<\/a>The most popular post, over the years, on Occasional Planet<\/a> is: \u201cMilitary Mystery: how many bases does the US have, anyway?\u201d\u00a0 American University anthropology professor, David Vine, spent six years trying to answer that question and to\u00a0investigate\u00a0the effect of U.S. military presence on foreign soil. In researching his subject, he traveled to U.S. military installations around the world, interviewing both the military and local residents. His findings are published in his new book, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.<\/a><\/em> (Henry Holt, 2015).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some of David Vine’s main points:<\/strong><\/p>\n The military admits we have an excess base capacity worldwide. It doesn\u2019t have a clear idea, and\/or doesn\u2019t want to confirm how many bases we have. The official count is 686 but it excludes known bases in Kosovo, Kuwait, and Qatar, \u201csecret\u201d bases in Israel and Saudi Arabia, and who knows how many in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vine settles\u00a0on 800 as a good estimate.<\/p>\n The sites vary from massive bases in Germany and Japan to smaller facilities in Peru and Puerto Rico, to off-the-record \u201cblack sites\u201d run by the CIA and military intelligence. By comparison, Russia has bases in 10 countries, mostly in former Soviet states. India and China have none.<\/p>\n Maintaining installations and troops overseas cost at least $85 billion in 2014. Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq brings the total to $156 billion\u2014money, Vine says, that could be better spent on education, infrastructure, housing and health care.<\/p>\n Our presence in other countries provokes hatred toward Americans. Our bases and troops in the Middle East have been major catalysts for anti-Americanism and radicalization.<\/p>\n Foreign bases heighten military tensions and discourage diplomatic solutions, while, at the same time, encourage excess military spending.<\/p>\n Imprisonment, torture, and abuse at bases from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib have generated worldwide disgust and damaged our reputation. Drone bases enable missile strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians, producing further outrage.<\/p>\n The official line is that these military bases are defensive and make us, and the host countries, safer. Yet they have functioned more as launching pads for interventionist wars that have resulted in repeated disasters costing trillions of dollars and millions of lives from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n David Vine: On\u00a0the presence of U.S. foreign military bases as a catalyst for war:<\/strong><\/p>\n Placing U.S. bases near the borders of countries such as China, Russia, and Iran, for example, increases threats to their security and encourages them to respond by boosting their own military spending. Again, imagine how U.S. leaders would respond if Iran were to build even a single small base in Mexico, Canada, or the Caribbean.<\/p>\n