Military Bases and Global Force Projection

Force projection, the capacity to deploy and sustain military power far from a state's own territory, depends heavily on a network of overseas bases that provide fuel, logistics, repair, and staging space. In Base Nation (2015), American University anthropologist David Vine documented a U.S. overseas basing footprint of roughly 800 installations spread across more than 70 countries and territories, a network with no real historical parallel and one built up in large part from occupation-era bases retained in Germany, Japan, and South Korea after 1945 and expanded further during the Cold War and the post-2001 war on terror. Vine's accounting, drawing on Pentagon inventories, put the total far above official Department of Defense counts, which tend to undercount smaller installations and covert or "lily pad" facilities used for refueling and quick-reaction deployments rather than permanent troop presence.