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Old 08-11-2022, 01:30 PM
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Angry Since 9/11 the US Has Increased Military Interventions to Historic Levels

Since 9/11 the US Has Increased Military Interventions to Historic Levels
By: Nick Turse - Responsible Statecraft & Common Dreams News 08-11-22
Re: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2...istoric-levels

America has conducted nearly 400 interventions since its founding, with more than a quarter in the last 30 years.

The United States has conducted nearly 400 military interventions since 1776, according to innovative research by scholars Sidita Kushi and Monica Duffy Toft.

This recent pattern of international relations conducted largely through armed force, what Toft has termed "kinetic diplomacy," has increasingly targeted the Middle East and Africa.

Half of those conflicts and other uses of force—including displays and threats of force as well as covert and other operations—occurred between 1950 and 2019, the last year covered in a new dataset, introduced by Kushi and Toft in a Journal of Conflict Resolution article published earlier this week. More than a quarter of them have taken place since the end of the Cold War.

The United States has carried out 34 percent of its 392 interventions against countries in Latin America and the Caribbean; 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific region; 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa; and just 13 percent in Europe and Central Asia, according to a newly refined version of the Military Intervention Project (MIP) dataset—a venture of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

In addition to providing the most accurate count ever of U.S. military interventions—doubling the number of cases found in existing data, while also employing rigorous sourcing methods—the MIP offers 200 variables that allow for complex analyses of drivers and outcomes of wars and other uses of force.

Crucially, Kushi and Toft, the director of the Fletcher School's Center for Strategic Studies, found that U.S. 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 assumed third position in all of U.S. history.

Unlike earlier eras in which displays and threats of force were employed, such posturing short of military violence has been absent in recent years. The United States, they found, has actually "engaged in 30 interventions at level 4 (usage of force) or 5 (war)."

Until the end of the Cold War, note Kushi and Toft, U.S. military hostility was generally proportional to that of its rivals. Since then, "the U.S. began to escalate its hostilities as its rivals deescalate it, marking the beginning of America's more kinetic foreign policy." This recent pattern of international relations conducted largely through armed force, what Toft has termed "kinetic diplomacy," has increasingly targeted the Middle East 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 MIP data incorporates confirmed covert operations and low-profile interventions by Special Operations forces, but a combination of U.S. government secrecy and the dataset's scrupulous sourcing standards guarantees that post-9/11 tally is an undercount, according to Kushi, an assistant professor of Political Science at Bridgewater State University and a non-residential fellow at Tufts' Center for Strategic Studies.

Recently, for example, Alice Speri and I revealed the existence of low-profile proxy war programs run across Africa, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific region. While experts say that the Pentagon has likely used the secretive 127e authority to carry out combat beyond the scope of any authorization for use of military force or permissible self-defense, in violation of the Constitution, such highly classified operations may evade capture in the MIP dataset. While 127e programs in Somalia and Yemen for example overlap with known U.S. military interventions, other uses of the authority, such as in Egypt and Lebanon, may not. The same goes for even lesser-known authorities like Section 1202, which provides support to foreign irregular forces aimed at near-peer competitors.

As the MIP is further developed and refined, Kushi and Toft hope that it will allow for a more nuanced understanding of the conditions that cause the United States to launch military interventions and the effects on the U.S. and the nations it targets, including the economic and human toll and inadvertent outcomes.

What, they ask, "were the longer-term costs and unintended consequences of the intervention in Afghanistan and how did that intervention influence U.S. engagements in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen?" The answers, they hope, will lead to improved data and, ultimately, a better U.S. foreign policy.

[About this writer]: Nick Turse is the Managing Editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Type Media Center. His latest book is "Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan" (2016). He is the author/editor of several other books, including: "Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa" (2015); "Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam" (2013); "The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Spies, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyber Warfare" (2012); "The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives" (2009); and "The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan" (2010). Turse was a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. His website is www.Nick Turse.com.
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Personal note: He's right - we've been there - and done that - more than
once.
-
It's a nightmare of consistant levels of fighting in many foreign lands.
And once we stabilize the area - we eventually pull out - and the bad
guys once more come back and it begins again and again.
-
For what? The folks we try to save end up being persecuted once again.
We can't regulate or stop the reoccurence of the brutality once we are
gone.The old mula's or leaders rebound and start the process once again.
-
The U.S. suffered this in our day - as it was said over and over again -
"Give me Liberty or give me Death" that was once the credo in the US
during our earlier internal years all across our Nation.
-
Overseas the Iron Fist operations / or Religious Zelous in other nations
- resume their practice of persecuting those that don't comply. The Mula's
resume their torcher over and over again - once we pull out.
-
Our current internal issues will take time to mend - we are splintered
to some degree - and yes - if we are truely American's we will come to
some resolve - and hopefully very soon.
-
A country like the USA must be one of Honor and Respect for all its
People's - both foreign or domestic. Sure we have border issues - and
yes we have drug issue problems - and sure we have good and bad cops
- as well as good ones but we also have - good and bad officials in office.
It's up to us to clean house to find a resolve - to once again become one
- and if not - we are doomed to becoming something other than American's.
-
We must stand up for the United States of America - and ensure our values
of Life and Liberty & Pursuit of Happyness - or does the Statue of Liberty
mean nothing to American's today?
-
Do you want to have internal wars like the Civil War of yester years?
I sure don't - Do You? Many in the wings of our country don't seem to
want to comply - they prefer - or want something else - even if by force.
Should this happen in our Country it will never be the same as it
once was. So - think about it - is this what we've become?
And - If so, I want no part of it - at all!
-
__________________
Boats

O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
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