The 1940 destroyers-for-bases deal founded today’s U.S. global base system.

Evidence

The base nation as we know it was born on September 2, 1940. It is a vastly underappreciated moment, generally treated as a small detail in World War II history books. But it was then, with the flash of a pen, that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began the transformation of the United States from one of the world’s major powers into a global superpower of unparalleled military might. … On that momentous day, more than a year before the United States entered the war, Roosevelt informed Congress that he was authorizing an agreement with Britain: the country would provide its nearly bankrupt ally with fifty World War I–era destroyers in exchange for U.S. control over a collection of air and naval bases in Britain’s colonies. … Although such a pact should have required congressional approval, Roosevelt simply declared it done. Under what became known as the “destroyers-for-bases” agreement, the United States acquired ninety-nine-year leases and near-sovereign powers over bases in the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Thomas, Antigua, Aruba-Curaçao, Trinidad, and British Guiana, plus temporary access to bases in Bermuda and Newfoundland. Roosevelt called the agreement “the most important action in the reinforcement of our national security since the Louisiana Purchase.” Whether the deal was quite so important to national security is questionable. But in terms of its transformative effect, there was little exaggeration in comparing the acquisition of these bases to the 1803 treaty that nearly doubled the nation’s size. The leases’ ninety-nine-year length reflected similarly grand ambitions: President Roosevelt intended to cement the global power of the United States for at least a century to come. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 50

Categorization

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