Left-Right Alliance for Closing U.S. Military Bases Around the World

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DAVID VINE, vine at american.edu
CATHERINE LUTZ, Catherine_Lutz at brown.edu

Author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, Vine is professor of anthropology at American University. Lutz is professor at the Watson Institute and Department of Anthropology at Brown University and author of The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts.

At the U.S. Capitol, on Thursday afternoon, “military experts from across the ideological spectrum will hold a public event to release an open letter arguing for the closure of wasteful, damaging, and unneeded U.S. military bases abroad. … Consensus is growing around a long-overlooked but crucial part of how the United States engages with the world: the nearly 75-year-old strategy of maintaining some 800 U.S. military bases in 80 foreign countries.”

See event livestream/phone-in: zoom.us/j/943926933 / (646) 876-9923 (ID: 943 926 933). Event is scheduled for Nov. 29, 1:00 p.m. ET in the Russell Senate Office Building, Room SR-188.

The open letter is addressed to the Trump administration and Congress and was drafted by the new transpartisan Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition. The Coalition “reflects growing agreement among military experts that reducing the excessive U.S. military footprint could, counterintuitively, make the country safer while saving billions of dollars a year.”

For more information, see: OverSeasBases.net.

The signatories to the letter include “Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, and Independents. They span a retired army general and other retired military officers; peace advocates; a former GOP member of Congress; Clinton, Reagan, and George W. Bush administration officials; and academics and think tank analysts across the ideological spectrum.”

In addition to Lutz and Vine, scheduled speakers include Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, (U.S. Army, Ret.), former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell; John Glaser, director, Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute; Sayo Saruta, director, New Diplomacy Initiative (Japan).