Question is
America's self-appointed
role as global cop
making us more or less safe?
The United States technically
not at war with any nation.
But that doesn't mean
our defense is dormant.
In the weeks
following Hamas's October
seven attack on Israel,
there have been nearly daily
attacks on US and coalition
forces by Iranian backed groups.
In just the past month,
an American destroyer shot down
multiple drones in its vicinity
in the Red Sea
and responded to distress calls
from a civilian commercial vessel
that was fired upon
by a ballistic missile.
U.S.
forces killed
at least five Iran backed
militia members in a drone strike
after the US identified
an imminent attack
likely to be launched
by militia forces in Iraq.
A defense
official told CNN that since October 17,
there have been 82 attacks
by Iran backed proxy
groups on US
and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria.
Since World War Two,
America has taken on the role of
trying to keep peace worldwide.
As U.S.
military bases have propagated
around the world
to the point where
there are now about 800 of them.
And today,
out of 195 nations on the planet.
US military counterterrorism
has a footprint in 78 of those countries.
As USA Today,
which first published this data,
put it nearly a quarter century
after the US launched
its response to 911.
The Pentagon continues
to pursue military actions
in the Middle East
and in many more parts of the world
than Americans may realize.
Joining me
now is the person who compiled the data,
Stephanie Saville,
co-director and senior researcher
at the Costs of War
Project at Brown University's
Watson Institute,
for which she wrote the recent paper,
United States Counterterrorism Operations
under the Biden
Administration, 2021 through 23.
Dr.
Civil,
does the expansion of our footprint
make us more or less safe?
Thank you so much
for asking that question.
It's just the one that should be asked
with this data.
And, you know, my answer is no.
There are more Islamist
militant groups than there were
when we started these
the so-called war on terror
in, you know, in 2001.
There are more recruits to those groups.
There's a ton of blowback
to all of this
military action around the world.
And we're seeing in Iraq
and Syria right now,
just as you pointed out, that the U.S.
presence
in these places
in the name of counterterrorism
actually makes US troops, you know,
makes it more likely
that they engage
in aggressive actions abroad.
Is it
they're a bit of chicken
and egg to all of this.
I shared your research
with Admiral James
Stavridis, former supreme
allied commander of NATO,
and he said to me,
you know,
be aware of the lesson, 1918
ish post-World War One,
we went the way of isolationism.
And arguably that's what
gave rise to World War two.
Yeah, I mean, I think every
context is different,
but what we've done is gone
so far in the direction of
being the world cop.
And, you know,
there is a militarized status
quo in this country.
The US feels like
it needs
to do something abroad
through military force. Primarily.
We've gone extremely far
in the direction
of using the military as the primary
tool of U.S. foreign policy.
And arguably that's not keeping,
you know, Americans
or anyone else in the world any safer.
My other research has shown that in the
the so-called war on terror,
the kind of ripple effects, the
the ways that these wars have caused
what's called indirect death, you know,
economic crises and hunger and
and the collapse
of health care infrastructure
that's caused 4.5 million deaths.
Not to say all due to U.S.
actions,
but the kind of reverberating effects
of these post-9-11 wars.
Dr.
Civil
Donald Trump
likes to say that
he kept the United States out of war.
You've analyzed the Biden administration.
78 is the number that you come to.
78.
We've got a footprint
of some kind in 78 of 195 nations.
What about Trump?
How does he compare to Biden
in this respect?
Yeah, So Trump
had relaxed a lot of the rules
of engagement
that allows the military
to conduct drone strikes in places
like Syria and Iraq and Somalia.
And Biden has tightened
those up and increased protections
for civilians.
But the
the overall footprint of counterterrorism
between the two administrations
looks remarkably similar.
I came out with a version of this map
during the Trump administration,
and it showed 85 countries total.
And this shows
78 under the Biden administration.
Now, this has some high intensity areas.
So
4 to 5 countries where the U.S.
has dropped
drone strikes on militant targets,
including Afghanistan,
Iraq, Somalia and Syria.
Nine countries where U.S.
forces have engaged
in on the ground
combat against militants.
And then the bulk comes in this category
of training and assistance
in counterterrorism.
So the U.S.
trains and assists other countries
security forces in counterterrorism.
That's happened
happening in 73 countries.
And that's really far
from the kind of innocuous
neighborly help that it sounds.
A lot of times what's happening
is that the U.S.
is providing
funding, weapons and training for regimes
that are very far from democratic.
They're using those tools
to crack down on political dissidents
and political opponents.
And it's really creating
and fueling a cycle of blowback
in which
those targeted groups are then
joined to militant movements.
So it's a provocative
and healthy conversation.
I'd love to see this
get on the presidential debate stage.
Thank you, Dr. Civil.
Appreciate your time.
Thanks so much for having me.