Volume 1 | Issue 5 | Article ID 2029 | May 23, 2003 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus

America's of Bases

Chalmers Johnson

America's Empire of Bases weapons for the armed forces or, like the now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root by Chalmers Johnson company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract As distinct from other peoples, most Americans services to build and maintain our far-flung do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize outposts. One task of such contractors is to -- that the United States dominates the world keep uniformed members of the imperium through its military power. Due to government housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the amused, and supplied with enjoyable, fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of vast network of American bases on every the American economy have come to rely on continent except Antarctica actually constitutes the military for sales. On the eve of our second a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with war on , for example, while the Defense its own geography not likely to be taught in any Department was ordering up an extra ration of high school geography class. Without grasping cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor- the dimensions of this globe-girdlingpiercing tank shells, it also acquired 273,000 Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its size and nature of our imperial aspirations or 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the the degree to which a new kind of militarism is supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, undermining our constitutional order. Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida. Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers,At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval our empire of bases. Official records on these task forces built around aircraft carriers whose subjects are misleading, although instructive. names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty According to the Defense Department's annual Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, military real estate, the Pentagon currently George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the numerous secret bases outside our territory to United States and its territories. Pentagon monitor what the people of the world, including bureaucrats calculate that it would require at our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e- least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign mailing to one another. bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8 industries, which design and manufacture million to replace all of them. The military high

1 1 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF command deploys to our overseas bases some which is voluntary, bears almost no relation to 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal the duties of a soldier during World War II or number of dependents and Department of the Korean or Vietnamese wars. Most chores Defense civilian officials, and employs an like laundry, KP ("kitchen police"), mail call, additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The and cleaning latrines have been subcontracted Pentagon claims that these bases contain to private military companies like Kellogg, 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other Brown & Root, DynCorp, and the Vinnell buildings, which it owns, and that it leases Corporation. Fully one-third of the funds 4,844 more. recently appropriated for the war in Iraq (about $30 billion), for instance, are going into private These numbers, although staggeringly large, do American hands for exactly such services. not begin to cover all the actual bases we Where possible everything is done to make occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report daily existence seem like a Hollywood version fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in of life at home. According to the Washington Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Post, in Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, waiters Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained in white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The serve dinner to the officers of the 82nd Report similarly omits bases in , Airborne Division in their heavily guarded Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and compound, and the first Burger King has Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has already gone up inside the enormous military established colossal base structures throughout base we've established at Baghdad the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a- International Airport. half years since 9/11. Some of these bases are so gigantic they For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, require as many as nine internal bus routes for which has been an American military colony for soldiers and civilian contractors to get around the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists inside the earthen berms and concertina wire. only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in That's the case at Camp Anaconda, fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, headquarters of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma Division, whose job is to police some 1,500 occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that square miles of Iraq north of Baghdad, from modest-sized island's second largest city. Samarra to Taji. Anaconda occupies 25 square (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only kilometers and will ultimately house as many as 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note 20,000 troops. Despite extensive security all of the $5-billion-worth of military and precautions, the base has frequently come espionage installations in Britain, which have under mortar attack, notably on the Fourth of long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air July, 2003, just as Arnold Schwarzenegger was Force bases. If there were an honest count, the chatting up our wounded at the local field actual size of our military empire would hospital. probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not The military prefers bases that resemble small even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number fundamentalist towns in the Bible Belt rather for sure, although it has been distinctly on the than the big population centers of the United rise in recent years. States. For example, even though more than 100,000 women live on our overseas bases -- For their occupants, these are not unpleasant including women in the services, spouses, and places to live and work. Military service today, relatives of military personnel -- obtaining an

