Dare you close them...

 

 

Two incidents drew enormous attention recently. First as usual is the obvious case of NGOs and human rights groups like ‘No Bases’, an International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, are vociferously demanding the closure of foreign military bases put up by US, Russia and other major powers on the grounds of human rights violations, ecological damage, sexual abuses and imperialist policies. The second incident is that of countries like Kyrgyzstan threatening the US to either close its airbase there or hike the rental to continue in their land. There has always been a debate on the relevance and importance of foreign military bases and most have always been against it as these bases are always considered to be flagbearers of first world hegemony. But questions remain as to whether it would be a US, a Russia or the host countries who would lose more if US or Russia and others were to withdraw their offshore bases.

According to US Department of Defence, US alone has over 761 foreign military bases across the world. And out of America’s gigantic $430 billion plus defence budget, a quarter of it goes to the host nations as rent or military aid. To take an example, it has allocated $6 million to Bulgaria as military aid to modernise and upgrade its military in lieu of US continuing its existing bases there. Latin America, a region where US has maximum military bases, has also topped in the list of military aid recipients. Countries which receive high US military aid are Colombia (received $5 billion since 2000 and 615 million in 2007 alone), Ecuador ($49 million in 2003), and Peru ($71 million). In Central Asia, both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan gets $150 million annually as aid in lieu of US air bases . Similarly Russia has promised to provide Kyrgyzstan $2 billion on loan, $150 million as financial aid, waiver of a previous debt of $180 million and construct a $1.7 billion hydropower plant. It has also promised similar military aid packages for Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Cuba.

While the concept of militarising the world is gradually fading, withdrawal of foreign military bases may economically backfire the host nations. Often, aid packages are big enough to change economic contours of the recipient nations. Kyrgyzstan isn't crying for US to leave. In fact, it is trying to make US understand that its counterpart, Russia is offering more. So if US wants to stay back, it has to pay more than what Russia is offering and this is actually benefiting Kyrgyzstan more than anyone else. One should not be surprised that a few years down the line when many of the erstwhile host nations of US bases start feeling the economic pinch of the US withdrawal, it would be the same NGOs and the human rights groups which would again blame the US for withdrawing and putting those nations in economic jeopardy. This is actually the tragedy of being a superpower. No matter whatever it does, it would always be at the receiving end.