Democratization and Security, Violence, Militarism and its impact to
Civil Society
Ramon Bultron
MIGRANTE International
17-20 November 2014
If one is to talk about democratisation, violence and militarism in the context of the Asia-Pacific,
there is no way to understand such without touching on the United States’ role in the region. Both
historically and up to the present, US militarism and interventionism, base-building, military
occupation and rotational troop deployments are very much evident especially in the Middle East,
North Africa, Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific.
To cite a few facts on the presence, activity and spread of the US’ military forces and
infrastructures in Asia-Pacific:
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US has over 67,000 overseas troops in around 225 bases in Japan, South Korea and
Indonesia. It has forces in Thailand, access agreements with Singapore and military
exercises even in actual combat zones in the Philippines.
Dialogues between defense officials of Taiwan and the US are held regularly. US arms
sales to Taiwan have been significant at $US71 billion for 1999-2005 alone. US and
Taiwanese military officials are also pushing for a theatre missile defense (TMD) system
installation in Taiwan as part of the US dual encirclement and engagement policy towards
China.
The Middle East has the largest number of US troop deployments with approximately
218,000 (although this number constantly changes). Historically, the region’s vast oil and
gas reserves has been an obvious reason for the permanent presence of US forces in the
area, alongside the US government's “War on Terror” policy aimed at suppressing militant
movements that are against foreign intervention.
Two US-led wars against Iraq were launched from its military bases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
and Qatar. These bases are also way stations for US naval forces that patrol the waters of
the Persian Gulf to blockade Iran, as well as for drone strikes that target Yemeni militants.
And despite claims by Washington that its military presence in the area are aimed at
promoting regional stability, the region has become even more volatile in the wake of
regime change uprisings supported by the US government in Egypt, Syria and Libya (the
so-called “Arab Spring”).
In Iraq in 2005, the US military maintained 106 forward operating bases with 14 "enduring"
bases. There were around 40 large bases (2005) and 110 small to medium bases in Iraq.
The reduction of base infrastructure brought the total number of bases down to around 75
in 2006.
There are also new bases in Afghanistan, which flank western China and provide control
and protection of pipelines from the Caspian Sea basin through Central Asia. This
economic aspect underlies the increasing importance of the bases in Central Asia in
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan where around 70% of the world's oil
reserves and natural gas lie.
Guam remains the most important place outside the US mainland where new air, naval and
ground facilities are being slated to be added. Guam is also set to receive redeployments of
7,000 Marines from Japan (Okinawa) while South Korea also faces significant
redeployments and consolidations.
With the advent of the US Obama administration's “pivot to Asia” strategy, the region currently is
the focus of Washington's military, trade and foreign policy. The US pivot mainly seeks to
“rebalance” its force projection in the region that involves building up its naval and air capacity in
existing bases as well as rotating its troops across territorires under temporary basing agreements.
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US Strategy and Responses in the Region
The pivot to Asia is a multi-approach strategy that seeks to address the prolonged and heightening
crisis of the US through the further development of its military-complexes inside the country,
ensuring that countries in the region continue to fall in line with its neoliberal economic strategies,
and contain the emerging powers from the region, China in particular, that has been challenging
the US’ economic and political dominance in the world.
To understand the US pivot, it must be first recognized that the global crisis resulting from the
rampant implementation of neoliberal globalization policies has grave repercussions within the US
economy controlled by monopoly corporations, especially financial oligarchs. Despite the US’
aggressive efforts to transfer the burden of the crisis to other countries, particularly its neocolonies,
the impacts of the crisis - evident in the growing unemployment, erosion of wage and displacement
of people (including forced internal and cross border migration) - cannot be denied.
Time and again, the US resorts to the twin strategy of intensified implementation of neoliberal
economics and increased military activities in order to overcome the crisis. It has become more
imperative now for it to do so as the crisis in the past decades has been more frequent, more
widespread and has lasted for extended periods.
Asia’s importance to the US economy is reflected in a Congressional Research Service study,
issued on March 28, 2012, which said that, “Since 2000, Asia has become the US’ largest source
of imports and second-largest export market after the North American region. As the most
populous area and fastest growing economic zone, Asia acquires more vital importance to the US
economy in the future.”
The most recent and significant economic offensive of the Obama administration in the region is its
Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPPA) that is aimed “to make Asian
nations central to its National Export Initiative.” (The NEI, designed in 2010, is a strategy for
doubling US exports by 2015 to generate more jobs urgently needed for economic recovery. As of
June 2013, the US unemployment rate was at 7.6% -- 11.8 million jobless.)
But in order for the US’ economic agenda in Asia to prosper seamlessly, it has to also contend with
other powers that is challenging the US’ control in resources, market and even technology. The
Congressional study particularly pointed out to China’s emergence as a regional, and even global,
power that will have “the potential to affect the US economy and our security in a variety of ways.”
