One Last Question, How many Nukes does Israel Have?

israel vs iran.jpg

Population of Israel - 8.3 million
Population of Iran - 81 million

Land area of Israel - 8 thousand square miles
Land area of Iran - 636 thousand square miles

Both are self governing independent nations recognized by the United Nations.

Number of Nuclear weapons possessed by Israel - estimated at between 75 and 400

Number of Nuclear weapons possessed by Iran - zero

What's wrong with this picture?

israhell.png

Remember when it was vehemently denied that Israel has nuclear weapons? Remember when that started to change and it went from no way to maybe? Remember when it became, ya, Israel has nuclear weapons? Remember when they stopped talking about Israel having nuclear weapons?

I would have to think that any "thinking" person would say at this point, "wait a minute, what's going on"?

Oh wait, one more thing. How many nukes does the United States of Democracy, Freedom and Brave People have?

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riverlover's picture

I would have guessed 5. Does the US do yard sales of "retired" ones now? Only to our special buddies?

Nuclear missiles work somewhat well in Sci-Fi disasters with incoming shit. Shoot them mostly at Sol.

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Meteor Man's picture

Who is the most bloodthirsty, militant threat to set off a nuke,
Trump or Netanyahu?

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Big Al's picture

@Meteor Man

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Big Al Gotta be Bibi, if only because he's been itching to do it for forty years or more.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Can't figure out how to embed twitter posts at the moment, but Susan Rice's reply to AIPAC's tweet which praised Trump's reneging on the Iran nuclear deal was "bullshit". Trump is destroying whatever credibility the US has left in the World.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Timmethy2.0 Since when is Susan Rice a truthteller? Wow. Apparently there are limits to what she thinks is acceptable, or maybe it's just because OMG Trump, and it would have been OK had anybody else done it.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Meteor Man's picture

I was gonna guess 2,000. This is what Bing turned up:

As of July 8, the United States has 6,800 warheads, according to data from Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris at the Federation of American scientists. 2,800 of them are retired, 4,000 are stockpiled, and 1,800 are deployed. The total number of U.S. warheads is second only to Russia, which currently has 7,000 of them.

http://time.com/4893175/united-states-nuclear-weapons/

Ok! What does "retired" mean? Where do you "stockpile" 4,000 nukes? And 6,800 does not add up unless you only count retired and stockpiled.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

riverlover's picture

@Meteor Man One fissile element going off in the US would cause a shitstorm. Someones would be killed.

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divineorder's picture

@riverlover

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

"We tortured some folks" like this was the same as saying "we invited some folks for dinner" or "we tortured some folks, but let's move on. Everyone makes this type of mistake and we shouldn't punish people for their mistakes or ruin their lives over it".

It's difficult to pick just one thing that he did during his tenure, but I'll go with calling him one of the worst presidents ever.

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It's a good thing that we celebrated the end of the Bush administration and their actions, huh?

IMG_1321.GIF

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snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

Her has no room to talk about this! We already had a person who had committed numerous sexual assaults in the White House so I would think that this is the one subject Hillary would stay quiet on. This should be embarrassing for her to even say anything about Trump, especially because she knew this about him but hung out with him anyway. And of course none of her supporters see the irony of her saying this. Guess who is clapping their hands together because she called Trump out on this.
Sheesh!!

IMG_1322.PNG

Hillary shuts down this 4 News TV interviewer.

Interviewer pushes her on when she will return the Harvey Weinstein donations her campaign received and he suggests she knew about the Weinstein rumors.

This led Hillary to remind him a sexual predator was elected as President and the importance of shining a spotlight on sexual assault.

Just imagine if media had held Donald Trump to this standard, since he actually committed sexual assault on many women? Maybe Trump wouldn’t be President today.

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Lookout's picture

@snoopydawg

too bad the reporter didn't ask...

This led Hillary to remind him a sexual predator was elected as President and the importance of shining a spotlight on sexual assault.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

TheOtherMaven's picture

@Lookout

for the chunks of sawdust in others' eyes.

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@Lookout

Reporter should have said: "Twice was enough to learn from".

