In years before 2014, the Afghan think tanks would opine that the US may wind down Afghanistan’s conflict through the end of this year, inferring that the goal of founding the nine large military bases across the country is almost accomplished. Many would delightfully say that Afghanistan is phasing into a new chapter with the flames of war quelled as the US government insisted on troop withdrawal.
Entrenching military headquarters in strangers’ territories has no excuse or legal ground under any circumstances. The Afghan nation would cast aside objection to this permanent military foothold thanks in most part to the bitter reality that the US operates about 800 enormous military stations and installations in more than 70 countries worldwide, and would embrace the approach of so many other host countries that are economically and militarily too powerful, provided that they are offered the same peaceful life the others enjoy.
Afghanistan’s war, notorious for being protracted and the lengthiest in the US history has spiraled into a state the US calls “out of control”. Even if the US determines to end the war, commanding the very military bases in different region is quite a threat to human life there, an impetus to likely war with regional adversaries. The perpetuality of American bases in Afghanistan – and perhaps elsewhere – is substantiated with the comments of an American war expert made in an interview last year that Afghanistan’s conflict and crisis is bound to last for at least another fifty years
The largest US military base by quantity of personnel is situated in Germany with over 9000 members. The world’s challenging power claims that Europe-based military headquarters safeguard its allies in the continent against Russia; stations in the Middle East ensure the free flow of oil and contain Iranian influence, and bases in Asia including Afghanistan protect its Asian allies from a rising China and North Korea.
The reality is no country in the world is willing to bully the other to a measure that might require building up of as much huge and as many more bases. North Korea, for example, has been demonized in recent years through the lens of media, but indeed, after the brouhaha over threats from North Korea unexpectedly faded out, it unveiled the secret behind it which was the installation of THAAD defense system in South Korea’s border with North. It elicited extensive reactions from South Korean communities. It also opened the mind that the North Korea’s entire boasting of nuclear advances and test-firings were just seen as potato-small challenges that is overplayed to allow the US place THAAD for objectives beyond the region – China and Russia.
The US military seniors are reasoning that if they bring troops back home, they may be less safe. As a largest military operator abroad, hasn’t there been any so-called terrorist attack in the US or other European countries so far. Or the number of overseas servicemen still needs to mount to contain these risks.
In September 2016, the new Philippine president, who rose against American policies, told US Special Forces to leave the southern Philippines, accused them of fanning the flames of conflict. Referring to recasting of its foreign policy towards Washington, he says:
“For as long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in that land [Mindanao], we might as well give it up.”
Even during the Cold War, as Robert Johnson has argued, the Soviet threat was subject to “undue alarmism” and even without American forces deployed in Western Europe; a Soviet attack was extremely unlikely. According to International relations scholar Robert Jervis:
“The Soviet archives have yet to reveal any serious plans for unprovoked aggression against Western Europe, not to mention a first strike on the United States.”
In 2005, Uzbekistan’s government gave the US a deadline of six months to quit its large military base in the southern town of Khanabad which was also referred to as K2. The military station was opened weeks after 9/11 to supply logistical aid for the Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Washington faced quandary and scrambled to renew the leasing agreement for the base, with US$ 15 million already paid to that date. The US offered a hefty aid package to make this former Soviet stronghold accept the request. But the order remained firm to take effect.
The US bases all over the world has back fired in many ways. Taking Iran as example, the Islamic revolutionary regime kicked off and beefed up its nuclear enrichment program due in main part to deter rising US bases on the east and west. By the same token, North Korea solidified its offensive and defensive power, prompted to do so for the large-scale US installations in South Korea and Japan.
Under present circumstances when the US bases are overwhelming the jurisdictions of the enemy states [Russia, China or Iran], how would it react if one of rival states move its military base somewhere close to the US?
Apart from Afghanistan which is under outright occupation, the rest of the world nations housing the US military bases feel belong to colonial territory. In 1991, the Philippine Senate attacked on the US military presence, calling it tantamount to colonialism and affront to Philippines sovereignty and then president Aquino ordered complete withdrawal.
Those US military bases sitting somewhere between the extremes of the US and a potential rival may play bulwark to the US defense. That is to say, these military bases armed to teeth with advanced warfare are on the frontline and fire would initiate from the same points as instant response or preemptive strike on the opposite fronts. What is vague to mind is to what extent does the US guarantee the safety of the accommodating states?
If Russia or China points one arm to the US in the event the chances of a hot war come to a head, the other is targeted at Afghanistan or others. No inhabitant would be in security. This theory, thus, discredits the legality of military bases at all. If the US goes to war with China over the South China Sea dispute, first it needs to deliver a security guarantee to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. The last country in row has already backed down from the US-China strife by uttering “NO” to the US military presence there.
