Saturday, September 12, 2015

Mapping American Expansionism


Mapping the Growth of Bases Worldwide is an interactive map of U.S. military bases and 'lily pad' bases around the globe. Lily pad bases (or Cooperative Security Locations) are small, often secret, facilities that the U.S. maintains, supposedly for anti-terrorism purposes around the world.

The large blue markers on the map show countries around the world which host U.S. military bases, for example the 174 bases in Germany. The smaller red markers show the individual locations of U.S. lily pad bases.

The data for the map comes from a number of sources. However the secretive nature of lily pad bases and the lack of transparency means that there may be many more lily pad bases that haven't made it to the map.

1 comment:

Jim E said...

I've been wanting to make an infographic of foreign military bases. Yours is excellent; I'm finding it hard to get an accurate number, depending o how bases are defines.