Postwar US power substituted a global base network for direct colonial control

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.” Alongside U.S. economic and political might, the base network became a major and lasting mechanism of U.S. power, allowing control and influence over swaths of the earth vastly disproportionate to the land actually occupied. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 96

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to arguments about US hegemony substituting informal control for colonial administration after WWII. — connects to: Postwar decolonization forced the military to maintain colonies under new guises via bases; The United States retains overseas territories primarily for military power projection.; The global base network predates and exceeds any empire’s military footprint in history (+16 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 96

Broader Connections

• The global base network is what enables the U.S. to wage distant wars #expands (0.75)
• The new base network mirrors the nineteenth-century global coaling-station system #expands (0.70)
• Overseas bases ease the waging of foreign wars and make war likelier #expands (0.70)
• Overseas bases enable interventionist wars rather than defensive protection #expands (0.70)
• US overseas bases extend an ancient imperial strategy of encircling domination #expands (0.65)
• Overseas bases reveal America’s permanent war footing and militarized economy #expands (0.65)
• Wars in Korea and Vietnam drove repeated expansions of the overseas base network #expands (0.60)