Why does the US have 800 military bases around the world? 

Vox has yet again made a brilliant piece of explanatory journalism. Have a look at the 4min VIDEO here. The US has about 800 military bases in other countries, according to David Vine in his forthcoming book Base Nation (Amazon). It costs a lot of money to keep them open. Why are they there in the first place? Also have a look at Bank of America’s “Transforming World” atlas, and at Wikipedia’s Major arms industry corporations by nation, and The SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing and military services companies, 2013’, SIPRI Fact Sheet, December 2014. Photo credit: VOX/mapping worlds/SIPRI.