Ressisting US military Bases: Colombia in Context

1.10.09

By Eric Schwartz – IPO

^{Bomb explodes on the U.S. Navy bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico}

The U.S.-made bomb that killed David Sanes in 1999 wasn’t dropped during a bombing raid in Iraq or Sudan. Sanes was killed while working in his hometown on the small island of Vieques, part of the United States colony of Puerto Rico. For over 50 years, the U.S. Navy had used two thirds of Vieques as a bombing ground, causing chronic health problems and environmental devastation. David Sanes’ death unleashed a mass civil disobedience movement to demand the closing of the bombing range. Local fishermen entered the bombing range by sea, while hundreds of local residents and supporters cut through the military fences to occupy the range, forcing the Navy to stop the bombings. Each time the protesters were hauled off the bombing range by U.S. troops, they managed to come back a few days later. In 2003, after a long campaign that won strong backing from Puerto Rican social movements, the U.S. government announced that the military would leave Vieques.

As the United States continues to expand and fine-tune its military presence around the world, people in places like Vieques keep struggling to keep U.S. bases out of their fields and their cities. The movements against foreign bases, which coordinate their campaigns through the international “No Bases Network”, confront justifications for the bases as diverse as their countries. In South Korea, a network of bases that is being re-structured to confront an increasingly powerful China is still justified with the threat of communist North Korea. After the U.S. military delivered aid to victims of the 2004 tsunami in Asia, the U.S. revived an out-of-use base in Thailand, saying that the bases might be needed for future humanitarian relief efforts. In Iraq, we are told that the bases are part of the fight to defend democracy. The US Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs explains that “in some cases, proximity to an American base provides a local window to host-nation forces to observe civil-military relations and to demonstrate how respect for human rights is critical to a functioning democracy.”* Meanwhile, Colombians are given a two-for-one deal, with a growing U.S. military presence that promises to defeat rural guerrillas and combat drug-trafficking at the same time.

In other parts of the world, though, the U.S. implicitly admits that the bases are geared to intimidate and, if need be, take on nearby countries that get out of line. The bases in Germany, installed over 50 years ago to contain the Soviet Union, are now justified as guaranteeing “regional stability”. The same arguments are trotted out whenever the need for U.S. military presence is questioned in Saudi Arabia, Japan, Djibouti in East Africa, or Pakistan. The use of Pakistani bases has allowed U.S. troops to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan and, more recently, to bomb the “Pakistani Taliban” and civilians living near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The agreements that permit U.S. forces to use local bases in Pakistan, like similar agreements with Colombia, Romania, and Bulgaria, are representative of a recent shift in U.S. military strategy. The megabases of the cold war are increasingly being phased out, making way for smaller bases and use agreements with local governments. The Bureau of International Information Programs informs us that “there is a shift away from huge bases requiring substantial supporting infrastructure to smaller cooperative security locations… [The Defense Department] is placing greater emphasis on military relationships as opposed to formal bases because they facilitate access but avoid the expense and vulnerability of bases.”* The article goes on to explain that “a limited number of U.S. military personnel might be located, alternatively, at forward operating sites ready to respond to trouble anywhere from the Western Hemisphere to Africa.”

Whatever the justification of the moment, the final goal of the 823 U.S. bases in the world remains the same: dealing with “troublesome” governments or social movements that challenge U.S. dominance or access to resources. If the need arises, the bases provide the U.S. military with the logistical support it needs to intervene in neighboring countries. U.S. troops also offer local armies training and support for counter-insurgency operations and for dirty war operations against social movements.

That’s why movements from Turkey to Thailand keep organizing to keep out U.S. troops. In Vicenza, Italy, local activists have briefly occupied the construction site for the planned Dal Molin airbase, and have kept up a permanent protest camp next to the site for over two years. Anti-militarist activists in New Zealand managed in 2008 to enter the high-security Waihopai base and remove the domes that hid from view several high-powered spy satellites. From 2005 to 2007 farmers in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, fought against the expansion of a U.S. base that eventually expropriated their fields and their villages. Joined at times by several thousand supporters, the farmers resisted repeated police attacks and efforts to demolish their homes, before finally being forced to leave their land.

^{Korean farmers and unionists protest against a U.S. base in South Korea}

Social movements have managed to pressure national governments into closing U.S. bases in countries in several continents. In the past twenty years, U.S. troops have been sent home from the Philippines, Uzbekistan, and Panama. More recently, in March of this year the Czech government bowed to popular opposition and withdrew plans to allow the Pentagon to set up a U.S. military radar base in the Czech Republic. Also this year, following a long campaign by local groups in Ecuador, Rafael Correa’s government finally kicked out U.S. troops from the base in Manta. In Okinawa, Japan, outrage against rapes by U.S. soldiers, including the rape of a 14-year old girl by a Marine, helped create an anti-base movement with deep popular support in Okinawa. Early this year that movement was able to pressure the Japanese government to negotiate a deal that led to the removal of half of the U.S. troops from Okinawa.

Organizing against U.S. bases and other military presence will continue in Colombia, South Korea, El Salvador, and other parts of the world where troops are stationed to protect the U.S. empire. These foreign military bases can appear impossible to challenge, but they are not nearly as invincible and eternal as they seem. To give a few examples, the Spanish soldiers that once ruled Latin America were sent back to the Madre Patria long ago. There are no more Roman soldiers in London, and no more Japanese soldiers in China. Because empires, however powerful they may be at their peak, can also fall. Social movements that manage to kick out U.S. bases, in Colombia and elsewhere, can free their countries from U.S. dominance and at the same time, bring people around the world closer to long-awaited fall of the U.S. empire.

• Jacquelyn S. Porth, Bureau of International Information Programs. U.S. Military Bases Provide Stability, Training, Quick Reaction. February 27, 2007. http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/February/20070227132836sjhtrop0.6571466.html#ixzz0RrtiwIMG

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