Are they aware of the number of US military bases overseas and in various places?

39 comments

  4. Seeing how I work for it, very aware.

    Seriously though, if you don’t know, next time you are out driving around see how many BAE buildings you can count. You might be surprised.

  6. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know America has bases around the world and provides humanitarian military aid to several countries.

  8. I think most people have a general idea that we have, by far, the largest military in the world and have a military presence in a ton of places around the world.

    I don’t think most people know specifics, and most probably underestimate the size and reach of our military.

  11. It’s got pull at the Pentagon and within the government but mostly the defense contractors and think tanks that make up the scare quoted military-industrial complex don’t hold a candle to the tech companies or the huge retailers at the top of the Fortune 500 in reach or power over the majority of American’s lives.

  12. Yep. I’m an Army brat so I wouldn’t exist without it. The Army helped lift my parents out of poverty and they met while serving. Plus I got to live in Fort Richardson in Alaska, Fort Benning in Georgia, Caserme Ederle in Italy, and Fort Campbell in TN/KY.

  14. Are you aware? So many people think our entire economy is fueled by war, when defense spending is only 3-4% of the economy.

  15. The MIC is not about what happens overseas, it’s the group of private companies within the US that researches and manufactures military hardware. I imagine awareness varies somewhat geographically, but half the point of having the MIC in the first place is to spread jobs to every congressional district.

    The MIC has a major presence in New England. Bath Iron Works, Raytheon, Natick Labs, Pratt & Whitney etc.

    People generally appreciate good jobs but don’t like wars. The degree to which the two are inexorably linked, well it’s hard to say exactly.

  16. I would say the military industrial complex is different from the number of US military bases overseas. Military bases are a subset of our military industrial complex.

    I would say that the average American has a pretty ok understanding of overseas operations. I think most Americans know that we have a not insignificant presence in Japan and Germany. I’m not sure if they know how big our military operations are in South Korea.

    And I think a lot of Americans know that military presence doesn’t always have to be on land. We know that there are massive carriers traveling around the world and moving into strategic places like near Taiwan when we want to make ourselves known without setting up a permanent camp there.

  17. I wouldn’t be able to give numbers, names, or dots on a map, but I’m vaguely aware of the scale

  18. I’d wager that more people are aware of our overseas presence than the reach of the actual MIC…the private companies like Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, etc. and how massive they are.

  19. Considering it employs a bunch of people in my industry with great benefits, really aware!

    The only people the “military-industrial-complex” bothers is our enemies.

    Our European allies love all the weapons we sell them.

  20. We’re aware. But one thing that the current situation with Ukraine has showed many of us is how dependent our allies are on our ability to project military power

  21. I do not believe most in the U.S. are aware of the scale of the military-industrial complex or the impact of the country’s military budget on the overall budget priorities of the country.

    Two points:

    I don’t think most understand how geographically diversified are the companies participating.

    I also don’t think most people can grasp the size of the financial numbers involved. One’s eyes tend to glaze over when there’s talk of many billions in expenditures.

  22. A good portion of us are part of the Military-Industrial Complex in some way or another. I work for a company that supplies concrete to various military installations around the Puget Sound region.

  24. I think a lot of people are actually not really aware of the scale of Military Industrial Complex. While many people are aware of military contractors such as Raytheon, Boeing, and the like they tend to be unaware of the countless suppliers of those systems and the other multi-purpose support such as construction, food, medicine etc.

  25. I think most people *over estimate* the scale of the military industrial complex and vastly underestimate healthcare expenses.

    This usually takes the form of “if we just spent as much on healthcare as we do on defense we’d have universal healthcare by now!”

    The kicker is that the government already spends *more* on healthcare than defense, and universal healthcare still isn’t here.

  26. I live in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County. The MIC is probably the largest employer in the area. My father and grandfather both worked for military contracting companies.

  27. I think most Americans are aware that the defense budget is large but don’t completely grasp the international scale. I always found/find it amusing to tell somebody that the Department of Defense actually operates the 10th largest American school system.

  30. Most have a vague idea, yes.

    > the number of US military bases

    While there *are* many, many of the lists I see claiming seemingly absurd numbers are misleading at best, and using definitions that don’t match what any normal person is thinking of as a “US military base” overseas.

    I often see any separate piece of land called it’s own “base”. A couple apartment buildings for the base a few miles down the road from it? Two bases!

    5 US troops in some country? It’s a US military base now. I’m not sure where the numbers cutoff should be, but every time there’s a few people working with a foreign country/military, is not what anyone’s thinking of for a base.

    There’s a lot of places we have permission to be but aren’t necessarily in all the time. Is some foreign airbase that we haven’t based planes at in 10 years a “US military base” because we have an agreement that we can if we want to? Does some token garrison of 2 dozen troops to maintain some facilities change that? I don’t know, but it’s certainly not what I picture when I think of a “US military base”, either.

    Some of those lists also claim that bases on our own territories are “overseas” – which is again, not the definition anyone sensible is using. An installation in Puerto Rico is not a foreign military base.

  31. Yes very much so. It personally makes me happy to know that we can protect our friends and allies. Stability. All for it.

    Given what is happening in Ukraine, all for more of it. Can’t have too much of a good thing.

  32. I don’t have them memorized, but I know some round numbers. I know we have bases in 80-90 countries and personnel deployed in roughly double that many. Summary stuff like that and a few details like where our long-standing bases are in allied countries vs a few hundred trainers vs a few thousand deployed troops.

    I also know quite a few people making their living on that industrial complex, folks as close as my dad, father in law and godbrother, so I’m very aware of how policy changes there impact people at home.

  34. Americans know that we have the largest military in the world, and that we spend the most on it. Therefore, we must have a sizeable military-industrial complex, too. Lots of us work for it without necessarily realizing it. A lot of us do not know the ways this subtly affects our economy and our politics, or that this is not how most other countries operate.

    Some of us are increasingly frustrated by this situation, but we tend to arrive at this position from wildly disparate ideological directions. Some of us are pseudo-socialists who want to break up corporate control. Some of us are libertarians who want to get the government out of the war-making business. Still others of us are newcomers who are right-wing America First types who are tired of seeing our troops wasted fighting other people’s wars. What’s amazing is that in the middle are the liberals and the conservatives, who don’t agree on much and are increasingly losing influence, but there’s still enough of them, and they agree on this 100%, that they’ve managed to keep the military-industrial complex almost entirely untouched.

  35. The Military Industrial complex has zero to do with the number of bases around the world.

    The military industrial complex is made up of the companies who’s profits depend on the military buying their products en mass every year and the Millions of Americans who’s lively hood depends on the weapons industry. Their lobbyists push for increased military spending and increased global conflicts and arms sales.

    That said, our entire defense budget is 3% of budget. I really wouldn’t say that makes us a warmonger when 97% of our budget isn’t used to blow stuff up.

  37. Pretty aware. Most Americans probably don’t know we have 4 of the top 5 largest air forces in the world but I imagine nearly every American knows we spend the most money if any country on our military by a wide margin.

  38. >Are they aware of the number of US military bases overseas and in various places?

    For the most part yes. Everyone knows the big picture, we don’t know every base. If someone said we had a military base in Africa, an American would be likely be surprised but not shocked.

    Same logic applies to the military-industry complex. We know its huge and incorporates a lot of companies. But there are a lot of companies and products which we would never think to be part of the military industry umbrella.

  39. OP seems to be mistaking a military with the term Military Industrial Complex.

    The military industrial complex as many in the comments are mentioning is the *Industry* that equips and fuels the military. Weapons manufacturers and shipping lanes that supply bases are the military industrial complex.

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