10/11/13 – David Vine – The Scott Horton Show

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Next up is our friend David Vine.
He's the author of Island of Shame.
Man, Island of Shame is right.
It's more like the whole world except that island worth of shame.
Welcome back to the show.
David, how are you doing?
I'm doing real well.
Thanks for having me back.
Very good to have you here.
And I should say you write for TomDispatch.com oftentimes.
I should not pound on the table while I say that.
You write for TomDispatch.com, and thank goodness for that.
And recently you wrote this article about the US military buildup in Italy, a good starting point for this conversation anyway, that was really kind of mind-blowing.
Maybe this isn't that thoughtful or original or anything, but it made me think that we need to start calling Italy airstripped too, like out of 1984 where England is merely airstripped one, the former nuclear air base of the American empire, you know?
Absolutely.
And Britain has been referred to as the unthinkable aircraft carrier, and it was during the Cold War and has more or less remained that with some reductions in the post-Cold War era.
But Italy is rapidly and in some ways taking its place as an aircraft carrier or runway for US military intervention far beyond Europe.
Well, so what's the problem?
Pirates in the Mediterranean there?
I think the military in some ways doesn't even know, but they want to have increased capabilities of intervention from Africa to the Middle East to the Balkans and Eastern Europe and Italy in the minds of military and other officials is the perfect location from which to base these sorts of intervention forces and to launch future interventions.
You know, I read this article in DefenseNews.com and it's funny, the paragraph, it's so redundant, it's terribly written, but basically you can't quote it without sounding like a fool.
But what it says is that the army, after getting kicked out of Iraq and winding down in Afghanistan, they're looking for ways to stay globally engaged.
In other words, they've got nothing to do.
So they form this dagger brigade and they're going, the dagger brigade, you know, like stab somebody in the back in a cruel kind of underhanded manner, the dagger brigade, and they're going to invade Africa.
And so look out Africans, you're going to get killed because here comes the dagger brigade because they're looking for ways to stay globally engaged.
Because what else are they going to do, sit around twiddling their thumbs, raping each other all day?
Yeah, I have to go look for that article.
Well, there's your key words, man.
And it's, you know, read it and weep.
You know what I mean?
It's out of the mouths of babes.
They don't know that they're not supposed to say, we see our bureaucratic institutional interest is to find people to kill.
And so we're on the lookout.
Yeah, I think for quite a while, the military, especially in Europe, beginning with the army, has been looking for things to do, for reasons to be there.
We're now, you know, more than 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and we still have tens of thousands of troops in Europe.
Those numbers have come down significantly in recent years, especially.
But as many point out, you know, what is the army doing in Europe?
And increasingly, Africa has become the answer.
No country in Africa is willing to host the headquarters of the US Africa Command to date.
So Italy and Germany have basically become the headquarters for the Africa Command as a whole and for different components for each of the armed services.
Well, and you know, if they were trying to come up with a coherent narrative about what they're doing there, they sure don't have one.
When they're fighting the Mujahideen that really they created accidentally, as a matter of blowback in Somalia, they fought for the Mujahideen in Libya, and then against them again in Mali, you know, and then chasing Joseph Kony around and all of this.
They're just making stuff up, obviously.
But I think one of the reasons I'm quite concerned is that the military is looking to get increasingly engaged, as you put it, or using their words, which means intervening increasingly in conflicts around Africa and elsewhere that the military and the US public, for that matter, and politicians know very little about.
I think we've already seen with the two recent raids in Somalia and Libya that the raids have generated a significant anger and outrage that the United States has violated the sovereignty of these two nations.
Any supposed benefits of the two raids that one might be able to claim, I think, you know, very, very quickly might be outweighed by the anger and outrage and, frankly, recruitment for forces that might wish to do the United States harm that have come about as a result of the raids.
Well, the Prime Minister was kidnapped the next day or two days later.
So talk about blowback.
I think it's more like backdraft, just blowing up right in your face, no secret about what happened here, you know?
No, I think that's exactly right.
