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<H1 class=title>The Pentagon's New Generation of Secret Military
Bases</H1></DIV>
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<H3 class=dek>How the Pentagon is quietly transforming its overseas base empire
and creating a dangerous new way of war.</H3>
<P class="byline byline-byline">—By <A
href="http://www.motherjones.com/authors/david-vine" rel=author>David
Vine</A></P>
<DIV id=dateline>| Mon Jul. 16, 2012 10:14 AM PDT</DIV></DIV>
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<P><EM>This <A href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175568/"
target=_blank>story</A> first appeared on the </EM><A
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" target=_blank>TomDispatch</A><EM>
website.</EM></P>
<P>The first thing I saw last month when I walked into the belly of the dark
grey C-17 Air Force cargo plane was a void—something missing. A missing left
arm, to be exact, severed at the shoulder, temporarily patched and held
together. Thick, pale flesh, flecked with bright red at the edges. It looked
like meat sliced open. The face and what remained of the rest of the man were
obscured by blankets, an American flag quilt, and a jumble of tubes and tape,
wires, drip bags, and medical monitors.</P>
<P><A href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" target=_blank><SPAN
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<P>That man and two other critically wounded soldiers—one with two stumps where
legs had been, the other missing a leg below the thigh— were intubated,
unconscious, and lying on stretchers hooked to the walls of the plane that had
just landed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. A tattoo on the soldier's remaining
arm read, "DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR."</P>
<P>I asked a member of the Air Force medical team about the casualties they see
like these. Many, as with this flight, were coming from Afghanistan, he told me.
"A lot from the Horn of Africa," he added. "You don't really hear about that in
the media."</P></DIV>
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<P>"Where in Africa?" I asked. He said he didn't know exactly, but generally
from the Horn, often with critical injuries. "A lot out of Djibouti," he added,
referring to <A
href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/camp-lemonier.htm"
target=_blank>Camp Lemonnier</A>, the main US military base in Africa, but from
"elsewhere" in the region, too.</P>
<P>Since the "Black Hawk Down" deaths in Somalia almost 20 years ago, we've
heard little, if anything, about American military casualties in Africa (other
than a strange report last week about three special operations commandos killed,
along with three women identified by US military sources as "Moroccan
prostitutes," in a mysterious <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mysterious-fatal-crash-provides-rare-glimpse-of-us-commandos-in-mali/2012/07/08/gJQAGO71WW_story.html?hpid=z1&utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=e556c26672-TD_Turse7_12_2012&utm_medium=email"
target=_blank>car accident</A> in Mali). The growing number of patients arriving
at Ramstein from Africa pulls back a curtain on a significant transformation in
twenty-first-century US military strategy.</P>
<P>These casualties are likely to be the vanguard of growing numbers of wounded
troops coming from places far removed from Afghanistan or Iraq. They reflect the
increased use of relatively small bases like Camp Lemonnier, which military
planners see as a <A
href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/dotmil/2012/01/30/us-military-envisions-more-bases-like-djibouti-facility"
target=_blank>model</A> for future US bases "scattered," as one academic <A
href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100912830&fa=author&person_id=1889"
target=_blank>explains</A>, "across regions in which the United States has
previously not maintained a military presence."</P>
<P>Disappearing are the days when Ramstein was the signature US base, an
American-town-sized behemoth filled with thousands or tens of thousands of
Americans, PXs, Pizza Huts, and other amenities of home. But don't for a second
think that the Pentagon is packing up, downsizing its global mission, and
heading home. In fact, based on developments in recent years, the opposite may
be true. While the collection of Cold War-era giant bases around the world is
shrinking, the global infrastructure of bases overseas has exploded in size and
scope.</P>
<P>Unknown to most Americans, Washington's garrisoning of the planet is on the
rise, thanks to a new generation of bases the military calls "<A
href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0810/p06s02-wosc.html" target=_blank>lily
pads</A>" (as in a frog jumping across a pond toward its prey). These are small,
secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan
amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.</P>
<P>Around the world, from Djibouti to the jungles of Honduras, the deserts of
Mauritania to Australia's tiny Cocos Islands, the Pentagon has been pursuing as
many lily pads as it can, in as many countries as it can, as fast as it can.
