The American Military Empire: A Threat to Human Rights?
By John M. Swomley, Professor Emeritus of Christian Social Ethics
St. Paul School of Theology
America`s role as the world`s only "superpower" is obvious, and many Americans take pride in that role. Few, however, are aware that America`s armed forces have built a worldwide empire that has led millions of people to fear and even hate the presence of uniformed American personnel. American journalists and the media do not describe life in the satellites, colonies, and bases that are a part of the imperial complex, or report the disregard of human rights, environmental damage, land seizures and other abuses that characterize the American presence.
The Pentagon maintains some 800 stations and air bases around the world. Some entire countries are virtual colonies. In South Korea, for example, the U.S. Army has 37,000 combat troops at 96 bases occupying 65,500 acres of that country`s land. It has for many years controlled a South Korean armed force of 670,000: 460 combat aircraft, 44 destroyers and frigates, as well as four attack submarines, all under a command structure led by U.S. military personnel. All of this happened when there was no Russian or Chinese occupation of North Korea to threaten control of South Korea. Even the less well-armed North Koreans never threatened the South when the U.S. commander and South Koreans withdrew a South Korean border division to deal with riots in South Korea. The North Koreans, although not a threat, were always used by the Pentagon as a rationale for the military occupation of South Korea and for periodic aerial and naval war games against the North.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which has long been active in South Korea, helped create the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), as a secret police organized to prevent dissent, including student protests and labor unrest, and in the process maintain censorship of the press. After its early organization it grew to about 350,000 agents within a country of only thirty million.
General Park Chung-hee was the President and virtual dictator of South Korea from 1961 to 1979, accepted by the U.S. Army and theoretically in charge of the KCIA. However, in October 1979 the KCIA commander shot the President`s bodyguard and then the President. No motive surfaced, but many in South Korea assumed that the U.S. had given the order to kill him because he was a nationalist, pursuing policies opposed by the U.S. such as a program to develop nuclear weapons.
A new President, Choi, and a new commanding general, Chun who was also acting director of the KCIA, took power in 1980. This led to widespread student protests and then to martial law, the closing of the universities, and the banning of political activities. There was a general assumption that all of this repression had taken place with at least the tacit consent of the United States. One reaction was the rebellion of whole populations in some areas, including an appeal to the U.S. embassy to intervene, but the U.S. commander had already given permission to Korean forces to act independently. In the city of Kwangju about 150,000 civilians seized weapons and ammunition from arsenals as well as armored personnel carriers, trucks and buses.
As a result of a decision in Washington, U.S. General John Wickham withdrew the Korean Division on the border of North Korea and turned it and other South Korean forces loose to engage in what later was called the Kwangju Massacre. South Koreans knew that the United States was involved in the killing of thousands of South Koreans, but the American people remained ignorant of the deaths and repression.
Under the leadership of Kim Dae-jung, the current democratically elected President of South Korea, some conditions have improved, such as relations with North Korea. The U.S. Army, however, continues its widespread control at many points and the Korean economy is still heavily influenced by the United States.
Another more tightly controlled U.S. military colony is Okinawa. Although there are eight major bases in Japan itself, there are forty-seven bases in Okinawa which nominally belongs to Japan but since the end of World War II has been largely controlled by U.S. armed forces. Neither the Okinawan nor Japanese police or courts have any control of the land, sea and air spaces occupied and used by the United States. The U.S. bases occupy 20% of Okinawa`s land, including the most fertile farm areas of a mountainous island.
During the 1950s, the U.S. took the land by armed force, burned and bulldozed houses and land without compensating the owners, and used the CIA to fund and encourage political control friendly to U.S. occupation. Okinawans are left with little arable land and most food is imported. Of all Japanese prefectures, Okinawa has the highest unemployment rate, highest prices and lowest wages.
The U.S. bases at best provide only about 5 percent of the gross domestic product of Okinawa, while tourism has become the main source of income.
U.S. damage to the environment is extensive. Fifty-five years of live shelling in U.S. artillery practice has resulted in severe erosion of mountains and fields, the destruction of coral reefs and oceans, the loss of livelihood of fishermen and the endangerment of rare species of birds and animals. Over 1,500 depleted uranium shells were fired into an offshore island.
