Today marks the 21st anniversary of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s agreement with U.S. President Ronald Reagan to negotiate a ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles, leading to the December 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
With its 700-plus military bases around the world, is the United States committed to building a new world order?
Earlier this month, Gorby released a statement and asked the United States if the Cold War is over.
[The] candidates, and the next president, will have to decide and state clearly whether America wants to be an empire or a democracy, whether it seeks global dominance or international cooperation. They will have to choose, because this is an either-or proposition: The two things don’t mix, like oil and water.
Suppose the old man is right. Suppose the U.S. is experiencing puberty between its democratic and empiric ways.
How to answer?
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Comments:
Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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Hmm, 700 sounds kind of high, just wondering what your source is on that. That’s more than 3X the number of countries.
I respect your skepticism, Tom. My initial sources were some of the maps linked from this Global Research piece.
I’ve since found a 2004 story in the San Francisco Chronicle that goes into further detail at the bottom of the link; but I wasn’t satisfied and sought more official data.
Wikipedia pointed me to a Department of Defense site, which in turn linked me to the FY2008 DoD Base Structure Report.
This PDF report indicates on page 6 a “real property portfolio” of 50 states, 7 territories, and 39 foreign countries, comprising a whopping 5,429 worldwide locations.
The report is inaccurate, though.
Look at the foreign countries, for instance, which are broken down by location at the report’s end:
Antigua, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Belgium, British Indian Ocean Territories, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, Norway, Oman, Peru, Portugal, Saint Helena, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom.
Where are Afghanistan and Iraq, for starters?
America would be a UTOPIA if we decreased military spend by 50 percent and put that money elsewhere and by “elsewhere” I mean to the citizens of the United States.
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