Although statistics are hard to assemble, given the often-secretive nature of
such bases, the Pentagon has probably built upwards of 50 lily pads and other
small bases since around 2000, while exploring the construction of dozens
more.</P>
<P>As Mark Gillem, author of <A
href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0816649537/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target=_blank><EM>America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire</EM></A>, <A
href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/america-town/"
target=_blank>explains</A>, "avoidance" of local populations, publicity, and
potential opposition is the new aim. "To project its power," he says, the United
States wants "secluded and self-contained outposts strategically located" around
the world. According to some of the strategy's <A
href="http://www.aei.org/article/foreign-and-defense-policy/toward-a-global-cavalry/"
target=_blank>strongest proponents</A> at the American Enterprise Institute, the
goal should be "to create a worldwide network of frontier forts," with the US
military "the 'global cavalry' of the twenty-first century."</P>
<P>Such lily-pad bases have become a critical part of an evolving Washington
military strategy aimed at maintaining US global dominance by doing far more
with less in an increasingly competitive, ever more multi-polar world. Central
as it's becoming to the long-term US stance, this global-basing reset policy
has, remarkably enough, received almost no public attention, nor significant
Congressional oversight. Meanwhile, as the arrival of the first casualties from
Africa shows, the US military is getting involved in new areas of the world and
new conflicts, with potentially disastrous consequences.</P>
<P><STRONG>Transforming the Base Empire</STRONG></P>
<P>You might think that the US military is in the process of shrinking, rather
than expanding, its <A href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174972"
target=_blank>little noticed</A> but enormous collection of bases abroad. After
all, it was forced to close the full panoply of <A
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/07/world/la-fg-iraq-troops-exit-20111208"
target=_blank>505 bases</A>, mega to micro, that it built in Iraq, and it's now
beginning the process of drawing down forces in Afghanistan. In Europe, the
Pentagon is continuing to close its massive bases in Germany and will soon
remove two combat brigades from that country. Global troop numbers are set to
shrink by around 100,000.</P>
<P>Yet Washington still easily maintains the largest collection of foreign bases
in world history: <A href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175338/"
target=_blank>more than 1,000</A> military installations outside the 50 states
and Washington, DC. They include everything from decades-old bases in Germany
and Japan to brand-new drone bases in <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-drone-base-in-ethiopia-is-operational/2011/10/27/gIQAznKwMM_story.html"
target=_blank>Ethiopia</A> and the <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-building-secret-drone-bases-in-africa-arabian-peninsula-officials-say/2011/09/20/gIQAJ8rOjK_story.html"
target=_blank>Seychelles</A> islands in the Indian Ocean and even resorts for
military vacationers in <A
href="http://www.vicenzamwr.com/livorno_seapines.html" target=_blank>Italy</A>
and <A href="http://www.dragonhilllodge.com/main.html" target=_blank>South
Korea</A>.</P>
<P>In Afghanistan, the US-led international force still occupies more than <A
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175501/" target=_blank>450 bases</A>.
In total, the US military has some form of troop presence in approximately 150
foreign countries, not to mention 11 aircraft carrier task forces—essentially
floating bases—and a significant, and growing, <A
href="http://www.space4peace.org/mission.htm" target=_blank>military presence in
space</A>. The United States currently spends an estimated <A
href="http://www.fpif.org/reports/the_cost_of_the_global_us_military_presence"
target=_blank>$250 billion</A> annually maintaining bases and troops
overseas.</P>
<P>Some bases, like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, date to the late nineteenth century.
