http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htmPublished on Thursday, January 15, 2004 by TomDispatch.com
America's Empire of Bases
by Chalmers Johnson
<snip> At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases
It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.
These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.
For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.<snip>
http://www.topsy.org/MilArWorld.html * Base Guide from Military.com "Every U.S. military installation around the world is in our database." Scroll down for a small map of overseas bases.
* Bases for Coalition Operations during Operation Enduring Freedom
* MilitaryLiving.com lists maps that it publishes
* U.S. Air Force bases around the world From About.com (very few bases actually shown)
* U.S. Military Bases World Wide 2001-2003
* U.S. Strategic View: Interactive Map from MSNBC -- "The Secret Empire: The U.S. Military in the 21st Century"
* Jane's
From U.S. Dept. of Defense
* Base Structure Report (BSR) for fiscal year 2005; pdf file
* Worldwide Manpower Distribution by Geographic Area from U.S. Dept. of Defense; 9/04; pdf file. Access to U.S. Dept. of Defense publications from Library of Congress.
Web pages that aren't there anymore (U.S. military withdrew lists of military facilities available on the Web in 2002)
o Military installations around the world used to be listed at DefenseLINK (the U.S. Military's offical main site) by country That list was withdrawn from the Web. There used to be a cached copy at Google, but it's been withdrawn as well.
o A complete 1996 list used to be here at DefenseLINK (list was last updated 17 July 1998). Google cached copy has been withdrawn.
More Information and Information about Specific Bases
* U.S. Army Installations and Facilities Web Sites from Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management U.S. Army. Examples: Camp As Sayliyah and Camp Doha in Kuwait
* Where We Serve: Information about Defense Department Installations from U.S. Dept. of Defense; last updated 2/2001
Information from Global Security
Global Security provides military news and information on a continuous basis. Lists of U.S. military facilities around the world from Global Security.
Iraq GlobalSecurity maps and lists of U.S. bases in Iraq
Many (most?) U.S. bases have their own Web pages. Examples of Global Security info about bases (along with satellite imagery), and bases with their own Web pages:
Diego Garcia
* Global Security page; Diego Garcia page
Kosovo
* Camp Bondsteel -- Global Security page; Camp Bondsteel page
* Camp Monteith -- Global Security page; Camp Monteith page
Kyrgyzstan
* Kyrgyzstan facilities from Global Security
Kuwait
* Camp Doha -- Global Security page; Camp Doha page
Qatar
* U.S. military facilities in Qatar
Projection of American Power Worldwide
* National Defense Strategy of the United States of America U.S. Dept. of Defense, March 2005
* National Security Strategy of the United States of America from National Security Council (The White House) 2002
* Access to Offical Strategy, Posture and Commission Documents from The Defense Strategy Review Page of the Project on Defense Alternatives
* Quadrennial Defense Reviews for 2005
* Project for the New American Century
* U.S. Military Spending
Commentary
* From Suez to the Pacific US expands its presence across the globe. By Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor, The Guardian, 3/8/02
* Globalization of Politics: American Foreign Policy for a New Century, by James M. Lindsay and Ivo H. Daalder, Brookings Review, Winter 2003.
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