The US military is operating in more countries
than we think
A new report finds that DOD uses ‘security
cooperation programs for ‘secret wars,’ and recommends that Congress rein them in.
NOVEMBER 8, 2022
Written by
Jim Lobe
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/08/the-us-military-is-operating-in-more-countries-than-we-think/
U.S. military forces have been engaged in unauthorized
hostilities in many more countries than the Pentagon has disclosed to Congress,
let alone the public, according to a major new report released
late last week by New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for
Justice.
“Afghanistan, Iraq, maybe Libya. If you asked the
average American where the United States has been at war in the past two
decades, you would likely get this short list,” according to the report, Secret
War: How the U.S. Uses Partnerships and Proxy Forces to Wage War Under the
Radar. “But this list is wrong – off by at least 17 countries in which the
United States has engaged in armed conflict through ground forces, proxy
forces, or air strikes.”
“This proliferation of secret war is a relatively
recent phenomenon, and it is undemocratic and dangerous,” the report’s author,
Katherine Yon Ebright, wrote in the introduction. “The conduct of undisclosed
hostilities in unreported countries contravenes our constitutional design. It
invites military escalation that is unforeseeable to the public, to Congress,
and even to the diplomats charged with managing U.S. foreign relations.”
The 39-page report focuses on so-called “security
cooperation” programs authorized by Congress pursuant to the 2001 Authorization
for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, against certain terrorist groups. One such
program, known as Section 127e, authorized the Defense Department to “provide
support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals engaged in
supporting or facilitating authorized ongoing military operations by United
States special operations forces to combat terrorism.”
According to the report, that “support” has been
broadly — or, more accurately, too broadly — interpreted by the Pentagon. In
practice, it has enabled the U.S. military to “develop and control proxy forces
that fight on behalf of and sometimes alongside U.S. forces” and to use armed
force to defend its local partners against adversaries (in what the Pentagon
calls “collective self-defense”) regardless of whether those adversaries pose
any threat to U.S. territory or persons, and, in some cases, whether or not the
adversaries have been officially designated as legitimate targets under the
2001 AUMF.
In Somalia in 2016, for example, U.S. forces invoked
“collective self-defense” to launch a strike against a rival militia of the
Puntland Security Force, an elite brigade that had originally been recruited,
trained, and equipped by the CIA and subsequently taken over by the Pentagon in
2011.
Moreover, the Pentagon deployed the PSF, which was
largely independent of the Somali government, to fight al-Shabab and the
Islamic State of Somalia, sometimes alongside U.S. forces, for several years
before the executive branch designated al-Shabab as legitimate targets. It has
never so designated the ISS.
Similarly, in Cameroon, U.S. forces accompanying a
partner force on an “advise and assist” mission ended up shooting and killing
an adversary. The Pentagon has used a Section 127 program there to pursue
leaders of Boko Haram, a terrorist group that has “never been publicly
identified as an associated force of Al-Qaeda, and thus a lawful target, under
the 2001 AUMF,” according to the report.
Congress rarely hears of these incidents because,
according to the report, DOD insists they are too minor or “episodic” to rise
to the level of “hostilities” that would trigger reporting requirements under
the 1973 War Powers Resolution.
An exception, however, came in October 2017 when four
U.S. soldiers, were deployed to Niger under a related “security cooperation”
program known as Section 333, which authorizes the Pentagon to “train and
equip” foreign forces anywhere in the world. Their presence in the field,
however, was authorized under a standing executive order, or EXORD, that
permits U.S. forces to engage in combat under particular circumstances, a
parallel authority of which Congress had not been previously informed. The incident
shocked lawmakers who were unaware that U.S. troops were operating in the field
in Niger.
“I’ve got guys in Kenya, Chad, Cameroon, Niger [and]
Tunisia who are doing the same kind of things as the guys in Somalia, exposing
themselves to the same kind of danger and not just on 127 echoes,” bragged Brigadier
Gen. Donald Bolduc (ret.), who commanded U.S. special forces in Africa until
2017 and is currently running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in New
Hampshire. “We’ve had guys wounded in all the types of missions that we do.”
The report, which relies on published work by
investigative reporters, interviews with knowledgeable officials and
congressional staff, official documents and records, as well as the author’s
legal analysis, identifies 13 countries with Section 127e programs in addition
to Somalia and Cameroon. They include Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon,
Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Niger, Nigeria, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. But
it stressed that the list is almost certainly not exhaustive.
Fifty countries, from Mexico to Peru in the west to
Indonesia and the Philippines (where U.S. forces are known to have taken part
in combat operations) in the east, and covering 22 countries in North and
sub-Saharan Africa alone (not to mention Ukraine) had Section 333 programs in
place as of mid-2018, according to the report.
Perhaps even more dangerous than the Section 127e
counterterrorism programs, according to the report, are security cooperation
programs undertaken pursuant to Section 1202 of the National Defense
Authorization Act of 2018. Using language that mirrors Section 127e, that
provision goes beyond the counterterrorism purposes of Section 1273e by
authorizing “support” to partner forces “engaged in supporting or facilitating
irregular warfare operations by the United States Special Operations Forces.”
“Irregular warfare” is defined by DOD as “competition
…short of traditional armed conflict” or “all-out war.” Pentagon officials have
described Section 1202 as “a highly useful tool for enabling irregular warfare
operations…to deter and defeat …revisionist powers and rogue regimes.” They
have also insisted that “irregular warfare is likely to be increasingly relied
on as DOD begins to “prioritize great power competition.”
“Broadly speaking, the purpose of the [Section] 1202
authority is to take the department’s [Section] 127e approach of creating and
controlling partner forces and wield it against countries like China, Russia,
Iran, and North Korea,” according to the report. “Section 1202, in short,
raises the same potential as § 127e for hostilities that Congress has not
authorized, but with far graver consequences because the enemy could be a
powerful, nuclear-armed state.”
Given the increased risks, simply repealing or
reforming “outdated and overstretched AUMFs …[is] insufficient,” the report
concludes. “Congress should repeal or reform the Department of Defense’s
security cooperation authorities. Until it does so, the nation will continue to
be at war – without, in some cases, the consent or even knowledge of its
people.”