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

snoopydawg's picture

@Lookout

I just watched her interview on this and the reporter was saying that she knew about the rumors about Harvey and she stayed silent on it. This is neither here nor there. He first started out saying that she was a friend of Harvey and that he had donated money to her campaign and then asked if she was going to return it. She answered yes and the reporter wanted a time frame.............. this went on for a few minutes, but then she deferred the topic to Donald and that he was a known predator but was elected president anyway.
That doesn't matter. Not to the topic of the interview. This was a 'gotcha' interview which this person wanted to pin her silence about him on her. No one knows everything about another person. Were there rumors of his behavior for years? Apparently, but I never heard about it until the story broke, but if he never acted that way in Hillary's presence, then why is it on her or any other person to speak up about his rumored behavior?

The interview was about Harvey, not Donald. But the irony for me is that Bill too was known as a sexual predator, he had paid women settlements for it and he was impeached for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. And even though those accusations against Bill were made while he was governor of AK, he was still elected president. This is where the glass house and stones come in.
Then there were the attacks on those women by Hillary who called them many names because they dared make the accusations against Bill. It's okay to defend your husband, but not at the expense of other women's character.

I could be wrong on this and if I am, then I look forward to others opinion.

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Lookout's picture

@snoopydawg

But the irony for me is that Bill too was known as a sexual predator,

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

snoopydawg's picture

@Lookout

Trolling again and saw this:

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Bill Clinton
Lost his law license

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Meteor Man's picture

@Meteor Man

Russia 7,000
USA 6,800 |
FRANCE 300 |
CHINA 260 |
UK 215 |
PAKISTAN 130
INDIA 120 |
ISRAEL 80 |
NORTH KOREA

https://www.ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report

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@Meteor Man
Some counts involve strategic nuclear weapons, those that can be delivered at intercontinental distances, via ICBMs, ballistic missile submarines, and strategic bombers. Others include shorter range nuclear weapons theoretically intended to be used on a battlefield.

I haven't seen a count of total Israeli nuclear weapons as low as 80 in some time.

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@Meteor Man

Maybe they don't count the 1800 they're currently pointing at people in with the 6800 because they're planning on using those and they figure that they'll need to replace them anyway?

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Oh wait, one more thing. How many nukes does the United States of Democracy, Freedom and Brave People have?

6800, slightly less than Russia:

Nuclear Arsenals

But Trump wants to increase it to 68,000.

Edited to change the number from 6000 to 6800. Time for another eye exam.

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Big Al's picture

@Timmethy2.0 than 6K.

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@Big Al
kind of tend to lose count, after firing off the first couple dozen or so.

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native

@Timmethy2.0

next stop 600,000.

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mimi's picture

@irishking
are just too confusing, so everyone knows they don't count the zeros. Who cares about zeros anyway? /s

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GreyWolf's picture

@mimi

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mimi's picture

@GreyWolf
How many zeros had the salary of the person who produced that TV program? And how many kids didn't learn how to handle the zillion zeros thereafter? And how many mamas were happy to park their kids in front of the TV and feeling not guilty about it, because ... they learned something ?

I didn't grow up with those cute children programs on TV to learn something. And I am grumpy.
But I have to admit, that's some classy TV children program productions. I like 'em too. I am just
... feeling like a low zero ... a nothing zero ... a looser zero ...

Sight what a zero-ish day. But you made me smile. Thanks.

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@mimi

your role in society.

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@mimi

that is what your fingers are for.

if trump goes past 10 billion nukes, we might want to have a think.

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Although they may well arm the F35 stealth fighter that we are selling them and they are 'paying' for them with the money we give them every year.

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snoopydawg's picture

Iran -none in 300 years.
Israel- none except for Gaza and all the other countries that told us to invade.
America-will we ever know? This is includes the countless coups with the second one being Iran in 1953?for standard oil and the British royal family.

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@snoopydawg @snoopydawg
and the Hindu Kush and that dastardly attempt on the Greek city states. Smile

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Bollox Ref's picture

@Timmethy2.0

...

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

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Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

@Timmethy2.0
The Zoroastrian Persian Empire kicked the Byzantine Empire out of Israel but twenty-five years later were themselves expelled from Israel by the Umayyad Empire.

