American impunity

In the year since Donald Trump took over as US president there has been continuity in US foreign policy, in the sense that the county continues to flout international law at will, but this disregard for the rights of others has been ramped up to a new level. Trump has sent more troops to Afghanistan, aligned the US even closer to Israel and, in a move that has flown under the radar, expanded its illegal drone war. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that US drone strikes in Somalia doubled to 34 and in Yemen tripled to 127 in the last calendar year. The policy of launching drone attacks in these countries has been intensified by Trump after a policy change where he declared that both countries were areas of “active hostilities”. This allowed the US government to bypass the lengthy sign-off process for each individual drone strike, giving military officials the authority to order such strikes on their own. The predictable result is a multiplication of drone attacks and greater civilian casualties. In one strike alone in November, the US killed more than a hundred people in Somalia, implausibly claiming that all the dead were members of the Al-Shabaab militant group. One of the first drone strikes ordered after Trump assumed power last January killed at least 10 children in Yemen.

The fact is that the US has no right to be fighting wars of aggression in either country. In Yemen, the US supported the Saudi-led coalition force fighting the Iran-backed Houthi group during the tenure of Barack Obama. Trump has aligned himself even closer to Saudi Arabia. In Somalia, the government’s fight against the Al-Shabaab militant group has been aided by more than 20,000 troops from the African Union. They have been successful enough that the troops are gradually being withdrawn. But the US, with its increased drone strikes, will likely break whatever fragile peace may be achieved. So far, Pakistan hasn’t experienced the same level of drone warfare as Somalia and Yemen, although the five strikes last year was an increase from 2016. That could soon change. The breakdown in ties between the two countries and the increased US troop presence in Afghanistan could lead to unilateral drone strikes targeting the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network, supposedly in the cause of protecting US forces. There is a danger too of the US further involving itself in Syria and other global flashpoints. For all his isolationist talk, Trump has turned out to be yet another committed foot soldier in the cause of the US Empire.