US strategic thinking discounted displaced populations as too few to matter.
Evidence
In the minds of many U.S. officials, the supposed gains to be realized from a base justified what they saw as the limited impact of removing a small number of people. Henry Kissinger is widely reported as having said of the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, “There are only ninety thousand people out there. Who gives a damn?” Stu Barber’s Strategic Island Concept was largely predicated on the same assumption: Who gives a damn? But from the perspective of the Chagossians and a long list of other peoples, there was of course nothing limited about the impact of their expulsion. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 212
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: The ‘who gives a damn’ calculus connects directly to the book’s strategic-island thesis.
Related
- Base officials dismissed displaced islanders as too few to matter. (similarity 0.91)
- Strategic gain calculations discounted the humanity of displaced peoples (similarity 0.91)