Asia is just the beginning. In Africa, the Pentagon has quietly created "about a dozen air bases" for drones and surveillance since 2007. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, we know that the military has created or will soon create installations in Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, Sao Tome and Prํncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, South Sudan, and Uganda. The Pentagon has also investigated building bases in Algeria, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria, among other places.

Next year, a brigade-sized force of 3,000 troops, and "likely more", will arrive for exercises and training missions across the continent. In the nearby Persian Gulf, the Navy is developing an "afloat forward-staging base", or "mothership", to serve as a sea-borne "lily pad" for helicopters and patrol craft, and has been involved in a massive build-up of forces in the region.

In Latin America, following the military's eviction from Panama in 1999 and Ecuador in 2009, the Pentagon has created or upgraded new bases in Aruba and Curacao, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru. Elsewhere, the Pentagon has funded the creation of military and police bases capable of hosting US forces in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, and even Ecuador. In 2008, the Navy reactivated its Fourth Fleet, inactive since 1950, to patrol the region. The military may want a base in Brazil and unsuccessfully tried to create bases, ostensibly for humanitarian and emergency relief, in Paraguay and Argentina.

Finally, in Europe, after arriving in the Balkans during 1990s' interventions, US bases have moved eastward into some of the former Eastern Bloc states of the Soviet empire. The Pentagon is developing installations capable of supporting rotating, brigade-sized deployments in Romania and Bulgaria, and a missile defense base and aviation facilities in Poland. Previously, the Bush administration maintained two CIA black sites (secret prisons) in Lithuania and another in Poland. Citizens of the Czech Republic rejected a planned radar base for the Pentagon's still unproven missile defense system, and now Romania will host ground-based missiles.

A new American way of war

A lily pad on one of the Gulf of Guinea islands of Sao Tome and Prํncipe, off the oil-rich west coast of Africa, helps explain what's going on. A US official has described the base as "another Diego Garcia", referring to the Indian Ocean base that has helped ensure decades of US domination over Middle Eastern energy supplies. Without the freedom to create new large bases in Africa, the Pentagon is using Sao Tome and a growing collection of other lily pads on the continent in an attempt to control another crucial oil-rich region.

Far beyond West Africa, the 19th century "Great Game" competition for Central Asia has returned with a passion - and this time it has gone global. It's spreading to resource-rich lands in Africa, Asia, and South America, as the United States, China, Russia, and members of the European Union find themselves locked in an increasingly intense competition for economic and geopolitical supremacy.

While Beijing, in particular, has pursued this competition in a largely economic fashion, dotting the globe with strategic investments, Washington has focused relentlessly on military might as its global trump card, dotting the planet with new bases and other forms of military power.

"Forget full-scale invasions and large-footprint occupations on the Eurasian mainland," Nick Turse has written of this new 21st century military strategy. "Instead, think special operations forces... proxy armies... the militarization of spying and intelligence ... drone aircraft ... cyber-attacks, and joint Pentagon operations with increasingly militarized 'civilian' government agencies."

Add to this unparalleled long-range air and naval power; arms sales besting any nation on Earth; humanitarian and disaster relief missions that clearly serve military intelligence, patrol, and "hearts and minds" functions; the rotational deployment of regular US forces globally; port visits and an expanding array of joint military exercises and training missions that give the US military de facto "presence" worldwide and help turn foreign militaries into proxy forces.

And lots and lots of lily-pad bases.

Military planners see a future of endless small-scale interventions in which a large, geographically dispersed collection of bases will always be primed for instant operational access. With bases in as many places as possible, military planners want to be able to turn to another conveniently close country if the United States is ever prevented from using a base, as it was by Turkey prior to the invasion of Iraq.