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Let me do something I almost never do and use a modified, updated version of an old introduction (from 2021) for TomDispatch regular David Vine's new piece. The reason: his focus today, which (sadly) couldn't be more up to date, is on one of the estimated 750 military bases this country still has scattered around this planet. It's a startling figure and, in the age of Trump, when the focus of so much news attention has been redirected to one man (or two, if you count Elon Musk), it's not something you'll normally read anything about. With that in mind, here's part of what I put down four years ago about that very same world of bases:
In January 2004, Chalmers Johnson wrote "America's Empire of Bases" for TomDispatch, breaking what was then, in effect, a silence around those strange edifices, some the size of small towns, scattered around the planet. He began it this way:
"As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order."
Twenty-one years have passed since then and Americans still pay no attention to that "empire of bases," which grew to a staggering size in this century. (Remind me of the last time any aspect of that Baseworld was featured in a political campaign in this country.) And yet it remains a historically unique (and expensive) way of garrisoning the planet -- without the bother of the sort of colonies older empires once relied upon.
At TomDispatch, however, we've never taken our eyes off that strange global imperial edifice. In July 2007, for instance, Nick Turse produced his first of many pieces on those unprecedented bases and the militarization of the planet that went with them. Citing the gigantic ones in then-U.S.-occupied Iraq, he wrote: "Even with the multi-square mile, multi-billion dollar, state-of-the-art Balad Air Base and Camp Victory thrown in, however, the bases in [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates' new plan will be but a drop in the bucket for an organization that may well be the world's largest landlord. For many years, the U.S. military has been gobbling up large swaths of the planet and huge amounts of just about everything on (or in) it."
Similarly, eight years later, in September 2015, at the time of the publication of his book Base Nation, Vine took TomDispatch readers on a spin through that same planet of bases in "Garrisoning the Globe," pointing out that "most Americans would be forgiven for being unaware that hundreds of U.S. bases and hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops still encircle the globe. Although few know it, the United States garrisons the planet unlike any country in history, and the evidence is on view from Honduras to Oman, Japan to Germany, Singapore to Djibouti." And today, a decade later, thanks to Vine, such evidence is again on view at this site (with a slightly more hopeful twist this time). Tom
Resistance Works
How Small Groups Took on Great Powers and Won a Victory for Decolonization, Africa, Indigenous Peoples, and More
By David Vine
At a time when many may feel that good news has gone the way of the dodo, look no further than the homeland of that long-extinct bird -- Mauritius -- for a dose of encouragement. There, among the islands of the Indian Ocean, news can be found about the power of resistance and the ability of small groups of people to band together to overcome the powerful.
Amid ongoing slaughter from Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan and the Congo, the news also offers a victory for resolving conflicts through diplomacy rather than force. It's a victory for decolonization and international law. And it's a victory for Africa, the African diaspora, and indigenous and other displaced peoples who simply want to go home. To the shock of many, President Donald Trump actually played a role in making such good news possible by bucking far-right allies in the United States and Britain.
The news came in late May when the British government signed a historic treaty with Mauritius giving up Britain's last African colony, the Chagos Islands, and allow the exiled Chagossian people to return home to all but one of them. The British also promised to pay an estimated à ? ï ? ? ï ? ?3.4 billion over 99 years in exchange for continuing control over one island, the largest, Diego Garcia. Though few in the U.S. even know that it exists, the Chagos Archipelago, located in the center of the Indian Ocean, is also home to a major U.S. military base on Diego Garcia that has played a key role in virtually every U.S. war and military operation in the Middle East since the 1970s.
Diego Garcia is one of the most powerful installations in a network of more than 750 U.S. military bases around the world that have helped control foreign lands in a largely unnoticed fashion since World War II. Far more secretive than the Guanta'namo Bay naval base, Diego Garcia has been, with rare exceptions, off limits to anyone but U.S. and British military personnel since that base was created in 1971. Until recently, that ban also applied to the other Chagos Islands from which the indigenous Chagossian people were exiled during the base's creation in what Human Rights Watch has called a "crime against humanity."
While the victories the Chagossians, a group numbering less than 8,000, finally achieved last month are anything but perfect, they wouldn't have happened without a more than half-century-long struggle for justice. A real-life David and Goliath story, it demonstrates the ability of small but dedicated groups to overcome the most powerful governments on Earth.
A History of Resistance
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