US wages almost 400 military interventions

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.

 

Lithium price rises to record high level

According to a report by South China Morning Post, lithium metal price in the Chinese market reached US$315,000/ton; just days after Argentinean President Alberto Fernandez signed his country up for China’s Belt and Road Initiative during a high-profile trip to Beijing this month.

The spot price has risen to this level for the first time – more than four times what it cost a year ago.

The two countries happen to be the world’s major players in the supply chain of the metal – an essential material used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

Argentina is located in a region with the highest concentrations of the mineral – South America’s so-called Lithium Triangle, which contains more than half of the world’s reserves.

Chinese companies are the biggest buyers and investors of lithium mines around the globe and refine two-thirds of the world’s lithium.

A vast deposit of one of the most highly coveted metals on Earth could potentially be located in the region around Mount Everest, according to Chinese scientists.

The researchers’ discovery of lithium near the world’s tallest mountain comes as global demand for the metal has been skyrocketing, sending prices to record levels and further fuelling geopolitical competition for strategic resources.

The ore deposit may contain as much as 1.0125 million tons of lithium oxide, according to the group of scientists from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

But it is not yet known how much the new Himalayan deposit – dubbed Qiongjiagang, after the nearest peak – could be worth.

It may also be the country’s third-largest lithium deposit after one at the Bailong Mountain site in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and the Jiajika deposit in Sichuan province, according to a report by China Science Daily.

The content rate of lithium oxide in the newly discovered deposit is also high enough to be of “industrial value”, according to the report.

“The Qiongjiagang lithium pegmatite deposit has good conditions for mining,” Qin Kezhang, Head of Research Team, was quoted as saying.

He pointed to the shallowness of the deposit and the quality of the ore, in noting that it would be relatively easy to mine and extract. He also said it is also in a favorable location, geographically – far from the heart of the Qomolangma nature preserve and still accessible. Qomolangma is the Tibetan name for Everest.

However, Qin said, exploitation of the lithium deposit is a long way off, as it is still in the initial “pre-study” phase.

As major economies are all aiming to shift to electric cars in the global fight against climate change, the silvery-white metal has been increasingly considered “new oil” or “white gold”, as it is an essential component in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

According to an estimate from the International Energy Agency, global demand for lithium would grow by more than 4,000% by 2040 if the world achieves its climate goals.

Currently, 85% of lithium comes from Latin America and Australia, according to market intelligence provider IHS Markit. The two regions are home to 64% of the world’s known lithium, according to the 2022 Mineral Commodity Summary from the United States Geological Survey.

The newly discovered deposit is said to be a type of lithium-bearing rock called spodumene – the same as that from Australia – while deposits in Latin America are found in brine lakes spanning the borders of Bolivia, Argentina and Chile – known as the Lithium Triangle.

As the world’s biggest EV market, Chinese companies refine two-thirds of the world’s lithium and dominate the global battery production.

That dominance has triggered concerns among the United States and its allies, which have vowed to reduce their supply-chain dependence on China.

Meanwhile, three quarters of the mineral supply in China relies on imports. More than 96 per cent of spodumene exports from Australia go to China, IHS Markit’s data showed, while more and more Chinese companies are venturing into Latin America for mining projects.

Chinese sale of fighter jet to Pakistan attracts other markets with ambitious plans but thin wallets

In December 2021, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) announced that it would soon acquire 25 Chinese-made J-10C combat aircraft. This purchase was a long time coming. Speculation that the PAF would acquire the J-10 goes back at least a decade.

Earlier plans to buy up several dozen J-10s were scuttled by a lack of funding, but India’s decision to purchase 36 highly advanced, French-made Rafale fighter jets apparently pushed Pakistan to move forward with their own buy of modern fighters.

Beijing has not had much luck lately exporting its fighter jets. It has tried to flog some of its less capable combat aircraft on the global market but with little success.

During the 1990s and 2000s, China offered export versions of two domestically-built fighter jets, the JH-7 (designated the FBC-1 Flying Leopard) and the F-8IIM (a heavily upgraded MiG-21, a plane that first flew in the 1950s). Neither of these planes secured an overseas sale.

Until now, China’s best result has been a handful of sales of its JF-17 to Burma (Myanmar) and Nigeria. The JF-17 is a rather basic lightweight fighter jet built explicitly for export. Pakistan has been its biggest buyer, with intentions of acquiring up to 200 planes. At the same time, these JF-17s will be manufactured in Pakistan and equipped with Western radar and Russian engines. There is very little Chinese about this aircraft.