This of course was during the 1,900 year long forced exile of the Hebrew Semitic nation from their homeland.

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"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush

mimi's picture

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@mimi

I shouldn't have watched this so late in the evening. That wormy-mouthed little twerp has, I hope, made himself (and his parasitic, psychopathic neo-con ilk ruining policy) an international pariah by this appalling final action which will result in no nation wishing to conduct business of any kind with the lying lunatics who've stolen the government from the American people and who are draining them and their country for their personal hostile corporate/military global takeover - which has to fail if anyone is to survive this.

But I suspect that the current potential for any such reaction would not likely have had any chance of being elicited to counter the Clintons or Pence enacting the same thing, as their pathology would likely have been cloaked in a more 'rational-ish' appearance, and perhaps Trump might be the saving of us all, as the entire corrupt government might well be taken down by this by the also-threatened international community, providing a chance for reform. (In the real sense, that of improvement, not deterioration.) I know, I dream... don't want nightmares because of this, though, whether while awake or asleep, for myself, for the Iranians, for anybody and everybody. International law - and human rights - must finally prevail.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

mimi's picture

@Ellen North
believe Europeans in general hope that the Americans themselves get rid of Trump. I don't think that many people are that aware of the fact that Clinton and Obama were as supportive as GWBush to the same foreign policies Trump is now recklessly and openly using to "play his role" as a "leader" and satisfy his ego.

Con artists are many among politicians, some better than the others. Trump is the worst con artist. He really needs to go to con artist school and get a professional degree in it. I don't believe that the general population in Europe gets the danger evolving out of Trumps style of "governing'. They simply don't understand it, shake their heads and hope this guy is stopped. All of it is just my guts' feelings. I have nothing to back it up with.

I get angry when I read the usual news media from Germany. I feel how they are becoming less independent in their thinking. Everything is awash in the same type of hyperactivity and the news articles are almost identical.

I have given up to understand how it has become that way. It just isn't worth anymore to "dig for the truth". The only truth right now I can see is that there is no way to know what is the truth and what is not. Then you can basically stop reading and go home and read books and a couple of newspapers who you still trust have some independent authors.

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@mimi @mimi

I wonder if it's more likely that German news journalists have become less independent in their thinking or in what they're allowed to print, whether by their owners, advertisers or politicians?

Conformity does not generally come naturally to writers en masse, and such a change is generally imposed, even if the conformist views are later accepted - while some of the more independent minds may quit jobs with such limitations. Censorship is spreading...

Edit: actually near-identical news items are typical of media having talking points handed to them to disseminate, or of their all using the same news service for information. Is there a concentration of news sources owned by a limited number of corporations in Germany?

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A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

divineorder's picture

Nuclear Winter. /s

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Big Al's picture

@divineorder farcical nature of the supposed importance of this "deal". Iow, why should Iran have to go without nuclear weapons and not Israel? Or the United States or anyone for that matter. And what gives the U.S. the right to threaten sanctions and war over the "possibility" that Iran might develop a nuclear weapon in the future, when the U.S. has over 5000 nukes?

That's why many of us have said the Iran nuclear deal was a smokescreen in the first place, meant to provide a reason for Trump to do exactly what he's doing now. Pull out and escalate, make Iran refuse to budge, try to cripple it's economy, etc. There is evidence from think tanks that was the plan all along.

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@Big Al

I think the purpose of the deal is to help get rid of nuclear weapons, something good that Obama said he would do from the very beginning of his Presidency.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiUL4Xl2CCE]

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@Timmethy2.0

Well, Obama went round getting other countries to get rid of their nukes, before declaring that the world's wealthiest country, which 'can't afford' health care or a living wage for the public good, had to sink (he said then) a trillion bucks of public money into new nukes rather than addressing any of the long-neglected needs of the country and its impoverished people forming more than half of the population, with the rest rapidly sinking as nearly all gains are now increasingly going to the top fraction of the 1%.

https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/USNuclearModernization

U.S. Nuclear Modernization Programs

August 2017

...An analysis by the Arms Control Association of U.S. government budget data projects the total cost over the next 30 years at between $1.25 trillion and $1.46 trillion in then-year dollars, meaning it includes price increases due to inflation.