Most were built or occupied during or just after World War II on every
continent, including <A
href="http://www.13af.pacaf.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=17367"
target=_blank>Antarctica</A>. Although the US military vacated around <A
href="http://www.dmzhawaii.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/global_posture.pdf"
target=_blank>60%</A> of its foreign bases following the Soviet Union's
collapse, the Cold War base infrastructure remained relatively intact, with
60,000 American troops remaining in Germany alone, despite the absence of a
superpower adversary.</P>
<P>However, in the early months of 2001, even before the attacks of 9/11, the
Bush administration launched a major global realignment of bases and troops
that's continuing today with Obama's "Asia pivot." Bush's original plan was to
close more than one-third of the nation's overseas bases and shift troops east
and south, closer to predicted conflict zones in the Middle East, Asia, Africa,
and Latin America. The Pentagon began to focus on creating smaller and more
flexible "forward operating bases" and even smaller "cooperative security
locations" or "lily pads." Major troop concentrations were to be restricted to a
reduced number of "main operating bases" (MOBs)—like Ramstein, Guam in the
Pacific, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean—which were to be expanded.</P>
<P>Despite the rhetoric of consolidation and closure that went with this plan,
in the post-9/11 era the Pentagon has actually been expanding its base
infrastructure dramatically, including dozens of major bases in every <A
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175159/tomgram:_nick_turse,_out_of_iraq,_into_the_gulf/"
target=_blank>Persian Gulf</A> country save Iran, and in several Central Asian
countries critical to the war in Afghanistan.</P>
<P><STRONG>Hitting the Base Reset Button</STRONG></P>
<P>Obama's recently announced <A
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175476/michael_klare_a_new_cold_war_in_asia"
target=_blank>"Asia pivot"</A> signals that East Asia will be at the center of
the explosion of lily-pad bases and related developments. Already in <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-to-expand-ties-with-australia-as-it-aims-to-shift-forces-closer-to-se-asia/2012/03/19/gIQAPSXlcS_story.html"
target=_blank>Australia</A>, US marines are settling into a shared base in
Darwin. Elsewhere, the Pentagon is pursuing plans for a drone and surveillance
base in Australia's Cocos Islands and deployments to Brisbane and Perth. In <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-seeks-return-to-se-asian-bases/2012/06/22/gJQAKP83vV_story.html"
target=_blank>Thailand</A>, the Pentagon has negotiated rights for new Navy port
visits and a "disaster-relief hub" at U-Tapao.</P>
<P><A href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691149836/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target=_blank><IMG hspace=10 alt="" vspace=6 align=left
src="http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/vine.gif"></A>In the <A
href="http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/operations/231257-philippines-re-opens-military-bases-to-us-forces-"
target=_blank>Philippines</A>, whose government evicted the US from the massive
Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base in the early 1990s, as many as 600
special forces troops have quietly been operating in the <A
href="http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/-depth/09/14/11/wikileaks-cables-us-forces-directly-involved-mindanao-terror-hunt"
target=_blank>country's south</A> since <A
href="http://www.socpac.socom.mil/default.aspx" target=_blank>January 2002</A>.
Last month, the two governments reached an agreement on the future US use of
Clark and Subic, as well as other repair and supply hubs from the Vietnam War
era. In a sign of changing times, US officials even <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/defense-secretary-leon-panetta-highlights-us-ties-to-vietnam-during-visit/2012/06/03/gJQAOWcLBV_story.html"
target=_blank>signed</A> a 2011 defense agreement with former enemy Vietnam and
have begun negotiations over the Navy's increased use of Vietnamese ports.</P>
<P>Elsewhere in Asia, the Pentagon has rebuilt a runway on tiny Tinian island
near Guam, and it's considering future bases in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei,
while pushing stronger military ties with <A
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/06/world/la-fg-panetta-india-20120607"
target=_blank>India</A>. Every year in the region, the military <A
href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/12/clinton_embraces_the_navy?page=full#.T4en9X1qJXc.mailto"
target=_blank>conducts</A> around 170 military exercises and 250 port visits. On
South Korea's <A
href="http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_militarization_of_paradise"
target=_blank>Jeju island</A>, the Korean military is building a base that will
be part of the US missile defense system and to which US forces will have
regular access.</P>
<P>"We just can't be in one place to do what we've got to do," Pacific Command
commander Admiral <A
