EMPIRE

Asia Times: US troops take 'Monroe Doctrine' global

WASHINGTON - United States troops appear suddenly to be deploying everywhere, and with very little notice. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but on the same week that one of the country's leading neoconservative writers called explicitly for Washington to serve as "Globocop", the Pentagon announced that it was sending 3,000 troops to the Philippines for joint operations against a minor Muslim guerrilla group.

On the same day, US congressmen visiting Colombia hinted that hundreds of US Special Forces training soldiers in the Colombian army might soon take a much more direct role in the civil war there as a result of last week's apparent abduction by leftwing rebels of three US military contractors, after their plane crashed in a rebel-held area.

Meanwhile, thousands more US troops are cruising in the Mediterranean, waiting to hear whether they will be invading Iraq next month from Turkey or with the main invasion force of some 150,000 soldiers, who have already deployed in or near Kuwait.

German commanders of the international force in Kabul warned that the US might have to beef up its 7,000 troops continuing operations in Afghanistan in order to cope with possible new fighting if Washington invades Iraq.

Thousands more US military personnel are on stand-by in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, ready to snatch suspected Islamic terrorists from Yemen to Somalia, while 4,000 more reservists remain in Bosnia and Kosovo to help keep the peace in the Balkans.