The list of countries targeted by the U.S. military includes the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single county in Latin America and the Caribbean and most of the African continent.
From the beginning of 1991 to the beginning of 2004, the U.S. military launched 100 interventions, according to CRS.
That number grew to 200 military interventions between 1991 and 2018.
The report shows that, since the end of the first cold war in 1991, at the moment of U.S. unipolar hegemony, the number of Washington’s military interventions abroad substantially increased.
Of the total 469 documented foreign military interventions, the Congressional Research Service noted that the U.S. government only formally declared war 11 times, in just five separate wars.
The data exclude the independence war been U.S. settlers and the British empire, any military deployments between 1776 and 1798, and the U.S. Civil War.
It is important to stress that all of these numbers are conservative estimates, because they do not include U.S. special operations, covert actions, or domestic deployments.
The CRS report clarified:
The list does not include covert actions or numerous occurrences in which U.S. forces have been stationed abroad since World War II in occupation forces or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, or routine military assistance or training operations.
The report likewise excludes the deployment of the U.S. military forces against Indigenous peoples, when they were systematically ethnically cleansed in the violent process of westward settler-colonial expansion.
CRS acknowledged that it left out the “continual use of U.S. military units in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the United States.”
“The U.S. has undertaken over 500 international military interventions since 1776, with nearly 60 percent undertaken between 1950 and 2017,” the project wrote. “What’s more, over one-third of these missions occurred after 1999.”
The Military Intervention Project added: “With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the U.S. to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite—the U.S. has increased its military involvements abroad.”
Editor’s Note: This interview originally appeared in People’s Dispatch.
Last month, Uganda paid the first installment ($65 million) of $325 million in reparations to the Democratic Republic of the Congo following an order from the International Court of Justice. This is for the crimes committed by Uganda during its occupation of the Congo in the 1990s. While this was a positive first step, there is a long way to go before justice is achieved. A key aspect is bringing Rwanda to justice for its crimes.
Kambale Musavuli of the Centre for Research in the Congo talks about this process of justice, the crimes of Rwanda and Uganda, and the responsibility of their partners such as the United States and United Kingdom.
A protest in Taleex, Somalia, on January 15 / credit: Khaatumo Media Office
Editor’s Note: Light editing helped conform this article that originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch to TF’s style.
Protests against secessionist rule are spreading across the Sool region of Somaliland, the breakaway region of northern Somalia. Unionist protesters are calling for reunification with Somalia and Somali activists and observers opine that the protests might soon spread across Somaliland, questioning the legitimacy of its unrecognized claim to sovereignty, which the United States and the United Kingdom have been seeking to strengthen with recent overtures.
On Sunday, January 15, protests were reported from the Taleex city, where Somaliland’s tricolor flags were removed and replaced with the blue flags of Somalia. Taleex is about 160 kilometers northeast of the epicenter of the protests, Las Anod, Sool region’s capital city. Las Anod was captured by Somaliland from Somalia’s autonomous region of Puntland in 2007.
The protests began in the city on December 28. In an attempt to put them down, security forces killed at least 20 civilians over the following five days, before reportedly retreating to the city’s outskirts on January 5.
Somaliland’s commander of Armed Forces, Brigadier General Mahad Ambashe, has, however, indicated his intention to take back the city, saying that his troops “shall continue staying in Las Anod and Sool region to ensure law and order has been followed by residents.”
Defiant, the clan leaders of the region held a meeting in Las Anod on January 12, calling on Somaliland’s forces to withdraw from Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (SSC), where a majority of the people have been historically opposed to secession from Somalia.
Pro-unionist troops under the command of the head of the Dhulbanate clan have taken over the city and sworn to defend it from Somaliland. “Everybody is waiting for the tribesmen in Las Anod to fully announce a war against Somaliland. And you will hear this very soon as they have formed a committee of 33 heads to come up with a roadmap to remove Somaliland from SSC,” Elham Garaad, a UK-based Somali activist whose unionist parents migrated out of Somaliland, told Peoples Dispatch.
The protests had spread to the city of Kalabaydh, 70 kilometers (43 miles) to the southwest of Las Anod, by January 12. Two days later, unionist demonstrations broke out in Xudun, 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the north of Las Anod, and in Boocame, 80 kilometers (49 miles) to its east. Protesters also took to the streets of Boocame’s neighboring Tukarak on January 15, and blocked a minister from visiting the city.
Badhaan, a city in Sanaag region, and Buuhoodle city in Cayn region, have also witnessed protests. The three regions together had formed the Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (SSC) state of Somalia, before being forced into Somaliland by the secessionist Somali National Movement (SNM).
