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As war, economic crises and political unrest continue to sap the United States, maintaining the vast network of U.S. foreign military bases may become more tenuous.   Tarak Barkawi writes in Al Jazeera:

But the US is divided and turned in on itself. Much of the government is hobbled by underinvestment, privatisation and party politics. Mainstream debate lacks little rational basis for effective foreign and strategic policy.

The presumptive Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has recently suggested China take over from the US in providing humanitarian aid.

The world is becoming a different place. Major US interventions, welcome or not, are unlikely to be on offer. We are perhaps one financial crisis away from the moment when the idea of maintaining even established bases abroad – when the iron web of empire since 1945 will itself be called into question.

This may be a moment for anti-militarization forces to push back against the war machine. Radio France Internationale reports that Kyrgyzstanʻs president-elect Amazbexk Atambayev has called for the U.S. to close its military base in Manas:

Kyrgyzstan’s president-elect Amazbexk Atambayev has declared that the United States must shut down its base in the central Asian country when the lease expires in 2014. Atambayev, who won Sunday’s election with over 63 per cent of the vote, said that the base’s presence is a security threat to Kyrgyzstan.

[…]

Local politicians say that fuel dumps by US planes destroy crops and cause illness, claims that are denied by Washington.

But Atambayev, who resigned as prime minister to stand as president, invoked the country’s security to justify the ultimatum.

“We know that the United States is often engaged in conflict. First in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, and now relations are tense with Iran,” he said. “I would not want for one of these countries to launch a retaliatory strike on the military base.”

The Washington Post published an eye-opening report on the United States’ rapidly expanding network of secret drone bases in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and even the Indian Ocean:

The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said.

One of the installations is being established in Ethi­o­pia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.

The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen.

The tiny Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles is being used for a drone base under the new U.S. Africa Command.  Wikileaks released diplomatic cables indicating that the U.S. plans to arm the drones and that U.S. negotiators as well as president of the Seychelles wanted such discussions to be secret:

The U.S. government is known to have used drones to carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The negotiations that preceded the establishment of the base in the Republic of Seychelles illustrate the efforts the United States is making to broaden the range of its drone weapons.

The island nation of 85,000 people has hosted a small fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by the U.S. Navy and Air Force since September 2009. U.S. and Seychellois officials have previously acknowledged the drones’ presence but have said that their primary mission was to track pirates in regional waters. But classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the unmanned aircraft have also conducted counterterrorism missions over Somalia, about 800 miles to the northwest.

The cables, obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, reveal that U.S. officials asked leaders in the Seychelles to keep the counterterrorism missions secret. The Reapers are described by the military as “hunter-killer” drones because they can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs.

To allay concerns among islanders, U.S. officials said they had no plans to arm the Reapers when the mission was announced two years ago. The cables show, however, that U.S. officials were thinking about weaponizing the drones.

During a meeting with Seychelles President James Michel on Sept. 18, 2009, American diplomats said the U.S. government “would seek discrete [sic], specific discussions . . . to gain approval” to arm the Reapers “should the desire to do so ever arise,” according to a cable summarizing the meeting. Michel concurred, but asked U.S. officials to approach him exclusively for permission “and not anyone else” in his government, the cable reported.

Michel’s chief deputy told a U.S. diplomat on a separate occasion that the Seychelles president “was not philosophically against” arming the drones, according to another cable. But the deputy urged the Americans “to be extremely careful in raising the issue with anyone in the Government outside of the President. Such a request would be ‘politically extremely sensitive’ and would have to be handled with ‘the utmost discreet care.’ ”

A U.S. military spokesman declined to say whether the Reapers in the Seychelles have ever been armed.

“Because of operational security concerns, I can’t get into specifics,” said Lt. Cmdr. James D. Stockman, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Africa Command, which oversees the base in the Seychelles. He noted, however, that the MQ-9 Reapers “can be configured for both surveillance and strike.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

We might expect to see more of these kinds of secret drone bases in the future given the immense cost of maintaining a network of 1000 foreign military bases and rising calls to cut these foreign bases:

In a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, there was evidence of rising support for closing American overseas military bases and bringing the soldiers home.

