fortified by military
Aaron Kreider
Think, Question, Resist
There are many reasons why students should question the presence of the large ROTC program on our campus. ROTC explicitly discriminates against gays and lesbians. It trains students to violate Catholic Just War Theory. Its values conflict with those of academia. But instead I will focus on the military's purpose and practices.
It should be clear that the role of the United States military is not, despite its name, defense. A military that is only one fourth as strong would be more than sufficient for defense. So what is its purpose?
According to the United Nations Development Program, the average American earns 100 times more, lives 26 years longer, has one fifteenth the chance of dying as an infant, uses 140 times more electricity and 20 times more oil than someone living in a least developed country. This income gap has doubled in the past 40 years.
How do Americans manage to consume so much of the world's resources? I propose that the function of the U.S. military is to ensure American dominance of the globe, thus guaranteeing that this disparity continues.
Economic inequality is the inevitable product of capitalism. This benefits the several percent of people who are rich, while hurting the overwhelming majority — the exploited poor. Fortunately for Americans, thanks to a powerful military, we are that several percent.
U.S. foreign policy and the military are intractably intertwined. American diplomacy, military and economic aid as well as CIA covert operations are all attempts to influence a situation, without resorting to direct military force. Much of their power comes from the fact that they are backed up by the world's strongest military. Thus when questioning ROTC's presence, one should examine not just military interventions (like Kosovo) but also the goals and actual practices of U.S. foreign policy.
The role of U.S. foreign policy is to extend capitalism to cover the entire globe so that states are dependent upon the industrialized nations, especially the U.S. The beauty of this system is that it provides the U.S. with cheap resources and markets for our manufactured goods and high-tech services. Poor nations are locked into producing primary goods (like agricultural products or minerals) that do not require processing or dead-end assembly work — while rich nations monopolize all of the highly profitable growth industries. Not surprisingly, states often try to refuse to be permanently dependent in this economic system. This is where the U.S. military comes in handy. The U.S. will use all of its might to stop any country from trying any alternative approach to economic development other than unadulterated capitalism. For if any state were to succeed, it would cause others to imitate it. Almost every U.S. intervention can be traced to this cause.
In 1954, Guatemala's democratically elected president Arbenz started a modest program of land reform. However as this program threatened to take uncultivated land from the United Fruit Company, the CIA organized a coup and set the scene for 40 years of civil war, military dictatorship, death squads, torture and disappearances affecting 200,000 people.
Juan Bosch's presidency did not last long in the Dominican Republic. Elected in 1963, he dared to propose land reform and nationalization. So he was overthrown in a military coup. Two years later, when civil war had broken out and Bosch's supporters were threatening to win, the Marines intervened and Bosch was not to return.
In 1978, leftist Sandinistas overthrew U.S. supported Nicaraguan dictator Somoza. Within a couple years, the United States was funding the Contra guerillas, wrecking havoc on Nicaragua's attempts to develop along alternative socialist economic lines. The U.S. solved the Sandinista "problem" in 1990, when the U.S. funded opposition party won the elections and Nicaragua returned to the capitalist path.
More recently in 1995 the U.S. restored Aristide, the democratically elected president of Haiti, to power under the condition that he renounce his previous opposition to unregulated free market policies.
Unlike the Cold War, it is no longer publicly acceptable for the United States to support anticommunist military dictatorships. Instead we urge states to move towards "democracy." However if you look closer at these countries, it is more critical that they follow unhindered capitalism (the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank) — than be democratic.
Israel is an excellent example. A so-called democracy, receiving billions of U.S. military and economic aid, the country's policies of disempowering Palestinians are closer to South African apartheid.
Colombia, now the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, is another good one. It holds regular elections, but the last time leftists formed a political party the government-tolerated death squads made short work of them. Colombia has the most human rights violations of any Latin American country and the victims are primarily peasants whose crime is that they are poor.
If you believe in economic justice, human rights and real democracy then you should oppose the existence of our military and ROTC. As a first step, let us follow The Observer's Sept. 15 editorial suggesting that "all ROTC students should be required to take a class in just war theory."
Aaron Kreider is a third year sociology graduate student. His column appears every other Monday.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, January 22, 2001
