Reddit mentions of Embattled Garrisons: Comparative Base Politics and American Globalism

So first of all, this is a really shitty article. He links to this RAND report to say "even when host countries like Japan and Germany cover some of the costs, U.S. taxpayers still pay an annual average of $10,000 to $40,000 more per year," completely missing that this same report concludes the following points:

• In many cases, but not all, overseas presence enhances contingency responsiveness
  
  • In-place forces are critical for the initial stage of major contingencies.
    
  • The global en route infrastructure enables reinforcement of in-place forces and broad responsiveness.
    
  • Access to bases from which direct air support can be provided is important.
    
  • Global naval presence contributes to response flexibility.
    
  • Overseas ground forces may not provide an advantage for regional responsiveness when not proximate to the area of conflict.
    
• Overseas forces targeted to specific threats provide deterrence and regional assurance.
  
  • In-place forces signal the ability to thwart quick victories and assure allies of U.S. commitments.
    
  • Regional air and missile defenses protect and assure allies and partners.
    
• Overseas presence enhances security cooperation, which builds U.S. capabilities to work with partners and helps develop their capabilities.
  
  • The marginal cost of security cooperation activity for forces based overseas is low, resulting in higher activity.
    
  • The greatest benefits accrue from working with advanced partners.
    
• Some posture changes could be advisable, depending on judgments about national security priorities and the relationships between posture and strategic benefits.
  
  • Further reductions in Europe would reduce costs, but at some penalty in terms of security cooperation and assurance of allies.
    
  • The emerging threat from long-range precision-guided weapons needs to be part of the calculus when adjusting posture in the Asia-Pacific region in the pursuit of deterrence and assurance goals.
    
  • In Asia, another key consideration is the value of having ground forces stationed in the region versus in the United States for flexible contingency response, assurance, and security cooperation with partners across the region.
    
  • In the Persian Gulf, policymakers must weigh the deterrent benefits of presence against the costs and the risks driven by host nations' political sensitivities to U.S. presence.
    
    The only conclusion that he cites is that cutting bases reduces financial cost, which is obviously true, but it isn't like there's an immediate tangible financial cost to our basing. On that point, Barry Eichengreen found here that if the US were to pull out, our interest rates would be like 0.8% higher, attributable to the preference of nations where the US has military bases to store additional FX reserves in dollars than they otherwise would.
    
    This isn't to say that the author isn't right that there's a financial cost component, but it kind of shows that they didn't even make the effort to engage with the literature.
    
    Most of his other arguments are also either out-of-date or just straight up false. For instance, he cites that: In contrast to frequently invoked rhetoric about spreading democracy, the military has shown a preference for establishing bases in undemocratic and often despotic states like Qatar and Bahrain. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, U.S. bases have created fertile breeding grounds for radicalism and anti-Americanism. The presence of bases near Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia was a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden’s professed motivation for the September 11, 2001, attacks.
    
    The US pulled its troops out of Saudi Arabia in 2003 and, more importantly, the creation of the air base in Doha came with broad support from the Qatari government. Despite my less than savory view of Saudi Arabia/Qatar, the presence of al-Udeid was most certainly a deterrent factor preventing Riyadh from straight-up invading Doha, which they had clearly shown inclinations of doing. The same argument could also be made about Iranian illicit activity in Bahrain, which is likely deterred by the presence of the Fifth Fleet when we compare it to other Shia hot zones, like Iraq, Yemen, etc.
    
    It seems quite interesting that the only country with significant Shia resentment where the Iranians have yet to establish a strategic foothold is the one with a US military base, isn't it?
    
    And, AGAIN, he links back to the SAME RAND study with those EXACT conclusions that UPHOLD basing to argue that changes in transportation render these military bases moot. THE VERY STUDY HAS, IN ITS FIRST CONCLUSION POINT, AN ARGUMENT THAT WOULD OTHERWISE COUNTER THAT LINE.
    
    And finally on the last point, of course, he mentions the China building a base in Mexico example- every isolationist does. His argument assumes that the reader already believes that Russia is opposed to the United States because of NATO expansion, which is pretty funny, considering we spent most of the 1990s also supplying financial aid to the Kremlin and welcoming them back to the community of nations through initiatives like the G8. It also, of course, ignores the close relationship that was enjoyed by Putin and Bush in the early part of their presidencies.
    
    The defining moment, which most scholars agree on, is the Orange Revolution in 2004, that was responsible for the chasm in US-Russia relations, not the abstract expansion of NATO or any mythical bases (which we don't actually have) in territories like Poland.