Obama's Arc of Instability, Destabilizing the World One Region at a Time

[Demeter]

http://www.truth-out.org/obamas-arc-instability-destabilizing-world-one-region-time/1316442192

It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.” It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them -- from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia -- Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace.

Garrisoning the planet is just part of it. The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services are also running covert special forces and spy operations, launching drone attacks, building bases and secret prisons, training, arming, and funding local security forces, and engaging in a host of other militarized activities right up to full-scale war. But while you consider this, keep one fact in mind: the odds are that there is no longer a single nation in the arc of instability in which the United States is in no way militarily involved.

Covenant of the Arc

“Freedom is on the march in the broader Middle East,” the president said in his speech. “The hope of liberty now reaches from Kabul to Baghdad to Beirut and beyond. Slowly but surely, we're helping to transform the broader Middle East from an arc of instability into an arc of freedom.”

An arc of freedom. You could be forgiven if you thought that this was an excerpt from President Barack Obama’s Arab Spring speech, where he said “t will be the policy of the United States to… support transitions to democracy.” Those were, however, the words of his predecessor George W. Bush. The giveaway is that phrase “arc of instability,” a core rhetorical concept of the former president’s global vision and that of his neoconservative supporters...

[newfie11]

1. Thank you for posting this n/t

[izquierdista]

2. What could have been

Suppose, for a minute, that John Kennedy laughed off his military advisers in 1961, told them "No, we're going to do things a new way. That Peace Corps that I just got through Congress, that's going to be our instrument of foreign policy. You in the Defense Department, are going to do just that, defend the United States."

Suppose that he sent teachers, agricultural experts, medical personnel, and civil engineers to countries that were "in our national interest". Suppose further that they built roads and dams and flood control projects, had teaching hospitals as part of the American embassy, and staffed schools and agricultural extension programs.

Suppose we showed more concern for the people of a country than whichever despot had managed to seize power.

Where would we be 50 years down THAT road?

[Demeter]

3. Halfway to a Federation of Planets

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxbmt_tWjwZWIeffWKmfcoQBoeDrLEQY5vpJfqJhoGktVCjUcVhStr5otu

[bhikkhu]

4. B.S.

The majority of the instability the article talks about is caused by the miserable governments of the region. We can take some blame for that, as current conditions metastasized out of the various agreements and arrangements ending colonialism, which handed over too many people to ridiculous local autocrats, but currently the reform movements are almost entirely native and democratic. Its not all about Obama - its about people sick and tired of tyranny and lack of opportunity.

Articles of this kind are just another variety of western ethnocentrism - believing that no one can accomplish anything and nothing in the world can happen without the west pulling the strings. In this case, its not about us, get over it!