href="http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/04/navy-larger-pacific-presence-china-samuel-locklear-042112w/"
target=_blank>Samuel Locklear III</A> has said. For military planners, "what
we've got to do" is clearly defined as isolating and (in the terminology of the
Cold War) "containing" the new power in the region, China. This evidently means
"<A href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=31598"
target=_blank>peppering</A>" new bases throughout the region, adding to the more
than 200 US bases that have encircled China for decades in Japan, South Korea,
Guam, and Hawaii.</P>
<P>And Asia is just the beginning. In Africa, the Pentagon has quietly <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-expands-secret-intelligence-operations-in-africa/2012/06/13/gJQAHyvAbV_story.html"
target=_blank>created</A> "about a dozen air bases" for <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-building-secret-drone-bases-in-africa-arabian-peninsula-officials-say/2011/09/20/gIQAJ8rOjK_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage"
target=_blank>drones</A> and <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/contractors-run-us-spying-missions-in-africa/2012/06/14/gJQAvC4RdV_story.html"
target=_blank>surveillance</A> since 2007. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, we
know that the military has created or will soon create installations in Burkina
Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, São
Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, South Sudan, and Uganda. The Pentagon
has also investigated building bases in Algeria, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, and
Nigeria, among other places.</P>
<P>Next year, a <A
href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pentagon-s-Last-Frontier--by-Rick-Rozoff-120612-54.html"
target=_blank>brigade-sized force</A> of 3,000 troops, and "likely more," will
arrive for exercises and training missions across the continent. In the nearby
Persian Gulf, the Navy is developing an "<A
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/uss-ponce-isn-t-persian-gulf-seal-mothership-admiral-says.html"
target=_blank>afloat forward-staging base</A>," or "<A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-wants-commando-mother-ship/2012/01/27/gIQA66rGWQ_story.html"
target=_blank>mothership</A>," to serve as a sea-borne "lily pad" for
helicopters and patrol craft, and has been involved in a <A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/world/middleeast/us-adds-forces-in-persian-gulf-a-signal-to-iran.html"
target=_blank>massive build-up</A> of forces in the region.</P>
<P>In Latin America, following the military's eviction from Panama in 1999 and
Ecuador in 2009, the Pentagon has <A
href="http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1105-21.htm" target=_blank>created</A>
or <A
href="http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1463:pentagon-using-drug-wars-as-excuse-to-build-bases-in-latin-america"
target=_blank>upgraded</A> new bases in Aruba and Curaçao, Chile, Colombia, El
Salvador, and Peru. Elsewhere, the Pentagon has <A
href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&source=embed&msa=0&msid=200051002538340819949.000499e6cb90476b05f73&ll=3.776559,-83.496094&spn=45.09916,79.013672&z=4"
target=_blank>funded</A> the creation of military and police bases capable of
hosting US forces in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica,
and even <A href="http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2012/vol1/184099.htm"
target=_blank>Ecuador</A>. In 2008, the Navy reactivated its Fourth Fleet,
inactive since 1950, to patrol the region. The military may want a base in <A
href="http://justf.org/blog/2010/04/06/us-base-rio" target=_blank>Brazil</A> and
unsuccessfully tried to create bases, ostensibly for humanitarian and emergency
relief, in <A
href="http://epoch-archive.com/a1/en/au/nnn/2009/09-Sep/Edition%2027/Edition%2027_11.pdf"
target=_blank>Paraguay</A> and <A
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/06/2012619112334487224.html"
target=_blank>Argentina</A>.</P>
<P>Finally, in Europe, after arriving in the <A
href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/camp-bondsteel.htm"
target=_blank>Balkans</A> during 1990's interventions, US bases have moved
eastward into some of the former Eastern Bloc states of the Soviet empire. The
Pentagon is now developing installations capable of supporting rotating,
brigade-sized <A
href="http://www.defense.gov/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=14397"
target=_blank>deployments</A> in Romania and Bulgaria, and a missile defense
base and aviation facilities in <A
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10497684.stm"
target=_blank>Poland</A>. Previously, the Bush administration maintained two CIA
<A
href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cia-black-sites-lithuania/story?id=9400744#.T_FNOfXAHLQ"
target=_blank>black sites</A> (secret prisons) in Lithuania and <A
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/22/poland-cia-rendition-flights"
target=_blank>another</A> in Poland. Citizens of the Czech Republic <A
href="http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/09/23-15"