The US pivot to Asia strategy thus also contains an agenda to contain the “Chinese threat” that can
be readily seen not only in the exclusion of China to the TPPA but also in the flurry of basebuilding, as well as military cooperation negotiations and joint military exercises in areas around
China's southern borders. These include the building of a major naval base in Jeju Island, South
Korea; plans to build another base in Kyoto, Japan; war games near the waters of North Korea, an
ally of China; interoperability exercises and the signing of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation
Agreement (EDCA) in the Philippines; and the whipping up anti-China sentiments across the entire
region.
On the other end, China has counterposed its own economic and political agenda by putting up
plans to rebuild the old Silk Road and designing what it calls a “new security architecture” for the
region.
The first step revives an ancient trade route and envisions trade interconnectivity via expressways,
transcontinental railways, oil pipelines, and industrial zones. It is also intended to rebalance
China’s growth by linking its less developed western and central provinces with Eurasia and the
rest of Asia.
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On the other hand, the “new security architecture” supposedly echoes the five principles of
coexistence (mutual respect, nonaggression, noninterference, equality and cooperation, and
peaceful coexistence) adopted by India, China and Burma (Myanmar) in 1954. According to
China's policy think-tanks such as the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, the
alternative is unlike the current US global security system and is inspired by Asian perspectives of
consensus, mutual trust and cooperation. It is also against the threat of force, supposedly being an
inclusive system that can be embraced by other Asian countries through diplomacy, culture and
economic cooperation.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a military alliance between China, Russia, and
certain Central Asian countries, is expected to play a big role in this new security architecture,
especially as Russia has been increasingly aligning itself with China due to EU and US sanctions
for its alleged role in the secession of east Ukraine.
This contradiction among the now appearing to be multiple poles of power further shapes the
security, military, and even democratisation landscapae of the Asia-Pacific region.
People's Resistance vs. US War and Militarism
The renewed US aggression in the Asia Pacific is designed not merely as a strategy to contain
China's economic expansion, but also to suppress national liberation movements against US
imperialism, as well as civil-society organizations (CSOs) that are critical of its agenda. One of the
chief architects of the Asia pivot, former US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, stated that the
aim of a “lean and mean” US military presence in the region is to “preserve our ability to conduct
the missions we judge most important to protect our core national interests”. These include
conduct “stability and counterinsurgency operations”, a euphemism for pacification campaigns
against people's movements that are either armed or unarmed.
Such US-instigated pacification campaigns often do not distinguish between “insurgents” and legal
human rights defenders under the rubric of Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), inevitably resulting in grave
human rights violations against large sections of the civilian population. Even human rights and
development CSOs are targeted for suppression, either with “extreme prejudice” (assassinations)
or soft psy-war methods that include red-baiting, terrorism-branding and “pro-China” smearing.
Such repression can severely hamper the delivery of much-needed services to basic sectors that
have been marginalized and neglected by US-supported governments.
In reaction to these and other effects of US militarism and war in the region, people's resistance at
various levels and means has also intensified. Anti-war and anti-interventionist people's
movements in affected countries are linking up and intensifying their advocacy actions, while a
more militant section espouses armed struggle as a means to turn back the tide of virtual
recolonization and assert people's democratic self-determination.
Among those at the forefront are peace organizations in the Philippines, Japan, South Korea,
Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan that are campaigning against base-building, visiting forces
agreements and rotational troop deployments by US naval and air assets in East Asia and the
Pacific. In 2011, the formation of a global peace network “Ban the Bases” bolstered the longstanding campaign against the continued existence and expansion of US military aggression
worldwide. It was followed by the July 2013 Manila conference, which in turn highlighted the global
impact that US militarism and intervention have on human rights concerns.
As part of the wider “Ban the Bases” campaign and in consideration of recent political
developments in the region, preparations are ongoing to hold a conference in the Philippines. This
is part of advocacy efforts to build a broad-based movement among concerned citizens in host
countries that will eventually campaign towards the dismantling of US military bases abroad and
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serve to strengthen the struggle for a just and lasting peace globally.
The increasingly multi-polar character of geopolitics in the Asia Pacific and elsewhere in the world
is rekindling transnational antagonisms, a volatile situation that US “corporatocracy” seeks to
exploit to its advantage. But the people's organizations are also very much aware that while they
are the ones most likely to suffer, this situation also provides an opportunity to forcefully assert
their demands for a people-centered development and genuine self-determination in affected
countries. There is great hope in people's resistance against US militarism and war in the Asia
Pacific, and this collective push is certain to become a bold feature of region's political and
economic landscape in the years to come. #
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