The global reach of the US military today is unprecedented and unparalleled. Officially, as of 2008, over 150,000 troops and 95,000 civilian employees are massed in 837 US military facilities in 45 countries and territories, excluding Iraq and Afghanistan. These official numbers are quite misleading as to the scale of US overseas military basing, however. That is because they not only exclude the massive buildup of new bases and troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also secret or unacknowledged facilities. The count of US military bases should also include the eleven aircraft carriers in the US Navy’s fleet, each of which it refers to as a moveable “four and a half acres of sovereign US territory.”
The bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over. Every year, US forces train 100,000 soldiers in 180 countries, the presumption being that local nations militaries will help to pursue US interests in local conflicts. Military bases have clearly been concentrated in countries with key strategic resources, particularly along the routes of oil and gas pipelines in central Asia, the Middle East and, increasingly, Africa, from which one-quarter of US oil imports are expected by 2015
The United States and Japan have reached a deal to re-deploy thousands of US Marines from the island of Okinawa. Some 9,000 marines will be sent to ''locations outside of Japan''. Some 10,000 troops will remain. The two sides have still not reached agreement on closing the Futenma airbase on Okinawa.The troops leaving Okinawa will be moved to Guam, Hawaii and other locations in the Asia Pacific region. Okinawa main island , which is twenty per cent smaller and twenty times more populous than Hawaii's Kauai island reluctantly hosted 32 US bases and facilities.
35,000 American servicemen and servicewomen are serving in Japan. In Korea, around 28,000 military
Hawaii represents a fraction of one per cent of the United States' land area and has just 1.37 million people, but is home to 119 total military sites, making Hawaii effectively a giant floating military garrison from which troops and military hardware are dispatched around the world. It is home to Camp HM Smith, headquarters of the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) which oversees military operations in roughly half the world from the Bering Sea to the Antarctic and across the entirety of the Pacific Ocean as far west as Central Asia, Pakistan and the southern Indian Ocean. Over half the world lives within USPACOM's "area of responsibility" including China, India, Indonesia, Japan and 32 other countries.
Guam where the US military already occupies one-third of the Phuket-sized island with around three dozen military installations and some 14,000 troops. Military expansion is being planned with one-third of the island already in military hands and a substantial historical legacy of environmental contamination and depletion which will include the removal of 71 acres of coral reef from Apra Harbor to allow the entry and berthing of nuclear aircraft carriers
The Marshall Islands, along with the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau, is party to the Compact of Free Association (COFA) which grants the US military virtually exclusive use of a vast swath of the Pacific for the transport, training and testing military personnel and weapons.Eleven of the 97 islands are leased by the United States. The US conducted 67 nuclear tests between 1946 to 1958. Those atmospheric nuclear tests had a total yield of 108 megatons, equivalent to more than 7,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. The tests made "Bikini Atoll" a household name. In the 70s islanders are told that it is safe to return to Bikini but are subsequently found to have dangerous levels of radiation in their bodies and are evacuated once again. Following exposure to such high levels of radiation the islanders begin to develop severe health problems. In 1996 - radiation levels are considered low enough to permit the return of tourism to Bikini Atoll.
In the Philippines, the US still maintains around 600 Special Operations forces in the country as "advisors" and this April, 4,700 US troops participatedre-deploy in joint military exercises. In recent years, the US has run around 20 exercises annually on Philippine soil, which have resulted in a near-continuous presence of US soldiers in a country whose people ejected US bases in 1992.
In northern Australia, the first deployment of an estimated 2,500 US marines has begun. The increased US presence in Australia is said to include B-52 bombers, FA-18s, C-17 transport aircraft and nuclear powered submarines.
President Obama declared, "The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to bolster its military presence in the region, "forging a broad-based military presence".
Presidential hopeful Romney wrote, "Security in the Pacific means a world in which our economic and military power is second to none."
Despite the fact that in 2011 the US defence budget was well over $700 billion - far exceeding the combined defence budgets for China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, the UK and Japan - a recent survey reveals one in four Americans believe the US is still not spending enough of its military!!
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space declared "This has nothing to do with defending the United States or its people against attack. It has everything to do with corporate profits and power."
The military act in the national economic interests of the US, ensuring access to markets and commodities and the bases also serve as markers of US power and credibility - so the more the better. The environmental, political, and economic impact of these bases is enormous. While some people benefit from the coming of a base, at least temporarily, most communities and many within them pay a high price: their farm land taken for bases, their bodies attacked by cancers and illness from military toxic exposures, their neighbors imprisoned, tortured and disappeared by the autocratic regimes that survive on US military and political support given as a form of tacit rent for the bases.
