Overseas bases offer little deployment advantage over US-based forces

Evidence

At the same time, more base experts of all political persuasions are concluding that the days of maintaining lots of overseas bases—especially sprawling “Little Americas”—are numbered. They see that technological advancements in the air and at sea now allow the rapid movement of military forces and power directly from the United States, decreasing any strategic value for permanent foreign bases. The former Pentagon official Ray DuBois and others in the George W. Bush administration have pointed to a Joint Chiefs of Staff study showing that, in most cases, the time difference between deploying troops to potential war zones from bases in Europe and deploying them from the east coast of the United States is either insignificant or completely nonexistent. A RAND study explains, “Ground forces based in Europe do not provide a significant deployment benefit to other theaters … If a situation is time-sensitive, lighter units can be airlifted from [the United States] in a time span comparable to those for European-based units.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1035

Categorization

• QUESTION: If basing offers no deployment-time benefit, what is the actual strategic argument for keeping the network — diplomatic reassurance, intelligence access?
• SHARE: This Joint Chiefs and RAND finding about base deployment times would interest anyone tracking defense-policy debates.