Our overseas military bases are pushing the nation deeper into debt and making the United States and the planet less secure.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, Guantánamo 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 CentsUnfortunately,
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 BasesThis 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.
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