Waving the blue flag of Somalia, the protesters have been demanding the “right to self-determination” on the question of reuniting with Somalia, which was fractured after the civil war that ended with the collapse of its federal government in 1991.
‘Most Regions in Somaliland Oppose Secession’
“Until 1991, there was no such thing as Somaliland, except when the area was a British Protectorate,” Mohamed Olad, a Somali activist studying law in the United States, told Peoples Dispatch. “The idea of forming a country on the basis of this border of the British protectorate,” separating itself from the part of Somalia under Italian occupation, was opposed by two of the three original states of Somalia that came to be part of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland after 1991, he said.
Support for secession was largely limited to the North West state, a stronghold of the SNM, which fought in the war against Somalia’s federal government led by Mohamed Siad Barre. SSC and Awdal “have historically opposed” the notion of Somaliland, Olad explained, adding that Awdal was captured by the SNM with the help of Ethiopia during the civil war.
The SSC leaders, on the other hand, were tricked into signing an agreement on the guarantee that Somaliland would form itself into a single state within Somalia. “That agreement never included secession,” he said, adding that discontent against Somaliland’s rule has since been intensifying, and protests might also soon spread to Awdal.
Three of the four major clans—namely the Dhulbahante, Warsangeli and Gadabursi—along with the smaller Issa clan, had opposed the secession from Somalia, added Elham Garaad. Only the Isak clan, which dominated the SNM and had a strong presence in the North West state, supported the secession and formation of Somaliland. Other clans have since felt marginalized by the Isak, which wields disproportionate power in the government of Somaliland.
But currently, the “Isak themselves are divided,” Garaad said. “Gaarhajis, one of the largest tribes (under the Isak clan), has been vocal about the atrocities in the SSC region.” Defending the right of the people in SSC to be unionist, they have called on the Somaliland government to stop the killings. Garaad maintains that the current spate of protests may soon reach even Somaliland’s capital city Hargeisa, which has been a historic stronghold of the SNM’s secessionist politics, dominated by the Isak.
“SNM was led by the elite and petty bourgeoisie of the Isak clan. They have neither dealt with the class contradictions within the clan, nor succeeded in integrating other clans into the secessionist movement,” historian Mohamed Hassan told Peoples Dispatch. “While the Isak is supposed to be the ruling clan, in effect, what you have in Somaliland is a one-man rule by former army Colonel Musa Bihi Abdi, whose term had already expired in October 2022. [An] increasing number of people within the Isak clan are also supporting unionist politics.”
Somalia is among the most homogeneous countries in Africa, in terms of language and religion, explained Hassan, who is also an advisor to the head of Ethiopia’s Somali state. The clan system from feudal times, preserved under colonial administration as an essential tool for divide-and-rule, remains the key fissure exploited by imperialism to ensure Somalia remains a fractured nation, he argued.
Rising Tide of Somali Nationalism
“But hundreds of thousands from Somaliland are working and staying in Somalia,” he added. Youngsters from Somaliland make up a significant portion of Somalia’s national army. The large Somali diaspora is getting increasingly politicized and organized by international exposure. All this has contributed to a surge in Somali nationalism, he said, adding that even businessmen in Somaliland, who want a larger and integrated market, seek a unified Somalia.
The tensions between clans—whose leaders choose the MPs in most of Somalia, including in Somaliland—is only a surface manifestation of the tide of Somali nationalism churning from underneath, Hassan argued. In the face of this nationalist sentiment, Somaliland’s existence as an independent entity is facing a “crisis of legitimacy” internally, he maintains.
This crisis is accentuated by the fact that Musa Bihi Abdi’s presidential term expired last October, despite which he has continued to rule without having conducted elections yet. In September, the Somaliland Electoral Commission announced that elections cannot be held for at least nine more months due to financial and technical problems.
Opposition parties, which have 52 of the 82 seats in Somaliland’s parliament, had led protests in August demanding timely elections. At least seven people were killed and several more wounded in the crackdown on these protests. It was the assassination of a popular opposition politician, in the backdrop of a spate of killings of prominent people in the SSC region over the last decade, that triggered the protests on December 28 in Las Anod, which have snowballed into a unionist movement.
While Somaliland is thus unraveling, with internal rifts between ruling and opposition parties, mounting tensions between the clans, and sa urging unionist sentiment contesting its legitimacy, the United States and the United Kingdom have been increasingly legitimizing the secessionist state.
U.S. Military Base in Somaliland?
The then-commander of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) General Stephen Townsend met with President Abdi in Somaliland in May, becoming the highest ranking official to visit the breakaway state, whose claims to sovereignty have no international recognition.
