New U.S. bases near rivals may create the very threats they aim to counter.

Evidence

Perhaps most troubling of all, the creation of new U.S. bases to protect against an alleged future Chinese or Russian threat runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. By provoking a Chinese and Russian military response, these bases may help create the very threat against which they are supposedly designed to protect. In other words, far from making the world a safer place, U.S. bases overseas can actually make war more likely and America less secure. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 40

Categorization

• SEED: This is the core thesis for an essay on security dilemmas: how forward basing as defensive strategy paradoxically generates the offensive responses it fears.
• XREF: Strongly echoes the security dilemma literature in international relations (Jervis) and Robert Jervis’s spiral model, as well as other critiques of forward presence as provocation.