Since I have started writing blogs, one of my assertions has
been that United States is the biggest warmonger as well initiator of regime change
programs around the world. This agenda is aimed at serving producers of lethal
arsenal in the United States as well foreign policy objectives.
The
United States has waged nearly 400 military interventions since its founding in
1776, according to a new research published lately. According to the study
by the Military Intervention Project, A New Dataset on US Military
Interventions, 1776–2019, half of those conflicts and other uses of force
occurred between 1950 and 2019.
More than a quarter of them have taken place since the end
of the Cold War. Out of the nearly 400 military interventions, 34% have
been in Latin America and the Caribbean; 23% in East Asia and the Pacific
region; 14% in West Asia and North Africa; and 13% in Europe and Central Asia.
The authors find that US interventions have increased and
intensified in recent years. While the Cold War era (1946 – 1989) and the
period between 1868 – 1917 were the most militaristically active for the United
States, the post-9/11 era has already taken the third spot in all of US history
and most of that military adventurism has been in West Asia.
It says, “These interventions have only increased and
intensified in recent years, with the US militarily intervening over 200 times
after World War II and over 25% of all US military interventions occurring
during the post-Cold War era.”
Until the end of the Cold War, US military hostility was
generally proportional to that of its rivals. Since then, the US began to
escalate its hostilities as its rivals deescalate it, marking the beginning of
America’s more kinetic foreign policy.
The
study reads, “Some scholars have explained such increasing interventionist trends
as part of the new norm of contingent sovereignty, which explicitly challenges
the traditional principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other
states. Particularly regarding the US, one perspective is that the country is
evolving past its Cold War doctrine.”
The
study notes, “US military interventions to promote geopolitical interests
cannot explain the dynamics of the post-Cold War era. If the US primarily
intervenes when its security interests are threatened, we expect the US to
intervene less in an era void of peer competitors where fewer vital interests
are arguably at stake.”
The authors point out that other researchers have asserted
the US uses force abroad without a clear organizing principle and thus its
military missions have had disastrous long-term and unintended consequences.
In 2018, a co-author said, “Current patterns of US military
engagement as kinetic diplomacy, diplomacy solely through armed force,” the research
says, in the past years.
While US Ambassadors are operating in one-third of the
world’s countries, US special operators are active in three-fourths.
A challenging aspect of measuring military interventions is
how to define an intervention, the research notes. The study highlights that
the definition of US military intervention may fall under any of the following
categories.
The movement of regular troops or forces of one country
inside another one in the context of some political issue or dispute. To
separate higher intensity interventions from minor skirmishes, this definition
excludes paramilitaries, government-backed militias, and other security forces
that are not part of the regular uniformed military of a state.
Similarly,
“Events must be purposeful, not accidental.” Inadvertent border crossings are
not included in this definition and neither are unintentional confrontations
between planes or naval ships. The definition excludes soldiers engaging in
exercises in a foreign land, transporting forces across borders, or on foreign
bases. Furthermore, the definition categorizes international military
interventions by temporal guidelines so that interventions are continuous if
repeated acts occur within 6 months of one another.
Instances in which the United States has used its Armed
Forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for
other than normal peacetime purposes...Covert operations, disaster relief, and
routine alliance stationing and training exercises are not included here, nor
are the Civil and Revolutionary Wars and the continual use of US military units
in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the
United States.
The political use of military force involving ground troops
of either the US Army or Marine Corps in an active attempt to influence the
behavior of other nations
Use of armed force that involves the official deployment of
at least 500 regular military personnel (ground, air, or naval) to attain
immediate term political objectives through action against a foreign adversary
Routine military movements and operations without a defined
target like military training exercises, the routine forward deployment of
military troops, non-combatant evacuation operations, and disaster relief
should be excluded
Militarized interstate disputes are united historical cases
of conflict in which the threat, display, or use of military force short of war
by one member state is explicitly directed towards the government, official
representatives, official forces, property, or territory of another state
This recent pattern
of international relations conducted largely through armed force, it noted, has
increasingly targeted West Asia and Africa. These regions have seen both
large-scale U.S. wars, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, and low-profile combat in
nations such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, and
Tunisia.
The authors say “the U.S. has increased its military usage
of force abroad since the end of the Cold War. Over this period the U.S. has
preferred the direct usage of force over threats or displays of force,
increasing its hostility levels while its target states have decreased theirs.
Along the way, the regions of interest have changed as well. Up until World War
II, the U.S. frequently intervened in Latin America and Europe,” but beginning
in the 1950s, the U.S. shifted its focus to West Asia and the North Africa
region.
The data comprises confirmed covert operations and
low-profile interventions by Special Operations forces, however, it points out
that US government secrecy and scrupulous sourcing standards of the public
database it studied guarantees that the post-9/11 tally is an undercount.
The post-9/11 era appear to be the third most active for US
interventions of relatively higher hostility levels. In this era, threats of
force are absent, while the use of force has been overwhelmingly commonplace.
Since 2000 alone, the US has engaged in at least 30 military interventions.
Experts say that the Pentagon has likely used secretive
authority to carry out combat beyond the scope of any authorization for the use
of military force or permissible self-defense.
They point out that while secretive “127e” programs in
Somalia and Yemen for instance overlap with well-known US military
interventions, other uses of the authority, such as in Egypt and Lebanon, may
not. The same goes for even lesser-known programs like “Section
1202”.
US
military conflicts have provided American arms manufacturers with ample
opportunity to make a profit and prolong the country’s history of violence
based on its founding.
According
to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Global
military expenditure is estimated to have been US$1,917 billion in 2019, the
highest level since 1988.
With a military expenditure of US$732 billion, the US
remained by far the largest spender in the world in 2019, accounting for 38% of
global military spending. The US spent almost as much on its military in 2019
as the next 10 highest spenders combined.
Today, SIPRI puts the cost of the US military at more than US$800
billion annually, accounting for almost 40% of global military spending.
