The Middle East base network persisted after its Cold War justification vanished

Evidence

Stepping back, it’s telling that the Carter Doctrine and the bases it spawned persisted despite the disappearance of the Soviet Union and any threat it may arguably have posed to Middle East oil. The U.S. military presence in a region that sits atop the world’s largest concentration of petroleum and natural gas reserves is not a matter of Cold War exigency. Rather, as the late base expert Chalmers Johnson explained, since World War II, “the United States has been inexorably acquiring permanent military enclaves whose sole purpose appears to be the domination of one of the most strategically important areas of the world.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 103

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The persistence of a base system after its stated casus belli vanishes is a dense observation about institutional inertia and the real purpose (domination of strategic areas) of the base network.