Redundancy and strategic denial drive the military to keep bases it barely uses

Evidence

Two principles that have guided the acquisition and maintenance of large numbers of overseas bases since World War II still appear to be at work today. They are “redundancy”—the more bases, the safer the nation—and “strategic denial”—preventing supposed enemies from using a territory by denying them access—both of which hold that even if the military has little interest in using a base or a territory, it should acquire as many as possible for every possible contingency and almost never cede its acquisitions. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1715

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the two operative principles—redundancy and strategic denial—governing overseas base acquisition.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader argument about why the base network persists even when individual bases lack clear military value; echoes earlier chapters on base inertia.