Before stepping down last year, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) rallied feverishly and passionately for the removal of United States military bases abroad. “We’re under great threat, because we occupy so many countries. We’re in 130 countries. We have 900 bases around the world,” Rep. Paul said last September while on the campaign trail before the November 2012 presidential election. “We don’t need to pay all this money to keep troops all over the country, 130 countries, 900 bases. But also, just think, bringing all the troops home rather rapidly, they would be spending their money here at home and not in Germany and Japan and South Korea — tremendous boost to the economy.”
Rep. Paul’s statement is shocking, considering that the United Nations currently only recognizes 193 member countries, two observers and 11 non-affiliated or disputed states. If the former representative’s statements were true, that would mean that the United States would have a military presence in 60 percent of the world’s nations, a feat seconded only by the Victorian-era British Empire.
Paul’s son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) feels that the United States, however, should have a lessened, but still noticeable, military presence globally. “I think having some places and bases where we could orchestrate attacks if we had to, if there’s a regrouping of people, wouldn’t be too unreasonable. But I think out patrolling the villages after 12 years, the Afghans should be doing that, Sen. Paul said.
Staggering U.S. global military presence
For many, America’s military presence globally is a hot-button issue. The United States control more than 1,000 military bases outside the United States, if the temporary bases in Afghanistan and Iraq are included — 95 percent of all non-domestic bases for any country in the world. What this means is that there are less than 20 remote bases in the world not controlled or owned by the United States.
Much of this is due to Cold War-bloat. For example, the United States still controlled 227 military bases in Germany as of 2011. In the Italian documentary, “Standing Army,” the late author Chalmers Johnson said, “The unit of empire in the classic European empires was the colony. The unit for the American empire is not the colony, it’s the military base … Things that can’t go on forever, don’t. That’s where we are today.”
Many sees the United States’ overwhelming global military presence as a de facto declaration of empire. In its unflinching commitment of the use of might to get its way, the United States in cowing the world into obedience. Many see the United States’ involvement in the Middle East — particularly, the invasion of Iraq — as a prime example of this.
However, the size of America’s forward deployment underlies a major consideration in global security. Many nations supplement or base in whole their national military strength on the American military presence in their countries. In light of austerity, American facilities and troops have taken the place of units and battalions long since sacrificed in the hope of balancing budgets. Spain, Italy and Greece would not have a functioning military without American intervention. Germany pays the Americans to train a large percentage of its military, as do the British.
Many in the American government favor America’s nation-based forward deployment system, as well. Many of the Congressional Republicans have came forward and stated that America’s military presence is essential to the cooperation of global partners with America and that reductions and rollbacks win America’s forward deployment will be more problematic than helpful. The president has moved to shift the military from being based on permanent installations and brigades to being based on movable, clandestine bases — “lily pads” — and specialized teams.
America’s military “omnipresence” has served to curtail territorial bickering and has brought a sense of “peace by force” to many former hotspots, such as Western Europe. But, as the United States formerly was an isolationist nation, this has come at an extreme cost.
Many have argued that the American military expands into areas where the United States has an economic interest — such as oil — for instance. Horace Campbell, for a piece for Pambazuka News, argued in regard to America’s presence in Africa, “AFRICOM [US Africa Command] is not what the people of Africa need and it is not what will achieve long-term stability on the continent. The struggles against militarism and exploitation in the United States cannot be advanced by a military command that serves the interests of oil companies and private military contractors …The call for resistance can now bring up to date the concrete experiences of the U.S. military and mobilize for the dismantling of the US Africa Command.”
Changing public opinions, shrinking military budgets and a contraction of the United States’ commitment abroad are changing the composition of America’s remote operations platforms; but, in looking at the reluctance in closing bases, it is easier to understand the challenges facing the rest of the military.
Paying for eternal vigilance
The United States’ posture of military omnipresence has given way to a concept known as “lily padding,” in which a number of small, secretive, inaccessible facilities are set up as launching pads for military intervention. These bases are quick to assemble, slight in creature comforts and give Washington immediate access to any operational theater it needs to be involved in.
This differs from forward deployment in that “lily-padding” works despite the local population, not in cooperation with them. The idea, according to Mark Gillem, author of “America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire,” is “to project its power” via “secluded and self-contained outposts strategically located” around the world.
According to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), “the strategic imperative of patrolling the perimeter of the Pax Americana is transforming the U.S. military, and those few other forces capable and willing of standing alongside, into the cavalry of a global, liberal international order. Like the cavalry of the Old West, their job is one part warrior and one part policeman — both of which are entirely within the tradition of the American military.”
“Even as the military remains ready to wage a full-scale war focused against a specific aggressor nation, the realignment of our network of overseas bases into a system of frontier stockades is necessary to win a long-term struggle against an amorphous enemy across the arc of instability,” AEI continued. “The forces that have drawn the U.S. military to Djibouti will draw it many other places, as well. Although countless questions about transformation remain unanswered, one lesson is already clear: American power is on the move.”
“Lily-padding” allow the United States to quickly deploy “response teams” to deal with situations, while avoiding the obligations a proper base must pay to its hosting nation, the expense of running a full installation and the needed coordination from Washington to mobilize a brigade. An example of the speed and effectiveness of “lily-padding” is the U.S. involvement in Central Africa — while the media covered extensively the skirmishes that the U.S. were involved in there, no one noticed when the United States set up the operation and drone bases in the region in the first place.
