Overseas bases make war more likely by lowering its cost
Evidence
For the United States, overseas bases have appeared to provide protection, safety, and security. They have appeared to hold out the promise of never having to fight a world war again. Instead, these bases have in many ways damaged national security. By making it simpler to wage foreign wars, they have made military action an even more attractive option among the foreign policy tools available to American policymakers, and they have made war more likely. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1065
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to the ‘when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail’ framing of military-first foreign policy
- SEED: The moral-hazard logic parallels insurance arguments: subsidizing a behavior increases its frequency.
Related
- US overseas bases make war more likely by easing military action (similarity 0.95)
- Judgments about overseas base security value rest on prior beliefs, not evidence (similarity 0.86)
- Easier access to bases makes US military intervention more likely (similarity 0.86)
- Offshore bases lower the threshold for launching interventionist wars (similarity 0.86)
- Without a superpower rival, overseas bases enable offensive wars of choice (similarity 0.84)
- Low-cost warfare makes states more likely to bomb casually. (similarity 0.84)
- Overseas bases enable interventionist wars rather than defensive protection (similarity 0.84)
- Historical base cases cannot prove that overseas bases provide security (similarity 0.84)
- The reciprocal scenario of foreign bases in America is unthinkable (similarity 0.83)
- The overseas base network is what enables sustained distant warfare (similarity 0.83)
- Overseas bases can increase global danger rather than security (similarity 0.83)
- Overseas bases reveal America’s permanent war footing and militarized economy (similarity 0.83)
- New U.S. bases near rivals may create the very threats they aim to counter. (similarity 0.82)
- Bases near rival borders provoke arms races and discourage diplomacy (similarity 0.82)
- Base closures abroad tend to be offset by new base construction elsewhere (similarity 0.82)