No Basis for These Bases: The Damage
Foreign US Military Bases Do in 2025
World BEYOND War
(July 14, 2025) —Today, World BEYOND War has published a new report exposing the devastating impact of military bases worldwide. Of 1,247 foreign military bases in the world, the United States operates 877 bases across 95 countries, and is rapidly adding more.
In coordination with the release of the report, July 14 is the Global Day of Media Action to #CloseBases where we’re asking you to join us in amplifying the Close Bases message.
If you can’t join the live “actionars” click here to access the toolkit with sample social media posts, a template letter to the editor, sharable graphics, and more.
Communities are rising up
to resist military base expansion
WBW’s report and day of action build off the Global Day of Action to #CloseBases on February 23, which had 60+ actions at military base sites in 27 countries.
Using the reach of the global World BEYOND War network, we need to keep this issue in the news and build on the momentum to shut the bases down. Instead of spending billions on bases that serve as launchpads for wars, tax dollars should be redirected toward the world’s real needs — housing, green energy, healthcare, and education.
ACTION: Read the report. Sign up to take action. Let’s amplify the #CloseBases message worldwide.
Towards peace,
Greta Zarro, Organizing Director, World BEYOND War
No Basis for These Bases: The Damage
Foreign Military Bases Do in 2025
World BEYOND War
A new report by World BEYOND War finds that military bases used by foreign militaries are growing in number, as are public protests and advocacy against those bases. Of 1,247 foreign military bases in the world, 877 of them, by latest count, are US bases outside of the United States. Eighteen other nations, combined, have 370 bases outside their borders.
(July 14, 2025) — While US bases are in 95 foreign countries all over the globe and virtually encircling the borders of Russia and China, the nation with the second-most foreign bases, Türkiye, has them all near Türkiye, with the exception of one base in Somalia, and the majority of them in Syria and Iraq where Türkiye has been waging wars.
During US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States added, and later closed, hundreds of bases. Türkiye and the US are allied members of NATO and weapons traders, and the United States maintains a military presence at nine bases within Türkiye, at one of which it keeps nuclear weapons. The only other nation on Earth with even a tenth as many foreign military bases as the United States is the United States’ very closest military ally, the United Kingdom, some of whose bases are joint US-UK operations.
The combined foreign military bases of the top three nations on the list, NATO members all, total 1,127. The fourth nation on the list, NATO’s raison d’être, Russia, has 29 foreign military bases. These are all found in 10 countries, all of which are near Russia, apart from one base in Sudan.
Foreign bases are catching on in a minor way with other nations. And governments like that of Djibouti that host bases for numerous nations for a fee increase the risk of sparking conflict. But foreign bases remain primarily and uniquely a US enterprise, with no other foreign basing approaching in scale that of US basing in nations such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
The biggest change in US bases in the past three years is the creation of dozens of new bases in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The US has also opened new bases in Western Asia, Somalia, South Africa, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Peru, and significantly in the parts of the world southeast of China: Taiwan, the Philippines, Guam, the Northern Marianas, Papua New Guinea, and Australia.
People have built popular movements to prevent planned bases and to close existing bases at many locations around the world, and increasingly they are in touch with each other.
On February 23, 2025, and surrounding days, individuals and organizations around the world took coordinated action to call for the closure of all military bases as part of the Global Day of Action to Close Bases. In over 60 locations people protested the foreign bases of various countries, including the United States, the UK, and Russia. See https://DayToCloseBases.org
Bases are often on stolen land and often perpetuate systems of segregation and colonialism. They do incredible environmental damage, tend to increase sexual violence and drunkenness, cost a financial fortune, prop up brutal governments, and facilitate drone attacks and wars.
Military Empires: A Visual Guide to Foreign Bases
In some places, movements against bases have achieved official support. The Governor of Okinawa has repeatedly visited the United States to insist that military bases be closed. Almost 20 years ago, the Government of Ecuador evicted the US military and banned foreign bases. More recently, the Ecuadorian government has violated its Constitution to allow foreign bases in the Galapagos Islands and proposed to do the same on the mainland, despite opposition from members of Parliament.
In some places, bases have been prevented or closed. In 2024, after years of struggle, supported by World BEYOND War and others, the Save Sinjajevina campaign met with the Prime Minister of Montenegro and gained his promise that there would be no military training ground built at Sinjajevina in Montenegro. This was to have been a massive and destructive project for the benefit of NATO and the US military.
In 2006, people in the Czech Republic learned of plans to create US bases in their country. They organized and prevented those bases from being built. In 2007, localities in the Czech Republic held referenda that matched national opinion polls and demonstrations; their opposition moved their government to refuse to host a US base.
In Colombia, a popular movement has prevented construction of a base for use by the US military on Providencia Island, and a new movement to prevent such a base on Gorgona Island is drawing on the lessons from that success.
As shown in the new report, complaints against foreign military bases are numerous. Bases deny sovereignty, make nations into targets, make wars more likely, support unpopular governments, do extensive environmental damage, proliferate nuclear weapons, provide criminal immunity to occupying troops, and create a segregated structure in which people do not all have the same rights.
The US public, and as far as can be determined, every other public whose government has foreign bases, has never been asked to decide on creating or closing such bases, and very rarely if ever even been surveyed in an opinion poll on the matter.
