Nevertheless, pressure came from Australia, France and England, as well as Panama, Denmark and Iceland, to return bases on their own territory or colonies and demobilize the twelve-million-man army on the national territory (it would have taken a larger army to maintain the huge basic system). However, the codification of U.S. military access rights worldwide into a comprehensive set of legal documents was more important than the decrease in the number of bases. These alliances formed security alliances with several countries in Europe (NATO), the Middle East and South Asia (CENTO) and Southeast Asia (SEATO) and included bilateral agreements with Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. These alliances have taken on a common security interest between the United States and other countries and have been the charter of the American base everywhere. The Status of Force Agreements (SAAs) was developed in each country to determine what the military could do; These generally gave U.S. soldiers broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed and environmental damage. These agreements and subsequent basic operations were usually shrouded in secrecy. The assumption that U.S. bases served local interests in a common ideological and security project dominated until the 1960s: allowing access to bases showed a commitment to the fight against communism and gratitude for U.S.
military aid. But with decolonization and the American war in Vietnam, such arguments began to lose their power, and the number of U.S. foreign bases declined by a peak in the early 1960s. Where access was once automatic, many countries had greater influence over what the United States had to give in exchange for basic rights, and those rights could be limited in several important ways, including by environmental and other rules. The negotiating masses used by the United States were increasingly sophisticated weapons, as well as rents for the country on which bases were built.5 These exchanges were often linked to trade and other types of agreements, such as access to oil and other raw materials and investment opportunities (Harkavy 1982: 337). They have also had destabilizing effects on regional arms records, especially when advanced weapons are the medium of exchange. .
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