target=_blank>rejected</A> a planned radar base for the Pentagon's still
unproven missile defense system, and now Romania will host ground-based
missiles.</P>
<P><STRONG>A New American Way of War </STRONG></P>
<P>A lily pad on one of the Gulf of Guinea islands of <A
href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=20708"
target=_blank>São Tomé and Príncipe</A>, off the oil-rich west coast of
Africa, helps explain what's going on. A US official has described the base as
"<A href="http://www.voanews.com/articleprintview/376603.html"
target=_blank>another Diego Garcia</A>," referring to the <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/01/AR2007010100698.html"
target=_blank>Indian Ocean base</A> that's helped <A
href="http://www.fpif.org/reports/the_other_guantanamo" target=_blank>ensure</A>
decades of US domination over Middle Eastern energy supplies. Without the
freedom to create new large bases in Africa, the Pentagon is using São Tomé
and a growing collection of other lily pads on the continent in an attempt to
control another crucial oil-rich region.</P>
<P>Far beyond West Africa, the nineteenth century "<A
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175540/" target=_blank>Great Game</A>"
competition for Central Asia has returned with a passion—and this time gone
global. It's spreading to resource-rich lands in Africa, Asia, and South
America, as the United States, China, Russia, and members of the European Union
find themselves locked in an increasingly intense competition for economic and
geopolitical supremacy.</P>
<P>While Beijing, in particular, has <A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/world/americas/us-alert-as-chinas-cash-buys-inroads-in-caribbean.html?pagewanted=all"
target=_blank>pursued</A> this competition in a largely economic fashion,
dotting the globe with strategic investments, Washington has focused
relentlessly on military might as its global trump card, dotting the planet with
new bases and other forms of military power. "Forget full-scale invasions and
large-footprint occupations on the Eurasian mainland," Nick Turse <A
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175557/nick_turse_the_changing_face_of_empire"
target=_blank>has written</A> of this new twenty-first century military
strategy. "Instead, think: special operations forces... proxy armies... the
militarization of spying and intelligence... drone aircraft... cyber-attacks,
and joint Pentagon operations with increasingly militarized 'civilian'
government agencies."</P>
<P>Add to this unparalleled long-range air and naval power; <A
href="http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/production/Top100"
target=_blank>arms sales</A> besting any nation on Earth; humanitarian and
disaster relief missions that clearly serve military intelligence, patrol, and
"hearts and minds" functions; the rotational deployment of regular US forces
globally; port visits and an expanding array of joint military exercises and
training missions that give the US military <EM>de facto </EM>"presence"
worldwide and help turn foreign militaries into proxy forces.</P>
<P>And lots and lots of lily-pad bases.</P>
<P>Military planners see a future of endless small-scale interventions in which
a large, geographically dispersed collection of bases will always be primed for
instant operational access. With bases in as many places as possible, military
planners want to be able to turn to another conveniently close country if the
United States is ever prevented from using a base, as it was by Turkey prior to
the invasion of Iraq. In other words, Pentagon officials dream of nearly
limitless flexibility, the ability to react with remarkable rapidity to
developments anywhere on Earth, and thus, something approaching total military
control over the planet.</P>
<P>Beyond their military utility, the lily pads and other forms of power
projection are also political and economic tools used to build and maintain
alliances and provide privileged US access to overseas markets, resources, and
investment opportunities. Washington is planning to use lily-pad bases and other
military projects to bind countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin
America as closely as possible to the US military—and so to continued US
political-economic hegemony. In short, American officials are hoping military
might will entrench their influence and keep as many countries as possible
within an American orbit at a time when some are asserting their independence
ever more forcefully or gravitating toward China and other rising powers.</P>
<P><STRONG>Those Dangerous Lily Pads<BR></STRONG></P>
<P>While relying on smaller bases may sound smarter and more cost effective than
maintaining huge bases that have often caused anger in places like <A
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1112/chalmers_johnson_three_rapes"
target=_blank>Okinawa</A> and <A href="http://www.tni.org/archives/act/17217"
target=_blank>South Korea</A>, lily pads threaten US and global security in
several ways:</P>
<P>First, the "lily pad" language can be misleading, since by design or
otherwise, such installations are capable of quickly growing into bloated
behemoths.</P>
<P>Second, despite the rhetoric about spreading democracy that still lingers in