And whether you call it blowback or backdraft, because it's so immediate, I think the danger is that these sorts of interventions are going to create more of the insecurity and mayhem that they're supposedly designed to prevent.
Do you hear that, everybody?
I'm coining a phrase.
I was going to write an article about it, but it just wasn't good enough, so I dropped it.
But I'm going to get that term into circulation.
Backdraft as the more immediate, less covert action-y version of blowback.
It worked on you, David.
I like it.
I'm carrying this thing through, man.
You should go with it.
All right.
So now, I'm going to be quiet for a long time in a row and let you describe what all you learned about the bases.
And just go ahead and tell us how many Taco Bells they got and everything you know about the base buildup and how many soldiers and whatever.
Did you talk to guys?
Did they say what they're doing there?
Whatever you got to say, let's hear it.
Sure.
For about four years, I've been visiting Italy as part of research for a book about U.S. military bases abroad and their broad impacts.
And Italy has been striking, because in those four years and actually beginning really the beginning of the war on terror, Italy has seen this very significant buildup of forces and bases, while at the very same time, we've been closing bases, especially in Germany, but closing bases around Europe.
So at the time that we're closing bases and returning facilities to the government of Germany, and actually a few in Italy, we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new bases, new facilities in Italy.
So we're seeing essentially a shift in the center of gravity for the U.S. military in Europe from Germany toward Italy.
Germany still remains incredibly important for the U.S. military, for U.S. military strategy in Europe and globally, for that matter, with Rammstein Air Base and very large training facilities in the east of the former Western Germany.
But Italy has come to assume increasing importance, and one of the bases in particular that I look at in this article at tondispatch.com is a new base in Vicenza, Italy, where the United States has actually maintained somewhere around six or more bases since the 1950s.
The army came to Congress in about 2006 and said, we need a new base.
We need a new base because we have this combat brigade, the 173rd Combat Brigade, that's divided.
It's split-based between Germany and Italy.
And Congress proceeded to turn over about $310 million for a new base in Vicenza, and actually in total around $600 million for additional construction, as well as a new base around Vicenza, around what they call the Vicenza military community.
And over the next several years, the space grew and I had a chance to go visit multiple occasions despite the tremendous opposition of local people in Vicenza, which is a city, smallish city near Venice.
Despite massive local opposition and opposition around Italy, the Pentagon proceeded with the help of the Italian government to build this very significant new base.
Now, the interesting thing that I point out in this article is that, flash forward to last spring, the Pentagon, the army, they get the keys to the first building in this new base, a place called Dalmalene, and they're within months of taking ownership over all the new buildings in this base, there are about 31 buildings.
That same, within weeks of getting the keys to the new base, the army announces, well, the whole reason that we needed to build this new base to consolidate a brigade in Vicenza, actually we're not going to consolidate in Vicenza.
We're going to keep two of six battalions in Germany, so that the whole justification for the new base, which was to consolidate a brigade in one place, they finally get $600 million, they get the buildings for the base, and then they tell Congress and the American public, actually, we take it all back.
We're not going to do what we said we're going to do, but we're going to keep the base, of course.
So this, to me, was particularly shocking and outrageous, because on the face of it, it looks like the army really never had any intention of consolidating in Vicenza in the first place, but just settled on a convenient justification that would pry loose hundreds of millions of dollars from Congress to get a new base where they wanted it.
Right.
Yeah, that's what it always comes down to it, too.
You know, you think about all the highfalutin rhetoric about saving innocent lives in Kosovo.
Just go look at Camp Bonsteel, a picture from the air in your Google images, you get the idea that maybe the whole war was fought just so the Halliburton could build that damn thing.
Or I guess maybe there's a pipeline there.
They're pretending to guard or something.
Yeah, I think we always have to look at the complicated interests that benefit from base construction and the presence of bases, especially in Europe, where, you know, as many have pointed out, you know, what, what is the military doing there?
Who are the enemies?
Who is who is Italy's enemy?
Who what enemies does Germany have these days?
One of the.
That's the whole thing.
It's keeping the Germans from building up their own army again.
Don't worry.
You have us.
You have NATO.