Afghanistan is the most defenseless of all submitting states hosting the US troops. The US, as alleged “custodian” of Afghan nation against foreign aggression [stated in Kabul-Washington Bilateral Security Agreement] has done the least for the dying nation in return for immense military bases it occupied. There is no modern defense system in place, other than something to protect the bases.
As a most destructive non-nuclear bomb, the use of MOAB on Afghan soil alerts the Afghan citizens about loads of such explosives behind the perimeters of the US stations. If there can be MOAB in their camp, there certainly are other demolishing ordnance like those used in latest truck bombing in Kabul’s diplomatic quarter that sent powerfully blowing shockwaves to surroundings.
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
“Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. This is the weak point of our defences, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong, the right. In a country where ...
Unless Syria will simply hand its most heavily pro-jihadist province, Idlib, to adjoining Turkey, which claims to have 30,000 troops there and is planning to add 20,000 more, World War III will probably happen soon, and here is why:Russia’s troops are in Syria at the invitation of Syria’s Government and they have provided crucial assistance to restore the Government’s control over areas that the jihadists (sometimes called “Radical Islamic Terrorists” or otherwise) had seized. Consequently, unlike the Turks and the Americans, who are invaders of Syria, Russia is instead a defender of Syria, and is committed to doing there only ...
America’s war of expansion over Mexico, backed by newspapers and politicians, has repercussions to the present day.Reflecting on his life while dying of throat cancer in 1885, the former US President Ulysses S. Grant said the Mexican-American War was, “the most wicked war in history. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign”.Grant had first-hand experience as he himself fought in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), then as a junior officer in his mid-20s. Less than two decades later, he rose to prominence as one of the most important ...
They could be found on the outskirts of Sirte, Libya, supporting local militia fighters, and in Mukalla, Yemen, backing troops from the United Arab Emirates. At Saakow, a remote outpost in southern Somalia, they assisted local commandos in killing several members of the terror group al-Shabab. Around the cities of Jarabulus and Al-Rai in northern Syria, they partnered with both Turkish soldiers and Syrian militias, while also embedding with Kurdish YPG fighters and the Syrian Democratic Forces. Across the border in Iraq, still others joined the fight to liberate the city of Mosul. And in Afghanistan, they assisted indigenous forces in various missions, just as they have ...
The conditionality of the Soviet Union’s agreement to allow East Germany to be taken by West Germany and for the Cold War to end, was that NATO would not expand «one inch to the east». This was the agreement that was approved by the Russian President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, a great man and a subsequent hero to democrats around the world.He agreed then to end the Soviet Union and abandon communism and thus to end the entire Cold War; he agreed to this because he had been promised that NATO would expand not «one inch to the ...
In the midst of turmoil and controversy, it is useful to review the most important preceding events and analyze how did this happen. Following are some key events and historical facts leading to the current crisis in Ukraine.Fact 1. In February 2014, a coup overthrew the Ukrainian government which came to power in an election certified by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation). The president, Viktor Yanukovich, was forced to flee for his life.This situation was presciently analyzed at the time by Seumas Milne who wrote, “The attempt to lever Kiev into the western camp by ousting an elected ...
Backdrop To The BalkansThe tiny South-Central Balkan country of the Republic of Macedonia is in dire straits right now, but most of Europe – let alone the rest of the world – has no idea that this is the case because the Mainstream Media narrative is that the state’s two-year-long political crisis was “resolved” when the patriotic VMRO-DPMNE government of Nikola Gruevski was replaced in a “constitutional/electoral coup” that followed Color Revolution and even Hybrid War provocations. The author wrote about this in a Sputnik piece at the time from May 2017 titled “The Macedonian Crisis Isn’t Over, and a ...
Leaked emails are filling in the picture of a Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton plan to destroy Russia – a plan which had originated with US President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1990, and which has been followed through both by his son George W Bush, and by both of the Clintons, but which has only recently started to become documented by leaked publications of personal communications amongst the key operatives who were the insiders running this operation behind the scenes, and who include Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George W Bush, Victoria Nuland, Jeffrey Feltman, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, Saudi Crown Prince ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
March 2018 marks the 19th anniversary of NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia.For over a month Canada has been bombing Yugoslavia. Without a parliamentary resolution, without a declaration of war and without a shred of legality Canadian war planes are attacking the nation that stood at the forefront of the fight against both Hitler’s Nazis and Mussolini’s fascists during World War II.The Nuremberg trial ruled that “to initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime.” Yet this is precisely what Canada and its NATO allies have done.The Canadian government said it was bombing ...
Sultan Abdul Hamid II, in the face of a rising secular nationalism in the late 1800s, that culminated in the Young Turk movement, tried to restore the influence of the Ottoman Empire among Islamic nations and the Empire’s many peoples by stressing the importance of Islam and the Ottoman Caliphate, of the role of the Ottomans as the protectors of Islam and, in the modern world, a bulwark against western colonialism.Over a hundred years after he left power, after the Empire was broken up by the western powers after the First World War, after the Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal, ...
