US makes 'trouble' with foreign bases, journalist says

The United States is spending an exorbitant amount of money on arms while making "trouble in the world" with its hundreds of foreign military bases, a prominent US journalist said.

In an interview released on Aug 6 by French independent media Elucid, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh talked about his concerns over the US foreign bases.

"Everybody's looking at China, and I'm so happy about it," said Hersh. "China has one foreign base. Do you know how many America has? 800."

Born in 1937, Hersh received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War.

"We spend an unbelievable (amount of) money; we think arms all the time," he added.

His concerns resonate with a study from the Quincy Institute, conducted by David Vine, a professor of political anthropology at American University; Patterson Deppen, a researcher for the World Beyond War organization; and Leah Bolger, the president of World Beyond War.

According to their study, the US military had about 750 bases overseas across 80 countries and territories in 2021. That means that about four of every 10 countries have US bases on them across every continent except Antarctica.

About a dozen other countries have foreign military bases, with 70 between them. The US has at least three times as many overseas bases as all other countries combined, the study says.

The study also points out that the US has nearly three times as many bases abroad as its 276 embassies, consulates and missions worldwide.

During World War II and the early days of the Cold War, the US started to establish a system of military bases in foreign countries. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, Germany still has 119 US military bases, and Japan also has 119, according to the Pentagon. There are 73 in the Republic of Korea, the study says.

This strategy of exerting power comes at a cost. Since 2001, the US has spent an estimated $8 trillion on wars, according to data from a report conducted by the Costs of War project at Brown University.

In 2019, the US government spent around $718 billion on its military, and about 3 percent of that spending could house the entire homeless population in the US. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in the US.

Vine, who is also the author of a book about US military bases overseas, has been researching and compiling a database of all the US bases around the world. He said one of the Pentagon's research groups used his list for reference for their research instead of conducting their own.

"It's a bad sign about transparency, but many researchers believe that the Pentagon itself, the military itself, they don't know how many bases they have around the world because there are so many bases," Vine told AJ+, a social media publisher owned by Al Jazeera.