The lost bases of the US empire (Tarak Barkawi)

Created by : Francis Goodwin View profile

The US maintains permanent bases in South Korea, established in 1954, that house some 28,500 personnel [EPA]

The United States maintains more than 700 military facilities on foreign soil that may not be as sustainable in the near future

Oct. 29, 2011 (Aljazeera) -- Remember the bases? As the world reeled from the sheer audacity of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, many feared the United States was seeking to establish a permanent presence in that country.

The idea was plausible enough. The stability of Saudi Arabia was far from assured. Why not establish a friendly client state in another major oil producing country?

Iraq would be made into a dependent and profitable ally of the U.S. from bases there, and U.S. power and influence could be projected across the region.

Such a plan for empire made far more strategic sense for the United States than the wild-eyed fantasies about unleashing Arab democracy from the muzzles of American cannon.

South Korea offered a model. There, after World War II, the United States backed a regime based on the landlords, officials and security forces that had been the local backbone of Japanese imperialism. With U.S. advisers, a peasant rebellion was brutally suppressed in the late 1940s.

The United States stood by its client during the Korean War, at cost of 45,000 of its soldiers’ lives and the devastation of the peninsula and its people.