2 1 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF abortion at a local military hospital isstrategy against "rogue states," "bad guys," and prohibited. Since there are some 14,000 sexual "evil-doers." They have identified something assaults or attempted sexual assaults each year they call the "arc of instability," which is said to in the military, women who become pregnant run from the Andean region of South America overseas and want an abortion have no choice (read: Colombia) through North Africa and then but to try the local economy, which cannot be sweeps across the Middle East to the either easy or pleasant in Baghdad or other Philippines and Indonesia. This is, of course, parts of our empire these days. more or less identical with what used to be called the Third World -- and perhaps no less Our armed missionaries live in a closed-off, crucially it covers the world's key oil reserves. self-contained world serviced by its own airline Hoehn contends, "When you overlay our -- the Air Mobility Command, with its fleet of footprint onto that, we don't look particularly long-range C-17 Globemasters, C-5 Galaxies, well-positioned to deal with the problems we're C-141 Starlifters, KC-135 Stratotankers, KC-10 now going to confront." Extenders, and C-9 Nightingales that link our far-flung outposts from Greenland to Australia. Once upon a time, you could trace the spread For generals and admirals, the militaryof imperialism by counting up colonies. provides seventy-one Learjets, thirteenAmerica's version of the colony is the military Gulfstream IIIs, and seventeen Cessna Citation base. By following the changing politics of luxury jets to fly them to such spots as the global basing, one can learn much about our armed forces' ski and vacation center at ever larger imperial stance and the militarism Garmisch in the Bavarian Alps or to any of the that grows with it. Militarism and imperialism 234 military golf courses the Pentagon operates are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Each worldwide. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld thrives off the other. Already highly advanced flies around in his own personal Boeing 757, in our country, they are both on the verge of a called a C-32A in the Air Force. quantum leap that will almost surely stretch our military beyond its capabilities, bringing Our "Footprint" on the World about fiscal insolvency and very possibly doing mortal damage to our republican institutions. Of all the insensitive, if graphic, metaphors The only way this is discussed in our press is we've allowed into our vocabulary, none quite via reportage on highly arcane plans for equals "footprint" to describe the military changes in basing policy and the positioning of impact of our empire. Chairman of the Joint troops abroad -- and these plans, as reported in Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and senior the media, cannot be taken at face value. members of the Senate's Military Construction Subcommittee such as Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, are apparently incapable of completing a commanding our 1,800 troops occupying the sentence without using it. Establishing a more old French Foreign Legion base at Camp impressive footprint has now become part of Lemonier in Djibouti at the entrance to the Red the new justification for a major enlargement of Sea, claims that in order to put "preventive our empire -- and an announced repositioning war" into action, we require a "global of our bases and forces abroad -- in the wake of presence," by which he means gaining our conquest of Iraq. The man in charge of this over any place that is not already project is Andy Hoehn, deputy assistantunder our thumb. According to the right-wing secretary of defense for strategy. He and his American Enterprise Institute, the idea is to colleagues are supposed to draw up plans to create "a global cavalry" that can ride in from implement President Bush's preventive war "frontier stockades" and shoot up the "bad

3 1 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF guys" as soon as we get some intelligence on Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab them. Emirates.

"Lily Pads" in Australia, Romania, Mali, Algeria Most of these new bases will be what the . . . military, in a switch of metaphors, calls "lily pads" to which our troops could jump like so In order to put our forces close to every hot many well-armed frogs from the homeland, our spot or danger area in this newly discovered remaining NATO bases, or bases in the docile arc of instability, the Pentagon has been satellites of Japan and Britain. To offset the proposing -- this is usually calledexpense involved in such expansion, the "repositioning" -- many new bases, including at Pentagon leaks plans to close many of the huge least four and perhaps as many as sixCold War military reservations in , permanent ones in Iraq. A number of these are , and perhaps Okinawa as part of already under construction -- at Baghdad Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's International Airport, Tallil air base near "rationalization" of our armed forces. In the Nasariyah, in the western desert near the wake of the Iraq victory, the U.S. has already Syrian border, and at Bashur air field in the withdrawn virtually all of its forces from Saudi Kurdish region of the north. (This does not Arabia and Turkey, partially as a way of count the previously mentioned Anaconda, punishing them for not supporting the war which is currently being called an "operating strongly enough. It wants to do the same thing base," though it may very well becometo South Korea, perhaps the most anti- permanent over time.) In addition, we plan to American democracy on Earth today, which keep under our control the whole northern would free up the 2nd Infantry Division on the quarter of Kuwait -- 1,600 square miles out of demilitarized zone with North Korea for Kuwait's 6,900 square miles -- that we now use probable deployment to Iraq, where our forces to resupply our Iraq legions and as a place for are significantly overstretched. Green Zone bureaucrats to relax. In Europe, these plans include giving up Other countries mentioned as sites for what several bases in Germany, also in part because Colin Powell calls our new "family of bases" of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's domestically include: In the impoverished areas of the "new" popular defiance of Bush over Iraq. But the Europe -- Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria; in degree to which we are capable of doing so Asia -- Pakistan (where we already have four may prove limited indeed. At the simplest level, bases), , Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Pentagon's planners do not really seem to the Philippines, and even, unbelievably,grasp just how many buildings the 71,702 Vietnam; in North Africa -- Morocco, Tunisia, soldiers and airmen in Germany alone occupy and especially Algeria (scene of the slaughter and how expensive it would be to reposition of some 100,00 civilians since 1992, when, to most of them and build even slightly quash an election, the military took over, comparable bases, together with the necessary backed by our country and France); and in infrastructure, in former Communist countries West Africa -- Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and Sierra like Romania, one of Europe's poorest Leone (even though it has been torn by civil countries. Lt. Col. Amy Ehmann in Hanau, war since 1991). The models for all these new Germany, has said to the press "There's no installations, according to Pentagon sources, place to put these people" in Romania, are the string of bases we have built around the Bulgaria, or Djibouti, and she predicts that 80% Persian Gulf in the last two decades in such of them will in the end stay in Germany. It's anti-democratic autocracies as Bahrain,also certain that generals of the high command

