imagine a world where the most powerful
country on earth in 2021
wasn't the united states but rather
spain
and instead of setting up military bases
just in their own country
they also set up bases all around the
world
lots of those bases are in former
colonies but also
there's a bunch in the united states
just imagine this
you zoom into fayetteville north
carolina and you see a huge military
base
but it's not a us military base it's a
spanish base
on american soil with lots of homes for
the spanish soldiers and their families
powerful weapon systems aircraft all run
by the spanish military
go inside of one of these bases and it's
all spanish restaurants
americans can't come in here unless they
work for the spanish government
and then imagine a hundred more of these
all throughout the united states on
american soil and hundreds of more
throughout the world
or shift the scenario a little bit what
if it was a country that wasn't our ally
a country like china what if they had
military bases not
in the u.s but right up close to our
border
powerful weapon systems right off our
shores and islands in the caribbean
if you're an american you have to
imagine what that would feel like
if you're not an american it's likely
you already kind of know what this feels
like
the united states has an extensive
network of military bases
outside of our borders hundreds of bases
i've been fascinated for a very long
time about understanding
these u.s foreign bases abroad but i've
never actually taken the time
to accurately map them so let's do it
let's map
every single us military base around the
world
it turns out that's a huge task
this is the story of the men of the
united states army who made this project
possible and of man's never ceasing
quest
for knowledge
[Music]
this is a full armored division to give
you an idea of size
each of those small dark squares
includes more than a thousand men
the united states military is bigger
than any of us
can really fathom it's so big that even
the u.s
military doesn't know how big the u.s
military is
back in 2018 1200 independent
accountants and analysts came in to try
to
audit the us department of defense to
basically
try to get like a paper trail of how big
this thing is
how much money it spends etc and the
department of defense didn't pass the
audit
like they literally did not have the
documents or the knowledge to really
piece together
a full scope of what this organization
is how big it is how much money it
spends
so we don't know nobody knows how big
the pentagon is
in all of its forms all we do know is
that objectively
it is one of the if not the largest and
most powerful
organization on the planet and in the
history of humanity
i mean if you have a organization that's
more powerful than than the department
of defense
uh in the history of humans like let me
know i want to know about it but
as far as i can tell there's nothing
bigger and more powerful than
the united states military in 2021. and
much of the us military
is not actually in the u.s but is
actually outside of our borders
all around the world this post is
somewhere in germany overlooking a
sector of the iron curtain
one of the first things that joe biden
and his administration did when they
came into power a couple of weeks ago
down the road
was ask for an assessment of how big is
our military presence
around the whole world what is our
strategy and what actually does this
presence look like
the department will conduct a global
forced posture review of u.s military
footprint resources and strategies
footprint i like that that's like a nice
thing like what's our footprint how big
is our footprint
around the world we don't really know
the pentagon is going to start to try to
assess that
so let's help the pentagon out and try
to map
every single united states base around
the entire
world let's do it
[Music]
it wasn't too long ago when i used to
think that
having military bases in other countries
was totally
normal like doesn't every country have
like military bases in
in other countries yeah anyway this was
sort of reinforced for me when i was in
college i did an internship at
nato with a headquarters of nato which
was in brussels to get this job
i had to get a secret security clearance
from the us government
in order to enter the military base
which was
nato this was really cool because there
was always like people coming through
nato that i got to meet
like my diplomacy hero madeleine
albright who used to be the secretary of
state or
this guy great honor representing my
country
abroad for the last 37 years
good old joe hey joe had no idea you'd
be president someday
anyway the big benefit of having this
secret security clearance is that i
could go into any military base
anywhere and so on saturdays i would
drive an hour from brussels
to a little village in the belgian
countryside where a military base
had been sort of plopped down in the
middle of the belgian countryside
in between like stone walls and quaint
streets and sheep and farming plots
yeah it's a little blurry in this map
because it's you know
a military base and sometimes they blur
the satellite imagery nothing i can do
about it sorry
and as soon as i entered into the base
went through all the security and i was
in the base
i felt like i had left belgium and was
suddenly entering
suburban america welcome to the united
states there was a taco bell
and movie theaters with american movies
and all sorts of shops and like yoga
studios and like
a grocery store that had all of the
products that i was
very used to all at the same price as i
could get them in the united states even
though they had been flown across the
atlantic
and brought to this place which is a
very expensive
thing to do it was a dream for me as a
poor college kid
living in brussels and
feeling a little bit homesick to be
honest i hadn't really figured out
culture shock at this point so
yeah i kind of loved it and i was again
sort of like
doesn't everyone have military bases in
other countries and they can sort of
just go to their military base and it
was just i was so naive
alas i've learned the truth
luckily i was able to talk to somebody
who literally wrote the book
on u.s military bases abroad most u.s
bases abroad look like
not so small u.s towns over the years
david has been
researching and compiling a database of
all the us bases around the world
the result is a very detailed audit that
hasn't really ever been
done to this degree in fact a few years
ago the pentagon's own
research arm the rand corp was doing
some research on military bases abroad
and instead of using the pentagon's list
of u.s military bases abroad
these guys used david's list like they
used david he was like he's a professor
he's like an
anthropologist he's not like a part of
dod and yet they're like
this list that he made is actually more
authoritative than like
the pentagon's own list i mean i'm sort
of
honored but it's it's not a good sign if
the the pentagon
pentagon research arm is using my list
and not the pentagon zone list
so i got a hold of david's list and
started wrestling with the data and
finding a way to display it on a map so
that i could get
every single base to show somehow after
a few weeks of doing this
i finally have a map and that map looks
like this
[Music]
every dot on this map is a u.s military
base
or installation of some sort in a
different country
many of these dots are not placed
exactly where the base is because many
of these bases are clustered in
areas and if i tried to map them all in
the exact spot where they really are
they would all just sort of stack on top
of each other and you wouldn't really be
able to see them but these dots
represent
every single base outside of the united
states from huge complexes
the size of rhode island to small
airstrips
little facilities that only house
american drones or
radar or supplies this is all of them
and at least all that we know of and if
you look at this map and you see
a base that you know of that is not here
or one that is there that doesn't belong
there
tell me about it i want to know because
this is
sort of hard information to ascertain
the pentagon is not
very transparent and neither are host
countries
about where certain bases are and why
they exist
many of the bases around the world are
their existence
is due to an agreement between the two
countries
that is often not open to the public
that is that is secret
any errors here are mine and not david's
all in all
the number here is about 750.
