Link:
US Military Considering Setting up Drone Basess in North Africa "For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens."
3 things occur to me reading this article.
1. If its not already obvious, we have entered the age of drone warfare. This represents a fundamentally new military age, and it is becoming normalized silently, under our noses, with very limited discussion.
Second, the considerations amongst the US military seem to focus solely on whether or not drones will be tacticall effective, and whether or not the presence of a few hundred US soldiers might anger the inhabitants of the area.
At no point does it seem as though ethics enters the questions, although with developements such as the UN announcing that it will investigate the legality of drone strikes and the associated civilian casualties, one must imagine that such calculations are taking place somewhere.
Third, is the consideration of what this means for military geopolitics going into the future. The way that the US asserts its power is changing. Historical context:
The Vietnam war was a disaster for the US military. By the end of the war the US public and political establishment were strongly opposed to sending more US troops into harms way for any reason. However, during this war, in neighboring Laos, the US discovered an alternative way to fight Cold War era “wars of containment.” Due to treaties with the Soviets, the US military ground troops could not enter Laos, so alternative tactics were necessary. In order to “contain the communists,” the CIA coordinated the organization, funding and tactical support of proxy groups, and the Military unleashed a massive bombing campaign. (In fact, the US dropped more bombs on Laos between 1964 and 1973 than on Japan and Germany combined during WW2. Its true.)
This state of affairs was known as the “Nixon Doctrine.” It was best summed up by Nixon himself when he proclaimed that “Asian boys must fight Asian wars.” From this point on the US military sought to advance its influence through proxies. Despite congress passing the Clark Amendment in 1976 and the Boland Amendment in 1984 which both banned US support of proxy forces, such tactics were the primary way through which the US military exercised its will upon global affairs during the last quarter of the 20th century. Similar tactics were used in Angola, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 represented the end of the use of proxy wars as the primary tool of US unilateralism. However, after almost 10 years of an ugly ground war, drones are increasingly embraced by the military.
So if the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended the era of US proxy wars, then the widespread and generally accepted application of drones certainly represents a new era of US military affairs.
The potential establishment of drone bases across North Africa represents a new way for the military establishment to extend its hegemony. Drone bases do not require large amounts of proxy forces, and do not put skilled American military personel into great risk. Thus they will probably not provoke any great public outrage. Most of the civilan deaths are under-reported, and the questionable legal status ignored.
If this base proves successful, the model will probably be replicated. It is also, in the words of Dashiell Bennett in The Atlantic, easy to imagine “other uses for such an outpost or the planes that are based there.”
Drones, along with increased privatization are changing the way that the US applies military force across the world.
In the age drone wars and increased privatization the US military has taken on a faceless, potentially ubiquitous, and highly decentralized form. In a word, postmodern.