The projected costs of nuclear modernization prompted Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) to utter the following on May 19, 2016, at the Brookings Institution: "it's very, very, very expensive....Do we really need the entire triad, given the situation?"

The U.S. military has upgraded and refurbished nearly all of its existing strategic and tactical delivery systems and the warheads they carry to last well beyond their originally planned service life and is now in the early stages of replacing many of these aging systems with new systems. Though decades old, these modernized forces are more capable than the originals and the new systems will include additional capability upgrades. The current and planned U.S. investment in nuclear forces is unrivaled by any other nuclear power.

Gen. Paul Selva, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in March 2017 that while Russia and China continue to modernize their nuclear forces, "we [the United States] do have a qualitative advantage." Similarly, Gen. John Hyten, the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2017, "the thing about deterrent capability is it doesn't matter how old [it is]." What matters is "whether it works."

The Obama administration requested large increases for nuclear weapons programs at the Defense and Energy Departments to sustain and modernize the arsenal. Indeed, president Obama's proposed spending levels for many key efforts exceeded what the administration originally advertised early in its first term.

Though president Obama and his military advisors determined that U.S. security can be maintained while reducing the size of its deployed strategic nuclear arsenal by up to one-third below the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) levels, the modernization plans they put in motion are based on maintaining roughly the New START levels in perpetuity. ...

...White House and Pentagon officials and defense budget watchers have expressed concern that the current triad modernization plans may not be executable in the absence of significant and sustained increases to overall military spending in the coming 15-20 years, in large part due to the fact that nuclear costs are scheduled to rise and overlap with a large "bow wave" in projected spending on conventional weapon system modernization programs.

The 2011 Budget Control Act puts in place caps on military spending through 2021. According to CBO, in the long-term an aging population, rising health care costs, and the rising interest on the national debt will constrain the amount of funding available for discretionary spending, including defense spending, if tax revenues do not increase significantly. Though the new Trump administration has pledged to repeal the Budget Control Act and increaase defense spending, many budget experts believe doing so will be easier said than done. Pressure on the defense budget and the implicit trade-offs within that budget are likely to persist into the 2020s and 2030s. ...

All this is toward planetary military/corporate takeover, while draining even more money from the American public to benefit those profiting from the MIC and the stolen resources of other people's countries; what other possible reasons could there be for this, when there are already enough nukes in existence to destroy life on the planet (I believe it was) 8 times over?

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@Ellen North @Ellen North

Not just the explanation that always ascribes the worst possible intentions to Obama. I think if you compare the above videos of Trump (Mimi's post) and Obama, there is a stark difference in empathy, intelligence and long range goals.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@Timmethy2.0

and no sane explanation for starving and oppressing the people to increase the arsenal.

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WaterLily's picture

@Timmethy2.0 The empathy, not so much. But many people were fooled by his charisma. Remove the personality and look at the policies and actions. None of those long-range goals were in our interest.

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@WaterLily @WaterLily @WaterLily

Thanks to Trump. Isn't it better to say your long range goal is to rid the World of nuclear weapons than to articulate no long range goal except Iran bad, America first, we will be fantastic, etc? At least putting the goal out there makes it possible, even if the MIC or whatever is opposed to that goal. Trump is extremely short sighted with his pulling us out of everything Obama including the Paris treaty. He is turning us into a pariah. Why is that better than when most of the World liked Obama and there was such a large emphasis on diplomacy?

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WaterLily's picture

@Timmethy2.0 @Timmethy2.0 And/or that he had anyone's interests in mind but the one percent's.

(Edit: grammar).

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@Timmethy2.0

But Obama only wanted to rid other countries of their nukes - and vastly increase those in the most militaristic and invasive country since Hitler.

The one with the world's by-far-largest military - also being further expanded to cope with occupying everyone else, and not in a good way. Trump's just enacting the next step in a more obvious manner. And voicing threats of extermination likely anyway planned.

