During Sunday’s Viking/Bear debacle, the network aired a commercial/PSA that reminded viewers to remember 9/11, honor the troops stationed abroad, and that the United States has troops stationed in 175 countries. Parenthetically, the United States has over 800 bases located throughout the world. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Andrew Browne wrote an article about China using military force to secure the Scarborough region, which is “one of the world’s richest fishing grounds” within the “nautical-mile exclusive economic zone of the Philippines.” Browne wrote that the Filipino government ruled in 1991 to abolish foreign military bases, causing the United States to close its largest foreign base in the world. Browne implied that the Philippines should welcome the U.S military back to the archipelago because said region also contains the “gas-rich Reed Bank” and China should not be allowed to bully the Philippines in order to control access to oil. Browne stopped short of recommending the U.S. re-establish a base in the Philippines because the base would then represent “potential sitting ducks for Chinese missiles. Plus, they are expensive.”
Browne’s article is so wrong on several fronts. First, he cites the high cost of operating a military base yet the U.S covers the globe with bases. Second, he wants the US to prevent China from having access to an oil-rich region, as if the U.S has not tried to control access to “resources” in the past. Third, the U.S. has bases scattered throughout out the Asian-Pacific region, e.g., Japan and South Korea, that are clearly within reach of Chinese missiles. In sum, having bases encircling the world consumes far too much taxpayer money and places Americans in harm’s way, either at the foreign bases themselves or by creating organizations hostile to American hegemony.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324665604579078833308333984.html
