The perpetual war against terror the so-called US-led coalition is waging worldwide is now almost universally synonymous with mass murder, and this is not just another claim built upon hyperbole. By the end of the twentieth century the United States employed military force abroad more than two hundred times. In Barack Obama’s two terms in office alone the US military conducted military operations in five countries in the Middle East and Africa, where the weapons of the US-led coalition claimed thousands of civilian lives.
Since 2004, the Pentagon has been targeting militants in Somalia, while the White House provides support to the government forces in the unraveling civil war in that country. However, American bombs are killing civilians just as effectively as they kill radicals, therefore the former became hostages of the military ambitions of Washington.
In 2011, Barack Obama approved of air and stand-off missile strikes against Libya, marking the start of the criminal US intervention in that country. This intervention resulted in the overthrow and consequent murder of the head of the Libyan state – Muammar al-Gaddafi. This resulted in the devastation of the most prosperous and stable state in Africa.
On 23 September 2014, the US-led coalition began bombing the positions of the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. While those strikes have yielded no strategic results, they’ve resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.
In 2015 Washington launched missile strikes on the positions of Yemeni fighters – the Houthis, while providing active support for the Saudi military intervention in Yemen.
Islamic State terrorists remain a threat in Iraq, Syria and around the world. In once-peaceful Libya, things have also unraveled, with expanding terrorist networks and yet another wave of refugees flooding Europe.
As it’s been noted by the French edition of the Huffington Post, the fight against ISIS is no longer a top priority for the US, replaced instead with a desire to contain China, while preventing Russia’s rise to international prominence. According to this approach, under the guise of carrying on the war on terror, the United States, despite the decline of its influence, is trying to get back into the regional game.
While being a big patchwork of various states, the US-led coalition has completely discredited itself and lost any legitimacy that it could have. The unnatural alliance of the Europeans, Anglo-Saxons, the Persian Gulf monarchies, as well as other states, ranging from Pakistan to Turkey can hardly be labeled as “a Western coalition”, it is rather “a coalition against Assad” or an “anti-Russian coalition.”
Moreover, there are doubts that ISIS has been an enemy of this coalition at all, which becomes obvious if you take a look at recent statements of the US Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Philip M. Breedlove who has been telling the world time and time again that Russia is a long-term threat to the existence of the US and its European allies.
According to USA Today, things are also awful for Washington in Asia. The Philippines have long been the cornerstone of American dominance in the Pacific. Now Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, having pronounced the United States a “loser,” has decided to side with China. He is clearly not satisfied with the attempts of the Obama administration by force to dictate its will to the world, while hiding from any sort of retribution under the facade of its US-led coalition, while bringing nothing but death, hunger and poverty to the people of the world.
Therefore, the US president to be — Donald Trump — inherits a pretty ugly situation that can get even more dangerous once the Obama administration leaves office.
Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”