While not recognizing Somaliland as a sovereign state, and officially adhering to ‘One Somalia policy,’ the United States has lately made several gestures seen as a dilution of this policy. Prior to Townsend’s visit, in March 2022, the Somaliland Partnership Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Republicans Jim Risch and Mike Rounds, and Democrat Chris Van Hollen.
The “Biden Administration has limited itself to the confines of a ‘single Somalia’ policy at the detriment of other democratic actors in the country. In this complex time in global affairs and for the Horn of Africa, the United States should explore all possible mutually-beneficial relationships with stable and democratic partners, like Somaliland, and not limit ourselves with outdated policy approaches and diplomatic frameworks that don’t meet today’s challenges,” Jim Risch had said.
The act was signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden on December 23, under the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which was the first time a separate reference to Somaliland was made in U.S. law.
The Act commissions a feasibility study by the “Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense,” to determine “whether opportunities exist for greater collaboration in the pursuit of United States national security interests… with… Somaliland.”
It further seeks to identify “the practicability and advisability of improving the professionalization and capacity of security sector actors within the Federal Member States (FMS) and Somaliland.” While adding that “Nothing in this Act… may be construed to convey United States recognition of Somalia’s FMS or Somaliland as an independent entity,” it stops just short of doing that.
Somaliland’s port city of Berbera will also be one of the sites for the U.S.-led multinational 10-day military exercise scheduled to take place in February. On January 13, personnel from AFRICOM’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa [CJTF-HOA] visited Somaliland and surveyed the Berbera port.
“Berbera is now an American military base without settling the secession issue,” former Somali Special Envoy to the United States, Abukar Arman, wrote in the Eurasia review. “Stakes have never been higher for all actors. Against that backdrop, President Muse Bihi was given the nod and wink to march on ahead to secure total control over his claimed territory by any means necessary. He was also granted the reassurance that neither the central government of Somalia nor Puntland will interfere militarily or otherwise.”
‘Oil Companies Want a Weak and Divided Somalia’
In the meantime, Genel Energy, listed in London Stock Exchange, claimed the right to explore and exploit the oil fields in Somaliland last month. The oil ministry of the federal government of Somalia has said it “categorically rejects Genel Energy plc’s claim to own petroleum rights in Somalia’s northern regions and calls upon Genel Energy plc to cease its illegal claim to own petroleum rights.”
Insisting that it is the only body authorized to grant such rights, it warned: “Any authorization granted in violation of Somalia’s laws and regulations is unlawful and would be considered null and void.”
Refuting Somalia’s Federal government, Somaliland’s secessionist government has claimed “the authority to engage foreign investors in order to explore and exploit the Republic of Somaliland’s potential hydrocarbons and mineral resources. No one other than the Somaliland government has the authority to claim or award an exploration license within Somaliland,” a statement issued on December 29 said, amid the crackdown on the protests in Las Anod.
Las Anod is also claimed by Somaliland’s neighboring Puntland, which has been an autonomous region within Somalia in dispute with Somaliland over the SSC region. On January 9, Puntland declared that it will be independent of Somalia until the Federal Constitution is finalized.
Disputes over the rights to enter into partnerships with foreign companies over oil and other natural resources are reported to be among the key reasons behind tensions between the Federal government of Somalia and Puntland.
“Oil and gas has been found across Somalia, including in Somaliland and Puntland. British capital is heavily invested. These oil companies want a weak and divided Somalia, because a strong and united country will be more difficult to exploit,” Hassan said.
Puntland’s state government maintains that the provisional federal constitution and the constitution of Puntland state allows it to act as an independent entity until the federal constitution is finalized, and all the states’ constitutions are harmonized with it.
Pointing out that Puntland has a constitutional right to be independent until the finalization of the federal constitution, Olad said it is Somaliland that has been blocking the finalization of the constitution. The federal government of Somalia, he said, should ensure that Somaliland will no longer hold the process of finalizing the constitution hostage.
However, a lack of confidence in the federal government led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who is seen as inept and pliable by western powers, is perceptible, despite the surging unionist politics and nationalist sentiment.
The federal government can truly reflect the widespread sentiment of Somali nationalism only when it is elected on the basis of one-person-one-vote, argues Olad. Former President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmajo, who had become a popular representative of Somali nationalism, had promised to break the stranglehold of the clans by implementing universal adult suffrage, but failed to do so. He lost the clan-controlled election last year, and the current government of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has failed to materialize the aspirations of Somali nationalism.
