17: TRUE SECURITY

  1. For this proposal and others, see Howard W. Hallman, “Deficit Reduction by Closing Overseas Bases,” European Disarmament, blog, November 8, 2011, https://europeandisarmament.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/deficit-reduction-by-closing-overseas-bases/.

  2. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, “Build Bases in America,” Politico, July 13, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39625.html; Sen. Jon Tester, “Tester to Defense Dept.: Close Overseas Military Bases, Not Facilities in the U.S.,” press release, Washington, DC, February 29, 2012, http://www.tester.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2137.

  3. Fox News, “Transcript: Fox News Channel & Wall Street Journal Debate in South Carolina,” January 17, 2012, http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/01/17/transcript-fox-news-channel-wall-street-journal-debate-in-south-carolina/.

  4. Nicholas D. Kristof, “The Big (Military) Taboo,” New York Times, December 25, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26kristof.html.

  5. “New Rules,” Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO, episode 222, July 29, 2011, http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/0/222-episode/article/new-rules.html#/.

  6. Reuters, “Military Needs to Close More Bases: General,” September 15, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/15/us-pentagon-bases-idUSTRE68E6H420100915.

  7. Center for Strategic and International Studies, “2010 Global Security Forum.” See also Harkavy, Strategic Basing, 167–68.

  8. Lostumbo et al., “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces,” 291.

  9. Calder, Embattled Garrisons, 214.

10. Jeffery D. Berejikian, “A Cognitive Theory of Deterrence,” Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 2 (2002): 169.

11. Baruch Fischhoff, “Do We Want a Better Theory of Deterrence?” Journal of Social Issues 43, no. 4 (1987): 73.

12. See e.g. Austin Long, “Deterrence from Cold War to Long War: Lessons from Six Decades of RAND Deterrence Research” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2008).

13. Paul K. Huth, “Deterrence and International Conflict: Empirical Findings and Theoretical Debates,” Annual Reviews of Political Science 2 (1999): 27.

14. Steve Chan, “Extended Deterrence in the Taiwan Strait: Learning from Rationalist Explanations in International Relations,” World Affairs 166, no. 2 (2003): 109–25.

15. Stephen Glain, “What Actually Motivated Osama bin Laden,” U.S. News & World Report, May 3, 2011, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/stephen-glain/2011/05/03/what-actually-motivated-osama-bin-laden.

16. Bradley L. Bowman, “After Iraq: Future U.S. Military Posture in the Middle East,” Washington Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2008): 85.

17. Nick Turse identified 134 countries in 2014, although Robert D. Kaplan cites 170 countries before 2001. Nick Turse, “The Special Ops Surge: America’s Secret War in 134 Countries,” TomDispatch, January 8, 2014, http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175794/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_secret_wars_and_black_ops_blowback/; Kaplan, Imperial Grunts, 7.

18. Lutz, Homefront, 9.

19. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts, 1–2.

20. John Q. Adams, “She Goes Not Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy,” American Conservative, July 4, 2013, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/repository/she-goes-not-abroad-in-search-of-monsters-to-destroy/.

21. Ibid.

22. National Park Service, “John Quincy Adams Biography,” Adams National Historical Park, accessed January 7, 2015, http://www.nps.gov/adam/jqa-bio-page-3.htm.

23. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address,” January 17, 1961, OurDocuments.gov, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=90.

24. Ibid.

25. SIPRI 2009. Today, the United States still spends more than twice China’s military budget and exceeds the military spending of the next seventeen countries (most of whom are allies) combined.

26. Gillem, America Town, 211.

27. Moscow Times, “Russia Has a Base in Syria Defense Ministry Seeking New Locations for Air Bases Abroad,” February 27, 2014, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/defense-ministry-seeking-new-locations-for-air-bases-abroad/495332.html.

28. Harkavy, Strategic Basing, chapter 6.

29. Klare and Volman, “America, China and the Scramble,” 307.

30. Standing Army, directed by Fazi and Parenti.

31. Mackenzie Eaglen, “Congress Ignores Pentagon’s Drawdown Abroad to Stall Domestic Military Base Closures,” AEIdeas blog, May 21, 2013.

32. Gordon Lubold, “U.S. Will Keep Cutting Its Bases in Europe, Top General Says,” ForeignPolicy January 13, 2014, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/01/13/trim_bases_not_boots_why_this_air_force_four_star_thinks_the_us_should_stay_in_euro.

33. Courtney Albon, “USAF Consolidating Excess Infrastructure but Still Calling for Base Closures,” Inside the Air Force, January 17, 2014.

34. Katherine G. Hammack, “2014 Green Book: The Costly Consequences of Excess Army Infrastructure and Overhead,” Army.mil, September 30, 2014, http://www.army.mil/article/134864/2014_Green_Book__The_costly_consequences_of_excess_Army_infrastructure_and_overhead.

35. “Posture of the United States Army Before the Committee on Armed Services,” United States House of Representatives, 113th Congress, March 25, 2014, statement of John M. McHugh, Secretary of the Army, and Raymond T. Odierno, Chief of Staff United States Army, 30.

36. Hammack, “2014 Green Book.”

37. Ibid.; Eaglen, “Congress Ignores Pentagon”; Albon, “USAF Consolidating Excess”; Lubold, “U.S. Will Keep Cutting.”

38. “Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015,” secs. 110–28.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

  1. David Graeber, “Neoliberalism, or the Bureaucratization of the World,” in The Insecure American: How We Got Here and What We Should Do About It, edited by Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 79–96.