4 1 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF have no intention of living in backwaters like base at Bishkek, and in December 2003, the Constanta, Romania, and will keep the U.S. dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, declared military headquarters in Stuttgart whilethat he would not permit a permanent holding on to Ramstein Air Force Base,deployment of U.S. forces in his country even Spangdahlem Air Force Base, and thethough we already have a base there. Grafenwöhr Training Area. When it comes to downsizing, on the other One reason why the Pentagon is considering hand, domestic politics may come into play. By moving out of rich democracies like Germany law the Pentagon's Base Realignment and and South Korea and looks covetously at Closing Commission must submit its fifth and military dictatorships and poverty-stricken final list of domestic bases to be shut down to dependencies is to take advantage of what the the White House by September 8, 2005. As an Pentagon calls their "more permissiveefficiency measure, Secretary of Defense environmental regulations." The Pentagon Rumsfeld has said he'd like to be rid of at least always imposes on countries in which it deploys one-third of domestic Army bases and one- our forces so-called Status of Forcesquarter of domestic Air Force bases, which is Agreements, which usually exempt the United sure to produce a political firestorm on Capitol States from cleaning up or paying for the Hill. In order to protect their respective states' environmental damage it causes. This is a bases, the two mother hens of the Senate's standing grievance in Okinawa, where the Military Construction Appropriations American environmental record has been Subcommittee, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) nothing short of abominable. Part of this and Dianne Feinstein, are demanding that the attitude is simply the desire of the Pentagon to Pentagon close overseas bases first and bring put itself beyond any of the restraints that the troops now stationed there home to govern civilian life, an attitude increasingly at domestic bases, which could then remain open. play in the "homeland" as well. For example, Hutchison and Feinstein included in the the 2004 defense authorization bill of $401.3 Military Appropriations Act of 2004 money for billion that President Bush signed into law in an independent commission to investigate and November 2003 exempts the military from report on overseas bases that are no longer abiding by the Endangered Species Act and the needed. The Bush administration opposed this Marine Mammal Protection Act. provision of the Act but it passed anyway and the president signed it into law on November While there is every reason to believe that the 22, 2003. The Pentagon is probably adept impulse to create ever more lily pads in the enough to hamstring the commission, but a Third World remains unchecked, there are domestic base-closing furor clearly looms on several reasons to doubt that some of the more the horizon. grandiose plans, for either expansion or downsizing, will ever be put into effect or, if By far the greatest defect in the "global they are, that they will do anything other than cavalry" strategy, however, is that it make the problem of terrorism worse than it is. accentuates Washington's impulse to apply For one thing, Russia is opposed to the irrelevant military remedies to terrorism. As expansion of U.S. military power on its borders the prominent British military historian, and is already moving to checkmate American Correlli Barnett, has observed, the U.S. attacks basing sorties into places like Georgia,on Afghanistan and Iraq only increased the Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The first post- threat of al-Qaeda. From 1993 through the 9/11 Soviet-era Russian airbase in Kyrgyzstan has assaults of 2001, there were five major al- just been completed forty miles from the U.S. Qaeda attacks worldwide; in the two years

5 1 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF since then there have been seventeen such military strategizing. The real reason for bombings, including the Istanbul suicide constructing this new ring of American bases assaults on the British consulate and an HSBC along the equator is to expand our empire and Bank. Military operations against terrorists are reinforce our military domination of the world. not the solution. As Barnett puts it, "Rather than kicking down front doors and barging into Copyright C2004 Chalmers Johnson ancient and complex societies with simple nostrums of 'freedom and democracy,' we need Chalmers Johnson's latest book is The Sorrows tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of profound understanding of the people and the Republic (Metropolitan), published as part cultures we are dealing with -- anof the American Empire Project. His previous understanding up till now entirely lacking in book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences the top-level policy-makers in Washington, of American Empire, has just been updated especially in the Pentagon." with a new introduction.

In his notorious "long, hard slog" memo on Iraq [This article first appeared on of October 16, 2003, Defense secretaryTomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Rumsfeld wrote, "Today, we lack metrics to Institute, which offers a steady flow of know if we are winning or losing the global war alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom on terror." Correlli-Barnett's "metrics" indicate Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing and otherwise. But the "war on terrorism" is at best author of The End of Victory Culture and The only a small part of the reason for all our Last Days of Publishing.]

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