As reported by David Vine for Mother Jones, “While relying on smaller bases may sound smarter and more cost effective than maintaining huge bases that have often caused anger in places like Okinawa and South Korea, lily pads threaten U.S. and global security in several ways: First, the ‘lily pad’ language can be misleading, since by design or otherwise, such installations are capable of quickly growing into bloated behemoths. 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. Third, there is a well-documented pattern 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.”
“Finally, a proliferation of lily pads means the creeping militarization of large swaths of the globe,” Vine continued. “Like real lily pads — which are actually aquatic weeds — bases have a way of growing and reproducing uncontrollably. Indeed, bases tend to beget bases, creating ‘base races’ 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?”
Despite the fact that the U.S. has closed all 505 Iraq-based bases, is in the process of closing the Afghan bases, and has closed most of its bases in Germany in anticipation of the reduction of its forward deployment staffing levels to 100,000, the United States’ foreign military presence is still staggering: 52,000 buildings, 38,000 pieces of heavy infrastructure (piers, wharves, storage tanks), 9,100 linear structures (runways, rail lines, pipelines), with an additional 6,300 buildings in the American territories. This is not counting black sites, top secret installations and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-controlled sites.
This is compared with around 20 remote deployment installations owned or controlled by other nations. Gary Younger is a public affairs officer with the International Security Assistance Force. “There are less than 10 NATO bases in Afghanistan,” he wrote in an October 2010 email. “There are over 250 U.S. bases in Afghanistan.”
Popping the myths on America’s base infrastructure
To the United States’ credit, the nation does not traditionally “plop” military bases haphazardly or without great consideration; the bases the United States have abroad now reflect the nation’s commitment and involvement militaristically over the last century. For example, there are so many American bases in Germany, Italy and France because — since World War I — the United States have been militarily active in those nations. For almost all of the bases the United States currently maintain, they were originally a staging site for a conflict in the hosting nation or in the hosting nation’s neighboring country.
The United States has a base in Cuba, for example, because Guantanamo Bay was used as a staging point for the Spanish-American War. After the U.S. annexed Cuba, Guantanamo Bay was kept as a ship depot and a Marines base under the Navy. When Cuba negotiated with Washington for independence, the U.S. requested and was offered a perpetual lease on Guantanamo Bay.
This is not to say that budget constraints and new priorities have not changed the nation’s attitude on forward deployment. However, it is this traditional philosophy that is the main rationale for supporting the system.
The forward-deployment system is one part public relations, one part perpetual fire watch. Many of the United States allies want the U.S. to have a military presence in their countries. This minimizes the responsibility the hosting nation has to take on in updating equipment, maintaining their own bases and recruiting new soldiers. Many nations have a military budget significantly less than the U.S. because the U.S. supplements military services to these nations.
Many countries, such as Germany and Italy, have volunteered to pay for the United States’ bases stationed in those countries. Japan spends more than $2 billion a year to maintain the American military presence in the region. South Korea pays for 40 percent of the military deployment expense to the country and has given $4 billion in construction fees to the U.S. toward force realignment. Australia, per President Obama, has offered American troops and ships “permanent and constant” access to their facilities.
This is not to say that the U.S. is artificially suppressing the militaries of partner nations. As argued by the Diplomat, “If the U.S. pulled back, the thinking goes, we could spend less because our allies would be forced to spend more. This is flawed for two reasons. First, allies that find themselves in regions where the security environment is growing tenser have already begun aggressively modernizing their militaries. Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, are all acquiring advanced capabilities … Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is the United States’ strength and commitment to security in the region that provides regional states the confidence to build their capabilities in the face of China’s decade-long military modernization.”
After World War II, it was resolved that the situation in the Pacific — in which the United States had to “fight its way in” through multiple checks with the Japanese that left hundreds of thousands of American soldiers dead — would never happen again. Gen. Joseph Dunford, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, recently testified that “being forward deployed and forward engaged allows us to shape the environment as opposed to reacting to the environment.” The idea is simple: if North Korea was to declare hostilities, for example, the United States can have troops mobilized in South Korea before the end of the week.
The permanent presence of the United States via a military base encourages military cooperation, gives the nation’s allies a sense of comfort and security and gives allies a direct and immediate route of diplomatic redress. Allies can train their troops on these bases (and typically do), can have military equipment serviced or even traded or replaced with American equipment and foreign military personnel can serve aside American personnel. Most importantly, forward deployment allows the U.S. to respond to a crisis quickly and efficiently without a major deployment effort.
Gen. Dunford testified that “it would take months to move [a force from the Continental United States] to the Western Pacific and seven consecutive miracles in terms of synchronizing the planes, trains and automobiles associated with moving that force.”
NATO, for the most part, is reliant on the United States’ forward deployment system, as are the U.N. Peacekeeping Teams. It should also be noted that there are no foreign military bases in the United States or in United States territory. There are American bases that host and train foreign military personnel, such as the Royal Air Force (RAF) at Nellis AFB in Nevada or the German Air Force Flying Center at Holloman AFB in New Mexico. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is a joint operation with the United States and Canada.