Bases served a grand strategy of global economic access without colonies.

Evidence

Roosevelt and others saw that the United States would have to exert its power through increasingly subtle and discreet means: the installation of bases as well as periodic displays of military might to keep as much of the world as possible within the rules of an economic and political system favorable to the United States. In 1970, a Senate committee found that “by the mid-1960s, the United States was firmly committed to more than forty-three nations by treaty and agreement and had some 375 major foreign military bases and 3,000 minor military facilities spread all over the world, virtually surrounding the Soviet Union and communist China.” As the late geographer Neil Smith explains, “global economic access without colonies” was the postwar grand strategy, with “necessary bases around the globe both to protect global economic interests and to restrain any future military belligerence.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 96

Categorization

• SEED: ‘Global economic access without colonies’ — Neil Smith’s phrase — is a strong framing device for any piece on the US base system as neocolonial infrastructure.
• XREF: Directly connects to paragraph 95’s explanation of why colonial control was no longer viable.