Lucille
01-18-2012, 02:50 PM
The long arm of the American Empire gets even longer.
Department of Defense’s Operational Access: We Own the World (http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2012/01/18/department-of-defenses-operational-access-we-own-the-world/)
One of the primary concerns of the U.S. Department of Defense is that America’s military is permitted to span the entire globe. In a DoD paper released yesterday, the Joint Operational Access Concept was introduced as a strategy to deal with what the military calls “anti-access” and “area denial” scenarios around the world. In other words, the paper makes suggestions on how to overcome situations in which operational access – “the ability to project military force into an operational area with sufficient freedom of action to accomplish the mission” – is hindered. The concept is not new: the U.S. has considered the entire planet as their own jurisdiction since at least WWII. Full spectrum dominance, or global hegemony, is the goal, and is righteous because We Own the World.
[...]
Notice the technocratic description of empire. The notion that any state or non-state actor would dare deny America military access to their territory is patently unacceptable. Those territories belong to America and we have the prerogative to militarily dominate them in order to project our power or conduct an effective war.
This does in fact describe the purpose of America’s Empire of Bases. The Gulf War of 1990-1991 got the United States a military base and contingent military force in Kuwait, which then was essential in the swift invasion of Iraq in 2003. The war in Afghanistan gained us a base and contingent force in Uzbekistan, from which the U.S. supplied its occupying forces. But the imperial game is even more radical now, with the rise of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command. These forces, ”without the knowledge of the American public,” writes historian Nick Turse, act as “a secret force within the U.S. military [that] is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed.” Whether invasions, military bases, or small covert special forces – the U.S. should have free reign over the globe.
The primary aims of Imperial Grand Strategy are three-fold: to use U.S. dominance to (1) ensure privileged access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources (2) establish proxy military bases for use in any conflict and (3) to prevent any other peer competitor from gaining their own dominance, or independence from this system. As a Top Secret National Security Council briefing put it in 1954, “the Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,” as it “contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world” as well as “essential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.”
Department of Defense’s Operational Access: We Own the World (http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2012/01/18/department-of-defenses-operational-access-we-own-the-world/)
One of the primary concerns of the U.S. Department of Defense is that America’s military is permitted to span the entire globe. In a DoD paper released yesterday, the Joint Operational Access Concept was introduced as a strategy to deal with what the military calls “anti-access” and “area denial” scenarios around the world. In other words, the paper makes suggestions on how to overcome situations in which operational access – “the ability to project military force into an operational area with sufficient freedom of action to accomplish the mission” – is hindered. The concept is not new: the U.S. has considered the entire planet as their own jurisdiction since at least WWII. Full spectrum dominance, or global hegemony, is the goal, and is righteous because We Own the World.
[...]
Notice the technocratic description of empire. The notion that any state or non-state actor would dare deny America military access to their territory is patently unacceptable. Those territories belong to America and we have the prerogative to militarily dominate them in order to project our power or conduct an effective war.
This does in fact describe the purpose of America’s Empire of Bases. The Gulf War of 1990-1991 got the United States a military base and contingent military force in Kuwait, which then was essential in the swift invasion of Iraq in 2003. The war in Afghanistan gained us a base and contingent force in Uzbekistan, from which the U.S. supplied its occupying forces. But the imperial game is even more radical now, with the rise of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command. These forces, ”without the knowledge of the American public,” writes historian Nick Turse, act as “a secret force within the U.S. military [that] is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed.” Whether invasions, military bases, or small covert special forces – the U.S. should have free reign over the globe.
The primary aims of Imperial Grand Strategy are three-fold: to use U.S. dominance to (1) ensure privileged access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources (2) establish proxy military bases for use in any conflict and (3) to prevent any other peer competitor from gaining their own dominance, or independence from this system. As a Top Secret National Security Council briefing put it in 1954, “the Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,” as it “contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world” as well as “essential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.”