The September 13 hearing was called to consider the nomination of Ashton Carter to be Deputy Secretary of Defense, the number two position, replacing Bill Lynn.

Many of the Senators present used the occasion to criticize the “disaster” ahead for the Pentagon and U.S. security if the Pentagon budget is forced to swallow deep budget cuts.

But in little noticed asides, a liberal Democrat, a moderate Democrat and a conservative Republican all called for closing overseas bases.

Chairman Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, led off the chorus of the skeptics. Levin argued

“Now, given the budget pressures under which the department’s going to be operating, one of the things that some of us believe we have to do is to take a look at the stationing and restationing of and the location of our military forces overseas where we’ve got large number of bases, and to consider both relocation and the restationing possibly of some of those military forces from overseas bases back to the United States. Is that on the table [to be considered as a reduction]?”

Ash Carter agreeably agreed that the issue was a potential candidate for cuts without committing to anything: “On the table.”

http://www.truth-out.org/war-and-tragedy-commons/1312405464

War and the Tragedy of the Commons

Chinese scholar Lü Chao, with the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences wrote an op ed article critical of a naval base in Jeju island:

The South Korean Defence Ministry recently decided to build a naval base on the island. US troops in South Korea will certainly use the naval base as a strategic outpost to contain China and ensure the regional ocean hegemony of the US.

[…]

South Korea is destroying the tourist resources on Jeju Island and changing the natural and human environment of the island, just in order to build a military base and turn the original “peaceful window” into a weapon aimed at its neighbor. I suggest that Chinese tourists boycott the tours to the island and let the “military island” disappear on the map of China’s huge tourism market.

It would be interesting to hear what Chinese tourists, whom the state of Hawai’i tourism authority is so desperately courting, think about the “military islands” of Hawai’i as a weapon aimed at China.

The article urges strong action by the Chinese government and people to oppose the Jeju base:

In order to maintain the long-term peace of the region, China should take actions, including economic sanctions, to react to provocative moves like this without hesitation.

Will China will also oppose the military expansion underway in Okinawa, Guam and Hawai’i?  “In order to maintain the long-term peace of the region,” we hope China says something.

Nick Turse has written another revealing article about the contours and scope of the U.S. empire:

Obama’s Arc of Instability

Destabilizing the World One Region at a Time

By Nick Turse

It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.”  It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet.  A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them — from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia — Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace.

Garrisoning the planet is just part of it.  The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services are also running covert special forces and spy operations, launching drone attacks, building bases and secret prisons, training, arming, and funding local security forces, and engaging in a host of other militarized activities right up to full-scale war.  But while you consider this, keep one fact in mind: the odds are that there is no longer a single nation in the arc of instability in which the United States is in no way militarily involved.

Covenant of the Arc

“Freedom is on the march in the broader Middle East,” the president said in his speech.  “The hope of liberty now reaches from Kabul to Baghdad to Beirut and beyond. Slowly but surely, we’re helping to transform the broader Middle East from an arc of instability into an arc of freedom.”

An arc of freedom.  You could be forgiven if you thought that this was an excerpt from President Barack Obama’s Arab Spring speech, where he said “[I]t will be the policy of the United States to… support transitions to democracy.”  Those were, however, the words of his predecessor George W. Bush.  The giveaway is that phrase “arc of instability,” a core rhetorical concept of the former president’s global vision and that of his neoconservative supporters.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Thomas Barnett, a military analyst at the U.S. Naval War College had been discussing a similar theory with military leaders.  He wrote an article and later a book entitled “The Pentagon’s New Map”, in which he argued that the new challenge for peace and security was integrating the underdeveloped and unstable countries of the world  – “the gap” – into the “functioning core”.   It is essentially a map of global empire.   Looks like U.S. policies are widening the “gap” so much that it might swallow up everything else, including the so-called “core”.