{"id":67691,"date":"2015-12-14T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=67691"},"modified":"2015-12-14T00:46:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T00:46:03","slug":"pentagon-announces-worldwide-expansion-of-us-military-bases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/12\/pentagon-announces-worldwide-expansion-of-us-military-bases\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Announces Worldwide Expansion of US Military Bases"},"content":{"rendered":"

11 Dec 2015 – <\/em>The US Defense Department (DOD) is preparing to expand its global network of military bases by establishing a new \u201cstring\u201d of bases in countries stretching from Africa to East Asia, unnamed Pentagon officials told the New York Times<\/em> Wednesday [9 Dec].<\/p>\n

The enlarged US basing arrangements will include at least four new large-scale bases or \u201chubs,\u201d including new facilities in East Africa and West Africa and Afghanistan, along with a greater number of smaller camps or \u201cspokes,\u201d sources told the Times<\/em> .<\/p>\n

The new bases, which the Pentagon describes as \u201cenduring\u201d bases, will host forces ranging from dozens of commandos up to 5,000 soldiers at the largest hubs, the unnamed military officials said.<\/p>\n

West Africa is a main focus of the expanded basing plans, and will host one of the larger hubs. The West African countries of Niger and Cameroon are the only countries set to host smaller \u201cspoke\u201d bases listed by the Times<\/em> report.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon plans to build a large \u201chub\u201d near Erbil in northern Iraq, where US special forces have already been conducting combat operations for months. US Special Forces commandos affiliated with the \u201cexpeditionary targeting force\u201d announced last week by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter are already setting up operations in the same area, according to reports.<\/p>\n

The new bases are only the latest development in the metastatic growth of Washington\u2019s global military apparatus. According to the official list of US overseas bases, US forces are stationed in Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, British Indian Ocean Territory, Bulgaria, Cuba, Djibouti, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Honduras, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Romania, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Taking into account non-officially acknowledged bases, \u201cforward operating posts,\u201d and other long-term deployments, the list of US bases expands to include the majority of the countries in the world.<\/p>\n

Recent weeks have made clear that the US is launching yet another expansion of its wars in the Middle East. Wednesday announcement, transmitted by the Pentagon through the semi-official mouthpiece of the Times<\/em>, demonstrates that the escalation of the US-led imperialist wars in Iraq and Syria will be accompanied by a generalized military build-up encompassing far wider areas of the globe.<\/p>\n

The new bases will facilitate a further expansion of manhunts, kidnapping, and other counter-insurgency operations which have been orchestrated by US military-intelligence cadres across ever-expanding areas of the planet since 2001 under the banner of the US \u201cGlobal War on Terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working from the new \u201chubs,\u201d Special Force troops and intelligence operatives will orchestrate supposed \u201ccounterterrorism\u201d missions, according to the description offered by the Times<\/em>. Operations launched from the new bases will enable close collaborations between \u201cregional American commanders, diplomats and spies,\u201d US officials said. In other words, the bases will provide launching pads for a further expansion of US military and intelligence activities in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, along the entire Indo-Pacific rim, and in every significant corner of Africa.<\/p>\n

In statements defending the basing expansion, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter claimed that the all-pervasive nature of the ISIS threat requires permanent global presence that reaches easily into every corner of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we cannot predict the future, these regional nodes\u2014from Mor\u00f3n, Spain, to Jalalabad, Afghanistan\u2014will provide forward presence to respond to a range of crises, terrorist and other kinds,\u201d US Defense Secretary Carter said in reference to the basing expansion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new bases will enable unilateral crisis response, counter-terror operations, or strikes on high-value targets,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford similarly claimed earlier this month that ISIS is based on a \u201cglobal dynamic\u201d that makes it impossible to combat the group within any limited list of countries.<\/p>\n

In reality, rather than \u201cfighting terrorism,\u201d the real purpose of the bases is to shape the world political order in accordance with needs of US imperialism, subjecting ever wider areas of the globe to military violence and repression by US forces.<\/p>\n

Recent operations in Eastern Europe have given a taste of what is planned for the new US military \u201chubs\u201d and \u201cspokes.\u201d Some 400 US troops have been deployed to forward operating bases in western Ukraine, where they are reportedly gathering information about Russian forces stationed near the eastern border with Russia, Military Times<\/em> reported Thursday. Intelligence gathered from the military spying is already being used to develop new training programs for the main US Army infantry school on the European continent, located in Germany.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wsws.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 Dec 2015 – The US Defense Department is preparing to expand its global network of military bases by establishing a new \u201cstring\u201d of bases in countries stretching from Africa to East Asia, unnamed Pentagon officials told the New York Times Wednesday [9 Dec].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}