Base Nation

INTRODUCTION

3. U.S. Department of Defense, “Base Structure Report—Fiscal Year 2014 Baseline: A Summary of the Real Property Inventory,” report, Washington, DC, 2014. The Pentagon generally considers U.S. territories including American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands “overseas.” Given that they lack full democratic incorporation into the United States, I also count them as overseas. The District of Columbia also lacks full democratic rights, but given that it is the nation’s capital and is not overseas, I consider D.C. bases domestic. For counting purposes, it makes sense to follow the lead of the Pentagon, which uses the term “base site.” In some cases, this means that an installation generally referred to as a single base—like Aviano Air Base in Italy—actually consists of multiple base sites—in Aviano’s case, at least eight. Counting each base site makes sense because sites with the same name are often in geographically disparate locations. Generally, too, each base site reflects distinct congressional appropriations of taxpayer funds. (See the first pages of the above annual report.) To come up with my estimate of eight hundred base sites and to compile the maps in this book, I compiled a database of bases from the “Base Structure Report” and scholarship and news sources.

5. Department of Defense, “Base Structure Report 2014.” The Army generally uses post, camp, and fort; the Navy and Marine Corps mostly prefer installation, camp, base, and station; the Air Force likes base. When it comes to foreign bases, terminology often reflects political, legal, and public relations calculations more than analytic accuracy: using the terms military facility or forward operating location, for example, helps minimize perceptions of a base’s size and significance and the idea that an occupying military has usurped another nation’s sovereignty. Ensuring that base ownership officially remains with the “host” country and that the United States is officially a “guest” is likewise one way to try to reduce local opposition and political furor. In reality, the degree to which a host exercises effective sovereign control over its territory varies widely and generally reflects broader power relations between the United States and a host (another term that can be something of a misnomer depending on the degree of control a country actually has over its U.S. guests). Despite the use of “America” in the book’s title, I have tried to use the technically inaccurate “America,” “American,” and “Americans” as sparingly as possible when United States, U.S., and U.S. Americans are meant.

1: THE BIRTH OF BASE NATION