The Pentagon's New Generation of Secret Bases

"While relying on smaller bases may sound smarter and more cost effective than maintaining huge bases that have often caused anger in places like Okinawa and South Korea, lily pads threaten U.S. and global security in several ways:

First, the “lily pad” language can be misleading, since by design or otherwise, such installations are capable of quickly growing into bloated behemoths.

Second, despite the rhetoric about spreading democracy that still lingers in Washington, building more lily pads actually guarantees collaboration with an increasing number of despotic, corrupt, and murderous regimes.

Third, there is a well-documented pattern of damage that military facilities of various sizes inflict on local communities. Although lily pads seem to promise insulation from local opposition, over time even small bases have often led to anger and protest movements.

Finally, a proliferation of lily pads means the creeping militarization of large swaths of the globe. Like real lily pads -- which are actually aquatic weeds -- bases have a way of growing and reproducing uncontrollably. Indeed, bases tend to beget bases, creating “base races” with other nations, heightening military tensions, and discouraging diplomatic solutions to conflicts. After all, how would the United States respond if China, Russia, or Iran were to build even a single lily-pad base of its own in Mexico or the Caribbean?

For China and Russia in particular, ever more U.S. bases near their borders threaten to set off new cold wars. Most troublingly, the creation of new bases to protect against an alleged future Chinese military threat may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: such bases in Asia are likely to create the threat they are supposedly designed to protect against, making a catastrophic war with China more, not less, likely."

That last 2 paragraphs are what flabbergasts me. It's okay for the U.S. to do this in the name of democracy, but other nations around the world, as discussed, doing this would be perceived by the US as a threat. Somebody explain the difference.
 
This is why I'm ok with general cuts at the Pentagon. Any government entity needs to be forced to prioritize to control expenses.
 
There's definite consolidation of bases going on for the purpose of saving money, and the opening of small installations throughout the world are taking their place. Several small and medium sized bases primarily in Europe have closed.

However, you'll never see them all shut down. That would be far too short-sighted. Furthermore, the really large installations like Ramstein are actually getting bigger, because the operations at the smaller and medium sized bases in Europe are moving into the larger ones. And you'll never see a base like Ramstein close. For starters, from an economic standpoint, it's cheap considering its size, location, and the terms of our agreement with Germany. It's simply too good of a deal for us. We'd be insane to close it. Second, it supports pretty much every operation we conduct in the Eastern Hemisphere.
 
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