Mohamed Hassan sums the situation up by citing [Italian communist] Antonio Gramsci: “The old is dying and the new is struggling to be born,” he says, adding that “the winds of change are most definitely blowing over all of Somalia.”
Cover of On the Ho Chi Minh Trail (University of Chicago Press, 2021)
On the Ho Chi Minh Trail, by Sherry Buchanan (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, Illinois, 2021)
The U.S. war on Vietnam is one of the most popularly and publicly criticized U.S. wars in the West—perhaps only now being superseded by the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Many filmmakers took their shot at a “critical” portrayal of the imperialist conflict—Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” Oliver Stone’s “Platoon,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and so on. Though, the context behind the conflict, what happened during the war, its repercussions, and—most importantly—the Vietnamese people’s perspective all still remain widely misunderstood, misinterpreted, and vastly oversimplified in the minds of the majority of those who live in the belly of the beast (the U.S. empire).
This was the deficit which author Sherry Buchanan purported to, in part, address in her book, On the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The cover insert of the book explains:
“Buchanan reveals the stories of the women who defended the Trail against the sustained American bombing campaign—the most ferocious in modern warfare—and of the artists who drew them. She focuses on what life was really like for the women and men under fire, bringing a unique perspective to the history of the Vietnam War.”
The prospect of approaching the conflict from an art-centered perspective with a focus on the women who were absolutely vital to the trail—and, as such, the triumph of the revolution—was welcome, refreshing and exciting. However, throughout the book the author demonstrates her inability to remove her red-, white- and blue-colored glasses as well as a clear lack of understanding peoples’ liberation movements that struggle against imperialism, ultimately leaving the reader with an experience that is more trite than enlightening.
Cover of On the Ho Chi Minh Trail (2021)
Buchanan’s book follows the author as she re-traces the trail—known locally as the Trường Sơn Road—from the north to south. The country was split in half during the war, with the north pumping out Vietnamese communist guerilla fighters and the south occupied by the U.S. military. Along the way, she visits historic sites and conducts interviews. Beginning in Hanoi, the author looks to loosely follow the trail as history unfolded. She visits Hòa Bình province, where revolutionaries trained before setting off on the trail, and the site of the infamous U.S. Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh. She takes us through the country of Laos, where the Trail Command had been headquartered during the Tết Offensive, and winds up in Ho Chi Minh City—the current name of Saigon, the former capital of the U.S.-backed puppet state, South Vietnam. Interviews with artists who traveled the trail as cultural troops for the People’s Army provide some fascinating anecdotes about life on the trail. Former combatants and youth volunteers shared stories of how they struggled against occupation and a bombing campaign that dwarfed the campaigns of the allies in WWII combined. During this war, 3 million people died. Most were Vietnamese, while only 58,000 were U.S. military personnel.
Despite the author’s ignorance, which prevented any contextualization of her interviews, their impact is nonetheless profound. By the end of the book, the collective commitment the Vietnamese people had to their revolutionary struggle is unquestionable. Almost every exchange Buchanan and her companions had with non-Westerners on their journey both underscored this theme and humanized the war. This is what—intentionally or not—the author successfully conveys in her book.
A woman serving as a Viet Cong guerilla during the U.S. war on Vietnam / credit: Bộ Quốc phòng
Each chapter is dedicated to one of several locations she visited. In an introduction and at the beginning of every chapter, Buchanan provides brief historical context about these sites, which includes explaining the events in the war that involved them. She’s eager to be critical of the United States here, offering statistics and figures that easily show the grotesque violence the empire unleashed during the war. The author even goes as far as questioning official U.S. government statistics and countered with the Vietnamese state’s data. (p. 165) However, this is where Buchanan’s book falls into the banal trap of performative criticism. Reminiscent of Oliver Stone’s TV series, “Untold History of the United States” (2012-13), providing facts and statistics that counter the imperial narrative (while important) do not nearly equate to an anti-imperialist analysis. While Buchanan is critical of the war, she is not critical of U.S. imperialism or, by extension, the question of national self-determination, which was at the core of the conflict covered in her book.