This following is an enormous detail-packed article which needs to be read in full at source to comprehend the totality of what's in process and the evident pathology behind it. (All emphasis mine)

From 2012, under Nobel Peace Prize-winning, charming Obama The Statesman:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/pentagon-new-generation-mili...

The Pentagon’s New Generation of Secret Military Bases
How the Pentagon is quietly transforming its overseas base empire and creating a dangerous new way of war.

David VineJul. 16, 2012 5:14 PM

...While the collection of Cold War-era giant bases around the world is shrinking, the global infrastructure of bases overseas has exploded in size and scope.

Unknown to most Americans, Washington’s garrisoning of the planet is on the rise, thanks to a new generation of bases the military calls “lily pads” (as in a frog jumping across a pond toward its prey). These are small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.

Around the world, from Djibouti to the jungles of Honduras, the deserts of Mauritania to Australia’s tiny Cocos Islands, the Pentagon has been pursuing as many lily pads as it can, in as many countries as it can, as fast as it can. Although statistics are hard to assemble, given the often-secretive nature of such bases, the Pentagon has probably built upwards of 50 lily pads and other small bases since around 2000, while exploring the construction of dozens more.

As Mark Gillem, author of America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire, explains, “avoidance” of local populations, publicity, and potential opposition is the new aim. “To project its power,” he says, the United States wants “secluded and self-contained outposts strategically located” around the world. According to some of the strategy’s strongest proponents at the American Enterprise Institute, the goal should be “to create a worldwide network of frontier forts,” with the US military “the ‘global cavalry’ of the twenty-first century.”

Such lily-pad bases have become a critical part of an evolving Washington military strategy aimed at maintaining US global dominance by doing far more with less in an increasingly competitive, ever more multi-polar world. Central as it’s becoming to the long-term US stance, this global-basing reset policy has, remarkably enough, received almost no public attention, nor significant Congressional oversight. Meanwhile, as the arrival of the first casualties from Africa shows, the US military is getting involved in new areas of the world and new conflicts, with potentially disastrous consequences. ...

...Yet Washington still easily maintains the largest collection of foreign bases in world history: more than 1,000 military installations outside the 50 states and Washington, DC. They include everything from decades-old bases in Germany and Japan to brand-new drone bases in Ethiopia and the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean and even resorts for military vacationers in Italy and South Korea.

In Afghanistan, the US-led international force still occupies more than 450 bases. In total, the US military has some form of troop presence in approximately 150 foreign countries, not to mention 11 aircraft carrier task forces—essentially floating bases—and a significant, and growing, military presence in space. The United States currently spends an estimated $250 billion annually maintaining bases and troops overseas. ...

...Obama’s recently announced “Asia pivot” signals that East Asia will be at the center of the explosion of lily-pad bases and related developments. Already in Australia, US marines are settling into a shared base in Darwin. Elsewhere, the Pentagon is pursuing plans for a drone and surveillance base in Australia’s Cocos Islands and deployments to Brisbane and Perth. In Thailand, the Pentagon has negotiated rights for new Navy port visits and a “disaster-relief hub” at U-Tapao.

In the Philippines, whose government evicted the US from the massive Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base in the early 1990s, as many as 600 special forces troops have quietly been operating in the country’s south since January 2002. Last month, the two governments reached an agreement on the future US use of Clark and Subic, as well as other repair and supply hubs from the Vietnam War era. In a sign of changing times, US officials even signed a 2011 defense agreement with former enemy Vietnam and have begun negotiations over the Navy’s increased use of Vietnamese ports.

Elsewhere in Asia, the Pentagon has rebuilt a runway on tiny Tinian island near Guam, and it’s considering future bases in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, while pushing stronger military ties with India. Every year in the region, the military conducts around 170 military exercises and 250 port visits. On South Korea’s Jeju island, the Korean military is building a base that will be part of the US missile defense system and to which US forces will have regular access.

“We just can’t be in one place to do what we’ve got to do,” Pacific Command commander Admiral Samuel Locklear III has said. For military planners, “what we’ve got to do” is clearly defined as isolating and (in the terminology of the Cold War) “containing” the new power in the region, China. This evidently means “peppering” new bases throughout the region, adding to the more than 200 US bases that have encircled China for decades in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and Hawaii.

