The US military has bases all over the world. I suppose that the UK and other super powers do the same. Are there any foreign military bases in the US?
Not bases, but I remember that at some point after 9/11, some european countries (I’m pretty sure it included Germany) had planes deployed in the USA to protect its airspace, in replacement of American airforces deployed elsewhere.
However, I can’t remember in what instance. Possibly at the beginning of the operations in Afghanistan.
This is a hijack, but the UK is not really a superpower (even if this sometimes appears hard to swallow to the British post-imperial collective psyche). Major power maybe, and also a nuclear power, but it takes more than that to qualify as a superpower, even though there is no clear-cut yes/no definition of what a superpower is. The term was (AFAIK) first use for the USA and the USSR during the Cold War, and common wisdom has it that with the collapse of the Communist bloc the US remained as the only superpower. Common wisdom also has it that you have at least one, maybe two, emerging superpowers in Asia. But surely the UK has nowhere near the political, military, or economic influence in the world as the US.
The closest thing I know of is the NATO-Partnership for Peace exercises that are conducted in Fort Polk, Louisiana. Thousands of troops from many different countries learn to work together jointly through a realistic war simulation on U.S. soil. There have been several of these since 1995 but foreign soldiers aren’t stationed there the rest of the time.
While it is hardly a foreign military base, there is a NORAD contingent of Canadian Forces personnel stationed at McChord Airforce Base in Washington State. They’ve got their own little section of a building which I visited when I was an Air Cadet. I won’t got as far to say it’s pernament, as I’m not sure if they are there now.
My brothers also mentioned to me their surprise at seeing foreign soldiers at various bases within the US. Though apparently, this is more of a “The US will help your military, friendly country, by letting your officer cadre filter through our system to see how we do it” then a foreign base, by any measure.
I recall that during my training at Ft. Sam Houston in the mid-80s I would spot various non-US uniform patterns every now and then around the mess hall.
Right. We allow components of various allied forces the use of facilities at American bases as parts of Joint Operations/Commands, as elements temporarily “attached” to some US unit for training or specific-mission purposes, as temporary guest/tenant in US facilities for their own training purposes, or for port-of-call/airspace overflight/landing privileges and the such, with reciprocity being part of the deal. And I believe many militaries that deploy far from home on a “peacetime” footing, even ours, work more under that model – far cheaper than a full fledged extraterritorial base.
AFAIK for the NATO nations other than the US, permanent full-blown extraterritorial bases are very few outside of the NATO zone itself and the current war/police action zones (Gulf/Iraq, Afghanistan, Balkans), or places like Lebanon where the operation is UN or otherwise multinationally flagged. Mostly would be in the overseas dependencies of those countries that still have any, and maybe an odd UK or French one in one or another former colony.
The US does have by far the most true overseas bases, yet even these days we do the “Joint Ops” thing if feasible.
Russia DOES retain full-fledged bases and even major commands (e.g. Black Sea Fleet) at locations in various of the former Soviet republics. China has no known bases overseas.