Buchanan wastes no time making her position clear in the first chapter. She includes a long, melodramatic interview with an actor who had joined the National Liberation Front (or Việt Cộng). But decades after the country reunited as one Vietnam, that person is critical of the revolution. The author is sure to include a tirade that frames China as an enemy of the Vietnamese people, standing in opposition to the United States’ “rule of law” and “freedom.” (p. 47) She continues this Cold War-era hysteria by leveling stereotypical anti-communist criticisms against the current communist-run Vietnamese state—authoritarianism, repression, corruption. But where is the “unique perspective” described on the cover flap? Buchanan provides no context, no opposing arguments, no critical thinking. She continues this theme of intentional ignorance throughout the rest of the book. In chapter 2, when visiting the Temple of Lady Triệu, she questions whether the revolution was feminist. (p. 67) This despite quoting Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts on the oppression of women under colonialism and Buchanan noting that the Women’s Union funds the feminist temple. Interestingly, the author fails to ask any of the Vietnamese women she interviewed about the feminist character of the revolution, nor makes any attempt to answer with statistics. In fact, the performative question in and of itself displays her ignorance about the goals of the revolution and the subject she claims to cover in the book.
Women’s Special Forces Division 6 studies maps of Saigon’s District 7 during the Tet Offensive / credit: bqllang.gov
Buchanan doesn’t stop at feigned ignorance. She actively stokes the racist, anti-communist fires within the Western psyche. In this way, the author completely fails the people whose perspective she claimed to value. Throughout the chapters, she does not shy away from throwing unsubstantiated claims of despotism or repression at the Vietnamese state. Yet, she spends no energy or effort speaking to the gains of the revolution. It’s as if Buchanan is uninterested in the obstacles that the people—including women—overcame to rebuild after the war or what the state has been able to provide its citizens. This is an excusable error for a book that claims to portray the experiences of the women who fought and defended the Ho Chi Minh trail. The author underlines her imperialist opinion of Vietnamese feminism with the usual Red Scare trimmings. She puts “liberated” in quotation marks when referring to territory from which the People’s Army and Việt Cộng expelled the imperialists, uses the term “indoctrinated” when referring to those who fought for the north, and even quotes a deacon who complains church land was “stolen by the locals” following the triumph of the revolution. (p. 208) In fact, in the final chapter, the author almost unconsciously praises what she perceives as capitalism creeping into the country, salivating over the presence of restaurants that serve $200 meals (p. 233) and designer stores (p. 246). If only Buchanan could see her own internalized indoctrination here, celebrating inaccessibility while belittling a popular guerilla movement which resisted the most violent war machine ever created.
Toward the conclusion of the book, as Buchanan enters Ho Chi Minh City, she intensifies her hollow attacks on the Vietnamese state. She devotes a large portion of the final chapter to another sensationalized scene when they visit two cemeteries—one for soldiers who fought for the revolution and one for those who fought for imperialist interests. Rather than contemplate the complex legacy of a Cold War-era invasion that divided a people or the violent colonialism that made the long war for liberation a necessity, she simplistically insinuates the state is vengeful and petty. Perhaps the most telling interaction Buchanan records in the book, though, is an unplanned encounter with a U.S. veteran who fought for the empire. Again here, the author fails to seek a “unique perspective.” Instead, she glorifies the invader, who claims he “worked with fighter pilots to help them do what they could to not injure civilians” (p. 220), and empathizes with his crocodile tears about being called a “baby killer” upon his return to the United States. Buchanan feigns pushback against his unproven claims that “the government (of Vietnam) treated [the highland indigenous peoples] terribly, cutting off women’s breasts and men’s achilles tendons,” and that “when [he] got to Vietnam [he] was told (reviewer’s italics) that the Việt Cộng came into villages and routinely killed a baby or a child to terrorize the people.” (p. 221) In the epilogue, she returns to this interaction by honoring the “courage” it took for this vet to return to the country to “do something (reviewer’s italics).” (p. 249)
Sherry Buchanan’s On the Ho Chi Minh Trail, while exciting in its proclaimed focus, is yet another example of the pitfalls of liberalism. The author’s misconception that criticizing a few isolated events equates to a “unique,” let alone anti-imperialist, perspective leads the book to speak more to the depressing ignorance of so-called progressives in the West than to the experiences of Vietnamese women during the war. While many of the anecdotes conveyed in the book humanized the war in a way that was certainly refreshing, Buchanan’s displaced patriotism undermines any meaningful significance. Despite her supposedly critical view of the war, the author ultimately served to defend pillars that uphold U.S. imperialism. If anything, what the book highlights for the reader is the importance of understanding what anti-imperialism means. Without it, criticisms of the West coming from liberals essentially equate to nothing more than white saviorism. The only allyship from the West of any value is true, revolutionary solidarity—solidarity that rejects Western capitalist assumptions of supremacy and stands firm in its defense of all anti-imperialist movements.
Nick Flores is a co-founder of and organizer with Bushwick, Brooklyn-based G-REBLS, a grassroots organization as well as a member organization of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Solidarity Network. Nick holds a double-major bachelor’s degree in history and Latin American studies.
