The Cuban Missile Crisis shows bases provoke the encircled power

Evidence

Whatever the rhetoric of ensuring peace and spreading democracy, overseas bases are meant to threaten. They are designed to demonstrate power and dominance. But it’s far from clear that demonstrating power and dominance makes the United States or the world any safer or more secure. Remember how the Kennedy administration reacted when the Soviet Union began installing nuclear weapons in Cuba—its only base in the Western hemisphere—at a time when the United States and its allies already had hundreds of bases, many stocked with nuclear weapons, surrounding the Soviet Union. The world then came closer to a nuclear conflict than at any other point during the Cold War. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1061

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to security dilemma theory and the reader’s existing interests in how infrastructure reads as provocation.