US foreign military bases.

This is a portion of a much longer article in the Monthly Review. The US insists that there will be no permanent bases in Iraq but nevertheless Bush speaks of the US being in Iraq ten years or so. The U.S. keeps bases as long as it thinks it needs them in most instances.


According to a December 21, 1970 report issued by the Subcommittee on Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Once an American overseas base is established it takes on a life of its own. Original missions may become outdated but new missions are developed, not only with the intention of keeping the facility going, but often to actually enlarge it. Within the government departments most directly concerned—State and Defense—we found little initiative to reduce or eliminate any of these overseas facilities” (pp. 19-20). In the 1950s and 1960s the United States articulated a specific doctrine of “strategic denial” that argued that no withdrawal should be made from any base that could potentially be acquired thereafter by the Soviet Union. The majority of U.S. bases were justified as “ringing” and “containing” Communism. Yet, upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States sought to retain its entire basing system on the grounds that this was necessary for the global projection of its power and the protection of U.S. interests abroad.