Washington, building more lily pads actually guarantees collaboration with an
increasing number of despotic, corrupt, and murderous regimes.</P>
<P>Third, there is a <A
href="http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookid=4725"
target=_blank>well-documented pattern</A> of damage that military facilities of
various sizes inflict on local communities. Although lily pads seem to promise
insulation from local opposition, over time even small bases have often led to
anger and protest movements.</P>
<P>Finally, a proliferation of lily pads means the creeping militarization of
large swaths of the globe. Like real lily pads—which are actually <A
href="http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/IPC/weedinfo/nymphaea.htm"
target=_blank>aquatic weeds</A>—bases have a way of growing and reproducing
uncontrollably. Indeed, bases tend to beget bases, creating "<A
href="http://www.crcnetbase.com/doi/abs/10.4324/9780203700075.ch6"
target=_blank>base races</A>" with other nations, heightening military tensions,
and discouraging diplomatic solutions to conflicts. After all, how would the
United States respond if China, Russia, or Iran were to build even a single
lily-pad base of its own in Mexico or the Caribbean?</P>
<P>For China and Russia in particular, ever more US bases near their borders
threaten to set off new cold wars. Most troublingly, the creation of new bases
to protect against an alleged future Chinese military threat may prove to be a
self-fulfilling prophecy: such bases in Asia are likely to create the threat
they are supposedly designed to protect against, making a catastrophic war with
China more, not less, likely.</P>
<P>Encouragingly, however, overseas bases have recently begun to generate
critical scrutiny across the political spectrum from Republican Senator <A
href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39625.html" target=_blank>Kay
Bailey Hutchison</A> and Republican presidential candidate <A
href="http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-06-22/ron-paul-offensive-war-is-un-american-close-all-u-s-military-bases-around-the-world/"
target=_blank>Ron Paul</A> to Democratic Senator <A
href="http://tester.senate.gov/Newsroom/pr_051911_overseasbases.cfm"
target=_blank>Jon Tester</A> and <EM>New York Times</EM> columnist <A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26kristof.html?_r=2"
target=_blank>Nicholas Kristof</A>. With everyone looking for ways to trim the
deficit, closing overseas bases offers easy <A
href="http://www.fpif.org/articles/bases_on_the_dock" target=_blank>savings</A>.
Indeed, increasingly influential types are recognizing that the country simply
can't afford more than 1,000 bases abroad.</P>
<P>Great Britain, like empires before it, had to close most of its remaining
foreign bases in the midst of an economic crisis in the 1960s and 1970s. The
United States is undoubtedly headed in that direction sooner or later. The only
question is whether the country will give up its bases and downsize its global
mission by choice, or if it will follow Britain's path as a fading power forced
to give up its bases from a position of weakness.</P>
<P>Of course, the consequences of not choosing another path extend beyond
economics. If the proliferation of lily pads, special operations forces, and
drone wars continues, the United States is likely to be drawn into new conflicts
and new wars, generating unknown forms of blowback, and untold death and
destruction. In that case, we'd better prepare for a lot more incoming
flights—from the Horn of Africa to Honduras—carrying not just amputees but
caskets.</P>
<P><EM>David Vine is assistant professor of anthropology at American University,
in Washington, DC. He is the author of </EM><A
href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691149836/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target=_blank>Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on
Diego Garcia</A><EM> (Princeton University Press, 2009). He has written for the
</EM>New York Times<EM>, the </EM>Washington Post<EM>, the </EM>Guardian<EM>,
and </EM>Mother Jones<EM>, among other places. He is currently completing a book
about the more than 1,000 US military bases located outside the United States.
To listen to Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Vine
discusses his experiences with the Pentagon's empire of bases, click <A
href="http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2012/07/gilding-lily-pad.html"
target=_blank>here</A> or download it to your iPod <A
href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&subid=&offerid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817"
target=_blank>here</A>.</EM> <EM>Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and
join us on </EM><A href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch"
target=_blank><EM>Facebook</EM></A><EM>, and check out the latest TD book,</EM>
<A
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086EF89K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tomdispatch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0086EF89K"
target=_blank>Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare,
2001-2050</A>.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>