Above: Shock and Awe over Iraq at the beginning of the Bush-era war and occupation of Iraq.
The United States has been one of the most aggressive military countries throughout our history. Now we know, based on research from the Congressional Research Service, that a dramatic escalation of military actions, “notable deployments of U.S. military forces overseas,” has occurred since the end of the Cold War. Many US foreign policy “leaders” began to talk about a new American Century or a PAX America where US hegemony dominated the world. This dream has turned into two and a half decades of extreme militarism, a nightmare for thousands of people killed and displaced throughout the world. Below is a brief report from the Project for Defense Alternatives, made up of retired military officers.
Since Cold War the U.S. has deployed military force 5 times more often than prior 193 years
From time to time the Congressional Research Service publishes a report listing “notable deployments of U.S. military forces overseas.” CRS updates this list “as circumstance warrant.“ The latest report covers 216 years, 1798 through August of 2014. It does not include the new bombing campaigns in Syia and Iraq.
Dividing this data by ‘eras’ we find:
Post Cold War (August 1990 – 14 August 2014): 146 deployments (averaging 6.1 per year.) Bush 1: 9, Clinton: 65, Bush 2: 39, and Obama: 33.
Cold War (24 June 1948 – August 1990): 47 deployments (averaging 1.5 per year)
Interwar and World War II (1918 – 1948): 34 deployments (averaging 1.1 per year)
Imperial Era and World War I (1866 – 1917): 69 deployments (averaging 1.4 per year)
Nation’s Founding through Civil War (1798 to 1865): 65 deployments (averaging 1.0 per year)
CRS notes the instances listed “… vary greatly in size of operation, legal authorization, and significance. The number of troops involved ranges from a few sailors or Marines landed to protect American lives and property to hundreds of thousands in Korea and Vietnam and millions in World War II.” Also the CRS list does not include ‘black op’ covert deployments carried out by the CIA or other special forces. The frequency of covert ops have also been trending sharply upward since the end of the Cold War.
This data deserves analysis at a much finer grain, categorizing by types of deployments and their significance, and the inclusion of covert ops. None the less, it should be a matter of great concern that post-Cold War U.S. military deployments have a occured with a frequency more than five times that of the prior 193 years of the nation’s history.