On the island of Belau in the Pacific, the site of sharp resistance to US attempts to instal a submarine base and jungle training centre, people describe their experience of military basing in the Second World War: "When soldiers come, war comes."
Source
The bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over. Every year, US forces train 100,000 soldiers in 180 countries, the presumption being that local nations militaries will help to pursue US interests in local conflicts. Military bases have clearly been concentrated in countries with key strategic resources, particularly along the routes of oil and gas pipelines in central Asia, the Middle East and, increasingly, Africa, from which one-quarter of US oil imports are expected by 2015
The United States and Japan have reached a deal to re-deploy thousands of US Marines from the island of Okinawa. Some 9,000 marines will be sent to ''locations outside of Japan''. Some 10,000 troops will remain. The two sides have still not reached agreement on closing the Futenma airbase on Okinawa.The troops leaving Okinawa will be moved to Guam, Hawaii and other locations in the Asia Pacific region. Okinawa main island , which is twenty per cent smaller and twenty times more populous than Hawaii's Kauai island reluctantly hosted 32 US bases and facilities.
35,000 American servicemen and servicewomen are serving in Japan. In Korea, around 28,000 military
Hawaii represents a fraction of one per cent of the United States' land area and has just 1.37 million people, but is home to 119 total military sites, making Hawaii effectively a giant floating military garrison from which troops and military hardware are dispatched around the world. It is home to Camp HM Smith, headquarters of the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) which oversees military operations in roughly half the world from the Bering Sea to the Antarctic and across the entirety of the Pacific Ocean as far west as Central Asia, Pakistan and the southern Indian Ocean. Over half the world lives within USPACOM's "area of responsibility" including China, India, Indonesia, Japan and 32 other countries.
Guam where the US military already occupies one-third of the Phuket-sized island with around three dozen military installations and some 14,000 troops. Military expansion is being planned with one-third of the island already in military hands and a substantial historical legacy of environmental contamination and depletion which will include the removal of 71 acres of coral reef from Apra Harbor to allow the entry and berthing of nuclear aircraft carriers
The Marshall Islands, along with the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau, is party to the Compact of Free Association (COFA) which grants the US military virtually exclusive use of a vast swath of the Pacific for the transport, training and testing military personnel and weapons.Eleven of the 97 islands are leased by the United States. The US conducted 67 nuclear tests between 1946 to 1958. Those atmospheric nuclear tests had a total yield of 108 megatons, equivalent to more than 7,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. The tests made "Bikini Atoll" a household name. In the 70s islanders are told that it is safe to return to Bikini but are subsequently found to have dangerous levels of radiation in their bodies and are evacuated once again. Following exposure to such high levels of radiation the islanders begin to develop severe health problems. In 1996 - radiation levels are considered low enough to permit the return of tourism to Bikini Atoll.
In the Philippines, the US still maintains around 600 Special Operations forces in the country as "advisors" and this April, 4,700 US troops participatedre-deploy in joint military exercises. In recent years, the US has run around 20 exercises annually on Philippine soil, which have resulted in a near-continuous presence of US soldiers in a country whose people ejected US bases in 1992.
In northern Australia, the first deployment of an estimated 2,500 US marines has begun. The increased US presence in Australia is said to include B-52 bombers, FA-18s, C-17 transport aircraft and nuclear powered submarines.
President Obama declared, "The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to bolster its military presence in the region, "forging a broad-based military presence".
Presidential hopeful Romney wrote, "Security in the Pacific means a world in which our economic and military power is second to none."
Despite the fact that in 2011 the US defence budget was well over $700 billion - far exceeding the combined defence budgets for China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, the UK and Japan - a recent survey reveals one in four Americans believe the US is still not spending enough of its military!!
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space declared "This has nothing to do with defending the United States or its people against attack. It has everything to do with corporate profits and power."
The military act in the national economic interests of the US, ensuring access to markets and commodities and the bases also serve as markers of US power and credibility - so the more the better. The environmental, political, and economic impact of these bases is enormous. While some people benefit from the coming of a base, at least temporarily, most communities and many within them pay a high price: their farm land taken for bases, their bodies attacked by cancers and illness from military toxic exposures, their neighbors imprisoned, tortured and disappeared by the autocratic regimes that survive on US military and political support given as a form of tacit rent for the bases.
On the island of Belau in the Pacific, the site of sharp resistance to US attempts to instal a submarine base and jungle training centre, people describe their experience of military basing in the Second World War: "When soldiers come, war comes."
Source
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