Not surprisingly, the Chinese have pinned a lot of hope on the J-10 when it comes to overseas sales. The J-10 was China’s first “fourth-generation-plus” combat aircraft. It is an agile, single-engine fighter jet roughly in the same class as the US F-16C. It features fly-by-wire flight controls and a “glass cockpit,” meaning that it utilizes several multi-function flat-panel displays, as opposed to traditional analog instruments.

The J-10 has had its share of teething problems. Although its development was initiated in the mid-1980s, it didn’t fly until 1998, and it was nearly 20 years before it entered operational service with China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). Even now, it is equipped with a Russian turbofan engine—underscoring China’s ongoing difficulties with developing a usable jet engine.

The latest variant, the J-10C—the version being exported to Pakistan—is considered to be a relatively advanced fighter. The J-10C features highly advanced active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and is capable of firing long-range missiles, meaning that it could engage enemy aircraft as far away as 124 miles.

One report claims that the J-10C is comparable to the most advanced versions of the F-16 (the so-called “Block 60/70” version).

China, despite being consistently among the top 10 arms exporting nations, is still essentially a niche supplier of weapons systems. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Chinese arms exports in 2020 consisted mainly of tactical missile systems (such as anti-tank weapons or anti-ship cruise missiles) and armed drones. After that come artillery systems, mortars, and lightly armored vehicles.

Sales of big-ticket items, such as warships, submarines, main battle tanks, and fighter jets, were few and far between—the major exceptions being the sale of Yuan-class submarines to Pakistan and Thailand, and offshore patrol vessels to Malaysia.

In fact, in 2020 China slipped to number eight on SIPRI’s list of leading arms exporters, behind France, German, and even Spain. Its arms sales for the period 2016–2020 were less than one-sixth those of the United States, the world’s leading arms exporter.

Armed drones, in fact, are China’s main exception to the rule of exporting rather prosaic weapons systems. As noted in an earlier article, Beijing has had great success selling armed drones.

According to SIPRI, China has exported armed drones to at least 16 countries on three continents, including Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These deals have earned Beijing more than US$700 million in export sales.

China has quickly become the developing world’s go-to source for armed drones, and Chinese drones are being used regularly in combat. While perhaps not as advanced as their competitors, Chinese drones are filling a critical—and lucrative—market niche.

Countries may not be lining up to buy most Chinese weapons, but armed drones are a segment where Beijing has several advantages over its competitors: a “good-enough” product—at a relatively low price—to just about anyone who has the cash, and with few or no questions asked.

Will Beijing be able to duplicate its success with exporting the J-10 that is has had with armed drones? It is probably too soon to say. Certainly, China faces a lot of competition in the global fighter business and, therefore, prospects for overseas sales of the J-10 remain dim.

Nevertheless, a successful sale of the J-10 to Pakistan raises the prospects that China could flood the global arms market with a relatively cheap and yet quite capable fighter jet. In particular, the J-10 could appeal to African, Asian, and Latin American air forces with ambitious plans and thin wallets.

Iran to launch direct shipping line to South Africa and Latin America

Iran has expressed its plan to launch a direct shipping line to South Africa and Latin American countries in near future; this was stated by an official with the Iranian Chamber of Cooperatives (ICC). Babak Afghahi, Head of non-oil trade and export development committee of ICC stated that the proposed shipping line will connect Southern Iranian ports to the ports of South Africa and then to Latin American countries, specifically Brazil.

He said, shipping line is going to be launched with the support of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and is aimed at developing Iranian non-oil trade with the countries in the mentioned regions.

“With the support of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, considering the capacity of Iran's cargo export to the mentioned destinations, the chambers of commerce across the country, the Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) of Iran and other export bodies have been informed about the new development,” Afghahi said.

As reported by IRNA, the Islamic Republic’s trade with South Africa reached US$43 million in the first six months of the previous Iranian calendar year, while the figure stood at US$27 million in the same period a year ago.

Following a new strategy for boosting non-oil trade and distancing the country’s economy from oil, Iran has been launching several direct shipping lines to its major trade destinations over the past few years.

Earlier this month, the Head of Iran-Syria Joint Chamber of Commerce Keyvan Kashefi announced the establishment of a direct shipping line between Iran’s southern port of Bandar Abbas and Syria’s Mediterranean port of Latakia.

Iran has also launched five direct shipping lines to Oman and is planning to establish direct routes to Qatar, India, Turkmenistan, and Russia as well.