Scattered small bases force collaboration with despotic regimes and enable coups.
Evidence
This is especially dangerous because the strategy of building small bases in as many nations as possible also guarantees collaboration with a significant number of despotic, corrupt, and murderous regimes. As we have seen, bases small and large have tended to provide legitimacy for and help prop up undemocratic regimes while interfering with efforts to encourage political and democratic reform. (Opponents may also use the bases to rally nationalist sentiment and violent opposition against ruling regimes and the United States.) As the U.S. military cooperates with local militaries to create lily pads, it becomes increasingly likely that Americans will become involved in local conflicts and political struggles about which U.S. leaders know little and whose victims are often innocent civilians. In Africa and other poorer parts of the globe, where struggles over resources have often led to corruption, repression, and violence, strengthening local militaries can also encourage ruling regimes to use them against opponents. It likewise can encourage opponents to see military force as the only way to claim a share of a country’s wealth and political power, increasing the possibility of coups and instability. Notably, the 2012 coup in Mali was carried out by a soldier who had received extensive U.S. training. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1018
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s larger thesis that US bases abroad harm America and the world by propping up undemocratic regimes.
Related
- U.S. officials collaborated with murderous regimes to secure base access overseas. (similarity 0.82)
- US bases abroad breed anti-Americanism and feed terrorist recruitment (similarity 0.80)
- Lily pads quietly expand US military reach into new conflict zones. (similarity 0.80)
- Bases near rival borders provoke arms races and discourage diplomacy (similarity 0.80)
- Lily pads self-reproduce and trigger base races that heighten conflict risk. (similarity 0.79)
- Easier access to bases makes US military intervention more likely (similarity 0.79)
- Offshore bases lower the threshold for launching interventionist wars (similarity 0.79)
- Small forward bases still harm local communities and provoke opposition. (similarity 0.79)
- Overseas bases spawn self-perpetuating communities dependent on their continued operation (similarity 0.79)
- The Pentagon shifted to small covert ‘lily pad’ bases to evade local opposition. (similarity 0.79)
- Lily pad bases cluster in weak states with lax environmental laws and lower costs. (similarity 0.78)
- Small military outposts advance U.S. business and deepen host-country dependence. (similarity 0.78)
- Smaller bases do not reliably avoid the local controversies large bases provoke (similarity 0.78)
- New bases near China and Russia may create the threats they guard against (similarity 0.78)
- U.S. lily pads turn allied militaries into proxy adjuncts that do the fighting (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Bases surrounding a rival power provoke dangerous escalation
#expands(0.65) — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1061