We'll protect you.
Don't rearm.
Not seriously.
You can arm yourself up enough to do what we say in Afghanistan, but please.
That's all.
I think that's basically the deal.
Yeah, that's that's one of the deals.
Yeah, Germany does have a quite significant army.
But I think one of the U.S. military officials I spoke to in Italy was was quite frank about what the military is doing in Italy.
He said, you know, we're not here to defend Italy, I'm sorry, Italy, he said, we're not here to defend you.
We're here because we've decided we want to be here so that we can do other things.
Yeah.
And you will sell us pizza and do as you're told.
That's the American attitude.
I wonder why they call us the ugly Americans, you know, I have no idea, actually.
Concentrate real hard and see if we can figure that out.
All right.
So now what's the big deal with this 200 Marines being sent there?
Do you think, you know, Patrick Coburn was on the show yesterday and, you know, he's making a great point, obviously, about the media and the Western elites just not paying one whit of attention whatsoever to Libya since the regime change since it's such a disaster.
And then I was saying, yeah, but be careful what you wish for, because as soon as they start paying attention, they're going to start finding problems to solve over there, you know.
And I just wonder what since, you know, by any measure, that war has been such a disaster and has just turned the country into lawlessness and and warring militias and whatever kind of thing.
Do you think this 200 Marines being moved to Italy now that that just means it's just a matter of days before they're moved to Libya and this whole thing escalates further?
Or I mean, it's sort of like with the Syria thing.
We just talked to John Pfeffer.
They've got to know better.
At some point, you've got to cut your losses and not we're talking about Syria with him.
At some point, you got to not do the George W. Bush thing to do, right?
Yeah, well, I think on the positive side of things, I think the days of large scale intervention, at least for the time being, and I hope for the long distant future as well, those days are over.
I think Obama and others on Capitol Hill have no interest in sending large numbers of people of U.S. troops anywhere.
And I think that's a real victory on behalf of people who've opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.
But I think there is this danger that small scale intervention, in addition to the use of drones worldwide, that that's the new or major part of the new U.S. military strategy going forward.
But I think that the danger is that small scale interventions, of course, can grow into much larger interventions as we've seen, you know, going back to Vietnam and before.
Well, that's been my fear about Libya, that, you know, things could really deteriorate there fast.
So then, you know, how many suicide bombings or how many ambassadors killed or how many Delta raids that go bad or whatever before they have to really escalate because of all the problems they've created?
I mean, that's been their pattern for 100 years running now, you know.
Yeah, I think it's really dangerous.
Hey, let me hold you through this short break and then ask you more about bases around the world.
Sounds great.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with David Vine.
He's the author of Island of Shame.
And we've been talking about his piece for Tom Dispatch, which also ran at Antiwar.com, the Pentagon's Italian spending spree.
And so in the book Island of Shame, which, like I was saying before the break there, is all about the Chagossians who were forcibly, well, they were kidnapped and forced marched across the sea basically by the Brits and the Americans who stole their island home from them so that they could have a nuclear bomber base there at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
But in that same book, there's I guess it's a whole chapter.
Or maybe two or something all about just America's global empire bases.
And of course, it's not the exact same kind of empire as the Roman Empire or the British one, but it is an empire in a great many ways.
And when it comes to the power and influence achieved by just having a base in a country where, you know, like we're talking about even closing it down, they don't want us to close down just for their immediate economic interests and that kind of thing.
They end up having, well, at last count that I saw, it was a thousand something bases.
I guess that number fluctuates, but there are and I think the American people still don't really have their heads around this.
The American government maintains a thousand military bases outside of the country, all over the world, basically everywhere but Russia and China.
We got a base right now.
It's crazy.
David, could you take us through?
Could you try to paint a picture of the empire bases?
And you know what?
I don't mean to put a bunch of words in your mouth about to what degree that makes it an empire or not or whatever it is.
You characterize it however you want, but also count up the bases for show us where they are and what they're for.
Sure.
This collection of bases, empire bases that that you refer to is really unprecedented in not just U.S. history, but but world history.
