Compiled by Griffin Epstein
The United States military has more than 700 bases in 130 countries. That means that almost every country in the world has a U.S. military base on it even though there are no foreign military bases on U.S. soil. On the map below [unavailable], countries with no U.S. bases or troops are colored red. All of those in white do have a U.S. military presence. The map also highlights a few of the places where the U.S. military has been involved in violent conflict. There are many others in the world — can you think of more places?
FORT BENNING, GEORGIA
The School of the Americas trains foreign military leaders. It has been accused of teaching torture methods, and graduates have been associated with death squads and human rights violations in other countries.
WOUNDED KNEE, SOUTH DAKOTA
300 Lakota Sioux killed in 1890 as the U.S. colonized the West.
EL SALVADOR
Between 1980 and 1992, U.S. military gave $6 billion in aid to the government in El Salvador. Up to 75,000 people died in a violent civil war.
PANAMA
The U.S. Military has left 100,000 unexploded bombs on and around former bases in Panama.
VENEZUELA
The United States supported an unsuccessful attempt in 2002 to remove democratically elected leader Hugo Chavez from power.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Democratically elected president Patrice Lumumba was assassinated on the order of then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961.
IRAQ
After the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. and the U.K. stopped trading food and medical supplies with Iraq. This deprivation killed more than two million people, one million of whom were children. In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq, beginning the current Iraq War. Since then, more than 650,000 Iraqis and 3,770 U.S. soldiers have been have been killed in Iraq.
THE PHILIPPINES
Fillipinos resisted U.S. colonization in the Philippine-American war (1899-1902). About 1 million Filipinos were killed during the war and the resulting insurgency.
VIETNAM
Between 1957 and 1975, the United States sent about three million troops to fight the North Vietnamese government using, among other things, chemical weapons. More than 58,000 U.S. troops and 900,000 North Vietnamese were killed.
AFGHANISTAN
The U.S. armed and trained Afghanis in the 1980s, then in 2001 invaded the country.