750 u.s military bases big and small
outside of the united states by outside
of the united states i'm including
u.s territories that are not equal to
the united states like guam puerto rico
etc but in reality we probably don't
know the real number because that
data just simply is not transparently
available to us
there are a couple major clusters here
where the most bases exist
one major one is germany and the others
are japan and south korea
these are basically holdovers from world
war ii and the subsequent korean war
when the u.s who won the war came in and
occupied these countries in order to
set up a new government write a new
constitution and to help the post war
transferred to a new government but
what's most interesting to me
aren't these clusters that came about
because of world war ii but instead
the far-flung sort of unexpected or
little-known places that the u.s
military has
a little footprint like all the dots in
africa
which have popped up in recent years as
the us has expanded
its presence there these are usually
small installations that hold maybe a
few soldiers or mainly
private citizens who are government
contractors
and they mainly house things like drones
or radar or weapon systems
you also have this cluster of dots deep
in the indian ocean
which is the island of diego garcia
which i've talked about at length
about the us military's role in
displacing
hundreds of local people to set up a
base there some of these dots are
just airstrips a runway in the middle of
nowhere
and these runways usually belong to the
host country and the u.s just
rents them for a period of time like
this facility
in the middle of the desert in oman
places like this
exists to hold supplies in case a war
breaks out
so the u.s maintains these stockpiles of
war supplies
all around the globe so that they can
strike at any point without having to
ramp up a
like a war economy at home it takes away
a lot of the friction
from going to war it made it easier for
the us military to launch
offensive wars the wars in iraq and
afghanistan
were easier to launch because the u.s
has maintained a huge infrastructure
basis
some of these dots don't represent a
place where u.s soldiers
are actually stationed but instead it
represents
where money from the pentagon has gone
to influence or
build up infrastructure for example in
iceland
the us is spending a lot of money tens
of millions of dollars
to upgrade this airport the airport that
we all go through when we're going to
iceland
but doing it for military purposes so
that the u.s
can use it can land there if needed so
next time you land in iceland on your
way to the blue lagoon
just know that you're passing by one of
these little dots
over here in the azores these islands
that are owned by
portugal nearly 2 000 kilometers away
from any land mass
there is a group of u.s military
installations
mainly used for refueling and weapon
storage
head up here to greenland and you'll see
a little base
way up high the most northern base in
the world where 140 americans live
kind of looks interesting i'd love to go
there someday way out here in the
pacific
you've got loads of remote military
bases
owned by the united states they're
mainly small airstrips
like this base on the southern tip of
this huge atoll
of the marshall islands all right listen
i'm not going to explain
every single base there are 750 maybe
800 there's a bunch of bases i just
wanted to give you a flavor of what some
of these
look like they're diverse they're all
over the place
and they're fascinating to me i have
been compiling
accounts of people who live next to us
military bases i have
over 100 accounts from people that from
i call it on instagram
i want more i want to make an entire
video about life
next to a base and that is why i'm
calling upon all of you
i'm gonna put a link in my description
to like a survey it's like a form of
like what it's like to live
next to us military base i have it right
here and i'm gonna be checking it
you can fill out this form and then i
will get your response
and i will read through your response
and i will use that to
construct an understanding of what life
is like next to a us military base
i talked to david a bunch about this too
he's done a bunch of research
done a bunch of interviews and i want to
keep talking about this
so if you don't live next to a military
base i want to hear from you
like what are your thoughts about this
whether you're an american or not an
american like
is does this seem right does it seem
like the right choice the right thing
for our taxpayer money to be going
towards
i'm still making up my mind on a lot of
this stuff and i want to start a
discussion
my goal in this video was to just map it
was just look at it be able to see it on
a map
and i've finally done that by the way
there will be a high-res version
of this map on my patreon for patrons
who sign up for the map background tier
that will be there so i will be in the
comments more than normal for this video
i want to hear from you before you go i
want to say thank you to
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desert and the ocean to film for this
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see you all in
the next video bye-bye