US Empire Creates Resentment, Not Security
Always nice when Guam gets a mention in The Nation. ************************ Around the Globe, US Military Bases Generate Resentment, Not Security Katrina vanden Heuvel June 13, 201 The Nation As we debate an exit from Afghanistan , it’s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force of more than 100,000 troops , but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave. This is an issue that demands a hard look not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but around the globe—where the United States has a veritable empire of bases. According to the Pentagon , there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad—over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. The cost? $102 billion annually—and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases. In a must-read article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences , anthropologist Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases “constitute 95 percent of all the militar