Obama and Pentagon prepare to spend more on counterinsurgency preparation

The following notes are based on highlights of an article article by Michael T. Klare that appear in the April 26th issue of The Nation magazine. The title of the article is "Two, Three, Many Afghanistans." The complete article is available at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100426/Klare

The chief point of Klare’s article is that “Obama's Pentagon is preparing for a number of counterinsurgencies in the developing world,” all related to terrorism, failing states, rogue states, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, or other national-defense-sounding rationales. We gotta get them before they get us. Klare writes there are many similarities in the Obama plan to the counter-insurgency program that emerged back in the early 1960s under President Kennedy’s administration, when Kennedy “authorized a vast expansion of Special Forces” while continuing the expenditures on conventional and nuclear warfare.

Obama is interested in the same kind of military expansion. Klare quotes from a speech given by President Obama on “violent extremism,” in which Obama said: “Unlike the great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the twentieth century, our effort will involve disorderly regions, failed states, diffuse enemies….(consequently) we’ll have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power.” The Obama counterinsurgency policy will be used to keep Al Qaeda and other groups assumed connected to it from establishing a foothold anywhere in the world of developing countries.

Obama's counterinsurgency doctrine was, Klare writes, “first enunciated in a series of speeches by Obama and Gates [Secretary of Defense], and has been given formal character in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s Congressionally mandated overhaul of strategy,” released on the first of February. The QDR reaffirms the idea of America “as [being] a global power with global responsibilities.” However, there are changes in the current international situation, with the growth of “non-state actors, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and other destructive enabling technologies.” Therefore, according to the QDR, US forces must be able to respond to “the full range of challenges that could emerge from a complex and dynamic security environment.” This is a rationale for endless wars, in which the government, especially the Pentagon and its congressional and industry supporters, can identify enemies in any number of places that are perceived as a danger to our national security.

US forces must “be equipped for counterinsurgency-type operations: helicopters, small arms, body armor, night-vision devices, mine-resistant vehicles, aerial gunships, surveillance drones and the like.” More revenues for Special Forces. More revenues for our partners “to strengthen their capacity for internal security.” The US has already exported this model to other areas, “supporting counterinsurgency operations in Columbia, the Philippines, and Yemen, among other countries.”

“The greatest risk,” Klare emphasizes, “is that the military will become bogged down in a constellation of grueling, low-level wars.” At the same time, the policy also wants more funding for conventional high-intensity warfare (e.g., big ships, big planes, submarines, large conventional armies, etc) “thereby producing ever-increasing military budgets, a growing national deficit and persistent economic paralysis.” The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan already demonstrate how costly and counterproductive war can be, whatever its guise.

What Klare does not emphasize in this article, but does document in his books and other writing, is that the real challenge for the US comes from a world in which there are increasingly not enough resources to go round. Military force will not help us resolve this basic fact, but only exacerbate it. We need different economic policies than we have, ones that encourage cooperation, equity, and an economic model that is consistent with the earth. In the meantime, we do the opposite, with military interventions in the forefront.