Foreign military bases are anomalies in a world of sovereign states. Why do major powers station their finite military forces to protect other countries and how does the distribution of these bases relate to a country’s grand strategy? Why do host-nations give up their sovereignty and allow foreign forces, capable of existential violence, to deploy within their borders? This dissertation takes a mixed method approach to each of these questions. For the first, I combine descriptive case studies relating the basing postures of five major powers and to their respective grand strategies with a quantitative analysis of the correlates of the US military basing network. To answer the second, I test the role of host-nation security conditions on US military access and then conduct an in-depth process tracing of US-Philippine basing relations. I find that foreign military bases are essential for super-power status and are an arena for great power competition. I conclude that the US foreign basing posture is strongly aligned with American trade relationships and against US enemies. For host-nation motivations, I conclude that security threats to the host-nation matter, but not uniformly. External threats have the greatest influence in increasing foreign military access, but low-intensity revolutionary threats actually tend to decrease a host-nation’s willingness to accommodate foreign forces.
","abstract_html":"<p>Foreign military bases are anomalies in a world of sovereign states. Why do major powers station their finite military forces to protect other countries and how does the distribution of these bases relate to a country’s grand strategy? Why do host-nations give up their sovereignty and allow foreign forces, capable of existential violence, to deploy within their borders? This dissertation takes a mixed method approach to each of these questions. For the first, I combine descriptive case studies relating the basing postures of five major powers and to their respective grand strategies with a quantitative analysis of the correlates of the US military basing network. To answer the second, I test the role of host-nation security conditions on US military access and then conduct an in-depth process tracing of US-Philippine basing relations. I find that foreign military bases are essential for super-power status and are an arena for great power competition. I conclude that the US foreign basing posture is strongly aligned with American trade relationships and against US enemies. For host-nation motivations, I conclude that security threats to the host-nation matter, but not uniformly. External threats have the greatest influence in increasing foreign military access, but low-intensity revolutionary threats actually tend to decrease a host-nation’s willingness to accommodate foreign forces.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Brown, Joseph W"],"institution":null,"degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Feaver, Peter","Beardsley, Kyle"],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2020,"date_issued":"2020","date_published":"2020","updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:07:12Z","subjects":["International relations","Military studies","Political science","bases","conflict","military","security","strategy"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20927","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.uri"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Feaver, Peter","Beardsley, Kyle"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Brown, Joseph W"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.accessioned","label":"Dc Date Accessioned","values":["2020-06-09T17:59:01Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2021-05-27T08:17:08Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2020"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Dissertation"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["International relations","Military studies","Political science","bases","conflict","military","security","strategy"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20927"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Foreign military bases are anomalies in a world of sovereign states. Why do major powers station their finite military forces to protect other countries and how does the distribution of these bases relate to a country’s grand strategy? Why do host-nations give up their sovereignty and allow foreign forces, capable of existential violence, to deploy within their borders? This dissertation takes a mixed method approach to each of these questions. For the first, I combine descriptive case studies relating the basing postures of five major powers and to their respective grand strategies with a quantitative analysis of the correlates of the US military basing network. To answer the second, I test the role of host-nation security conditions on US military access and then conduct an in-depth process tracing of US-Philippine basing relations. I find that foreign military bases are essential for super-power status and are an arena for great power competition. I conclude that the US foreign basing posture is strongly aligned with American trade relationships and against US enemies. For host-nation motivations, I conclude that security threats to the host-nation matter, but not uniformly. External threats have the greatest influence in increasing foreign military access, but low-intensity revolutionary threats actually tend to decrease a host-nation’s willingness to accommodate foreign forces.
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"],"dc:identifier.uri":["https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20927"],"dc:subject":["International relations","Military studies","Political science","bases","conflict","military","security","strategy"],"dc:title":["The Politics of Foreign Military Basing"],"dc:type":["Dissertation"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:07:12Z"}