potential to explode into the public sphere. This would have initiated discussions about the role of the CIA in organizing rebel groups and fomenting revolution for the ultimate purpose of regime change. Maybe we could have linked all of this information to the current situation in Mali and then voiced our opposition to military incursions in this region.

But what happened was this. The Republican Party wanted to use the cover up to their benefit, without exposing the CIA. No one wants to mess with the CIA. (Plus, the Republican Party has an ideological loyalty to the military-intelligence complex.) So, in their messaging, they decided to bracket all the information about the CIA, still treat the Benghazi embassy as a legitimate embassy under the control of the State Department, and direct all of their criticism toward the way the State Department secured the embassy and responded to the attack. In other words, they framed it as another case of government incompetence (which is a primary Republican ideological narrative). Of course, the Democrats have the same loyalties to the military-intelligence complex, and simply formed their talking points in reaction to the Republican argument.

The result? A debate about security, and honesty, and the State Department, and very little about the CIA. Since both political parties share a key commitment (and are probably completely subservient to the military and intelligence communities) the public conversation about a potentially illuminating event has elided everything that is important for the public to know, instead focusing on the most trivial details.

Why Afghanistan?

On Thursday's Daily Show, the guest was Peter Tomsen, a former U.S. Special Envoy and expert on Afghanistan.  Now, there are probably many Daily Show interviews, and many other such interviews from other sources, that I could use to make the point I am about to argue, but I just happened to "feel like it" this time.  So there was nothing particularly special about this interview.

The general point I want to raise is:  such a distorted view of the world has been constructed and promulgated, that even the "experts" are often clueless and misguided.  Never trust an expert.  Or at least, never trust an expert just because they are an expert.  Do your own research so that you can evaluate claims with reference to your own knowledge base.

The Peter Tomsen interview demonstrated the ineptitude of experts quite well.  For example, he suggests that there has been so much interest in Afghanistan because it is located on a plateau, which gives its occupier strategic military advantage.  Even Jon could see the ridiculousness of this proposition, it seemed from his jokes.  It is, in fact, quite an outmoded understanding of geopolitical strategy.

The salience of things like geographical features, or even oil, is not what it used to be.  What matters now is having neocolonial control over other governments so that they willingly "open" their markets to foreign investment and create projects that enable or require the involvement of multinational corporations.  (In Afghanistan, for example, whether intended or unintended consequence, the infrastructural devastation cause by all of the wars has actually allowed some corporations to profit enormously from reconstruction efforts.)  I have argued before that "Islamic extremists," such as the Taliban, are only threatening to the United States when they refuse to cooperate with the U.S. and its corporate interests.  Otherwise, the U.S. is all to happy to openly or covertly support Islamist groups.  It is clear, then, what the true strategic interest is.

Probably the most laughable and blatantly false thing that Tomsen said was that the Pakistani government has control over the ISI.  Expert on what now?

Understanding Western Intervention In Libya

I would actually like to address the MENA unrest once more before moving on (a series on health is to follow!).  I just read a blurb by one of my favorite neo-Marxist theorists, Immanuel Walllerstein, which seeks to make some sense out of the U.S./NATO decision to intervene in the Libyan conflict.  His premise:  that it was more a matter of subduing the Arab resistance movement and maintaining the geopolitical structure of the region than about humanitarian aid or oil.  Read "The Great Libyan Distraction."