And Asia is just the beginning. In Africa, the Pentagon has quietly created “about a dozen air bases” for drones and surveillance since 2007. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, we know that the military has created or will soon create installations in Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, South Sudan, and Uganda. The Pentagon has also investigated building bases in Algeria, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria, among other places. ...

...Finally, in Europe, after arriving in the Balkans during 1990’s interventions, US bases have moved eastward into some of the former Eastern Bloc states of the Soviet empire. The Pentagon is now developing installations capable of supporting rotating, brigade-sized deployments in Romania and Bulgaria, and a missile defense base and aviation facilities in Poland. Previously, the Bush administration maintained two CIA black sites (secret prisons) in Lithuania and another in Poland. Citizens of the Czech Republic rejected a planned radar base for the Pentagon’s still unproven missile defense system, and now Romania will host ground-based missiles.

A New American Way of War

A lily pad on one of the Gulf of Guinea islands of S­ão Tomé and Príncipe, off the oil-rich west coast of Africa, helps explain what’s going on. A US official has described the base as “another Diego Garcia,” referring to the Indian Ocean base that’s helped ensure decades of US domination over Middle Eastern energy supplies. Without the freedom to create new large bases in Africa, the Pentagon is using S­ão Tomé and a growing collection of other lily pads on the continent in an attempt to control another crucial oil-rich region. ...

Far beyond West Africa, the nineteenth century “Great Game” competition for Central Asia has returned with a passion—and this time gone global. It’s spreading to resource-rich lands in Africa, Asia, and South America, as the United States, China, Russia, and members of the European Union find themselves locked in an increasingly intense competition for economic and geopolitical supremacy.

While Beijing, in particular, has pursued this competition in a largely economic fashion, dotting the globe with strategic investments, Washington has focused relentlessly on military might as its global trump card, dotting the planet with new bases and other forms of military power. “Forget full-scale invasions and large-footprint occupations on the Eurasian mainland,” Nick Turse has written of this new twenty-first century military strategy. “Instead, think: special operations forces… proxy armies… the militarization of spying and intelligence… drone aircraft… cyber-attacks, and joint Pentagon operations with increasingly militarized ‘civilian’ government agencies.”

Add to this unparalleled long-range air and naval power; arms sales besting any nation on Earth; humanitarian and disaster relief missions that clearly serve military intelligence, patrol, and “hearts and minds” functions; the rotational deployment of regular US forces globally; port visits and an expanding array of joint military exercises and training missions that give the US military de facto “presence” worldwide and help turn foreign militaries into proxy forces.

And lots and lots of lily-pad bases.

Military planners see a future of endless small-scale interventions in which a large, geographically dispersed collection of bases will always be primed for instant operational access. With bases in as many places as possible, military planners want to be able to turn to another conveniently close country if the United States is ever prevented from using a base, as it was by Turkey prior to the invasion of Iraq. In other words, Pentagon officials dream of nearly limitless flexibility, the ability to react with remarkable rapidity to developments anywhere on Earth, and thus, something approaching total military control over the planet. ...

This has been underway for decades and if not stopped now, fascism will exert total military control over the planet, at least while planetary life survives the abuses of a corporate/military empire powered by pathological greed and run by psychopaths. With an awful lot of nukes.

If such as drones and nuclear missiles are to be used to repress populations and eradicate protest on a global basis, many small bases would be all that's required.

How appropriate that 'Lily Pads' are evidently to be used against a world of already-boiling human frogs.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

in trying to sway our elections like Russia...oh wait.

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Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

@Blueslide
You mean like that country that broke into our embassy, kidnapped our diplomats and thereby ensured that Ronald Reagan would defeat Jimmy Carter?

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"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush

TheOtherMaven's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason

When somebody here ends a statement with "oh wait", it usually means "Whoops, they DID that!", or "Whoops, they DIDN'T do that!" (depending on context).

D'oh.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

lotlizard's picture

were always fine mouthing the fake news of “it is not known if Israel has nukes and if they do, it is not known how they got them.”

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