Little America bases normalized permanent overseas troop presence as legitimate.

Evidence

The family decision and the housing, schools, bowling alleys, and Burger Kings that followed it can seem superficial. They are anything but that, however, and their implications for the military and for the country as a whole have been profound. The Little Americas helped enable the permanent peacetime deployment of troops overseas, appeasing GIs, their families, and other Americans upset about the long-term presence of U.S. troops abroad. The city-sized bases that began growing in Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and beyond in the late 1940s and early 1950s also helped improve relations, legitimizing and normalizing what might have otherwise been seen as permanent occupation. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how infrastructure normalizes otherwise contentious arrangements, echoed in the reader’s trees-as-infrastructure essay focus.