The Evolution Of American Overseas Base System

It’s quite obvious that the military bases system of the US has become a critical part of its national security strategy and an effective means to fulfill its national interests by analysis of the history of the United States overseas expansion and military deployment after the Civil War. The strategic cognition of the US elites has been changing in three aspects,which are their geopolitical cognition, threat cognition and their cognition of the great powers respectively and thus,the global bases system has always been in the process of changes and adoption.The dissertation tries to analysize the following aspects based on the framework of the strategic cognition of the US policy makers,the national strategies and the US bases system:(1) The US policy makers have made alignment to their Eurasia bases according to their changing geopolitical cognition. With its strategic focus switched from Europe to Asia, the adoption of its Asian bases has become the core of US’effort to optimize its military deployment.(2) The US policy makers have realized the complicated security environment,so its overseas presence must cope with all kinds of threats,from the traditional military competition among the great powers to all the nontraditional threats.(3) The US has paid more attention to China’s rising and its military modernization these years and the Pentagon has optimized its bases and troops based on the’air-sea-battle’ conception, which will challenge China’s core national interests.(4)The traditional allys of the US have maintained to be the most important military access choices for the US,but the US will adopt more mobile ways to deploy its overseas forces including the coalition of the willingl.(5) The bases-related issues have become the important aspects between the US and the host country and there are always lots of debates and critics on the US global military bases.It’s not a fresh phenomenon for a big power to establish some military bases abroad and the related factors, including the geopolitical features, deployment and functions of these bases have been case-specific and varying with time. We can understand this strategic means and make use of it only if we treat it in a dialectic way.