Since 1972, 5,000 crimes (including rapes, murders, robberies and burglaries) have been committed by U.S. military personnel against Okinawans. The rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by three American marines in 1999 resulted in a people`s rally of 8l5,000 Okinawans, parents, teachers, students, labor unions, women`s groups, civic organizations and people from all political parties. U.S. Admiral Richard Macke, commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, was quoted in the press as calling the rape "absolutely stupid. For the price they paid to rent the car (used to kidnap the child) they could have had a girl." No U.S. official review or inquiry was conducted.
In addition to the bases just described, there is Kadina Airbase, the largest in the Far East, and Futenma Marine Air Station, which covers a huge area in the center of Ginowan, second-largest city in Okinawa.
Within the United States there is the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which is often treated as part of the colonial empire. The small island of Vieques off the coast of Puerto Rico`s main island has approximately 9,300 residents. In the 1940s the U.S. Navy took three-fourths of its land for military use and relocated its residents to a tiny area between a live firing range and a munitions storage area. The Navy uses the island for bombing practice and amphibious landings. The lives of residents have been threatened, as has the environment. There is 50% unemployment and cancer rates are much higher than in the rest of Puerto Rico.
In July 1999, Puerto Ricans marched to the naval base to demand that the Navy leave Vieques. The residents want the island demilitarized and the contamination cleaned up. Other civil disobedience has continued, with demands for community economic development. The Navy has responded by promising a vote in November 2001, and if voters want to expel the Navy they agree to leave by May 2003.
Congress could have removed the Navy long ago if it were not for the power of the military industrial complex and its devotion to superpower status.
When referring to U.S. bases, we speak not only of huge military facilities, but also of soldiers and their dependents, housing complexes, swimming pools, golf courses, post exchanges, and nearby bars, brothels, and STD disease clinics. When I taught in the Philippines in 1973, the U.S. naval base at Subic Bay was near the town of Olongapo, whose only industry was entertainment houses which included almost 55,000 prostitutes, along with various other places offering rest and recreation to U.S. naval and military personnel.
In Australia, according to an Australian Encyclopedia, the U.S. maintains more than two dozen installations concerned with military matters. However, there are many more joint facilities manned by Australians and Americans, but funded by and for the U.S., such as a Joint Defense Space Research Facility. In addition there are U.S. Air Force land and sea surveillance flights that operate over the Indian Ocean, and a transit point for aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered attack submarines, missile cruisers and destroyers. One facility for communicating with U.S. submarines is the largest and most powerful of all the stations in America`s worldwide submarine communications system. It covers U.S. military operations in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. In fact, Australia is integrated into the American military system via a thorough military alliance. It is host to more U.S. operations than any other country except for the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany.
The American military empire includes storage facilities for nuclear weapons. The November-December 1999 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists lists the following total nuclear deployments in places in the Pacific of 1700 weapons in Okinawa, Guam, Taiwan and the Philippines. Almost 800 were at Kadena Airbase in Okinawa. Presumably they have been withdrawn, but B-61 bombers are listed as still remaining at ten airbases in seven European countries.
The military empire also includes a program called Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) whereby the Pentagon sends specially-trained U.S. forces for training missions in 110 countries to establish close relations with their officers for possible future operations and for training them in espionage and other skills. The U.S. officers also get invaluable information about those countries and their terrain while preparing the country`s officers for internal defense against rebel groups in their own countries. Indonesia was a prime example of this during the Suharto regime, where U.S. trained officers opposed the independence of East Timor.
These are illustrations, by no means complete, of the American Military Empire. They can be considered positive and useful only if one approves of imperialism. Certainly its victims do not approve of it, and there have been numerous demonstrations against the bases in Korea and Okinawa, almost all of them nonviolent.
The most recent example of U.S. imperialist sabotage of international law and order is our opposition to a treaty to establish an international criminal court to hold accountable soldiers and political leaders charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The world`s leading democracies support such a treaty but the U.S., China, Israel, Libya and Yemen voted against it in the United Nations. The U.S. wants to keep its soldiers, CIA officers, and other operatives who are part of the 200,000 imperial agents deployed in at least 40 countries from being tried for rape, murder, torture, and other crimes or infractions of human rights.
The cost of U.S. imperialism, with all its liabilities in terms of financial outlay, hatred engendered against Americans abroad, terrorist activities, and the bad reputation that comes from CIA "secret" operations, is too high a price to pay. Its ultimate cost is, in fact, nearly irreparable damage to future world order.
