Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bacasper]

Too Many Overseas Bases

David Vine | February 25, 2009

Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco


Foreign Policy In Focus

In the midst of an economic crisis that�s getting scarier by the day, it�s time to ask whether the nation can really afford some 1,000 military bases overseas. For those unfamiliar with the issue, you read that number correctly. One thousand. One thousand U.S. military bases outside the 50 states and Washington, DC, representing the largest collection of bases in world history.

Officially the Pentagon counts 865 base sites, but this notoriously unreliable number omits all our bases in Iraq (likely over 100) and Afghanistan (80 and counting), among many other well-known and secretive bases. More than half a century after World War II and the Korean War, we still have 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. Others are scattered around the globe in places like Aruba and Australia, Bulgaria and Bahrain, Colombia and Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, and of course, Guant�namo Bay, Cuba � just to name a few. Among the installations considered critical to our national security are a ski center in the Bavarian Alps, resorts in Seoul and Tokyo, and 234 golf courses the Pentagon runs worldwide.

Unlike domestic bases, which set off local alarms when threatened by closure, our collection of overseas bases is particularly galling because almost all our taxpayer money leaves the United States (much goes to enriching private base contractors like corruption-plagued former Halliburton subsidiary KBR). One part of the massive Ramstein airbase near Landstuhl, Germany, has an estimated value of $3.3 billion. Just think how local communities could use that kind of money to make investments in schools, hospitals, jobs, and infrastructure.

Even the Bush administration saw the wastefulness of our overseas basing network. In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced plans to close more than one-third of the nation�s overseas installations, moving 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members and civilians back to the United States. National Security Adviser Jim Jones, then commander of U.S. forces in Europe, called for closing 20% of our bases in Europe. According to Rumsfeld�s estimates, we could save at least $12 billion by closing 200 to 300 bases alone. While the closures were derailed by claims that closing bases could cost us in the short term, even if this is true, it�s no reason to continue our profligate ways in the longer term.

Costs Far Exceeding Dollars and Cents

Unfortunately, the financial costs of our overseas bases are only part of the problem. Other costs to people at home and abroad are just as devastating. Military families suffer painful dislocations as troops stationed overseas separate from loved ones or uproot their families through frequent moves around the world. While some foreign governments like U.S. bases for their perceived economic benefits, many locals living near the bases suffer environmental and health damage from military toxins and pollution, disrupted economic, social, and cultural systems, military accidents, and increased prostitution and crime.

In undemocratic nations like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Saudi Arabia, our bases support governments responsible for repression and human rights abuses. In too many recurring cases, soldiers have raped, assaulted, or killed locals, most prominently of late in South Korea, Okinawa, and Italy. The forced expulsion of the entire Chagossian people to create our secretive base on British Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is another extreme but not so aberrant example.

Bases abroad have become a major and unacknowledged �face� of the United States, frequently damaging the nation�s reputation, engendering grievances and anger, and generally creating antagonistic rather than cooperative relationships between the United States and others. Most dangerously, as we have seen in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and as we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan, foreign bases create breeding grounds for radicalism, anti-Americanism, and attacks on the United States, reducing, rather than improving, our national security.

Proponents of maintaining the overseas base status quo will argue, however, that our foreign bases are critical to national and global security. A closer examination shows that overseas bases have often heightened military tensions and discouraged diplomatic solutions to international conflicts. Rather than stabilizing dangerous regions, our overseas bases have often increased global militarization, enlarging security threats faced by other nations who respond by boosting military spending (and in cases like China and Russia, foreign base acquisition) in an escalating spiral. Overseas bases actually make war more likely, not less.

The Benefits of Fewer Bases

This isn�t a call for isolationism or a protectionism that would prevent us from spending money overseas. As the Obama administration and others have recognized, we must recommit to cooperative forms of engagement with the rest of the world that rely on diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties rather than military means. In addition to freeing money to meet critical human needs at home and abroad, fewer overseas bases would help rebuild our military into a less overstretched, defensive force committed to defending the nation�s territory from attack.

In these difficult economic times, the Obama administration and Congress should initiate a major reassessment of our 1,000 overseas bases. Now is the time to ask if, as a nation and a world, we can really afford the 1,000 bases that are pushing the nation deeper into debt and making the United States and the planet less secure? With so many needs facing our nation, it�s unconscionable to have 1,000 overseas bases. It�s time to begin closing them.

[catman]

I think most on this board would like to see the US pull out of South Korea.

[Chuvok]

The DoD's annual Base Structures Report is the document you want to look at for the military's "official" tally of bases and installations.

Here's a link:

http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/bsr/BSR2008Baseline.pdf

According to the report, the DoD has 761 sites in foreign countries, mostly in Germany, Japan , and Korea.

[wesharris]

Actually hippy, you and I agree on something. Fewer bases, I'd go for a hell of a lot fewer foreign bases. With draw completely, let's sever most of our foreign economic and military alliances to while we're at it. Restructure the US economy to be a primarily internally driven economy, concentrate on space based assets as a course for expansion, and screw the Euros and Asian trasheys. On this we agree.
Here
is some free

[mekku]

[sharkey]

of course you can afford it when your money goes directly into these sites instead of a social programs

[TheUrbanMyth]

Only 1000? Time to double it.

[bacasper]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[TheUrbanMyth]

Seriously though...you've got a resurgent Russia, a booming China, Iran and North Korea developing nuclear bombs...and you think bases should be cut?

If you are going to cut anything, cut "fat" not "muscle".

[mnhnhyouh]

No we cant. But then my we and your we are not the same......

h

[NAVFC]

One thousand bases is a little over stating it in the sense of the word base. As alot of these are not bases, but small support activities.

Like the NSAs (Naval Support Activities) in South Korea for instance..they arent huge full fledged bases, yet theres 2 of them and they are very small commands with less then 500 people each.
there are many of these tiny commands distributed through the world.

Id like to see a tally of just US major military bases.

[caniff]

[Ya-ta Boy]

NAVFC and caniff are right. Not all bases are equal.

That said, I would like to see an overall reduction in US military activities. Back in 2003 there were numerous reports that the US could 'take on' the next 10 countries. How about reducing that to about the next 5 countries? Nothing wrong with regional powers taking on more of a responsibility for their own defence.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the real threat has been non-state actors. National security strategy needs to adjust to that reality and move away from traditional armies. Sledge hammers and fly swatters.

[sharkey]