It's a collection of bases that outstrips the largest collection that the as you mentioned, the Roman Empire, the British Empire, any previous empire or people ever collected.
Bases has long been an important part of military strategy for empires, for for countries, peoples.
But the United States has amassed really beginning in World War Two, a collection that's global in scale and really quite remarkable in number.
There's some bases, of course, it's important to point out that go back to the to the 19th century, including Guantanamo Bay and others outside the continental U.S.
But it's really in World War Two that we see the explosion in this number of bases.
The number, as you said, fluctuates, fluctuated over time, of course, during the Cold War, reached even higher levels, somewhere in the two to three thousand or more range around the world.
But, you know, again, more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States still maintains hundreds of bases.
It was easily over a thousand until quite recently.
It's a little unclear how many bases remain in Afghanistan.
There were one point five hundred and fifty U.S. bases, and that's in addition to NATO bases.
But now what was the best numbers I've seen is that there remain about one hundred bases in Afghanistan.
That takes the global total of U.S. bases outside the 50 states in Washington, D.C.
That total is probably somewhere in the range of eight hundred.
Still a huge collection of bases with major concentrations still in Europe, especially as we've been discussing in Germany and Italy, but of course, also in Japan and South Korea and throughout East Asia.
There's all this talk of the Asia pivot right now.
The United States has been pivoted to Asia for decades.
We've had literally hundreds of bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam and throughout East Asia, encircling both the Soviet Union during the Cold War, now Russia and China.
And now the Obama administration wants to move more military power in that direction.
It's also important to point out that there is a growing U.S. military presence in Africa proper.
The U.S. military will only acknowledge the presence of one base that's in Djibouti on the continent of Africa, but it's clear that the military presence is growing, especially with the creation of small drone bases and small bases for special forces troops.
Sometimes they're run by contractors.
Generally, they're placed within host nation bases.
So we're seeing a growth in the number of bases in Africa, also in Latin America.
So at the same time that the United States is closing many bases in Afghanistan and some in Europe and elsewhere, we're seeing a growth in the number of bases, many of them these small, often referred to as lily pad bases.
And there are a number of dangers with that strategy, including the getting involved in conflicts that we don't know anything about, as we've discussed.
But also there's the potential, of course, for a small base to become something quite a bit larger.
And that's exactly what we saw in Diego Garcia.
It was pitched to Congress in the late 60s, early 70s as an austere communications facility.
Now it's a multi-billion dollar base.
So I think we shouldn't be fooled by the creation of bases when they're just referred to as lily pad bases or cooperative security locations.
Those bases can become much larger and be the beginning of a much larger investment and involvement of U.S. military power.
And then at the same time, though, in the book, you quote him talking about and I guess this is just the Air Force saying, well, we can rule the world from Guam and Diego Garcia by 2015.
We don't need all these lily pad bases all over Eurasia because they cause us problems.
I mean, they're they're recognizing the problem of blowback and backdraft and all this great stuff.
And they're recognizing that, you know, be easier if we just threaten everybody with our hydrogen bombs from our air bases.
And I guess, you know, tungsten rods from God.
Yeah, well, I think there are a few things to be said about that first, you know, as we're trying to understand U.S. military strategy and make sense of it and how it changes in the world, we shouldn't think or assume that it's all logical.
And of course, the U.S. military, let alone the whole national security bureaucracy, it's huge.
And they're competing interests and different views and different strategies going on at once that aren't necessarily coherent or logical.
So you do have some people in the Air Force who say, you know, we don't need all these little bases around the world.
Just give us, you know, three huge bases, Guam, Diego Garcia, maybe one or two in the States and we can rule the world.
But meanwhile, you know, there are people in the Army, in the Air Force, the Navy, of course, who want far more bases and especially the Army and in places like Africa and the Marines to a lesser extent who are exploring the creation of these smaller bases.
So you have multiple strategies going on at the same time.
All right.
I'm sorry.
We're all out of time.
We got to go.
But thank you very much, Dave.
Appreciate your time on the show.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
All right.
That's David Vine.
He's associate professor of anthropology.
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