Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
War & Peace

Guantanamo: The Bigger Picture

by , | Mar 17, 2008

The U.S. base at Guantanamo has been called many things. The “gulag of our time” (Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan, May 2005). “The key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror” (Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, January 2007). The “legal equivalent of outer space” (unnamed Administration official). The right place for “the worst of a very bad lot” (Vice President Dick Cheney, January 2002) and for the “most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth” (former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, January 2002).

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Gender and U.S. Bases in Asia-Pacific

by , | Mar 14, 2008

The power dynamics of militarism in the Asia-Pacific region rely on dominance and subordination. These hierarchical relationships, shaped by gender, can be seen in U.S. military exploitation of host communities, its abuse and contamination of land and water, and the exploitation of women and children through the sex industry, sexual violence, and rape. Women’s bodies, the land, and indigenous communities are all feminized, treated as dispensable and temporary. What is constructed as “civilized, white, male, western, and rational” is held superior to what is defined as “primitive, non-white, female, non-western, and irrational.” Nations and U.S. territories within the Asia-Pacific region are treated as inferiors with limited sovereignty or agency in relation to U.S. foreign policy interests that go hand-in-hand with this racist/sexist ideology.

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A River Runs Backward

A River Runs Backward

by , | Mar 12, 2008

When historians look back on the war in Afghanistan, they may well point to last December’s battle for Musa Qala, a scruffy town in the country’s northern Helmand Province, as a turning point. In a war of shadows, remote ambushes, and anonymous roadside bombs, Musa Qala was an exception: a stand-up fight.

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Winter Soldier Hearings

by , | Mar 6, 2008

Get ready for the horrible, honest reality of the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan like you haven’t heard it before. For four days, from March 13 through March 16, hundreds of U.S. veterans of the two wars will descend on Washington and testify in the “Winter Soldier” hearings about what they really did while they were serving their country in Iraq. And their experiences aren’t pretty.

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Yankees Head Home

by , | Mar 5, 2008

Absent in the discussion of the conflict brewing in the Andes over a Colombian military incursion into Ecuador to kill a guerrilla leader is the role of U.S. military in the conflict. It goes well beyond providing satellite intelligence on the location of guerrilla camps: the two countries have opposing responses to Washington’s attempt to militarize the hemisphere. Ecuador’s constituent assembly proposes prohibiting all foreign military presence, while Colombia seeks ever greater U.S. military hardware, intelligence and troops. The U.S. response has been quite undiplomatic.

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The China Syndrome

The China Syndrome

by , | Mar 5, 2008

On February 4, President Bush announced a baseline military budget of $515.4 billion for the next fiscal year, not including funds for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the largest one-year Pentagon request in real, uninflated dollars since World War II. This Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 figure represents a 7.5% increase over the 2008 appropriation of $479.5 billion and is expected to be the first of many rising requests supposedly needed to replace equipment lost and damaged in Iraq and to gear up for the security threats to come. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen explained last October, “we’re just going to have to devote more resources to national security in the world we’re living in right now.”

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Flogging a Dead Agreement

by , | Feb 29, 2008

The Indian government suddenly finds itself under intense and mounting U.S. pressure to complete a nuclear agreement during the present U.S. administration. “We don’t have all the time in the world,” Nicholas Burns bluntly said this month. One of the chief architects of the agreement and the U.S. undersecretary for political affairs, Burns was referring to the India-specific agreements with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and change of rules at the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) that are necessary for the export of nuclear plants and equipment to India. He reminded the Indians that “this is an election year” in the USA and hoped “very much that this process can now be completed.” David C. Mulford, U.S. ambassador in New Delhi, similarly pressed for the conclusion of the agreement during the Bush administration. He suggested that it is almost “now or never” for New Delhi to get behind such a deal before non-proliferation groups force additional conditionalities.

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Iran in the Crosshairs

Iran in the Crosshairs

by , | Feb 28, 2008

(Editor’s note: This is the introduction to the new primer, Iran in the Crosshairs, published by the Institute for Policy Studies. The full report is available here. Print copies can be ordered by calling IPS.)

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