Profiting From US Military Bases Overseas

Introduction to an excellent 7,000 word article by David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C.

“We’re Profiteers”

How Military Contractors Reap Billions from U.S. Military Bases Overseas

 " U.S. bases overseas have become a major mechanism of U.S. global power in the post-Second World War era. Alongside postwar economic and political tools like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the United Nations, the collection of extraterritorial bases—like colonies for the European empires before it—became a major mechanism for “maintaining [U.S.] political and economic hegemony,” advancing corporate economic and political interests, protecting trade routes, and allowing control and influence over territory vastly disproportionate to the land bases actually occupy. Without a collection of colonies, the United States has used its bases, as well as periodic displays of military might, to keep wayward nations within the rules of an economic and political system favorable to itself.

Building and maintaining this global base presence has cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars. While the military once built and maintained its forts, bases, and naval stations, since the U.S. war in Vietnam, private military contractors have increasingly constructed and run this global collection of bases, foreshadowing and helping to fuel broader government privatization efforts. During this unprecedented period, major corporations—U.S. and foreign—have increasingly benefitted from the taxpayer dollars that have gone to base contracting."

find the article here

David Vine goes into meticulously researched details of companies, size of contracts, examples of the revolving door syndrome, huge misappropriations of funds, Pentagon spending, uncompetitive contracts, US worldwide military bases, widespread election donations, lobbying details, tax evasion, shell companies, involved Congress members, waste and inefficiency, etc, etc.

War and the military industrial complex is a highly profitable business of capitalism. Abolishing the latter will see an end to the former.
JS