Part IThe historical background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is going back to 1917 (the Balfour Declaration) and the establishment of the British protectorate over Palestine (the Palestine Mandate) after WWI with its provision for a national home for the Jews, although formally not to be at the expense of the local inhabitants – the Palestinians. Nevertheless, it became in practice the focal problem to keep an appropriate balance between these stipulations to be acceptable to both sides – the Jews and the Palestinians.The people and the landSince the time of the Enlightenment followed by the Romanticism, in West Europe emerged ...
In one of the more bizarre foreign policy announcements of a bizarre Obama Administration, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that Washington will “help” Kosovo to join NATO as well as the European Union. She made the pledge after a recent Washington meeting with Kosovan Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in Washington where she praised the progress of the Thaci government in its progress in “European integration and economic development.”1Her announcement no doubt caused serious gas pains among government and military officials in the various capitals of European NATO. Few people appreciate just how mad Clinton’s plan to push ...
QASEM SULEJMANI FOUGHT IN BIH AGAINST SERBS?! A Croatian journalist discovers who was killed by the Iranian general! It was important for James Bond the Middle East, turning the WAR on in SYRIA!Hasan Haidar Diab (56) is a prominent Croatian journalist and war reporter. However, his link to the Balkans is in the Eighties of the last century, when from native Beirut to study in the then SFR Yugoslavia, and that is due thanks to the character and part of Josip Broz Tito, or his role in the Non-Aligned MovementOver the years of the war, primarily because of the knowledge ...
The June 20 Gray Falcon commentary “Failure to Communicate” has this excerpt, that led me to an extremely anti-Russian and anti-Serb article, from a venue which has previously slanted in that direction:“The latest example of this ‘flipping the script’ is a New Republic feature comparing Putin to Milosevic. In reality, it is the West acting towards Russia the same way they acted towards the Serbs two decades ago. I’ve argued before that Putin is aware of this, though the Russian public and media in general may not be.”Whether the issue is the Caucasus or Ukraine, bombing Russia hasn’t been considered, unlike ...
It is coming clear these days that many university professors are increasingly fat-cat and lazy, not doing any research once they get tenure. It is a system-wide corruption of the academy, so entrenched that central administrations have only led the corruption in multiplying salaries and offices with no committed function to advancement of learning and dissemination of knowledge – the constitutional and statutory objective of the academy the best are devoted to everywhere.This deep-structural degeneration is not confined to any one place or region. Regular contacts from other universities report a similar decadence. The solution is straightforward, but unspoken: (1) ...
The escalation of tensions between the United States, Britain and France, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, should not surprise anyone. In the last few years, the US leadership and mainstream British media have presented Russia as a major threat to global peace and the international order. Russian president Vladimir Putin in particular has been demonised as a ‘war-monger,’ an ‘aggressor,’ an ‘unscrupulous politician’ hell-bent on restoring Russia’s past glory’ at whatever cost.This projection of Russia as a threat to world peace has intensified in recent days partly because of Putin’s unveiling of Russia’s cutting edge military ...
American torture is back in the news again as Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Central Intelligence Agency, prepares for what could be a rocky Senate confirmation hearing with some tough questions about her role overseeing a secret torture prison in Thailand and destroying tapes of brutal detainee interrogation sessions.Haspel’s nomination, and to a lesser degree her earlier appointment as deputy CIA director, reopened what more well-meaning observers, including torture survivor Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have called “one of the darkest chapters” in US history, the so-called “enhanced interrogation” abuse of men, women and children caught up ...
The Kosovo Question recently once again became an important issue of global politics and international relations for two reasons: 1) The Albanian “government” of the “Republic of Kosovo” announced to officially proclaim the existence of the Kosovo Army (that is a violation of the 1244 UN Resolution in 1999), and 2) The “president” of the “Republic of Kosovo”, a war criminal Hashim Tachi, participated on November 11th (2018) in Paris to the world leaders’ celebration of a centenary anniversary of the end of the WWI (the signed armistice with Germany) as the official representative of an “independent” Kosovo. He was ...
In the current context, the US is threatening to wage a preemptive nuclear war against Russia, which possesses a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons. Hillary Clinton has confirmed that “nukes are on the table” and she intends to use them if she becomes president. We need to defend ourselves against Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. Her solution is to blow up the planet.World War II ended in Mushroom Clouds.If Hillary decides to wage a preemptive nuclear war on Russia, World War III would commence with mushroom clouds.How would World War III end. Would it have an ending?In the words ...
The magazine is covering the research gaps uncovered by global Western hoax mainstream media platforms and academic teaching & research institutions.
This is an alternative information & academic research digest platform with the purpose to offer an alternative “another side of the truth”.
The magazine is independent, private, and free of any influence by any institution, organization, government, or pressure group. URL: www.global-politics.eu
