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Foreign Military Bases and Resistance to Them Are Spreading
By World BEYOND War
A new report by the global peace group World BEYOND War finds that military bases used by foreign militaries are growing in number, as are public protests and advocacy against those bases. Of 1,247 foreign military bases in the world, 877 of them, by latest count, are U.S. bases outside of the United States. Eighteen other nations, combined, have 370 bases outside their borders.
The full report is available at https://worldbeyondwar.org/basesreport2025While U.S. bases are in 95 foreign countries all over the globe and virtually encircling the borders of Russia and China, the nation with the second-most foreign bases, Türkiye, has them all near Türkiye, with the exception of one base in Somalia, and the majority of them in Syria and Iraq where Türkiye has been waging wars. During U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States added, and later closed, hundreds of bases. Türkiye and the U.S. are allied members of NATO and weapons traders, and the United States maintains a military presence at nine bases within Türkiye, at one of which it keeps nuclear weapons. The only other nation on Earth with even a tenth as many foreign military bases as the United States is the United States’ very closest military ally, the United Kingdom, some of whose bases are joint U.S.-UK operations.
The combined foreign military bases of the top three nations on the list, NATO members all, total 1,127. The fourth nation on the list, NATO’s raison d’être, Russia, has 29 foreign military bases. These are all found in 10 countries, all of which are near Russia, apart from one base in Sudan.
Foreign bases are catching on in a minor way with other nations. And governments like that of Djibouti that host bases for numerous nations for a fee increase the risk of sparking conflict. But foreign bases remain primarily and uniquely a U.S. enterprise, with no other foreign basing approaching in scale that of U.S. basing in nations such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The biggest change in U.S. bases in the past three years is the creation of dozens of new bases in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The U.S. has also opened new bases in Western Asia, Somalia, South Africa, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Peru, and significantly in the parts of the world southeast of China: Taiwan, the Philippines, Guam, the Northern Marianas, Papua New Guinea, and Australia.
People have built popular movements to prevent planned bases and to close existing bases at many locations around the world, and increasingly they are in touch with each other. On February 23, 2025, and surrounding days, individuals and organizations around the world took coordinated action to call for the closure of all military bases as part of the Global Day of Action to Close Bases. In over 60 locations people protested the foreign bases of various countries, including the United States, the UK, and Russia. See https://DayToCloseBases.org
Bases are often on stolen land and often perpetuate systems of segregation and colonialism. They do incredible environmental damage, tend to increase sexual violence and drunkenness, cost a financial fortune, prop up brutal governments, and facilitate drone attacks and wars.
In some places, movements against bases have achieved official support. The Governor of Okinawa has repeatedly visited the United States to insist that military bases be closed. Almost 20 years ago, the Government of Ecuador evicted the U.S. military and banned foreign bases. More recently, the Ecuadorian government has violated its Constitution to allow foreign bases in the Galapagos Islands and proposed to do the same on the mainland, despite opposition from members of Parliament.
In some places, bases have been prevented or closed. In 2024, after years of struggle, supported by World BEYOND War and others, the Save Sinjajevina campaign met with the Prime Minister of Montenegro and gained his promise that there would be no military training ground built at Sinjajevina in Montenegro. This was to have been a massive and destructive project for the benefit of NATO and the U.S. military. In 2006, people in the Czech Republic learned of plans to create U.S. bases in their country. They organized and prevented those bases from being built. In 2007 localities in the Czech Republic held referenda that matched national opinion polls and demonstrations; their opposition moved their government to refuse to host a U.S. base. In Colombia, a popular movement has prevented construction of a base for use by the U.S. military on Providencia Island, and a new movement to prevent such a base on Gorgona Island is drawing on the lessons from that success.
As shown in the new report, complaints against foreign military bases are numerous. Bases deny sovereignty, make nations into targets, make wars more likely, support unpopular governments, do extensive environmental damage, proliferate nuclear weapons, provide criminal immunity to occupying troops, and create a segregated structure in which people do not all have the same rights.
The U.S. public, and as far as can be determined, every other public whose government has foreign bases, has never been asked to decide on creating or closing such bases, and very rarely if ever even been surveyed in an opinion poll on the matter.
Find the full report at https://worldbeyondwar.org/basesreport2025
Find more information at https://DayToCloseBases.org.
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Foreign Military Bases and Resistance to Them Are Spreading
https://worldbeyondwar.org/basesreport2025/
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org. He hosts Talk World Radio.
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